Steve – Phone ringing ….Good morning, I am just calling to enquire about your Gynecomastia services, I am just wondering how much does it cost to get the surgery done and is it Medicare refunded?
Huyen – Phone ringing ….Hello there, I saw your ads on Google about laser eye surgery and your Free Assessment offer, just wondering how much does the surgery cost first before I book in for an assessment?
Steve – “How much does it cost?”, I think that is the most frequently asked question that clinics are dealing with. For lower priced or simple services, it could be simple to answer this question. But when it comes to high value, customised services like surgery, how can you answer this question without scaring prospects away and instead turn the enquiry into a consultation booking and potential surgery after that?
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Huyen – In this podcast episode, we are going to walk you through the best 6 tips that we have for converting this type of question into a booking. By the way, my name is Huyen Truong, and that was my co-host Steven Tait. We’d like to say a quick hello and welcome if you are new to this podcast channel; by tuning in each episode you will be hearing current best strategies and tactics to help grow your practice quickly. You can subscribe to our podcast channel for alerts on future episodes by hitting that little bell button (Ding sound), which lets you keep up to date with every new episode as they become available.
Steve – Today we are going to discuss something that can be an issue for all businesses, not just those in the medical fields; “How to deal with the ‘How much does it cost question and how to not scare the prospects away?”. This is actually one of my favourite topics to discuss as I hear about it quite often from conversations with our clients. I have also had to answer this question repeatedly myself through the years of running my own business.
A question like how much does it cost for your web design services?, isn’t so easy to answer. There are so many elements for a website build project: do you want your website to be just a glossy online brochure or do you want a website that positions you as a top expert in your niche and convert more bookings… how big is the website, how many pages, any special features…so on and so forth
Huyen – Before we begin…we have this one special freebie for listeners of today’s special podcast… we’ve created an example of a live chat and phone script that you can follow to help you to convert more leads into patient bookings. We’ve left the download link in the show notes below so don’t forget to download it before you go and implement these strategies into your future calls with prospects.
Steve: Now your website is ranking well in search engines and a prospect has found you and contacted you online. You’re getting various enquiries about options, procedural questions, or maybe they’re ready to book their consultation. Then when the lead wants to discuss your costs, you notice that those leads that contacted you are suddenly not converting into actual bookings. It’s unfortunately a common theme in digital marketing for many professional practices. So what can we do about it?
Huyen – It is very common that you get a call or email from someone who found you online, and eventually the call leads to the same question…. “How much does it cost?”. We notice a lot of practices answer this question about “How much does it cost?” too quickly, allowing the prospective patient to just stop engaging and lose the opportunity of converting them into booking.
Steve: Regardless of what pricing we give, any price will be too much if the person asking doesn’t fully know, understand, and believe in the value of your service. That’s the problem with answering the question “How much does it cost?”, and it often poses a major dilemma for clinic owners who provide custom, high-level services.
Huyen – Our strategy is to never ever give an exact price until your correct value has been established. The only time you could consider not adhering to that strategy, is when you knew your pricing was super competitive in the marketplace, then simple price info can work to your advantage.
Steve: In our experience, most prospects haven’t been trained in how to evaluate or purchase something, and they may only be looking at making a purchase like this a few times in their life, suggesting that they might not necessarily have all of the information that they need for evaluating how best to purchase it. As professional sellers, who do this all day, every day, it’s our job to help clinics understand how to frame prospective purchasers thinking around “price” or “cost” in a manner that will allow them to make the most informed decision.
Huyen – I think that “What something costs” is just one factor among many in a purchase consideration. For less sophisticated buyers, however, price is the most concrete factor and the most logical for which they will use. This is why these types of buyers usually ask about pricing so quickly. Because It’s easier for them to judge others.
Steve: When considering how most prospects respond once they hear the price, their reaction usually falls into one of four categories;
The Blow-up: “That price is way too high, the highest by far of all the other clinics!”
The Negotiator: “That is your list price, but I am special and deserve the best price.”
The Player: No reaction at all, they just move to the next question as if nothing was said.
The Magician: “That is helpful, thanks.” Then they disappear forever.
Huyen – Great category selection, I like the Magician – I’ve seen them many times on our client’s live chat windows.
Keep it mind that rarely does discussing price early in the sales’ process lead to a sale. When we do arrive at discussing the price too early, we’ve given the power to the buyer or prospect. In a time when information is freely available, price is the only negotiating chip that we have.
Steve: The script that we provided in the show note below is to help you navigate handling the “How much does it cost?” situation. Fundamentally, it is ideal if this interaction is played out over a phone conversion, and the script is imagined as such. It is easier to convert someone into a booking when you get to talk to them directly over the phone, as it is too easy to be dismissive and avoid engaging in conversion through typing. But a phone conversation allows you to better qualify the prospect and address any other objections they may have more easily.
Here are few tips that you should keep in mind when answering this question…
Huyen – Here is Tip 1: As we mentioned in the previous podcast episode #23 “How to make sure leads become actual patients.” we discussed that the timeliness of your response is very important.. The rule of thumb is that when you receive a web enquiry, please call them back immediately. Within 5 mins, don’t allow the hot lead to chill over 30 mins. The speed of response is important, as your prospect will quickly move on to someone else who is more responsive if the response time is too long for them.
Steve: Moving on to Tip 2: you need to be able to qualify prospects to see if they are the right one for your practice, we usually use the N.B.A.T method, which stands for Needs – Budget – Authority – Time, which tries to qualify prospects by getting as much information in these areas in respect to your prospective patient… What we mean by this is…
N – stands for Needs (what do they want)
B – Budget – have they got finance for it, self-budgeting or looking for finance assistance
A – Authority (do they need to ask someone else or they need to consult with their family members to make a decision, it is a good idea to have a conversation with both of them)
T – Timing (how soon do they want this procedure – in a few months, or years’ time?)
Huyen – Then the next step is to transition to identifying their 3 I’s (Issues – Importance – Impact) To break this down a little..
Issues: What are their main issues? Let them talk about it and dig further into them for understanding any physical and emotional issues they are having to deal with. Can they send some photos of their problem areas for the doctors to have a look?
The second I is
Importance: How would the treatment or surgery help them, how important is it? And how soon they want the procedure?
And final… impact – the goal is to know the potential impact of the treatment or procedure, how this procedure would change their life or what the ideal outcomes they would like to get from this procedure (the physical, emotional and social benefits).
Steve –Tip 3 is that you need to know how to address any objections that prospects may have in your favour. Adding a list of pre-completed FAQ’s regarding a service to your prepared script for handling inquiry calls, will help ensure whoever is following the script will be well armed to handle your prospective patient’s enquiries.
Huyen – Moving onto Tip 4: Don’t ask them to book the consultation after the first few lines of conversation unless they are keen and ready to go (it is like proposing a marriage after the first date right?) And also Calling leads back instead of emailing them.
If you see an enquiry coming through email asking for the price, don’t reply to that email, if you have their phone contact information, call them and have a conversation, if you reply via email, the response rate is usually very low and you will turn them into the Magician as soon as you reply to them with the costing information; unless your pricing is really attractive.
Steve – Our second to last tip for you is to be prepared to have a long conversation over the phone (some can be up to 30 mins), your conversion rate will go up in proportion to the engagement time spent with the prospect.
Huyen – Yeah, I agree whole heartedly, over my career as a business owner, lengthy conversations over the phone signal good engagement and a high conversion rate. One of the most common things happening in practices is that your Practice Manager or Receptionist don’t have sales skills, however they are the first contact when enquiries come in and these staff should be able to cleverly convert them into bookings instead of just simply answering basic questions. That is why our final tip, is that we suggest for all clinics to give proper sales training for your support staff that are answering the phone or responding to emails.
Steve – So following these tips can provide some great keys to ensuring that leads become consultations and eventually treatment bookings. Providing constructive feedback to your staff on an ongoing basis is a great habit to get into and taking sales training more seriously if you want to take your marketing to the next level.
Hopefully, this has given you something to think about; we would love to know your thoughts and feedback on this podcast so comment below if you have any!
Huyen – Also if you want us to address a particular topic on a future podcast, please fill out the short 1 min survey linked to in the podcast show notes below so we can produce relevant podcasts for you. Also, if you wanted to be guest on the podcast, that would be even better! Email us and let us know what topics you would like to discuss on the show, we’d love to have you on the show.
This is the first podcast channel in Australia about medical marketing, and we aspire to make this channel a world-leading channel for the healthcare professional community.
Steve – We feel there are many benefits of being on our show including;
- Exposure to our healthcare professional community including thousands of doctors, surgeons, specialists, dentists, and other healthcare professionals
- We promote our podcasts on social media and Google not just in Australia but internationally, gaining strong global exposure
- You can use this podcast on your website as blog post material
- The podcast will be a Q & A interview-style format, and it would only take up to 30 mins of your time.
We can’t wait to have you on our show!
Steve – That’s the end of this podcast, we hope you enjoyed the show, and we look forward to seeing you at the next episode. Bye for now!
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Show Note
https://onlinemarketingfordoctors.com/podcast/increase-new-patient-conversion/
https://onlinemarketingfordoctors.com/podcast/communications-in-specialist-practices/
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