"Leads to Loyal Patients" - How to Increase Your Dental Practice Booking Rate (feat. Brian Craig)

🚨 Are you losing potential new patients every single day without even realizing it? In this episode of The Dental Domination Podcast, DentalScapes co-founders Dan Brian and Brian Craig reveal the #1 reason most dental practices struggle to grow: poor lead management and low conversion rates.

💥 Learn how to convert more leads into actual appointments, increase your patient base, and boost practice revenue using proven strategies and automation tools designed specifically for dental practices.

📈 Whether you're a general dentist, orthodontist, pediatric dentist, or specialty practice, you'll walk away with actionable tips to:

- Increase your new patient booking rate
- Improve speed-to-lead follow-up
- Use texting, email, and chat to connect with modern patients
- Nurture leads who didn’t book immediately
- Automate your front desk follow-up with DentOwl 🦉

💡 Bonus: We introduce DentOwl, our brand-new automated lead management platform that helps practices follow up faster, communicate better, and never let a hot lead slip through the cracks.

Check out the show notes: https://www.dentalscapes.com/leads-to-loyal-patients/

👉 Learn more or schedule a free strategy call: https://dentalscapes.com/start

Transcript

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All right, welcome back to the Dental Domination Podcast. My name is Dan Brian. I'm the co-founder of Dentalscapes and I am here today with my other co-founder, Brian Craig. Brian is also our VP of Client Services and we are here today to dig into a topic that I think a lot of dental practices or at least I know a lot of dental practices can relate to. And that is lead management and actually converting potential patients into actual new booked appointments. And so it's something that I think most practices would like to be better at than they are currently, even if you're a high performing practice, there's always room for improvement. And one of the things that Brian and I have really taken away from our experience in dental marketing and working with the practices that we serve is that even small incremental changes in conversion rate or the number of callers that you're converting into new patients, even small improvements can make an incredible difference in terms of the revenue that you're generating for your practice, your profitability. ah And so it's just a game changer and something that I think does not get enough ah talk out there in the industry about because at the end of the day, know, marketing is designed to bring in qualified leads and that's great. But at the end of the day, nothing really matters unless those qualified leads aren't converted by your front desk into actual new patient appointments. And I am preaching to the choir here though. So Brian, um what can you tell us about the practices that you talk with day to day in terms of the struggle to convert leads into actual appointments? Yeah, Dan. So um it is something that's very common. uh Just about all practices struggle with it. And, you know, to your to your point during the intro there, it does make a big difference in the final numbers that your practice sees because, uh you know, I'm a data nerd. So excuse me for automatically going to that. But it really is a math thing. And if you can manipulate those variables anywhere in the initial lead all the way to patient in-seat, you can make a huge difference in your practice and your end results. Absolutely. And you know, we talk about the numbers and the math and how that all works. I mean, just just by way of example, let's say that a practice is bringing in 100 leads each month. And let's say that they're converting at around, you know, an average rate, which is, you know, we'll just peg it at 50 percent. So they're converting 50 percent of those leads. That means from those 100 leads, they're getting 50 patients that month. But what if you actually converted 60 percent? that's 60 patients instead of 50 each month. And what does that difference look like? And I would encourage practices to not just think about the initial appointment value here and however much money you're bringing in in month one, but take a look at your patient base and the average length of time that a patient is with your practice and look at what we call patient lifetime value. When you think about that extra 10 patients a month, if you're doing that 12 times a year and you're bringing in an extra 120 patients a year. What does that look like in terms of the revenue impact to your business over the course of the next 10 years? I mean, I think it's really crazy and Brian you and I have seen practices, you know able to tick up that conversion rate and really add tens of thousands or more incremental revenue to their their bottom line each and every year pretty awesome. Yeah, it absolutely is. we're not talking about tiny numbers here either. For general dentistry, lifetime value of a patient on average is 10 to 15 grand and maybe even a little bit more than that. And for the cosmetic or specialty practices, can easily have a 50k plus average lifetime value for Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the numbers are really significant. This is not small change by any means. Now, when we talk about conversion rate or sometimes called booking rate, uh you know, the percentage again of those leads that convert into actual new appointments, you know, I threw out the benchmark of 50 % and I think that's a decent target for most practices. But a lot of practices aren't even hitting that. And we actually see a lot of practices that that come to us. Um, you know, inquiring about services that are maybe at 40%. I've seen some practices that are even a little bit lower than that, which is not good. Um, but we actually push our, our practices, those that we work with to hit at least a 60% target. Um, and to be quite honest, you know, in doing this, the amount of time that we've done. Even higher than that is not out of, out of the range. that's possible by any means it really though, takes training your front desk team. um Acting on every lead that comes in, calling them back if the call is missed or if, know, hopefully not. But if it does go to voicemail, these things happen. Getting the consistent follow through and follow ups is super important. uh What would you say about like the follow up that's necessary in terms of nurturing these leads that come in and actually closing the deal? Yeah, so I would say that it's a lot more than you think it or a lot more than most people think it is. You know, because you're here in the business every day. you know, metrics that I've seen say that, you know, 14 times on average, I think is the number I normally see is the number of times that you need to hit somebody who doesn't book initially. And that's not 14 phone calls necessarily. You know, that can be a a mix of text message and email and phone call. um But oh just like we're busy, the people that call your practice are busy. And if they don't answer or if you don't get an answer on that first or second or third try, a lot of times it's not a, no, we don't want to come to your practice. It's a Well, I had to pick up the kids from school and take them to soccer practice. And then, you know, it was a long day at work and we've got a nightmare going on with the house. um And, you know, I would encourage our listeners not to think about these consistent follow ups as hassling or bugging people, but, you know, more trying to contact them and keep, keep your practice top of mind at a good time for them. Yeah. You know, work your way through to the no. Don't take a no response initially as a final no. Yeah, and you you mentioned, you know, these don't all have to be phone calls. And in fact, you know, like you said, we actually encourage practices not to rely too heavily on phone calls simply because in today's day and age, and we're talking about Gen Z and millennials and you know, even some older adults here, they just are not as inclined to pick up the phone as they once were. And if they're anything like me, they don't even pick up the phone for a number they don't recognize. So there's there's obviously things that we can do to mitigate that. And one of those is text messaging. super important and you know one of the things that you and I have worked on and implementing at dentalscapes is helping practices with missed call text back so that folks are receiving a text immediately if the call is not answered right away or if they're unable to connect with someone at the front desk so that's super important. Now I just wanted to talk also you know a little bit about this concept of speed to lead because you mentioned you know 14 follow ups so true you know just just by the very nature of the world we live in, you need to be hitting these people pretty consistently and over a span of time, simply because like you said, folks may just be busy, they're dropping the kids off at school or whatever it may be. You need to get them when it's right for them and however it's right for them. And so that's where we talk about phone calls, text messages, and we're gonna talk about online website chat additionally here in a second. But uh as far as, you know, the follow up itself, speed to lead is, is a real thing within this industry and within dental marketing, uh, of course. And that really is just talking about the amount of time between when you receive the call and following up on it or receive the chatter, receive the form, fill and following up on it. What do you think is a good target for practices to strive for when it comes to responding to leads and following up? Yeah. So if, if it is a lead that finds you online somehow, like that's not referred to your practice or didn't have their neighbors say like, Hey, they're, they're the best. You only need to work with them. it's a lot shorter than you might think it's five minutes or less. If it takes you more than five minutes to respond to that potential new patient, they've gone to the practice down the road that, you know, it is responding in that amount of time. 100%. And you know, it's also something to think about as more and more practices are. And, you know, I think you and I agree they should be implementing website chat on their websites. It's particularly important there too, because we know that if you're not responding to a chat within say 20 seconds, that person is bouncing and they're gone and they're, they're already calling the next practice down the road. Like you said. Um, and there are things that can be put in place. to make that easier to manage. It's not necessarily the case, although it would be ideal. It's not necessarily the case that your front desk team needs to be monitoring that online chat absolutely every millisecond of every day. There are automations, text backs that you can put in place within those chat features that can help you manage those leads and ensure that nothing is falling through the cracks. Is that right? Yeah, and if you work in a dental practice or if you are working at the front desk, with patients coming in, with having to work on insurance verification, with all the different things that you have going on, it's not reasonable to be able to respond manually as a human being to every inquiry that comes in within five minutes. have to rely on technology to help you instead of trying to do everything manually. Yeah, and speaking of technology, wanted to just take a moment and um ask you for on behalf of our listeners. So we actually are just now rolling out a new platform called Dent Owl. What can you tell us about that? And it's really designed to address this very problem. It is, yes, because we've seen uh with our clients exactly what most practices are facing around that. uh It's not a lack of desire to respond quickly. It's that it's just not reasonable to do without the technology. So the Dental platform we're rolling out handles a lot of the things that we've talked about so far. uh Things like automatic uh responses to new chats or new emails uh or even things like if somebody calls the practice and uh you're not able to pick up at that time for whatever reason, what we call missed call text back, which is the system will automatically text that person, hey, this is uh XYZ dental, I saw that we missed your call, how can we help? because text is so ubiquitous in our society these days. Like I know, you know, if somebody calls me, I'm probably not gonna take that call for a number of reasons unless I already know who it is. ah But if I get a text, yeah, odds are I'm gonna answer it. uh You know, it's asynchronous, like it doesn't have to be done immediately. It can be done in five minutes when I'm freed up. uh So it helps a lot with that conversion rate we were talking about earlier. Yeah, absolutely. And so this is something that we're really excited to offer to all of our clients. Now it is something that's exclusive to dental scapes clients. So if you are interested in a platform like this, reach out to Brian or I, you can go to dental scapes.com slash start or email me directly at Dan at dental scapes.com can reach Brian. If you prefer to at Brian at dental scapes.com as well. I'm to put you on the spot there, Brian. Um, but we would love to hear from you. If that is something that could make a difference in your practice. And I suspect that it could given that Like I said, most of the practices we initially talk with are converting, you know, 50, maybe less percentage of the leads that are coming into their practice. If you can tick that percentage up by 10%, even 20%, it can make an incredible difference in terms of the revenue that your practice is able to generate, ah the patient base that you're able to uh accumulate and that your profitability over time. So we're super excited to roll it out. Again, it's called dental if you want to talk more about it. Just go to dentalscapes.com slash start uh and we would love to have a conversation with you It is included uh in every marketing program that we offer our clients uh In any case, you know, we've talked a lot about you know This very common struggle within the dental industry today Brian Is there anything that you would want to leave our listeners with? That you think you know based on your experience working with so many clients ah It's something that they should they should take away from this conversation Yeah, so two things I would say. The first is that dentelle is spelled D-E-N-T-O-W-L and the mascot is a little owl. So it wasn't a mispronunciation. That's actually kind of a play on the word there. um The second is that I know we've talked a lot today about real-time conversion, getting in touch with people really quickly. The other thing that I want to mention that Dental is good for and, you know, that certainly there are, you know, other solutions that you can build out by hand that could um do similar things for this last piece is that just because this says no initially does not mean that they're going to say no three months or six months from now. So another important piece of this is then you're talking about 50 % conversion, 100 new patient leads, maybe 50 of them convert now. Those other 50, you in touch with them as, know, unless they say, no, don't ever contact me again. You need to stay in touch with them. So that can be something like a monthly email newsletter, which we do through Dental, ah but something to stay top of mind, because you'll find that over time, as that list grows and as you're doing like nurturing and marketing to a larger number of people who may have initially said no, that you'll start to convert some of those. So over time, you know, that can really turn into a uh significant wave of new patients there. Yeah, love it. mean, it's all about the immediate follow up, but it's also about nurturing those relationships over time, cultivating that relationship and then getting someone in the door. Maybe six months, 12 months down the road. It's still still infinitely valuable for your practice and not something that you should be giving up on because really at the end of the day, if you're not following up with folks that uh did not book that appointment, maybe you know immediately you are literally just leaving money on the table or when it comes to your marketing investment. literally lighting money on fire. So uh definitely all great things, things that we've designed Dent Owl to do. I love that you mentioned ah the pronunciation and the name because Dent Owl does have a really awesome logo and I wish I could claim that, know, Brian and I developed the name based on some grand scheme or grand marketing and strategy, but rather we really liked the logo. And I have to say the owl embodies wisdom in my opinion. So I do believe that it's it's quite fitting and the owl is also has a very sharp sense of vision. So ah What would you say Brian is that fair? Yeah, it's all good anyway Yeah, check out the show notes if you want to see that um that awesome owl logo and contact us dental scapes comm slash start if you'd like to talk about implementing dental for your practice start converting more of those leads into actual new patients and see your profitability grow uh as a result. So in any case, thank you so much for joining us all today, everyone. If you liked what you heard, please take a moment and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen to these shows. We really appreciate it. It's the best way for us to reach other dentists and practice managers out there so that we can help as many people as possible. Thank you so much for joining today, Brian, as well. ah You said you don't pick up the phone most of the time, but you do pick up my calls, so I'm feeling honored and humbled. ah Sounds good. All right, everyone. Take care, have a great day, and thanks for tuning in. Alright man.