The Private Practice Success Podcast

16. Mastering Conversion Rates: Setting the Right Targets for Your Front Desk Team

• Gerda Muller • Episode 16

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In this episode of the Private Practice Success Podcast, Gerda addresses a common challenge faced by practice owners: Setting the right Conversion Rate Targets for your Front Desk Team.

Prompted by a recent discussion in her Facebook group, Gerda provides expert insights into what conversion rates mean for your practice and how to effectively manage them to ensure sustained growth and efficiency.

In this Episode, you'll learn (amongst others):

  • The definition and importance of conversion rates in private practice.
  • How conversion rates impact cost of client acquisition and practice efficiency.
  • Key variables affecting conversion rates, including lead nature, sales training, and demographics.
  • Strategies for tracking and improving your practice's conversion rates.


Special Bonus:

Download Gerda's FREE Front Desk Referral Log Template (with video instructions) to start tracking and improving your practice conversion rates today. You can get that right HERE.

Who This Episode Is For:

  • Private practice owners aiming to enhance their client conversion strategies.
  • Business owners seeking to improve the efficiency and performance of their front desk team.

Join Gerda as she shares actionable advice and tools to help you set meaningful conversion rate targets. 

Connect with Private Practice Success & Gerda here:

Well, hello there, spectacular private practice owner. My name is Gerda Muller, and you are listening to the Private Practice Success Podcast. And this is episode number 16. 

The title for today's episode is Mastering Conversion Rates. Setting the right targets for your front desk team. This episode was actually prompted by a question that a group practice owner recently asked within my Facebook group.

So if you don't know, I do have a Facebook group. It is called Private Practice Success for Allied Health Professionals, and it is exclusively for private practice owners - whether you are a group or a solo private practice. And this question was asked by a group practice owner.

And she said, “Hey, everybody, I would love to know what target percentage do you set for your front desk team when it comes to conversion rates?” And she actually created a poll with different percentages and people have started to respond to that. And there was quite a bit of a range in the numbers, which I suspected. And this is also not the first time that this conversation has come up in the Facebook group. Because knowing your conversion rate is really, really important. 

And if you've never had key performance indicators, i.e. KPIs, at your practice, I would make knowing your conversion rates one of the top three that you need to start looking at, okay. I find that a lot of times when people get stuck into KPIs, they try to do too much too soon. But conversion rates will most certainly be one of the top three that I recommend you look at. So I thought it is important enough for us to have a conversation about that today here on the podcast.

 As a valued listener of the podcast, I'm also going to gift you a free copy of my Front Desk Referral Log Template including a video overview of how to use it. So, keep listening, I'm going to share more about the referral log towards the end of this episode, otherwise you can jump straight into the podcast show notes and download your free copy in there. But let's start now by actually defining what is a conversion rate.

Defining Conversion Rates in Private Practice

Now, within the context of allied health private practice, a conversion rate measures the effectiveness of turning a client enquiry into a confirmed appointment in your calendar. 

So let's say if you had 100 enquiries in a week, and 50 of those enquiries turned into actual appointments in your diary, then you have a 50 percent conversion rate. 

Let's look at another example. If you had 100 enquiries in a week, and 80 of those enquiries booked an appointment into the calendar, like a confirmed appointment, then you have an 80% conversion rate. So that is how you calculate it. 

And at the end of the day, your conversion rate from a broad-spectrum approach is a really important KPI because it reflects the efficiency of your business's marketing and communication strategy. And it's important because ultimately, it's going to influence your practice growth and even more importantly - sustainability. And that's what we want. We want a sustainable business. So that is how we define a conversion rate. 

Why is it important? I've just said it impacts your growth and your sustainability, but that's like big picture. So if we take a step down from that in more a day to day, week to week, month to month impact, well, it impacts your cost of client acquisition.

So every new client booked into your diary is actually costing you money. Did you realise that?  So you need to know what is your cost of client acquisition? How much does it cost your individual practice to get that new client appointment in your diary? Now that's not the focus of today's conversation, but your conversion rate is going to impact that. So the higher the conversion rate, the lower the cost of client acquisition. So those two numbers impact one another. 

The other reason is the impact on your HR. So your human resources, which in this instance is your front desk team. Because how much time are they spending on calls and enquiries, trying to convert them into actual appointments. So if you've got a higher conversion rate, there's going to be less impact on the front desk team in terms of their time. And that is an HR resource, your admin team at the front desk. 

The third reason why this is really important is that your conversion rate will tell you how many leads to use business language, or to use private practice language, enquiries, you will need each month in order to fill the diary.

So if you know that your conversion rate is let's say 50 percent, and If we go back to our example at the start - we said if you get a hundred enquiries a week and you're converting at 50% . If you want to have 50 new client appointments a week, you would know then that over the month you would need 400 enquiries to get 50% conversion rate for the month. So that's going to inform how many enquiries you need in order to reach your booking target. 

So now we start to see that there's three numbers at play here, right? It is the number of leads, then the conversion rate - how good are we at converting them into appointments -and that then impacts our booking rates, and therefore the booking targets that you set for your front desk team.

Can you start to see how all of these things impact one another? And this is why business is so interesting, right? It is so interesting because there's a lot of variables that you need to look after. And it's why I love business so much. It's also why a lot of people give up on their practice, because it's like, I think I'm not doing things right. I don't know how to do this. It's just because you don't know what you don't know. But we are fixing that with this podcast.

Okay, so to recap - conversion rates impact our cost of client acquisition. It impacts our human resources at the front desk. And it tells you really important information in terms of how many enquiries do you need every day, week, and month in order for you to reach your revenue and also your profit targets. So it's a really, really important number.

But let's circle back to the initial question. The initial question this practice owner asked in my Facebook group is, “What is their conversion target rate as a percentage that everybody here in this group is setting?” And the answers were as low as 30% and as high as 80%. Now, obviously we would love that to be 100%, wouldn't it? But that would mean that we live in a perfect world and that's never going to happen. 

So what is that target percentage? Now, as a business consultant, coach, and mentor who has worked with many practice owners over the last 10 years, and who has had her own group private practice since 2007 people, and I still have it today - I can tell you that there isn't really an industry target percentage. I wish I could tell you that, but I would be lying to you and I would be setting you up for failure. Because your percentage target depends on quite a number of variables. 

So let's talk through these variables. And as we go through it, I want you to really reflect on how is this playing out at your practice.

And I'm not saying you shouldn't have a target percentage, you most certainly will. And I'm going to answer that at the end. But I first want you to think through these variables with me here today. And this is not an order of priority. This is just how it's popping up in my head. 

The Nature of Leads

So the first and really for me, a very salient variable, is the nature of these leads. So I'm going to use the word leads. It's enquiries, right? As a business coach, I think in terms of business terms which is why I use the word leads, and I want you to get used to that. I know it can sound a bit icky because it sounds very salesy, but that's the business term for it and you are running a business, okay.

So I am going to expose you to those terms in my podcast. There's actually nothing icky about it because the better you get at your business, the more people you're going to help at the end of the day and that's why you've become a helping professional. All right, let's get back to variable one, the nature of the lead. In other words, is this a hot lead? Or is this a cold lead? Again, those are very much business terms. So what is a hot lead? 

Hot Leads

A hot lead is a lead that already trusts that you are going to be the service for them because they have heard about you. Maybe your business have been recommended by somebody else, versus a cold lead is somebody that haven't had a lot of exposure to your business and your brand. They're very new to hearing about you. 

So an example of a hot lead would be a GP referral. So if a client goes in and sees their doctor, and this is their family doctor, they may have been seeing this GP for, you know, many years, even if it's just a couple of months, but they've had a lot of contact with this doctor and they trust the doctor. If that doctor says, “Hey, I need you to go see Gerda at The Psych Professionals”, the trust that they have in that GP now translates into trust with me. So they are already trusting me more than a name that they would be looking up on Google to get help with. Because if the GP says that, yes, the psychologist is, I trust that they can help you, that they're the right person to help you. That client's going to go, yes, I want to see good at the psych professionals because doctor said that is who I need to see.  So that is an example of a hot lead. 

Now, I want you to think of who are those hot lead referrers within your world, because those are the people that you want to make sure that you continue building relationships with. Because the likelihood of converting those referrals into actual appointments is much higher.

Another example of a hot lead that does not come from referrals is social media. Now, yes, this takes a bit longer, but if you have a constant social media presence, in other words, your Facebook page and your Instagram page is not a haunted house, but you actually post at least three times a week on your Facebook page or Instagram page - ideally every day, but I know sometimes that's hard - but at least three times a week and you are actually posting good content. So content that builds trust, which means you have a combination of different posts from entertaining, educational, inspirational - all of those combinations of your social media are happening there. And you also share, you know, team members spotlights, this is how we help, all of that stuff. So yeah, that's it. And again, that is probably a topic for another podcast, that marketing communication, social media strategy that you need. 

My point here is if you do that really well, and you're consistent, what happens is people build trust with your brand on social media. So when they get to that point and they feel like they need to - in my instance, with my practice - need to see a psychologist, and they've been exposed to a lot of our content on social media, and therefore they trust us, they are more likely to call us up than somebody else who they don't trust. So that is also a hot lead.

So hot really refers to the amount of trust that enquiry or that lead has, before they pick up the phone to call or before they flick off that email to you. So the higher the trust, the warmer the lead, and therefore the more likely that you will be converting them into an actual appointment. 

So your hot leads are going to lead to higher conversion rates. So the more hot leads that is coming through to your business as enquiry - the higher your conversion rates, and we know that a high conversion rate is good for business because it lowers your cost of client acquisition. It means that the front desk team are only talking to people who are actually going to book in, so it's great use of their time, alright. 

It doesn't mean that you don't need cold leads. I will always encourage you not to put all your eggs in one basket, okay. Because what if that GP retires? Now, obviously you shouldn't only have one GP referring to you. You need to be cultivating a group of practice angels, and I've spoken about practice angels before. I specifically defined that in Episode 1 of the podcast, so if you've not listened to that one, please go and check that out. You need to cultivate practice angels. In fact, and I will just add this in here, I recommend that every full-time equivalent clinician at the practice, should have five practice angels that they are nurturing and cultivating, building relationships with at the practice.

Okay, so, as I said, yes hot leads, amazing, you want as many of them as possible. And that is all that relationship building from a marketing perspective within our industry. It's all about relationships and you need to know who are those referrers within your world for your practice. And they need to work on those relationships, but you also want to have some cold leads. So let's look at some examples of cold leads.

Cold Leads  

A cold lead is somebody that has not had an opportunity to build up trust in your brand and therefore the service that you provide. So cold leads often come from things such as Google ads.

An example of a cold lead via a Google ad, might be if somebody struggles with anxiety. It's starting to impact their functioning and the ability to even go to work. They might go onto Google and go, you know, I need to see somebody. I need some help. Maybe they don't have a regular GP that they go to. Or maybe this is in the middle of the night and they're popping in anxiety, psychologist, Brisbane. And then what would happen, Google will present them with options. And at the top, there will be three or so sponsored ads, that's called Google ads of psychology practices that says - hey, based on the search terms that you've set in, we think we can help you. And you know, if people then click on that link and they get to your website and they reach out, that's called a cold lead, because they really don't know you from a bar of soap. Google has just told them that based on what you've popped in here, we think this person who has paid us money, but it still matches the keywords that's in the search, will be your best bet. 

So that's an example of a cold lead from a Google ads, and the same holds true for Facebook ads. So if you are doing a Facebook ad and you know, it lands into somebody's feed and they click on it, they've never heard of you, but they reach out wanting to book in that's called a cold lead. So your conversion rates for cold leads are generally lower because they've not had that opportunity to build trust. Now, that being said, doesn't mean that Google ads and Facebook ads don't work. They most certainly do, but there's a whole science behind getting that to work well.

So as a business owner, you most certainly want to focus on the hot leads first and foremost, and then, you know, still making sure you don't have all those eggs in one basket. Test driving and seeing how you go with your colder leads and then making a decision as to how much you want to invest into those strategies.

Sales Training for Your Front Desk Team

The second variable that's really important and that will impact your conversion targets is the level of sales training that you've provided your front desk team with. Now, please keep listening because again, I'm using the business term ‘sales’. And I know I'm a psychologist, I  work with psychology and mental health practice owners and allied health every day. I know we hate that word.  It gives 9 out of 10 of you the ick. But you know what? You can't have clients if your front desk team isn't trained in how to have a sales conversation - which is a conversion conversation.

And if you're going to go, no, I'm not doing it, then that's perfectly fine, but that means that your diary is not going to be as full as the practice down the road, or across the block, or maybe even in the same building as you. Sales conversations or conversion conversations is about making sure that people get the help that they need.

That's what that is about. It's about going, okay, this is the issue, this is the reason why you're reaching out. And now we're going to first assess, can we help you? Yes or no? And then talk to you about that. That's all it is. That's what a sales conversation is, right? In other words, to use Allied Health speak, it is your triage conversation. It is your intake conversation, and that probably feels a bit more comfortable, but it's a sales conversation. Sales, conversion conversation, intake triage, that's exactly the same thing if your triage and intake is done by your front desk team.

Now I work with some group practice owners where they like a clinician to do that work. You can most certainly do that. But I feel like I would rather use a clinician for direct billable work, and train up the front desk administrative team to do that triage and intake whatever word you use for it. And it's always been like that in my practice over the years.  It has always been the front desk, i.e. admin team that does that and it works perfectly fine. Because you just need to train them in having the conversation. So if there's a great level of training that has gone into the front desk team, you will have a better conversion rate, than somebody whose front desk team has not been trained in having these conversations.

And I know that all front desk teams aren't trained similarly. Because I have done mystery shopping over the years when I was still on the ground running the practice. I would mystery shop as I was learning these things, other group practices to find out how are they doing their triage and intake. And I can tell you some of them absolutely sucked. There was no engagement in that conversation. And I would get off the phone and go, I can't believe that they would not have this conversation.  I would literally call up and say, “Hey, I just wanted to find out how much does it cost to see one of your clinicians and how does it work?” And I would get very short answers. They would not ask me any questions in response, and it was just so eye-opening seeing how other people do it. And when I would jump off that, I would go, okay, so if that's what's happening, what do I think our reception should be asking people? What should they have asked me in order for me to actually book that appointment?

So I want you to reflect on what does your triage and intake process look like? How much time have you actually spent training your front desk team in doing those processes and having those conversations? Have you actually role played it with them? Do they also know how to engage in objection handling?

So objection handling is again, a sales term, a business term, which I know my practice owners don't like. But those are the reasons why people don't book. So at the very least, what you need to do, if somebody doesn't book and they go into that, nope, didn't convert column, your front desk team needs to also write down why did the person say we're too expensive? Was the person actually looking for a bulk bill service? Was the person actually looking for a psychiatrist and they confused us with psychiatrists and we are psychologists? Did they call up and we didn't have somebody that can see them on a Friday because all our Friday clinicians are fully booked, and they only have their RDOs on Fridays and it's the only day of the week they can come and they didn't want to come on the Tuesday.

Like what is the reason why this person didn't book. Because that objection list is the thing that's going to inform future training. Because guess what? You don't do front desk training in having conversion conversations just once. It needs to be an ongoing process because things change in the marketplace all the time. I wish it could be set and forget, but it's just not the case. But again, that's what makes business interesting. And in order for you to keep your conversion rates at the level that you want them, and therefore you to keep your diaries full and have the impact that you want in your business - you need to look at those things.

So if it is people ringing up asking to be bulk billed, you need to ask yourself, okay, if we are not a bulk billing practice, how do we stop those enquiries from coming through? So that will then inform things that you need to do over the next one, two, three months in order to reduce the amount of bulk billing enquiries coming through to your practice.

For example, if you're doing Google ads and people are calling up asking to be bulk bulled, and that's where they come from, from a Google ad, then you need to put bulk bulling in as a negative keyword as part of your Google ads strategy. So that if somebody pops into the Google search term, bulk bullying psychologist in Brisbane, your ad doesn't show because if they click on your ad, it costs you money.

So you can use a negative keyword to stop those enquiries from coming through. It might tell you that, hey, maybe you need to pop onto your website that you are not a bulk billing service. So that thing gives you things to do as the business owner in order to have less of those enquiries coming through so that when your team does hop on the phone, it is with leads that is more suited to your business rather than them spending 10, 15 minutes on the phone with somebody who at the end of the day was looking for bulk billing service.  And you've wasted your admin's time and you've wasted that client's time. And we don't want that, because that's not an efficient use of your front desk resources. That also links to the third variable, which is the demographics. 

Demographic Dynamics

Now, a lot of times when people reach out to work with me in my Private Practice Success Academy, particularly people will go, I think my business is different because of where I'm located or because of the type of clients I deal with.

So very often people think that based on their demographics, that the business strategies will be different. Well, what I know to be certain is that irrespective of your demographics and your location, all business strategies and principles still apply to your business.

However, when it comes to your conversion rates, your demographics is a variable that's going to impact it. It doesn't mean we don't track conversion rates. It doesn't mean we don't train our front desk team into having those sales, aka conversion, aka triage, aka intake conversations.

We still do all of those things, right? So the business strategies and concepts, 100 percent still applies, but we need to be mindful that the demographics of your market will impact your conversion rates, which is why I said at the start that I don't think that there is necessarily an industry conversion rate target. I mean, there probably is, but it doesn't mean that that's going to be relevant to your practice based on your demographics. Because if you have a practice that is located in a really high SES area, those clients are going to have less financial constraints when it comes to paying for your services - versus if you are in a low SES area. And we need to be mindful of these things, right? So that might mean that your conversion rate target is a little bit lower than somebody whose practice is in a higher SES area. 

Now the interesting thing is that I've always had two practices and one of them was in more mid to high range socioeconomic status area. And the other one has always been in the lower SES area. And it's really interesting stats between those two practices that I'm going to share with you now. And that is on average, over all these years, the average session fee in the lower SES area has actually been higher than in the higher SES area. How interesting is that, right? But again, that's because I knew that the one was in a low SES area, so I worked twice as hard on strategies to get it up to where I wanted it to be because I wanted both of them to be equal. And I use different referrals and all of those types of things to get it up to where it should be. Again, topic of discussion for another podcast. 

My point is this, there most certainly are ways for you as a business owner to have the same financial results. However, when it comes to conversion rates, you're going to have to work harder at the front desk to help people. And you need to be mindful that those conversations are going to be more tricky. Especially at the time of me recording this podcast, we are currently in a state of economic contraction. People are struggling to pay their bills. Cost of living has increased. The cost of services have increased. Because for business owners like me and you, our costs have increased. Our super has gone up. It's going up again at the end of this financial year. Our rent has gone up. Our overhead costs have gone up. We need to pay good money to retain our talent, our clinicians. We need to pay good money to retain amazing admin staff, right? Which means that we then pass that cost on to the clients. And all the businesses out there do something very similar.  So it is a really difficult time for our clients. 

So you want to be mindful of what is happening within your community, what is happening with your demographic, because that is most certainly a variable that's going to impact your conversion rates. But again, if you know what this variable is and you're keeping your eye on that variable, it will inform strategies and tactics for you to implement. And this people, this is why you need time as the business owner -  feel like I'm getting onto my soapbox here - this is why you need time to work on your business.

This is why you cannot be stuck in the weeds of clinical work or operations. You need this time to sit at the top of the mountain, as we like to say in the PPS Academy, going - What is happening here? What am I seeing? What are the trends? What do these numbers tell me? And now that I see these numbers and I know what it's telling me. What am I going to do about it?

So you have to make sure that you have that time. As a group practice owner, I would want you to have at least one to two days a week working on your business. And you know, you might love the clinical work, that is amazing, but you have to balance it with working on the business or you're not going to reach your goals and you're not going to get the outcomes you want from your business.

The Impact of No-Shows & Cancellations

Last but not least, I want to talk about the final piece of the variable discussion. And that is the following - is it actually a conversion? If you think back to the definition that I shared at the start, we said that a conversion is when somebody calls up making an inquiry and they then get converted into an actual appointment. So a confirmed appointment into the diary. 

But is that actually counted as a conversion if that person potentially no shows? Or maybe they change their mind and they then cancel that appointment. So a no show and a cancellation is different to a reschedule. In my opinion, a reschedule most certainly still counts as a conversion because maybe something happened they just can't come on that day that they booked that first appointment, but they can come a week later. That's still a conversion. It's just, there's a lag between when the appointment actually happens. But a lot of people forget to go back and look at the no shows or cancellations. And then they forget to take that off their conversion rate. So you need to think about that as well. 

Everything in business is about peeling the onion. There is always another layer of where you can improve things. Now, if you've not even started looking at conversions and all these variables, just start at the top layer okay, and do one thing at a time. So those are the main variables that I really want you to consider and reflect on.

Building Sustainable Systems

So what is the answer then to our original question around – “What is the conversion rate target as a percentage that we need to set for our front desk team?”

Well, step one is that you need to start tracking this number. If you have not been tracking it, please start today.   As mentioned at the start, I am going to gift you my Referral Log Template. So this is an Excel spreadsheet that we use at my practice to track all referrals coming into the practice. Not just referrals, but also enquiries. So whether that is a hot lead that's coming from a GP or another third party. Or whether that is somebody that just calls  us up randomly, maybe they emailing us, maybe they are doing our online contact us form. Doesn't matter where they come from.  Each and every enquiry is recorded on this Excel sheet. And I like using an Excel sheet because it's really plain, it's simple. And that is how I like to keep things in business. Business is complicated enough already. So we just use very plain and simple sheets for these types of things. Because if it's too complex, your team will struggle to use it.

Now, I think our referral log can probably be even simpler. But this is what has been designed for my practice based on the referral types that we get. So some of it you could potentially delete out. And of course, I'm going to give you the Excel sheet, you can use it in whatever way, shape or form works for you. And I'm also going to give you a video walkthrough. So this video was done by my practice manager that helped me design this Excel sheet. She also trains our front desk team in it. It's the lovely Ash Davison. She started at my practice as a receptionist, then she became our practice manager. So she did this video when she was practice manager, and she is now our Director of Strategy and Operations. Needless to say, she knows her stuff and she's been working with me for many, many years now.  So I am very confident that this is going to be of value for each and every one of you. And yes, I'm going to give it to you for free because you've listened to my podcast. 

Now you will find the link to download this in the show notes, so go and find it there. Make it your own, but just start tracking it today.  Then once you know what your conversion rate is, then that is your starting blocks. Let's be really conservative, and let's say your conversion rates at your practice for this month or the last month was only 30%. Cool. Now you know it's 30%. What you do next is you now compete with yourself.

You go, okay, it's 30%. It is what it is. We're not going to judge that number. What do I need to do to get this to 35 percent next month. And you implement one thing, not 10, not nine, not eight, not five, not three, not two. One thing, one thing. Because you know what? If you go totally gung ho and implement 10 new things, and then you get to 35, maybe even 40%, guess what? You will not know which of those things led to the increase. Yup. That is you shooting yourself in the foot. I know it feels good. It's like, oh, I did 10 new things this month! I feel so productive pat on the back for me. No, it doesn't help because more is not always better.  Because more means more time, money, and energy in it. And three out of those 10 things might be working and the other seven might not be making any difference whatsoever. So why should you be doing it? 

And this is where you need to slow down to speed up. And that is a phrase we often use in The Academy - we need to slow down in order to speed up. So that is why you then go one thing that I'm implementing this month and I'm going to see that to make a difference. - yes or no? If it didn't, I'm going to ask myself - okay, did it not work because I didn't do it consistently, properly, or maybe this is a strategy that just needs more time, then I make a decision based on the answers to that, and then I go from there. If I am very confident that this is the thing that made the difference, then I go - okay, how do I now make sure that I systemize and automate it, so that this one strategy keeps on being implemented and keeps working. And only once I've done that, then I go to the next thing.

So this is all about slow and steady wins the race, okay. This is how you win at this thing called business.  By not competing with others, but by competing with yourself, and your own business and your own progress. And then you start to move it up and move it up and move it up. And then you will know what is the benchmark and the target for your business?

So if you get it as high as 60, 70, 80 maybe even 90, and your front desk team leaves and somebody new comes in and all of the sudden conversion rates are sitting back at 40 - then you know that it's a training thing generally, okay. Because you know at your practice what your benchmark is. And when the team changes but the system hasn't changed then you just know okay, I need to now hold this person's hand, need to support and train them up, maybe do more role all of that type of stuff. In order to get it back to where it was. 

All right. So the answer to the question is - it depends. And it starts with you tracking your numbers, and then setting your own targets that you and your team will work together in order to achieve it. Alrighty. Thank you so much for tuning in. I truly hope that this was of help.

Please hop into the show notes, download the Referral Log Template and use it, make it your own. And as always, remember that I am here to help you build a practice you can't stop smiling about 😊

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