The movie Moneyball centers on how Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) utilized data to reinvent the Oakland A’s baseball team. Based on the true story of the A’s 2002 season, Beane and A’s General Manager Peter Brand used statistics and analytics to figure out the best players for the team, instead of the intuition and gut feel that defined how scouting was done since the dawn of baseball. The A’s set the record for most consecutive wins (20) based on their new data-driven approach. Why am I telling you this?
I’m often asked what makes the most successful practices successful. Every single one of those practices keeps good stats and makes adjustments to their processes based on that data, instead of gut feeling.
So, if you aren’t gathering stats, where do you get started? First, let’s focus focus on the top of the funnel. In these stats, I’m assuming that you are using a seminar as the first interaction . If that’s not the case, you’ll simply modify the seminar statistics to focus on the first in-office consult.
Leads Generated: How many leads are generated for the marketing investment being put in? It’s important to note that more is not always better. Any marketer knows how to generate lots of leads – simply take off all the filters from the marketing funnels. Lead volume will go up significantly but lead quality plummets. We don’t like to do that because ultimately that won’t result in what matters – patients starting treatment with the office. It can also burn out the front desk with all the necessary outreach to leads. The key here is to find the balance of lead volume and lead quality.
Lead Contact Rate: How many of the leads generated does the office get on the phone? This is a useful stat to understand if your staff is using the 4-day follow-up and that they are calling at the times our stats show are best to reach most people on the phone.
Cost Per Lead: How much does it cost for you to generate a lead? This can vary greatly from office to office and, like mentioned above, not all leads are created the same, but the office should know how much it costs to generate one lead for the practice.
Seminar Show Rate: How many of the leads show up to the seminar? This is one of the most important stats to be tracked because it says so much about the overall effectiveness of the early stage of the sales/marketing effort for the practice. A low show rate should lead the office to explore a couple of areas including:
- How effective is the practice at building emotional buy-in / interest over the phone?
- What is the Confirmation Protocol? Is it being followed to a T?
- What physical factors might be keeping patients from getting to seminar location? Most new patients have never been to the seminar location before, so minor issues (paying for parking, directions that aren’t crystal clear, etc.) may prevent them from showing.
Consult Schedule Rate: How many of the people in attendance at the seminar schedule for a consultation? This is an indicator of the delivery of the lecture, the emotional build-up, the drama created between the office’s solution vs alternatives (surgery, etc.), and the close the presenter uses to book appointments.
