A lot of sales experts are going to tell you that the goal of any sales process should be to maximise the number of prospects you can move from one level of the sales funnel to the next. At RevaHealth.com we find that this goal can result in clinics using their limited resources inefficiently, and effort being wasted on enquiries that are never going to result in business.
At every stage of the sales funnel you are going to have prospects that are never going to convert into business. This could be for any number of reasons, including: they can’t afford the treatment, they aren’t suitable for the treatment, they are a competitor researching your clinic, they live too far away, etc. A clinic’s business process needs to maximise the number of prospects that can result in business while excluding the prospects that will never result in business.
There are three key ways in which to achieve this:
- Exceed or meet the prospect expectations
- Provide them with sufficient information to allow them to exclude themselves
- Ask questions so that you can exclude unsuitable prospects
Converting Website Visitors into Online Enquiries
Visitors to your website are expecting to be able to find the information they are looking for quickly and easily. They are not expecting site originality or artistic flair, they have come for information; give it to them as quickly as possible without cluttering your site. You should try and follow standard web conventions in the design and structure of your website and make it easy for the visitor to get to the following information:
- Phone number and contact form
- Opening hours
- Address
- Map
- Prices
- Testimonials
Your goal is to give the visitor this information while also building trust. Trust can be built in two ways through a website: transparency and personal information. Transparency can be provided with clear pricing information and candid descriptions of your core specialities. It can also be useful to mention the services you do not provide to avoid any confusion. Personal information can be provided through staff profiles and the use of pictures.
If you meet the visitor’s expectations, the next stage is to channel them into creating an email enquiry. This will typically only ever be a small percentage of your visitors, but hopefully will include a large percentage of the visitors who are actually interesting in purchasing a treatment from your clinic.
A common question we are asked is what percentage of visitors you should expect to create an enquiry. Unfortunately this is an impossible question as the single biggest variable is how ‘qualified’ the visitors to your website are. In this instance ‘qualified’ means how interested your typical visitor is in purchasing one of your treatments.
An example we commonly quote is a clinic in London that has written exceptional descriptions of the health problem they treat. These descriptions attract hundreds of visitors per day, however most of these visitors are just looking for information – they are not interested in getting treatment. This clinic converts under 2% of all visitors into online enquiries.
However, as a general guide, if you are not converting at least 5% of your visitors into online enquiries you should look to your website for potential problems.
Email Enquiries
When consumers submit an online enquiry they expect two things. First of all, they expect an automated response that informs them that you have actually received their enquiry and tells them when they can expect a response. It is a good idea to take advantage of this email to highlight the key benefits of your clinic and include contact information. In this way a consumer will always have easy access to this information even if they can’t find your website again.
Secondly, they expect a personal email that directly addresses their query. This second email should be sent no later than one business day after the initial enquiry was received. If this is not possible then an additional email should be sent explaining the delay.
The email that you send to the customer is your first real chance to start building a relationship with them. The key elements in building that relationship are to personalize the email to the consumer (it is vital that you do not sent a stock email) and to be as transparent and candid as possible.
It is easy to enter into an email dialog with the customer at this stage but remember that the goal of this stage in the sales funnel is to get the customer to the next stage. You should always try and progress the email dialog into a phone call. The purpose of this stage is to give the customer sufficient information and trust in your clinic to move them to that stage. At the same time it gives you the opportunity to weed out the time wasters.
If the customer will not engage with you on the phone then there is very little chance that they will visit your clinic. Only in a rare case is it worth expending significant effort on a potential patient that will not schedule a phone conversation. Typically this means that they are not prepared to commit to the next level of relationship.
This could be for any number of reasons – perhaps they were just comparing prices, perhaps they can’t afford it, etc. All personal emails sent to a customer should either be asking for a suitable time to call or setting a time for when you will call.
A Note On Having The Consumer Phone You Directly
A common question that we are asked is: if the goal of an email enquiry is to get the customer to talk to us on the phone, why don’t we skip the email enquiry step and just publish our phone number on our website?
First of all, it is important to put your phone number on the website in case the visitor actually wants to call you. However, it is also vital that you have a contact form and we argue that this is the desired route that you want to encourage your visitors to follow.
The reason for this is that if a consumer calls you they have a reasonable expectation that they will talk to an informed person who will be able to answer their questions. However, the person best qualified to talk to the consumer may well be busy when they call. It is better that you agree a time with the consumer when the right person can speak to them.
In some cases the consumer will get an answering machine (don’t forget your visitors will be on your website 24 hours a day, 7 days a week). A contact form is always available. It allows you time to research the consumer’s query and be properly prepared to directly address their concerns in a way that exceeds their expectations.
Phone Call
The consumer expects you to call at the specified time, or if they are calling you they expect that the relevant person will be available. They expect the person that they talk to will be able to speak specifically to their personal enquiry. They do not necessarily expect that person to have all the answers, but they do expect them to be knowledgeable, friendly, polite, understanding and non-judgmental.
Once you have succeeded in getting someone to talk to you, you have a real opportunity to start building a relationship. While you might have spent a lot of effort on your website and with the email dialog, all that did was to get the customer on the phone. So, no matter how good your website is, if you don’t manage to build a relationship with them on the phone then they are simply not going to purchase treatment from your clinic.
Face to Face
This is now getting back to your core business. You have brought the potential customer from the online world to the physical world and it is now up to your normal business processes to close the sale.
However, like all of the previous stages of your pipeline, once you have got the person to this stage everything that went before matters very little. Even if you have exceeded the customer’s expectation in all of the previous stages, you must at least meet their expectations at this stage.
Repeat and Referral Business
This is the ultimate goal that you should have for ever visitor to your website. Nothing is more profitable for your business than having a customer return for future treatment. You have already built the relationship with them and do not have to bring them through the sales pipeline again.
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