Learn the Easiest Way to Boost Your Clinic’s Revenue by Thousands per Month
Which of these is easier:
A: Win back a lost patient who didn’t book an appointment in their first call
B: Win new patients using online or doctor marketing
If you’ve been running a dental, chiropractic, or physical therapy clinic for any amount of time, you should know the answer is A.
A potential patient who has already called you is a far more promising lead than people who have never heard of you and still need to be reached with marketing.
Yet, even though we all know this, most clinic owners devote far more energy to their marketing than they do to winning back lost patients.
Today, you’re going to learn how to boost your clinic revenue in the easiest possible way – by winning back lost new patients using specific phone scripts (without feeling salesy) and call tracking strategies.
You can also learn more about call recording and what you can do with call recording.
What Is a Winback?
Every clinic receives calls from potential patients who end up not booking for various reasons, such as the dreaded “I need to think about it” or "Does your clinic take insurance?". And every clinic misses some calls, some of whom leave a voicemail – but most of whom do not.
These two types of patients are your clinic’s single greatest source of new revenue. Why? Because they have already called you. They already found you either through online marketing, doctor marketing referrals, or some other means. They have a problem and called you to see if you have the solution at a price they are willing to pay.
These are what the business world calls ‘hot leads.’
And in the healthcare business, you have only days, perhaps hours, to win these patients or lose them to a competitor down the street that has more google reviews then you.
A winback is simply your attempt to follow up with patients who did not book or didn’t leave voicemails, and give them a second chance to make an appointment with you.
No matter what size or type of clinic you run, each phone call that does not book is worth potentially thousands of dollars in lifetime revenue. If you don’t call them back, you are just handing that money to your competitors. It’s like forfeiting a boxing match right before the bell rings.
As we like to say, the power of tiny gains is the secret to building a million dollar clinic.
If you can gain just one new patient per week by winning back a lost patient, how much revenue would that translate to over a year? Tens of thousands of dollars.
Clinic Owners Crushing It through Winbacks
Karen Craven, who owns Craven Sports Services in Saskatoon, made an extra $4350 in just one month after she began using Callhero’s software to pursue winbacks.
If she continues at that rate, she’ll earn over $50,000 extra over the course of the year.
Aaron Lebauer owns a small cash-only physical therapy clinic in Greensboro, North Carolina that gets less than 150 total calls every month. And even though his clinic failed to answer nearly half the calls that came in during one month, he still made $5600 by following up with lost patients.
And Shafiq Bhanji, who owns 21 physical therapy clinics in Ontario (Athelete's Care), increased his revenue by $57,500 per month simply by following up with lost patients using phone scripts and call tracking systems like what we will show you in a moment.
All of this revenue is coming in with zero new marketing.
This works for any size clinic, in any size or type of market, and in any niche.
How to Successfully Pursue Lost Patients and Missed Revenue
So how does this work?
Pursuing winbacks requires a blending of two fundamental systems.
First, you need a way to track your incoming calls so you will know which callers didn’t book and which ones didn’t get answered and didn’t leave a voicemail.
Second, you need a trained front desk team that is given specific phone scripts, time, and incentive to make calls to the people listed in your call tracking system.
All the clinic owners above are using CallHero’s call tracking system, which also tracks the performance of their front desk marketers who use phone scripts to call back the lost patients.
Check out this video and learn how to Winback Lost Physio Patients With This
Script:
For instance – here’s the screenshot from Karen Craven’s CallHero dashboard.
You can see that Karen’s dashboard on CallHero attributes each winback to the front desk person who called them. Breanne is leading the charge with three successful winbacks, for a total of $1750 in revenue. The entire clinic had over $4350 in revenue gain from winbacks last month 💪💪💪
Plus she is crushing it with a 97% answer rate (for 1674 calls) and 81% booking rate
Instead of losing new patients who didn’t book or leave a voicemail, now you can listen to the recorded call and then call them back. What often happens if you call early enough is, they still haven’t found someone to help. Other times, they’ve had a bad experience at another clinic and are understandably wary of trying another one.
The key is – you can’t treat winback calls as transactions. These are real people, and you must treat them as such by prioritising the relationship over the transaction. That’s where the phone scripts come in.
Julie is another good example. Watch her story and discovery what she learned about winbacks...
Julie loves her front desk call management system because it allows her to easily winback lost new patients.
Phone Script for Lost Patients at a Physical Therapy or Chiropractic Clinic
For instance, here’s part of one possible phone script for a physical therapy or chiropractic clinic:
“Hi, this is Jim. I’m a physical therapist from ABC clinic. You called us yesterday. Are you still in pain? Would you like to tell me what happened and how you’re feeling?”
Then, you be quiet and let them talk. Listen. And then empathise:
“That must be very frustrating. I’m sorry to hear you’re in pain Sharon.”
Then, give them some social proof about how well your clinic has helped other patients. If you have an actual clinician calling, you might say something like this:
“I hear this story all the time... In fact, we just recently helped a lady just like you… [tell story & show results]"
We have found that if you use a clinician to make these calls, you will double your conversion rates.
Next, counter their objections. If they’re not sure because they have a bunch of insurance question, here’s a good line to use:
“Is using insurance the only thing that matters to you when you decide which PT you will choose or are you concerned more about value?”
Then, close by giving them choices:
“[CLINICIAN] has a 3 week wait list but right now I can squeeze you in. We have tomorrow at 9AM or Thursday at 2PM. Which one works best for you?... {wait for response} If they say no.... What time do you prefer??
Now, contrast the above phone script with something like this:
“Hi – you called our clinic yesterday. Sorry we missed your call. Do you want to make an appointment?”
Do you see the difference? The first is relational and makes the caller feel welcome, understood, and valued. The second is transactional and bypasses all the human stuff. The second one is faster, and therefore more ‘efficient.’ But it doesn’t work, and you won’t earn nearly the revenue you’ll gain using the proven phone scripts.
Recognise Your Team for Great Work
An important piece of the team training portion mentioned earlier are the incentives. Especially if your front desk is making the calls to your lost patients, they need more than just phone scripts, and they need more than just the time it takes to make the calls.
They also need incentives.
Set your system up so they are motivated to make these calls, and even look forward to them. CallHero’s call tracking system can be programmed to inform you whenever someone successfully wins back a lost patient. You’ll get an email that looks something like this:
Have a system in place for rewarding and thanking your team each time this happens. You could even set up a tiered reward system. After the fifth winback, that team member gets a bonus or a gift card or some other reward. More rewards after the seventh, tenth, and however high you want to go each month, each 90 days, or each year.
The point is – put a high priority on letting your team know how much you appreciate this work. That way, they will prioritise it too, and won’t view it as ‘just another task I have to do.’
Find Out More about Winning Back Lost Patients – Free Webinar
Most clinics can win back at least two lost patients every week.
What you need first is a system for tracking and recording your incoming calls and other metrics, which is what CallHero delivers for you. Without this call tracking system, you have no idea how much money you’re leaving on the table.
Then, you need an array of phone scripts, and a way to know which one is best for each potential winback.
On this 90 minute webinar, Jerry and I will show you:
- The front desk metrics you need to know if you’re serious about increasing revenue
- How to give bonuses to your front desk and be thrilled to do so
- Walk through multiple phone scripts
- How to easily train your front desk – even though you don’t have time
- Live Q&A
CLICK HERE to learn more and sign up for this free training webinar
Why Winbacks Are Your Single Greatest Marketing Plan
I used to be just like you. When I owned my first clinic and eventually expanded to five, my favourite thing was to win new patients. It was the most exciting part of the job.
How do you win new patients? I did what everyone else seemed to be doing – more marketing! At one point, I was spending $65,000 per month on marketing through Google and Facebook. How much do you spend? Is it worth the investment?
Eventually, I found out it wasn’t. I had set so many marketing goals: Increase impressions. Increase clicks. Get more traffic. Spend more money and watch the numbers go up. And the numbers did go up. We got more clicks, traffic, and impressions as we spent more money.
But there was one number that wasn’t going up as fast.
Our booked appointments.
Is your schedule filled with empty white spots? I still had way too many open spots, considering all the money and effort I was pouring into marketing.
Plus, as I grew to five clinics, my employees started asking for raises. I had to hire more staff. To pay for all that, I increased my marketing even more. And for all that effort, I was barely making payroll.
Sound familiar?
Eventually, it hit me. I was chasing the wrong trends. Marketing alone would never produce the revenue increases to justify the investment. I needed to focus on my systems, patient experience operations, training, and leadership.
I needed to change the way we related to our existing (and potential) patients, not keep chasing after new ones all the time.
Produce an outstanding patient experience, and what happens? More online reviews and referrals. And that leads to more optimised traffic than marketing alone could ever deliver.
How do you produce an outstanding experience for patients?
Make them feel like family. Focus far more energy on the ones who are calling, not the ones who aren’t. Put even more energy into the ones who are coming in. Shift money from marketing to operations. And start paying your teams for performance, not just for showing up.
With systems in place like call tracking and phone scripts, we increased our winbacks and revenue from returning patients and so much more. Barely making payroll became a thing of the past. And eventually, I built up to 127 clinics, which I eventually sold for a nice fat check.
What’s Your Story?
If you want to start increasing revenue, the solution is not to invest more in marketing. First and far more important, you need to focus on your operations.
And a critical part of that is using call tracking and phone scripts to win back lost patients. That’s your easiest missing revenue.
Want to learn more?
Sign up for the free webinar (CLICK HERE) and learn how to win back lost patients
