VMP 262: Improve Your Veterinary Practice's Online Marketing With Better Phone Service

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Brandon Breshears
November 1, 2023
35
 MIN
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VMP 262: Improve Your Veterinary Practice's Online Marketing With Better Phone Service
November 1, 2023
35
 MIN

VMP 262: Improve Your Veterinary Practice's Online Marketing With Better Phone Service

In this podcast episode, Brandon Breshears, a digital marketing expert, talks about how sales play a crucial role in the veterinary industry. He shares practical advice on improving sales skills, distinguishing between sales and marketing, and the positive effects of boosting conversion rates. Breshears also discusses the significance of handling phone calls, offering value, educating clients, and closing sales effectively, emphasizing how even small improvements can greatly impact profitability.

I recently had the pleasure of chatting with a digital marketing expert on my show. We dove deep into the world of sales in the veterinary industry, and I'm excited to share the highlights of our conversation with you.

First things first, let's address the elephant in the room: sales. I know it can have a negative connotation in the veterinary industry, but trust me, it's crucial for the success of your marketing campaigns. Sales and marketing go hand in hand, with marketing getting the message out there and sales coming into play when potential clients interact with your practice and make the decision to do business with you.

So, how do you know if you have a marketing problem or a sales problem? It's important to identify the root cause of any issues you may be facing. If you're not seeing enough people showing up or booking appointments, that's a marketing problem. On the other hand, if you're getting plenty of website visitors but they're not converting into clients, that's a sales problem.

Now, let's talk about the impact of improving your sales conversion rates. Even a small increase can make a big difference in your return on investment. For example, going from a 2% conversion rate to 5% can lead to a significant boost in profitability. It's all about reframing your perception of sales as helping people. By converting potential clients, you're able to provide them with the care they need and deserve.

Belief in your offerings is key. If you don't believe in what you're providing, it's time to work on improving your service until you can confidently stand behind it. Remember, you're here to help people, and that belief will shine through in your sales efforts.

When it comes to sales techniques, it's all about educating and guiding your clients. The goal is not to manipulate or convince, but rather to help them understand their problem and find the best solution. And don't underestimate the importance of effective phone handling. Building rapport, providing context, and offering value during phone conversations can make a world of difference.

Now, let's talk about strategies for closing sales. After building rapport and explaining the process and pricing, it's time to ask the potential client, "So what day works best for you?" By offering a few options, you give them the freedom to choose a convenient time without feeling pressured.

To wrap things up, I want to leave you with four key points for successful sales. First, frame sales as helpful, because that's what it's all about. Second, empower your front desk staff with conversation control tools. Third, create scripts and systems that align with your marketing strategies. And finally, provide recordings for training and improvement.

Remember, even small improvements in your conversion rates can have a big impact on your profitability. So, don't shy away from sales. Embrace it as a way to provide great care to your clients. And if the word "sales" feels uncomfortable, just think of it as "helping people." Because at the end of the day, that's what it's all about.

I hope you found our conversation insightful and packed with practical advice. By implementing these tips and tools, you can improve your sales skills and ultimately provide better care for your clients and their pets.

Episode Transcript

Brandon (00:00:02) - Welcome to the Veterinary Marketing Podcast, where it's all about how to attract, engage and retain clients to your vendor hospital using digital marketing. My name is Brandon Breshears. I hope you're having a wonderful day. In today's episode, we are going to be talking all about the bad word in the veterinary industry, which is sales. This is a four-letter word to most veterinary professionals. People do not like sales. But guess what? It is important and having good sales processes in place can make the difference between a successful marketing campaign and a failure. And the purpose of me making this episode, hopefully, is for I'm actually selfishly making this for my clients because I can do all the marketing in the world. I can generate traffic for my clients and get them basically showing up to their site. But if they're not converting on the sales side, all that work that we just did did not help. So I'm going to give some very practical sales tools and tips in this episode. And really the point of it, I think you should save it in the future, because you might want your staff to listen to it in the future.

Brandon (00:01:07) - So it's really from a selfish standpoint. I want my clients to have fantastic salespeople in place so that they can convert as many as possible. Obviously, there's going to be nuance to all of this. You're going to need to apply your own insights about what you know about your customers and your clients, and the types of services that you're marketing, but it's going to be very helpful for you. Now, before we begin, we have two sponsors for this episode, and here they are. This episode is being sponsored by the International Veterinary Dentistry Institute and Veterinary Dentistry dot net. If you're a veterinarian or you have veterans that you work with who struggle with dentistry, or who'd like to be more confident when it comes to dental procedures, then you definitely should go to ivdi.org/vmp. That is ivdi.org/vmp to sign up for a free upcoming live training that's going to go far beyond your average dentistry seminar. This is the gateway to the Veterinary Dental Practitioner Program, an intensive masterclass program that is a comprehensive initiative designed to enrich veterinary associate skills while empowering practice managers practice owners to take their practice to new heights.

Brandon (00:02:23) - This live training is going to be conducted by board-certified veterinary dentist Dr. Brett Beckman. He's been on the podcast twice and is incredibly talented teacher and educator. He's going to dive deep into actual cases. He's going to dissect all the vital components of effective dentistry, case management, and this is going to give you some really direct insight and a clear blueprint to improve your prowess in veterinary dentistry. So if you're ready to elevate your practice and your professional skills, simply go to ivdi.org/vmp. This is going to be the golden opportunity that helps you to make a significant impact in your practice. It's going to help to give your patients and your clients better care. And it's also going to improve the personal professional development that you have in your career. Go to ivdi.org/vmp. This episode is being sponsored by two websites by Brad Haven. We have used vet equipment and new vet equipment for over nine years now. Used vet equipment has been helping vets to buy and sell used equipment. You can save money when you buy.

Brandon (00:03:31) - Used everything from cages, kennels, pumps, X-ray equipment, lasers, ultrasounds, dental equipment, surgery equipment, lab equipment from a boxes and tables, tubs and sinks, vet trucks and vet boxes. What do you have to sell at used vet equipment? They bring the buyer and seller together. Also, if you're looking for a new vet equipment with amazing warranties, check out new vet equipment where they show you the price up front. They have digital X-ray equipment, dental X-ray equipment, ultrasound equipment, surgery, lighting, surgery tables, autoclaves. When you go to new vet equipment, you'll clearly see the price on every single item for sale. And you'll also know what the warranty is so that you can buy without regret. Also, if you are interested at all in joining the Facebook group, that's free. It is vendor called the Veterinary Marketing Nerds. Be sure to head on over to facebook.com/groups/theveterinarymarketingnerds. Also, I've been posting a ton on LinkedIn, and so if you are enjoying its different types of content on there.

Brandon (00:04:31) - So if you're enjoying this podcast, you want to also engage on LinkedIn. Be sure to connect. They're always happy to connect. If you have questions, it's a great place to message me too. So let's jump into today's episode. Let's talk about sales. And sales is different than marketing. Marketing is getting your message out to a group of people, right? You're outbound contacting people. You know, there's the different types of marketing you have social email paid, paid, social paid search, different things. You mean postcards. All of that falls under the marketing umbrella. But when somebody calls or interacts with your business and when they're deciding whether or not they're going to do business with your practice, that is when sales comes in. So I want you to think about real quick. If you have a marketing problem or if you have a sales problem, and it's pretty quick and easy to identify if you have a marketing problem, you don't have enough people showing up to your practice. You don't have enough people calling your phones.

Brandon (00:05:29) - You don't have enough people booking appointments online. That's a marketing problem. If you have all of these activities happening, if you have people going to your site assuming that they're the right demographic, right. So let's say you have pet owners in your area as the bare minimum kind of qualification to know, are these the right people? Are they in your area? Number one, because they have to be able to physically come into your practice. And then number two, do they own pets and do they need veterinary care? If that's true, if you have people coming to your site but they're not converting into clients, you have a sales problem. And there are very few practices out there that have good sales training and good sales systems in place. But if you can. Master sales and get a systematic way of consistently converting people who are strangers into customers and clients. Tiny little improvements in the work that you're going to do is going to have massive impact. Let me tell you really quick about the math here.

Brandon (00:06:25) - So. So let's say that you have a conversion rate at 2% currently. And that's pretty low right? Hopefully it's much higher than that. But let's say cold traffic. People that don't know like and trust you already. You only convert 2% of those people. And let's compare that to boosting it just to 5%. So a 3% increase in conversion, which is definitely achievable, especially if your conversion rate is low. You should be able to dramatically improve it. Typically I like to see conversion rates around at least 10% for for cold traffic, even higher than that for urgent care or different types of services, but at least 10%. So let's just use the two and 5% okay. So at 2% conversion rate, let's say you have 100. Or let's actually break it down. Let's say you have 1000 visitors in a month. At 2% conversion, you're going to have 20 new clients. All right. And let's assume that each one of those clients gives you a $50 profit just for the sake of the argument here.

Brandon (00:07:28) - That's going to be a total of $1,000 in profit. So the ROI that you have is going to be calculated return minus the investment divided by the investment times 100. So let's say you make $1,000. Let's say you spent $100 to get that. Your return on investment would then be a 900% return on investment. Now let's see if you use those exact same numbers, but at a 5% conversion rate. So you have the same 1000 visitors, but now instead of 20 sales or 20 customers, you have 50 customers now using the same profit per sale. You'd make $2,500. So your ROI now becomes 2,400% return on investment. So a small, tiny increase from 2% to 5% yields a 166% increase in return on investment. So it makes sense to focus on these tiny little things. Now, I know that sales is technically like bad word in the veterinary industry, and I don't want to deter people from sales because they have bad connotation with it. So I think that number one, sales we need to reframe this sales is helping people.

Brandon (00:08:44) - If you are not helping the potential customers that you have coming into your practice to get the care that they need and the care that their pets deserve, you're not helping them. So until you convert them, you're not able to help them. And so I've heard clients before where we've recorded phone calls and things, and they don't even ask them if they want to set an appointment. They don't. They'll bring their bias into it, too. A lot of times where they'll say, you know what, we're more expensive. You should go to the practice down the road. They don't know the quality of care that they're going to be receiving at the other location. They don't know the situation for their pet. So if you're trying to get the best outcome, the things that you can control are, number one, are they going to come to us? And if they come to us, we can control the situation. We can provide the best care. We can get things right for them. And if you don't believe that, you need to improve your service so that you can believe it, if like for example, I'll tell you if somebody is running ads with another agency, I feel like the things that I can control in helping practices improve their marketing.

Brandon (00:09:48) - If you're working with somebody else, I feel like you should be working with me because I have the belief that I'm going to do a better job. I'm going to give you better results. I'm going to give you more care and all of those things. Right? And so if you don't believe that, you should get your service to that level so that you are feeling like you're actually helping. So Saling is helping, we're going to help more clients. And that's the goal, right? We're going to help more clients. We're also going to be able to help the practice. We're going to be able to help the pets. So everybody wins in a situation. If you're ever doing a sales process or sales system where it's not win, win, win, you need to reevaluate the products that you're selling. You need to improve your service. Right. So this is assuming that you have a high level of belief in your products and services. So the goal of the people that are speaking on the phone should be to help the clients get the best outcome.

Brandon (00:10:37) - We're not trying to manipulate. We're not trying to coerce or convince. We're just trying to help them come to the right conclusion based on their situation. If you let the client drive the conversation, though, this isn't going to happen because clients don't know what they don't know, right? Like, I've never worked in a practice and I don't have a clinical background. So if I was to call somebody and say, hey, you know, I've got a question about this product, if I'm just answering questions, asking questions, or just getting them answered, I don't know what I should be asking. I don't know why I should be asking different questions. So veterans and veterinary professionals are very big on educating clients. And guess what? When you're on the phone, this is a time when you absolutely can educate clients and help them to understand why it is that they need to know what you know, that they need to know, so help people get from the not knowing what they don't know, to being aware of a problem, to understanding that there is a solution to this problem, and then coming to the right conclusion based on their situation.

Brandon (00:11:39) - So it is number one in the best interest of your practice to use sales techniques that are going to help you to convert more clients. It is in the best interest of the clients and it is in the best interest of their pets. So I'm sure there's been times where people have not gotten the care that they need because they were not getting good service on the phone or on the internet, and you can apply the same type of phone type scripts to your online funnels. Because I think a lot of times people will just kind of forget that the online funnel conversion process where people are self booking is basically the same as on the phone. It's just a different medium. And so communicating via medium is really, really important. So understanding that number one we're going to be using sales techniques in a way that is going to be helpful. It's going to produce better outcomes. It's going to produce better relationships. It's going to get us everybody what they want. And so we're just helping. We're not selling, we're helping.

Brandon (00:12:38) - We're not being manipulative and we're not convincing. I think with phone calls, number one, you have to set expectations. And this is going to help the entire process throughout, you know, from beginning to end. So number one, you have to make sure that your staff has the same level of training when it comes to answering the phones as they would if they were doing procedures. So number one, if they don't know something, it's okay to say no, I'm not sure about that. Let me get back to you. Let me do more research. If you had somebody that was in practice doing a procedure, let's say they're doing dental extractions. They've never done it before and they don't know what they're doing. Would you rather them just try and figure it out? Or would you rather them go and get help? You'd probably rather them go get help. So make sure that number one expectations are set properly for both your staff and then also for the customers, because you have to be able to tell your clients exactly how the process is going to work.

Brandon (00:13:37) - It needs to mirror the service that you provide in your practice. Everybody has to understand how all of the parts work in practice, and help them to really understand what they need to expect when they come into the practice, too. So if you want to come across as a practice that provides lots of great service, that spends more time with each client, having a phone conversation that is just brief and short and you're not giving stories, you're not giving context that doesn't match and align with the brand that you're trying to. As. And so you need to make sure that based on what your practice values, the standard of care that your practice is providing, things like that, you have to make all of these different pieces aligned, because if they don't align, it's just like when you have a landing page that doesn't match the ad or it doesn't match the brand colors or the messaging is wrong or different. Same exact thing with phones. So number one, give people scripts and come up with a script that your CSRs will have every single time.

Brandon (00:14:46) - I think the very first thing that you need to do is don't use phone trees if possible. Phone trees, I think, are the killers of conversion when it comes to any kind of phone calls. So if you pick up the phone and you want personalized care, you're offering a high value, high level of care. And you call and you get a phone tree that sounds like you're calling the bank, that is the wrong impression to have has the first impression. So think about each step of the funnel. Think about your brand and how you're trying to represent your brand, because this needs to be consistent with that funnel. So number one, if you have a phone tree with a menu I would say please don't have it unless you're trying to be a corporate big time company. There's no reason for that. And even then, if you're trying to be a huge company that has multiple locations and stuff, people don't like the feeling that they get when they call this, especially in urgent care situation when they want help.

Brandon (00:15:44) - It doesn't help. It doesn't make them feel like they are being taken care of. So that's number one. Number two is don't let it ring more than three times. That is a rule that you must live and die by. If the phone is ringing, somebody has to pick it up by the third ring. I can't tell you how many times I've listened to calls that we've got qualified people searching for different search terms that get on the phone, and they wait and they're put on hold for a minute or more. If somebody doesn't know, like, and trust you already, they call and the first experience they have is immediately put on hold like you don't matter, I don't care. They're not going to convert. And this is going to kill your sales. So it needs to be answered with three rings. Absolutely. That's the that's the law. And by the way, with the with all of this that I'm telling you, I used to work in call center and would do phone sales for four years.

Brandon (00:16:39) - I made thousands and thousands of sales calls both outbound and inbound. And so this is stuff that I've actually done and applied and learned and trained other people on. And so I was selling mortgages at the time, which I think is far more difficult to sell than selling veterinary services to people who are calling you, who want your services and are actively trying to find a solution for their problem. So that's, I think, very, very important. Now, getting back to the script, it is important to give people a framework for how to answer the phones. They need to know exactly what to say, and they need to have it rehearsed many times so that it doesn't sound like they're reading. And once people get the general framework, they can add their own personality into it, but it needs to be reviewed and managed on a regular basis. So typically, as an example, I would say you should say, you know, ABC Animal Hospital, how can I help you? Something that's general that they say every single time they need to sound like they're smiling on the phone, because you can tell if you answer the phone like you are grumpy, you don't want to talk to them.

Brandon (00:17:44) - You're stressed, overwhelmed. It's going to kill the kill the sale. We used to have salespeople that we train, and we'd put a mirror in there so that they could look at themselves and smile, because especially there's there was guys with monotone voices who were very boring to listen to. And so we'd make them smile and look at themselves smiling, and they felt silly doing it, but they would smile and it would come across as more friendly so people can feel it. When you're smiling, people can feel your mood. Make sure that this is talked about because they need to have a warm welcome. How do we want to present our practice? Right? You only have one chance to make a first impression. And so it is incredibly important. I can't say how much it is. Every single touchpoint that you have with this new client is setting expectations for how it's going to go down the road, and especially if you want to be charging premium prices for your services, which is something that everybody wants to do.

Brandon (00:18:35) - You don't want to be the low-cost practice. Right. You want to be charging more. How do you justify that? You have to justify it through experience. You have to justify it through benefits that you're doing and things like that. So have. A consistent experience. I'm going to say that probably 20 more times here on this on this episode. But it's very, very important. So number one, have a script. What do they say. Usually it's going to be different topics that people are calling for. But I would probably have 2 or 3 buckets right. So one is like current clients right. That are calling. What do they say when current clients call for follow up or for rebooking or things like that? And then another one, which is what do you say to new clients who are interested in specific services? So you'll typically know what kind of services you're marketing for, what kind of service calls that you get. And so I think you need to have pre-rehearsed with these different types of clients that you're going to be generating and attracting.

Brandon (00:19:33) - So what do I mean by that? Like let's say you're doing marketing for dental procedures, spay and neuter and same day appointments. For example, you need to understand the types of questions that each one of those people are going to be asking. And then you have to be prepared with how to pivot the transact or pivot the call from typically questions to closing. And people want on the phone somebody that's calling, they typically have several questions in their mind that they need to get answered so that they can make a decision most of the time. And depending on the urgency level, if people have enough information, they're going to then be able to make a decision. And it's either going to be yes or no. And if it's a no, you can either decide to push back and try to get, you know, people back online. If it's a no, that might be okay because they might not align with your practice. They might be a good might not be a good fit. But if it's a yes, then you need to be able to convert them.

Brandon (00:20:33) - So let's talk about this in a few breakdowns because I think this is really, really important. A lot of the times when I'm listening to calls from practices and I've listened to now probably thousands of calls now, I probably should measure how many I've listened to. But generally speaking, when somebody calls your practice, they're looking for information. And so if you're just in the process of answering questions, number one, it seems like that you're just an order taker. We don't want to be order takers. If people are asking questions, that is totally good, but you need to make sure that you direct it in a way that's going to be meaningful. And again, clients don't know what they don't know. So you have to educate them and get them to understand. Let me tell you what I mean by that. So somebody calls and they say, hey, I have a dog. And I wanted to know how much is it to get it spayed. Right. And most practices will just say, oh, you know, let's say it's $200 for the exam.

Brandon (00:21:35) - And then we have labs, which is 190, and then we have the spay, which is $700. And that's all that is said, just like that. And then it's quiet, right? And so from there, your CSRs are hoping that's enough information that that's going to convert them. And it's not giving them any detail about the quality of service that you offer, what kind of pet they have, what kind of dog it is. You've built no rapport at all. So you want to be able to build rapport on the phone. You want to be able to give context, and you want to be able to provide value those three things. So let's say somebody called the way that I would address this is absolutely we'd be happy to help you with that. We we do surveys all the time. What kind of a dog do you have, by the way? So immediately. Getting information right, making small talk. Wonderful. How old is your dog? How long have you had them for? Right.

Brandon (00:22:31) - And let's say they say, I have a Great Pyrenees and she's three. I love Great Pyrenees. They're so fun. Right? Something that is good, that builds rapport, that makes people feel warm and welcoming. I know this is kind of awkward sometimes, and sometimes it's kind of hard, especially when people just want the info. We'll talk about objections and things like that, but it's 80% of people love talking about their pets. They love building rapport. And because the veteran that you choose for your pet is very personal, you want to be able to talk to them. And so if you have this rapport with them, it's going to be much better along the entire process. So it's really helpful. So make sure that you give people tools to make small talk and things and help them practice it. Because it is a skill. And especially a lot of people are introverted and like you have to become an extrovert a little bit to do this, not become one, but just practice being one.

Brandon (00:23:26) - And so having an interest in people makes them feel good and also helps to get more information that's going to be relevant, right? So there's going to be times when people say things like, you know, why do you need to know that? Or how about you just tell me the price? I just want to know the price. I'm looking for price. And so maybe that person isn't a good fit, which is totally okay, but maybe they are a good fit and they just have a defensive wall up in place. And so generally you can disarm people with walls that are just looking for info with some pretty good little scripts that you have in place. And I call them just pivoting questions. So when somebody calls the power dynamic is that they're going to ask the questions and they're going to direct the call because they are wanting to be in charge of the situation. But that puts you in the place of order taker. And you don't want to be the order taker, because unless you're commoditized product, you want to be able to communicate the value that you have.

Brandon (00:24:25) - So these pivotal questions that you are trying to use are going to be things like, yeah, I totally get where you're coming from. So acknowledge what they say and understand. And say, you know, I wish it was as simple as saying, you know, it is this price and every time it is exactly the same. But the truth is that every dog is different because, you know, there's different considerations with breeds and weights and things like that. And so in order to give you information that's going to be relevant and not waste your time, we need to just gather a little bit of information so that we can then give you a quote that'll be more realistic. And so taking the conversation, acknowledging there where they are agreeing with them, that disarms them, and then giving justification for why we need to go in the direction that I want it to go. It helps you to establish credibility and then also take control of the conversation. And so having phrases like this and coming up with some, you can brainstorm them.

Brandon (00:25:27) - But the general kind of framework is number one. Agree. Yes, I totally understand. Number two is empathizing with them. I wish I could just give everybody the same quote, because it would make my life a lot easier, and it would cut down on the time it would take to to get people info. But in order to give you information that's going to be valuable and not waste your time, we need to gather and use the gather instead of we need to take or get. We're gathering a little bit of information so that we can give you exactly what you're looking for. And then finishing off these sentences with does that make sense? And then allowing people to respond when you when you frame things in terms of does that make sense or is that is that clear or do you understand that and not in a I say condescending way at all? Right. So always I like to use the does that make sense? Because it's not condescending, but getting people to say, yeah, that totally makes sense, that agreement.

Brandon (00:26:25) - Robert Carlini, who wrote a book called influence, talks about different sales tactics, and one of them is getting people to say yes a bunch of times throughout. So the more you can get somebody to say yes, typically the more likely you're going to be able to convert them. So building an understanding with people and helping them to get the information that they need. Allows you to then build a rapport to you. So let's say you go through that conversation of would it be okay if I gathered just a little bit of information so that we could give you a detailed quote? If they say, sure, sounds good, then you have permission to begin more detailed conversation with them. And so I think especially when you can just start building rapport. And if you're trying to offer service that is not just like in and out super quick, which most practices don't want, that they want to be able to have high-quality care. They want to build relationships and rapport, asking questions, helping people to understand what's different about your practice.

Brandon (00:27:27) - You could say, you know, so just to let you know, here's kind of what goes into these procedures. A lot of people don't know exactly what goes into them. So number one we have this intake procedure. Number two, we have this type of safety and monitoring equipment. We have all of our procedures with a technician present at all times along with the doctor. We have specialized training that we use. And then the recovery rooms are, you know, all these cool features and benefits. You're giving so much more context that people just don't have or don't know because they've never worked in a practice. And in fact, in most procedures they just drop their pet off and they don't see how the sausage is made, so to speak. They don't know what's going on behind the scenes. And so giving people context and education over the phone in a sales situation is going to help you to have much higher conversion. Now, a few things that you can do from a practical standpoint is, again, number one, it's incredibly important that you have scripts set up.

Brandon (00:28:26) - So figure out the types of buckets and calls that you kind of like to put people in buckets. That's how Google puts what are called in market segments. So these different in market segments that you have of current clients, former clients and then potential clients, maybe how are you going to engage and convert these people based on the questions that they typically ask? And also there's just I mean, typically people will have the same types of questions over and over again. So if you train these people in your CSRs on the most common types of questions that they have and how to take it from being an order taker to leading the conversation to the next step, it's going to be much more effective for you. So. Be sure to script this out and make something that works for you. Number two is really important, in my opinion, to have call tracking in place and call is a great tool. If you want to go to veterinary marketing podcast forward slash call rail, you can actually get $100 off call rail.

Brandon (00:29:24) - It's very affordable. There's so many cool tools and if you need help with that, please reach out because I think every practice should be using it. Fantastic tool. It records and transcribes all the calls it has listening that will send conversions to the different platforms. It does conversion tracking, it does source tracking. Fantastic. I can't can't recommend it enough. And then also you can use it for training. It helps you to understand where you're lacking, what opportunities there are and how to improve them. So with all of that, the last thing that I think is incredibly important, that every single time you have a conversation with a potential client is you ask for the sale, which is going to be asking for the conversion and having questions that are very softball, where you're not hard selling people, you're not manipulating people. It's just very, very simple. So after you ask more questions with somebody and they get all the info. I would probably do an assumed close for most of the phone calls that you're doing.

Brandon (00:30:31) - So let's say the conversation is going great. You've built rapport, you've explained your process and your price, and you've gotten info on their pet. The next question, in my opinion, would be, so what day works best for you? And then we have Tuesday at this time or on this date. So giving people 2 or 3 options and assuming the close. So what day works best for you. That is a very soft close call I'm sorry call closing. And I think it's very, very effective. And it doesn't feel pushy. It's easy to ask and it helps them if you just answer their questions 80% of the time. Seriously, 80% of the time people will not book an appointment. They'll say, okay, you know what? I'll call back, thanks. Or okay, thanks. And that's typically it. And so if you don't ask for them to schedule an appointment 80% of the time, they won't do it. So have a very softball close. That's. So what day would you like to come? Here's the times that we have available.

Brandon (00:31:39) - If you have something that is more urgent that they need to come in same day, obviously you don't have to go through the whole the whole sales pitch, but. I'm having a question like, would you like to set up an appointment right now? When were you hoping to get in? When were you hoping to have this done? Those types of questions are super helpful if you're going to go with questions like, well, when were you hoping to have your pet spayed or neutered? I would put that earlier in the conversation just to get context again for gathering information that's going to be useful to help close this person into a new client. So just as kind of like a recap here, I think, number one, we need to make sure that we're framing sales in a way that is helpful. Number two, we need to give the people at the front desk the tools to take control of the conversations. So they're not just order takers. And then number three, you need to create scripts and systems that are going to reflect the type of marketing that you do and the entire funnel so that you're consistent throughout the entire process.

Brandon (00:32:48) - Number four, I think you need to provide recording so that you can record your customer service people and do training on the different types of problems that you see and totally make the expectation with your salespeople and your CSRs that it is going to be a learning process and you don't expect them to be perfect. But having these frameworks in place is going to dramatically help, because the tiny increases that you make when it comes to improving conversion rate is going to dramatically improve the profitability of the campaigns, marketing and your practice in general. So very, very, very important. And then finally, every single time a potential new client calls, you need to ask a closing question. So what is that closing question. Figure out your favorite ones. Ones that are low pressure, that reflect your practice well and make everybody feel good. But you have to ask them, if you ask for the sale, you're going to get more sales. I guarantee it, you're going to get more clients. So ask people over and over again.

Brandon (00:33:50) - And if the word sales makes you uncomfortable, just use the word helping people, because if you don't help them, they're not going to come in. So be sure that you consider that when you're thinking about this again, make it a win win win for everybody and don't kind of overcomplicate it. It doesn't have to be difficult. These people that are calling you, they need and they want your services. And so you're going to be able to provide them with great care. So if you don't believe that, you need to improve your service. So I hope this was helpful. If you have any questions comments, you need help with anything, please don't hesitate to reach out. I genuinely hope that you develop some really cool scripts. If you develop a script that you really like that works really well, send it over. I always love looking at these things and if you need any help with call really? Again, veterinary marketing podcast call rail is $100 off and I can't suggest it enough. Have a great day everybody.

Brandon (00:34:42) - Talk to you on the next episode.

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Brandon Breshears
Digital Marketer & Podcaster
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