How to Convert Prospects to Patients

Personalized medicine is an emerging practice of medicine that uses an individual's genetic profile to guide decisions made in regard to the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease. However, when it comes to converting patient prospects to patient customers, there is nothing personal about the process at all.

For hospitals, clinics, and, particularly, those who practice in elective surgical specialties, like plastic and reconstructive surgery and dentistry, reproductive services or bariatric surgery, the failure to convert a patient prospect to an actual patient who chooses to use your services can have an eye-popping impact on your bottom line.

There are many who offer advice about how to convert prospects to leads to customers. Most involve:

1. Start with casting a large net.

2. Qualify leads so you don't waste resources on those who are not interested in buying your services.

3. Personalize your message using mobile technologies that are relevant, repetitive, redundant, and relational.

4. Follow up in an appropriate and timely manner that results in a call to action. You are six times more likely to qualify a lead if your follow-up occurs in less than an hour from the time the lead is received. Think how many more prospects will move into your pipeline if you respond to 100% of your leads in an hour or less.

5. Don't be annoying or stalk your leads. Contact them the way they want to be contacted and when they want to be contacted. I've had four people from the same firm cold contact me on LinkedIn. Guess what I told them?

6. Create a way to measure results.

7. Avoid conversion aversion.

8. Make it stupid simple for customers to take the next step or buy your product.

9. Use web analytics to differentiate prospects from leads to customers.

10. Understand the conversion process: attention, interest, desire, action.

The future of personalized prospecting and lead converting is as important and has as bright a future as personalized medicine. Each will create a better outcome and user experience and add more user defined value.