While you’ve been busy and out generating more physician referrals, chances are you’ve also been sitting on a whole host of potential patients.

Most practices I meet with contact a new patient lead 1 – 3 times before giving up, placing the lead in a drawer never to be seen again. I call this the dead leads drawer where good patient leads go to die. 😔

Even if your practice doesn’t have a literal dead leads drawer. It’s probably got something equivalent. (Even if you don’t think it does.)

Trust me on this one… Even in the very biggest, best, and brightest practices I’ve worked with there is a version of a dead leads drawer lurking in a dark corner somewhere in the practice. 

If you’re a practice leader, I would encourage you to take some time this week to sniff out where the proverbial dead leads drawer is in your practice. 

Those “dead” leads are patients who at some point:

These are patients in your universe right now ready and waiting to have care with you.

You’ve invested so much to get these referrals and leads in the door. How can you make sure those patients get the care they need?

Take this tip from my dog groomer:

Last week I got this text message from the dog groomer.

It wasn’t that I was intentionally ignoring my pup’s scruff. I just had other things I was focused on. I wasn’t paying attention.

You’re not just competing with a competitor across town. You’re competing with little league practices, work schedules, and doom scrolling. You’re competing with busy schedules and a million daily distractions. 

But… This text from the dog groomer brought the pup scruff to the forefront of my attention. He’s past due for a bath and so I was like, “Sure, why not?” without even having to think about it.

Within 30 seconds the groomer’s Client Concierge, Brady, responded and my puppy was scheduled for his next haircut.

✅ And like that, I had one thing crossed off the to do list. 

Now, I have no idea if Brady is the person sitting at the front desk waiting to check in my pooch when I arrive or if “Brady” is the groomer’s AI agent. Frankly, I don’t care because whoever Brady is got the job done quickly in a high-quality manner. 

Brady wasn’t sitting around waiting for the phone to ring, hoping I would ask Google or ChatGPT for their info, look up their website, and maybe remember to call them. 

Brady was pro-actively reaching out, breaking through the distractions, bringing my need to the forefront, and making it easy for me to get that need met.  

What can we learn from this?

✨ Don’t ignore the patients who are already in your universe.

While it’s important to always be bringing new people in the door (that’s my entire job), it’s also important to maximize a whole host of patients who already know you and trust you enough to have reached out or been referred to you. 

✨ Don’t wait for patients to come to you.

You have plenty of patients and potential patients ready to have their treatment with you. Don’t make it more difficult for them. Remove the friction and meet them where they are.

✨ Make it easy to schedule with you.

Not only did the dog groomer make it easy for me to schedule my appointment, it would have been harder not to schedule the appointment. 

Had I ignored this text message, in a few days I would have had to go look up their phone number, call them, and finally get the appointment on the books. It was way easier to just respond to the text and get it done.

✨ Don’t take it personally. 

I wasn’t intentionally ignoring my pet’s hygiene. I fully intended to eventually get the appointment scheduled. Life gets busy. People get distracted. Keep reaching out, as my friend Liam Welch says, with joyful persistence.

✨ Make the message matter. 

Notice the groomer’s text message was personal and conversational – not just a robotic link to schedule my next appointment. 

They:

✨ Try this technique with: 

Slightly adjust the text to fit the circumstance and you’re ready to go.

If you have some spots open this week, next week, or any time this month, reach out to your existing and interested patients and get them filled.

Here’s to filling patient schedules and fresh furry friends…