Episode Transcript
Key Takeaways
- Strategic thinking is crucial for the growth and adaptation of your practice.
- The decision to charge for consultations should align with your long-term business strategy.
- Free consultations can attract more patients but may result in higher no-show rates.
- Paid consultations often bring higher quality leads but may reduce patient volume.
- Evaluate your practice’s current stage and strategic needs before deciding on consultation fees.
Strategic Thinking
This is where you can start thinking about the strategy of your practice. When I say strategically, you need to look at your practice and how it’s going to impact it and what stage it’s at. If you need to take the beach versus take the stronghold tactically and strategically in order to win the war, you have to look at it. What stage of this battle are you in?
Charging for Consultations
Today we’re going to talk about whether or not you should charge for a consultation. But before we get into that, I’d like to invite you to come to thinkbasis.com and we’ve got a live widget on there. I’d like you to engage with that widget and just let me know exactly what you’re struggling with in terms of your plastic surgery marketing.
Free vs. Paid Consultations
Now in my consulting practice, this is probably one of the most frequent things that I have to deal with, if not the most frequent thing that I have to deal with. And this comes up all the time for every practice, this idea of whether or not you should charge for a consult, what’s better to have a free consultation or a paid consultation.
“A free consultation, having to see a lot of people, you may obviously have to staff up or get support or just be prepared to sit around.”
Advantages and Disadvantages
Now there are advantages and disadvantages to charging for a consultation and the same goes for a free consultation. So I’d like to examine each so you can decide which is right for your practice. Now this is a strategic question and I want you to start thinking in terms of strategy and not just a tactic of whether or not you should try to charge for this consultation.
Long-term Strategy
And what I mean by strategy versus tactic is when you’re talking strategy, you’re thinking more long-term. You’re thinking about how what you’re about to do is going to impact the overall business, whereas a tactic is just a technique. It’s something that you’re doing.
Free Consultation Dynamics
So let’s first examine the free consultation. What happens when you have a free consultation? And this is going to be a generalization, and there will be edge cases where this won’t be the case. For example, places where you may have a monopoly or there’s not a lot of competition, or quite frankly your competition just sucks, so it wouldn’t really matter what you do.
Paid Consultation Dynamics
Let’s quickly examine the paid consultation. Now, with a paid consultation, what you’ll typically see is a lower volume of patients, right? Unless you’re a celebrity, if you’ve gotten to that celebrity angle, you’re able to get good publicity in your area.
“With a paid consultation, if you’ve got a paid consultation, you should typically expect someone further down the buying cycle.”
Coping Strategies
We’ve talked about how going free versus paid can cause certain issues like no-shows and so on. I want to discuss some coping strategies, some things that you can start to think about in terms of how to handle some of those situations. One of the things that I want you to think about is how you can decrease that show rate.
Building Value
One of the most important things here when you’re coping with no-shows is how are you building the value? Why are people coming to your practice? What’s the reason that they’re there? Why do they want to come in the first place?
Competitive Markets
The other thing I want you to realize is that in a competitive market, if you’ve got people that are providing the same services as you, whether it’s Botox or breast augmentation, it doesn’t matter. If the consumer has a choice, it’s very important for you to stand out from them.
Conclusion
To sum it up, I want you to understand that there is no right or wrong answer to the paid versus free consultation. The only thing that really matters is that you figure out at what stage your business is in, your practice is in, and what strategy is best for your practice at that time.