Based on a PracticeCare® podcast conversation, Jake Goates on Managing Leads Matters More Than Generating Them, with Jake Goates, founder of GOAT Dental Marketing Consultants.
What’s the difference between lead generation and lead management?
Lead generation is everything that gets someone to contact your practice: word of mouth, your website, SEO, pay-per-click, ground marketing. Lead management is what happens after they call or fill out a form. Most practices are decent at the first one and never build a system for the second.
Jake had a client running a Google campaign for full-arch cases that pulled in 122 leads in a single month. Only a small percentage were contacted quickly. A smaller percentage got someone on the phone. A smaller percentage scheduled. A smaller percentage showed up. Why work so hard to get new leads if this is how they’re handled?
Why do so many practices overlook managing the leads they already have?
It comes down to too many hats and no dedicated system. The person answering the phone is also checking patients in, holding for insurance, and getting pulled chairside. Leads become one more thing in the pile instead of a tracked pipeline.
When leads do come in, there’s little to no organization of them, nobody owns them or is responsible to follow up, and it’s usually all done manually.
How fast do you actually need to respond to a new lead?
Faster than most practices think. If a lead form submission isn’t contacted within the first five minutes, you’ve already lost roughly 80% of your shot at reaching that person. If you think about the lifetime value of a new patient in your own practice, that loss is likely significant revenue.
What does a working lead management system actually need?
- One pipeline. Every lead, no matter the source, lands in the same system, not scattered across an inbox and caller ID.
- Immediate automation. A text and email go out the moment someone submits a form or you miss their call, so they know you got it and someone is coming.
- A follow-up task on every open lead. If a lead hasn’t been scheduled, there’s a task attached to it and someone accountable for clearing it.
How many times should you follow up before giving up on a lead?
More than most people are comfortable with. Most practices stop after the second or third attempt, so anyone who keeps going past that picks up more than their fair share of the business.
Vary the timing, too. If you tried someone at 2 p.m. yesterday, try 10 a.m. or 4 p.m. today. Better yet, ask on your lead form what time works best for them, and build your follow-up sequence around that answer instead of guessing.
Where should a practice owner start if this all sounds overdue?
Start simple even if you know you’ll outgrow it. A basic system that actually tracks every lead beats a sophisticated one that never gets built.
A final note from Carl White
I see this constantly: practices pouring money into new campaigns to generate more leads while the leads they already paid for quietly go cold. Fixing what happens after the phone rings is almost always cheaper than generating more calls. Look at your own numbers before you spend another dollar on lead generation. You may already have more opportunity sitting in your inbox than you think.