The Practice of Therapy

Whitney Owens
Welcome to the practice of therapy podcast. This is Whitney Owens recording a podcast takeover for Gordon Brewer. Thank you so much for hanging out with me over these past few weeks in the month of June on this podcast takeover. If you have missed the first few episodes, I encourage you to go back and get to know me and a little bit more about the work I do. The first episode I did was just kind of my journey, my story into private practice and consulting. And then the next episode, we talked about the ebb and flow of private practice, why things slow down, speed up, and how to make the most of those opportunities when maybe your practice isn't going the way you wanted it to. And then today, I'm gonna talk about our hot topic on how do we take all those new calls and inquiries and make them into new clients. I have found so many people miss out on opportunities, because they aren't doing the calls correctly, or the inquiries correctly, and they could have more new clients. So I want to walk you through that process of how to increase those conversion ratios. So before we get started on that, I do want to let you know that I have a free PDF on how to network with churches, it goes through four steps, we found that a lot of practice owners aren't really sure like, what do I say to a church when I want to make a relationship? What kind of church should I make a relationship with? And how can I make it work so that I can continue to get a steady referral stream going. So I'll walk you through that PDF on how I've been able to successfully do that in my practice. And I've seen other practice owners do that as well. So to get a hold of that PDF, you can head over to Whitney owens.com. And get access to that. You can also join my email list, where I'll give you tons of information on how to start and grow a faith based practice. So today, on this podcast episode, I'm going to walk you through how I've been able to be successful and having higher conversion ratios for when people are calling your practice or emailing your practice. We call these inquiries. And how do we get these inquiries into actual new clients getting scheduled, it amazes me how many people spend so much money time, energy on marketing, but then they're not spending as much time and energy on actually converting these clients. So you put all this time and effort into people calling the practice, but then they actually call in, things aren't going right. So that could be somebody's not answering the phone, or they're not saying the appropriate thing or that the process is confusing, well, then you're losing money because these people aren't scheduling. So it's so important. This, this is the first step of people getting to know you and your practice. So it's really important that you do this right on the front end. And then after that you can work more on retaining clients. So I'm going to walk you through that process here today. So the first thing I want to point out to you are just some really bullet points, things to really consider. And then we're gonna walk you through how we actually do a call to get someone to schedule. So here's some of the important points that I want you to consider. Always, always, always make the process as easy as possible for clients to schedule. We know this as therapists, when we're working with clients who we're trying to maybe get them to reschedule an appointment. There's every excuse in the book, your location is too far away that time doesn't work for me, I have something else going on. Right? The list goes on of excuses people have for not coming to counseling, we a lot of times even though those excuses are legitimate, sometimes, a lot of times they said they just don't want to deal with their stuff. So we want to make it as easy as possible for people to be successful in therapy. And so that being said, make it as easy as possible for people to actually schedule an appointment. So that's something you should be thinking about across the board for your practice, what is the easiest way for clients to get into therapy and to have a positive therapy experience? I'm always asking myself, when I'm creating new systems in my practice, we'll walk you through the intake process. I even encourage you that if you've had a practice for a while even this is a really good moment to go and just look at your process and ask yourself is this intake process is smooth as possible? What things can we do to make it easier? What things are becoming difficult for clients in the process of scheduling?

All right, so let's make it as easy as possible. You have got to have someone answer the phone. Okay. I cannot stress this enough. So that could be you answering the phone. It could be you hired assistant to answer the phone. It could be an in person, a virtual assistant. It could even be one of your clinician Maybe answering the phone, but someone needs to answer the phone. When phones are not answered live, you have much less ability to get these people scheduled. Okay, your your percentages, your ratios are declining if you're not answering it live, and here are the reasons why. One is a lot of people have a list of therapists that are running through. So when you don't answer that phone law, they're moving on to the next person. They're on Psychology Today, they're on whatever they're on. I can even think, a couple of years ago, I got, I think three or four referrals for speech for my daughter's either speech or OT. And I took that list and I went straight down, I thought, I've got 20 minutes right now in my schedule to get this taken care of. So I'm going to schedule with whoever answers the phone. And that's exactly what I did. And then the place didn't answer. They call me back, I don't know, an hour later. And I said, I'm sorry, I've already scheduled somewhere else, right? It doesn't even take that much time to schedule with someone else by the time you get that call back. So you don't want to be a situation where people are leaving messages on a machine. And then you're getting them and calling them back. Because you're going to lose people. Yeah, some people, you're going to be able to schedule, but you're going to lose some of those people. So maybe you went out and spent $500 In Google ads? Well, if you had five calls from that Google ad, and you only got one of those scheduled because you know only one of them answered, when you call them back, you haven't really had a lot of success there. But if you're able to answer the phone, loving it three in the five day schedule, you can see how much more productive that is. So make sure you have somebody actually scheduling your phone's lab. And you want that process to be really easy for people. You don't want them to have to wait on hold when they call like there are some places, there's an automated system or music playing and they're waiting. I'll tell you I have kids, sometimes waiting seven, eight seconds is enough time that I'm gonna have to hang up that phone because someone is screaming, and I'm gonna have to go take care of it, right? So you want to make it as seamless as possible that someone live is actually answering the phone who can form a relationship, answer questions, and be able to talk to people. We know that answering the phone live from the research I have done is better conversion ratios. Hands down. Okay? I know it seems expensive and difficult at times, especially when you're a solo owner wanting to hire somebody. But if you need to have more interactions, if you need to have more clients, and you're going to have to get someone answered the phone. I remember those days when I was a solo practice, owner. And even I'm so embarrassed to say when I had a group practice, I still didn't have anybody answering the phone. At first it was me. So I was me. And I was scheduling for me and two other clinicians. So a group practice and the owner to answering the phone which by the way, when does an owner ever answer the phone? When I call the pediatrician to schedule for my kids, he's not answering the phone. When I call the dentist, they're not answering the phone, their admin is right. It's a you need to have an admin answering the phone as well. Right? But I can remember those days when I would sit at my computer. And I'm like, hurry and and type in a note in between sessions because the next person is about to be there and the phone would ring but I need clients so I gotta answer. So I answered the phone. And it was on and on and on. The next person is texting me I'm here for my appointment. Why can't go get them out of the Lobby because I'm stuck on a phone call with someone who continues to share their story which they should share their story. This is why they're calling. But then I would feel so so much conflict within me Do I Do I go get the person in a lobby to put this person on hold. You know, once the actual client that's here pay me once the person who hasn't actually scheduled yet. And it would put me behind for the next session, it would mess up the day. And I feel rushed on the actual call, which I'm going to assume the person could tell I was rushing on the call. And it was just a really, it. I'm shooting myself in the foot both ways, really. And so when you have someone else answer the phone, I remember when I first had someone answer and scheduled somebody, it was so much freedom. I had done a therapy session and I got out I was like someone got scheduled by someone else. It was just so glorious. And I was able to work and I could do the work that I wanted to do not that I didn't like answering the phones, but someone else can answer the phone. Not everyone can do therapy, right? And not everyone is you and your clients want to see you. So anyway, make sure that you're actually answering those phones laugh because I can tell you all day long all these things you can do to market and help your practice. If you're not getting those calls answered. You're not helping yourself right there with that, okay. Now, it is always better in my mind. Some people argue with me on this, but I'm just gonna tell you what I think I think it is better to reach out to get the person on the phone than to scheduled through email. And this is why I think that the phone in that conversation provides that personal touch that you need to have with people in there a lot more likely to schedule if it's through email, it's less personal, you're hearing less of their story. And we have found at least with our practice that people don't schedule as easily Just beyond that, we want to get people on the phone so we can really hear the story. So we can get them with the audio therapist, but their situation, like clients don't always understand how fit works with therapy, which is why we want to get them on the phone to figure out that best fit. So if somebody emails our practice, we do everything we can to get him on a phone call, we do answer their question, of course, like, that's a wonderful question. You know, here's some of the things we specialize in, would it be okay for us to give you a call to we can talk about this further, or here's our number, or when's the best time to get in touch with you, so that we can have that personal connection. And if it's not with our practice, then at least on the phone, we can get them to the bribe practice.

And then, even though I do think that phone is the best way to to get somebody scheduled, sometimes people are not going to pick up the phone, or sometimes it's going to be the middle of the night. I can also think I'm using my kids for a lot of examples here. But like, if I get a referral for someone for them, and sometimes during the day, I'm at work, and I really don't have the time to call these people and make all these appointments. So then I go to the website, if I see that I can schedule with someone online and already got a direct recommendation for this person, you better believe I'm going to schedule online, right? Because it's easier. And so I encourage you to have an online booking option for clients so that they don't necessarily have to call your office or it might not be a convenient time to call your office. Also on that we our mental health, you know, there are people that have so much PTSD, anxiety, depression, that even making phone call is a lot of effort for them. So if we can do an online option for them, it's going to be a lot easier. Now, I want to tell you this, and I want you to really try to listen here, and hopefully this, this is something that you can receive here. So I get a lot of pushback on this too. I want you to to not offer free 15 minute consults. A lot of people offer an online booking free 15 minute consults. And I understand those increase your conversion. Great. That's why we just need to get them on the phone to schedule an appointment, right? I mean, someone else can do that part for you. But when you start offering 15 minute free calls to people that says to them that your time is free, right? And I know you're worried about getting the right fit, and what if this person isn't a good fit, and then we have to get them in with somebody else? Well, if they're concerned about the right fit, they can call the office and talk to someone about that. Or they can come in and pay to see you. And let's just say they come to see you and they have an eating disorder and you don't work with eating disorders, that's okay. You can refer them to someone who works with eating disorders, at least they came in and saw someone and they should be paying your rate to talk to you, right? We don't just randomly call doctor's office and get a free 15 minute console on a problem we're having with our knee, right? If you've got a problem with your knee, you're going to be calling the doctor's office, and they're going to get you in with the orthopedic gap. And then you're gonna pay for that appointment. And he might end up saying, Well, you know what, it's not really your knee necessarily, it's your muscle or this, I need you to go to PT or you know, so it's not like, they're always going to help you perfectly. Sometimes you have to refer out for something else happens all the time. And so that's what happens in mental health. So you should be paid for your time, should offer an online booking option where people can book directly with you. Now for conversions when we talk about that we're talking about converting a call or an inquiry into an actual new appointment. So ratios for this, just to give you an idea is 70 to 80% of inquiries are scheduled with an insurance based practice. And it's 30 to 50% are scheduled for a profit pay practice, okay, I want you to track this stuff in your practice. You could spend all day long marketing, trying to train people and answering phones being available to incidents. But if you're not watching your conversion rates, then you're not going to know what's working and what's not. So in my practice, it used to be actually that our conversion rate was usually around 50% 55%. And I knew that every single month, based on the number of calls we would get that's about how many people would schedule and we have a private pay practice. Now my admin has been with me for I don't even know two years now or something like that. She's so excellent knows people in the community. She's fantastic. And she converted about 70%. Now average, she blows me away. So I know that that's the percentage of conversion. So if it drops one month, I can say okay, well, what just happened? Like what's wrong here? Right. And when I do my consulting with private practices, we do this all the time. I start people on the intake call, what's going on with your conversions? How many people are actually scheduling a lot of people have no idea what that is. And then if they do know what that is, sometimes it's might be low, they might say, Okay, well, I'm at 30% for private pay practices. like, Well, that's good, but we need to get a higher than that. So let's work on this. And we go back to the drawing board and figure out what the problem is. But your numbers and tracking are going to show you when things are not going right, your practice, you need to know what those are. All right, so let's start now with what are you going to do on the actual phone call? Okay, we will just work through those important bullet points. And let's do a rundown of the basic phone call. So when someone calls your practice, the first thing you want to do is say hello to them. Right? basic and simple. Introduce yourself, say hello, and how can I help you? So it's as simple as Hello, this is Whitney over at Water's Edge counseling, how can I help you today? Right, they're going to give you some kind of reason why they need help with something, hopefully, it'll be just like a quick one or two liner right there.

Now, before they get too, too into their story, I want to encourage you to stop them because you have got to get their name and phone number. A lot of times people want to jump in. And a lot of times they'll ask you immediately what is what kind of insurance do you take, right? Well, we don't really take insurance in our practice, we don't say that upfront. Because sometimes people can use our network benefits. There's a lot of different things that people can do. But the most important thing is that we want to make sure people are getting help. So even if we don't take their insurance, we have to refer out, hey, I want to get the information off this call. So I can refer you to the right place that you're not just making a bunch of phone calls, let's make it as easy as possible for people. So if they stop and they ask questions like that, or they keep talking, we'll kind of stop them first again, say excuse me, you know, before we keep going, do you mind giving me your name and phone number. That way, if we get disconnected, I'm able to give you a call back, I can't tell you how happy I am. When I actually do have to call an insurance company. That part I'm not happy about but when they say to you, let me get your name and number in case we get disconnected, I can call you I'm like sweet, because I do not want to go through that automated system again. Right? So so when we say to them, let me get your name and numbers and call you if necessary. Like usually people are pretty happy about that, guys, sometimes we do get disconnected for various reasons, right. But right here, we're really trying to track their information. And the other thing is some some calls go sour, unfortunately. So it could be that you hear an abuse situation going on in the background, and they tell you about something you have to report and you're gonna be glad that you got their name and number because if you get too far into the call, sometimes people won't give you that information again. So make sure you get that information upfront. And then before you get going into the phone call, find out how they heard about you. Because you want to track this just like you track your conversion rates. And this is important, because marketing is very expensive. And you want to know what's working and what's not. So let me give you a prime example. There's a magazine here in our town called Savannah magazine. And I had this dream that my practice was going to be in Savannah magazine one day. And so I got caught got in contact with them somehow. And it's like $800, which is a good chunk of change to be in a magazine. But it was going to have our picture like a professional photographer was going to come to the practice and take a photo and we're gonna answer like eight questions about counseling. And I was like, Yes, this is going to be so cool. We're in Savannah magazine, it goes into all the doctor's offices in town, it was in this special issue highlighting health care. So I was thinking this is going to be amazing. Well, guess how many people said that they heard about us from that ad that we had in the Savannah magazine, zero, row, zero, no one. Now someone might have seen it. I mean, such as we have to encounter practice a long time name recognition, all that stuff. But no direct referrals came from that. And so I have learned that I need to track what is working and what's not. So that we don't I mean, I want to be in things and do other things. But like, for example, we don't normally get a lot of referrals from our speaking engagements. We did speak at a local youth group pretty recently. And there was, I don't know about 50 sets of parents there. I think one parent called scheduled. So you know, it's something. But we usually have found that doing those kinds of events are not the things for our practice in our community that increase our client load, I have actually found that Google is what really helps. So I want to make sure I'm tracking that. Or maybe if you run a Google ad or a Facebook ad, like you want to make sure you're tracking that. So when people call, how did you hear about us and making sure that you are your admin is collecting that data, and you want to invest your money into what works and not what doesn't work? I think a lot of people say, Oh, I should do this because I've never done it before or I need to diversify where I'm marketing and sometimes that's really good, especially if some thing in your marketing messes up somewhere. But don't put all your money into something that doesn't actually get clients to your practice. So make sure that you're tracking how many or hearing about you. Okay. And then after you ask the caller about that, you want to ask what is bringing them into therapy or what's bringing their loved one into therapy. And this is a time for you to listen compassionately, and with understanding, and this part of the call can go for a little while, which is another reason why it's good to have someone else taking these calls. That way you can deal with things you need to deal with, and someone else can take these calls.

And then after that, like Oh, and by the way that that moment is where you're developing a relationship with that person, they feel like you've heard them that you understand them, right. And then after that, you're going to use that information to schedule them with the right person. So you might say something like, well, this particular therapist would be a good fit for you for X, Y, and Z. It sounds kind of funny, but you're selling therapists really. But you're selling a therapist because you want to help a client, okay? So ultimately you're doing is to try to help the client. But here's an example. So for myself, let's say somebody needs got anxiety when they call and that's what they need to do. So the person at my practice, who took the call might say something like, well, Whitney has years of experience working with anxious clients, she uses cognitive behavioral therapy, which works really well with people who have anxiety, we have found that CBT is one of the most effective forms of therapy for anxiety, right? So you see that so like, I have another therapist in my practice, who does eating disorders, and there are not a lot of people in town to do eating disorders. So if someone were to call and have body issues or food issues, we can say, well, this therapist does great with eating disorders. She's been doing it for three years to the day, she's getting this certification, that a DA, and explain why they're good fit. So then we get to the scheduling time. So by this point, hopefully they're thinking, okay, yes, this is a good fit, you're so nice, you answer my call. Now, they might just they might get to the point where they explained to you that they have insurance. And if you're an insurance based practice, hopefully you are on their panels that they need you to be on. And if not, you'll have to kind of walk through that process with people and explaining to them why you don't take insurance if you are cash pay practice. And so I don't want to spend too much in this episode going into that. But I do think it's important that you know why you don't take insurance, and that you're able to convey that to clients on the phone. And so take the time to figure figure that part out and to train people on why it is if it's the paperwork that goes along with it, or if it's the diagnostic part, you don't want to diagnose your clients have to send that information, whatever it is, make sure you can really explain that to clients on the phone. And for them to understand. Now, of course, if they want to use your their insurance, you need to be able to provide them with some referrals that they can do that point them in the right direction for that. But I have found a lot of times I'll be on the call, or I used to be able to calls and they would say they had insurance. But by the time we got to the end of the call, and I've explained who the therapist is whether a good fit, I would say hey, well, you're no we're not on that panel, I don't have to explain that we fully don't take insurance, but I can explain that we don't take their particular insurance because that's what the focus is on. And that we can give them a referral or they're welcome to schedule and try to submit at a network benefit. We do provide those super bills for you. And you can do that on your own. Sometimes you have to educate people on all that in that experience. So make sure that you can educate people on that. But then you want to get them scheduled, and you want to make it as seamless and easy as possible. You don't want to have to have the client do something later. So for example, we take the credit card at this time, because when the client comes in for the first session, we don't want to be taking the credit card then. And it's like one more thing, we have to do more more and more complication. The other thing is I want to encourage you to have at least a 24 hour cancellation policy, even a 48 hour cancellation policy. And I know it can sound tough that you're going to take the full session fee. But this gets people to come to therapy, which is the whole reason why we're here. If you have the cancellation policy, and they're canceling less than 24 hours and you say hey, you know, I'm so sorry, we have this policy, they're going to be a lot more likely to still come for their appointment if they can, I've definitely had clients tried to cancel on us and we I'm gonna have to charge you two minutes we'll come anyway reminds we'll do a virtual appointment anyway. And then it ends up working well for them. And so, of course, you want to make sure when you are scheduling them, that you tell them about the cancellation policy. And you want to make sure that you get that credit card information is there a lot more likely to show up to their appointment if you get that information in advance, and it's just easier in the long run. And so then at the end, hopefully you've scheduled that client, they know make sure they know the next steps make sure they know the location of your office, how to get to the building, how to get in touch with their therapist or if they need to change anything that you give them all that information. And of course at the end you want to make sure they don't have any additional Questions and then they know how to get in touch with you, if any questions were to come up, and hopefully by then you have scheduled a call on it, and you've walked them through that process. At our practice, I know it sounds kind of crazy, but it takes about 30 minutes to do this whole process, not only just getting on the call and talking with them and getting them scheduled, sometimes sometimes that can go quickly, I would say the average calls probably more like 10 to 15 minutes. But then we have to upload all the documents to the portal send the information to our therapists that they understand who's coming in with the intake call was like we send the therapist a form, where we track all the information, we write about the calls, they can read about it. And then all this data gets collected in every single week, me as a group practice owner, I

get into the system, I look at what's going on and a lot of different areas, but one of them is definitely call conversions. How many calls did we get and how many of those converted, because I want to make sure that our call numbers are staying up. And then we're getting these converted. I also do this for the online booking. In fact, we found that about 50% of the online booking stick, meaning they actually continue to stay clients. But hey, I figured we're getting some clients out of it. And we're not having to really pay for anything. It's not like anyone's having to answer a call that I'm honest, we'll keep doing what I'm doing. So there will be a PDF here in the show notes, it's going to help you with this whole process. So this PDF that you can go into the show notes and download, it's going to walk you step by step through what I just presented with you today. So that way, you don't have to worry about taking the notes on this, but you have a quick and easy cheat sheet. And I have had a lot of people I consult say they really appreciate a cheat sheet because they can give it to their admin. Sometimes they just have their admins listen to this episode. So you know, listen to me walk through the process. So that way they have it. So now you've got it here on the practice therapy so that you can have people walk through that process. And if you are hearing me today, and you're thinking, oh Whitney seems to know what she's doing. I'd love to work with her. Please reach out to me. And you can go to my website, Whitney owens.com and get on the email list. Send me an email. Let me know what's going on in your practice and how I can help you and me and Gordon, we go way back. So we'll reach out to Gordon as well. And I appreciate him giving me the time to hang out with you today. And I hope that after you hear this episode, your conversion rates will go up and your business will be more successful. Thanks for taking the time to let me hang out with you today.