I cannot stress enough the importance of customer follow-up for your hair restoration sales. It is the essential key to better functionality as you grow your business. It improves your business operations, and you will see better efficiency in your hair sales funnel, resulting in greater profits. And as a former business owner, I know you love greater profits.
Without proper follow-up protocols, your sales funnel will have bottlenecks resulting in money being left on the table, and then you are not maximizing your profitability. This reduces your capacity to expand your hair restoration base and properly meet customers’ needs. It can even potentially generate negative word of mouth, further damaging future growth.
Why is it important to follow up on leads?
A lead is typically defined as a brand-new potential customer that does not know you or your business. Each lead has a dollar value of $11,000, the average value of a hair surgery.
Your business is not the field of dreams, and those who need your services won’t just come if you build it. To be successful, you must implement protocols for following up and nurturing the leads you get. They could have stumbled upon your website from a Google hair restoration search and submitted their information. They may not know you or your business.
When something is unknown, it is human nature to be skeptical. That’s especially true for something as personal as hair loss. In fact, we find that men typically have a harder time moving forward than women.
This skepticism will affect their decision to further engage with you in the sales funnel. They could go cold from the first email or phone call, completely ghosting you as if they did not exist. This is why reaching out one or two times is ineffective. Remember that the lead has a dollar value. Don’t leave money on the table.
Your new leads will require greater nurturing than existing customers. On average, it takes seven touch points before customers take the next step.
This is why drip campaigns are incredibly impactful. By establishing protocols and a team dedicated to properly nurturing your leads, you will see a direct correlation to an increase in responses and leads becoming customers.
How important is a follow-up email?
While it should be standard business practice to send a follow-up email upon receiving a lead, doing a consultation, and having completed a procedure, it is important to not get lost behind electronic communication. Indirect contact does not build human connection, and it is easy for the recipient to ignore this type of communication. Also, most inboxes receive a slew of emails and yours may get lost in the numbers.
On the flip side, by implementing standard operating procedures to have automatic emails sent after each interaction, you will continuously nurture hair restoration buyers, letting them know that you are there and are able to serve their needs. A properly configured and managed email automation will allow you to determine the pain points the prospect is having and allow all subsequent emails to focus solely on that one concern (i.e. will it hurt, will it look natural). Think of each email you send as a touch-point resulting in further consumer buy-in.
I highly recommend follow-up phone calls as well, so the soon-to-be new client has the chance to hear your voice. That humanizes you and is superior to purely electronic communication. Smile when they answer or you leave a message because they can hear it.
The 3 Key Areas to Implement SOPs for Follow-up:
1) Follow up if they don’t book a consultation.
How long should you follow up? Until they book a procedure or ask to be removed from drip email, text campaigns, or phone calls.
Consider this: A person who is going bald will continue to lose hair unless they do something about it. Their business is fair game until a consultation or a procedure is booked, or until they tell you to remove them from the contact list. Follow up the same day as the phone call with an email. Attach the bio of the doctor and any other downloadable materials that could assist in their decision-making process, and a ‘thank you.’
3 impactful mentions to add to your follow-up emails after the first phone call:
- We have treated _______ amount with your same issue and they have been so happy with their results!
- I understand it can be overwhelming to know what the next steps are. We are happy to assist you in your search in any way possible.
- The best thing to do for yourself in the process is to come in for a consultation as we are unable to know exactly what you need without seeing you in person.
Bonus Tip: If your practice is regularly busy, consider a statement in your emails such as, “I’d love for you to see the procedure and maybe even speak with one of our patients. Let me know, and I’ll see if I can get the patient’s approval. However, they might not be chatty as sometimes people fall asleep during the procedure, but you may get lucky :-)”
2) Follow up for those who do not book a surgery.
This is another area where you will want to follow up until they buy or ask to be removed. Since you have either done an in-person or virtual consultation, you can ask them how often they would like you to reach out. They will tell you their timeline.
In the meantime, while they are thinking about it, they will discover doing nothing only leaves them more of the same or progressively worse. When you have done all you can in a consultation, and they are interested but not ready to buy, this is your time to follow up, follow up, follow up!
I promote and encourage prompting them to sign up for an email or a text campaign for follow-up as this is a very standard mode of communication. There are automated programs out there that you can set to send specific texts at specific times. They are called ‘SMS sequences’ and this article explains them further. This is a great way to work smarter and not harder! https://www.salesmate.io/blog/automate-follow-ups-with-text-sequences/.
3 things worth including in your follow-up email post-consultation:
- A before-and-after photo of someone with a similar problem. For example, if they have dark hair with crown loss and are about 45, send a photo of someone with dark hair with crown loss in their same age bracket.
- Discuss the benefits of getting their hair back based on what is most important to them. For example, if they said they would like to look younger, include in the email ‘many of our clients say they look an average of 10 years younger. We would love to have you feel the same!’
- We would really love to be the ones to do your procedure. Please don’t hesitate to schedule to get on the way to a full head of hair!
3) Followup for those who had a procedure; build your gallery!
How about those that have already had surgeries? They need followup, too!
I recommend scheduled follow-ups for the first 12 months post-procedure. Tracking their progress and hearing feedback is SUPER important to the success of your business as well as the connection you are building between the client and your brand. Not only will you be able to gather beneficial testimonials and before-and-after photos, but your after customers may want additional procedures or other treatments. The more they interact with you, the stronger their connection to you, and you build those touch-points. Set a follow-up appointment or reminders like this:
- Follow up the next day, 7, 14, and 30 days after the procedure to ensure the patient is comfortable with post-op instructions and is healing well. You want to eliminate any healing surprises, Google searching, and them trying to erroneously solve their own concerns.
- At 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, and 12 months you take “after” photos of them. Build your gallery as it will help the next candidate in moving forward. Ask for reviews at any time. They can review the day of the procedure, the staff, and eventually, their new hair.
- At 3 months patients need encouragement as they have yet to see a return on their investment. Assure them that it is working, and they are in the process of their hair maturing. Nervousness can be overcome with hair and scalp analysis done under video magnification so they can see the progress.
- At 12 months, patients need to be seen to discuss the ultimate results of their procedure, and post-op photos must be obtained for your gallery!
- Also, at 12 months send a post-surgery ‘happy birthday to your new hair’ card with $500 off their next procedure. That’s one of my favorite follow-up techniques. Many gentlemen have multiple surgeries in their lifetime to get the maximum results they desire. Make sure they pick you for round two or more.
I hope this outline gives you clarification of the follow-up process. I am confident proper implementation will result in fewer bottlenecks and an improved sales funnel. Looking forward to your improved profits!
In the best interest of your hair restoration business,
Kari Collins
