Struggling to “convert” new prospective clients into regular, lasting clients?

Banging your head against the wall because you feel like your PsychologyToday profile markets you as an invisible ant in an anthill?

New clients aren’t getting back?

This article will review critical principles mental health therapists must master to dramatically improve behavioral health client acquisition.  Specifically, we'll cover the importance of multiple contact and marketing channels, following up quickly, and your tone (inviting) when speaking with prospective clients.

Let’s begin our series about New Client Acquisition with a meditation on principles that will guide your success.

Availability:  Be Present on Multiple Channels

Obvious but critical.  You must be available on multiple marketing channels.  Some obvious ones:

• Email
• Therapist Profile Websites:
  • PsychologyToday.com
  • GoodTherapy.org
• Personal Website
• Social:
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
• Google Business Listing
• Bing Business Listing

When someone Googles you, you and your practice should dominate the first page results.  You want to make sure there are multiple places folks can find and reach you.

Instruction:  Teach Your Prospects How to Contact You

It’s not good enough to just be present; you need to offer easy, quick ways for prospective clients to reach out, and equally important: you need to educate them on how to contact you with explicit action steps.

Each channel should contain your phone number and email address.  Most channels should link to your website where they can learn more about you.

Beyond that, provide specific instructions, depending on the channel, for how to best get in touch.  Some examples:

• Facebook:  Add the following to your bio: “To get in touch about services I can offer, please email me at therapistemail@therapistwebsite.com or send me a private message via Facebook.  Excited to connect”.
• Twitter:  Include in your profile bio at the very end: “To get in touch, head to therapistwebsite.com and click Contact”.
• Your Website:  Make sure every page has your contact information and a brief message: “To learn about the services I can offer, please call me 123.456.7890 Monday-Friday between 10am and 11am or 3pm and 4pm”.

Again: let your prospects know how and when to best contact you.  Set clear expectations about how you will respond (and try hard to exceed them).

Quickly Respond to New Client Inquiries

You will lose prospective clients the longer you take to respond.

Ideally you can pick up the phone on their first call.  The faster you can get back, the better.

Imagine the average PscyhologyToday user scanning through search results and sending emails or calling potential mental health providers on a Sunday.  Suppose that person has found three potential providers that appeal to their specific issues.  She dials the first provider and leaves a voicemail, then the second and leaves a voicemail, and when she calls the third, that therapist picks up the phone and quickly learns about that prospective client and makes a solid connection.  Because her specific issues are affecting her, she quickly sets an appointment to begin therapy.

The other two therapists are left in the dust.

Imagine the same scenario but this time no therapist answers the phone.  Who do you think will win that new client?  Most likely, the first person to respond and make a connection.

You should respond to new client inquiries everyday, ideally immediately, hopefully within an hour.  If you don’t have time, send a text to schedule a call for later.

Do not wait a weekend to respond because you are “not working”.  Do not wait until you have an hour to batch your calls.  

You have 15-20 minutes for a potentially long-term new client.  No excuses.

Call back as fast as possible and if you are busy, schedule a future call as soon as you can.

Prioritize Your Responses from Most Personal & Immediate to Least Personal

If you can, call immediately.

Secondly, send over a text explaining when you can call back.

Thirdly, send an email to schedule a call.

Finally, respond back via a social network system to schedule a call.

You want to speak with your prospects on the phone, humanizing you and your services, and making a strong personal connection.

If you are hesitant or afraid to hop on the phone, you are going to lose new clients and our advice?: get over it and be okay making a few mistakes to learn this important skillset.

If you are so paralyzed by the idea of speaking on the phone, suggest correspondence via email and be as helpful as possible.  But really, just go for it with a call.

If, more likely, the prospective client is somewhat uncomfortable speaking over the phone, offer to answer any questions you can via email and encourage them to set an appointment date for your first session.

Hold Their Hand to Set Their First Appointment But Never Hard Sell

Ultimately, your primary goal when corresponding with prospective clients is to actually establish a provider-client relationship and do therapy (assuming you feel comfortable with your prospect and feel you can provider valuable services).

Do not shy away from asking to set a first appointment date.  Suggest that you begin your relationship with a first intake session to see if you both feel comfortable diving into therapy.

Simultaneously, do not be too eager to set up a first appointment if you haven’t heard a substantial amount about your prospective client.  Your own subjective judgement here will be essential.

Likewise, do not say yes to new clients you cannot provide quality treatment just to get a new client.  You’ll waste your time and theirs; you want patients you can really help, sticking with you until they feel their concerns are resolved.  You’ll get better referrals and just feel better about doing therapy and practicing your skillset when you can see noticeable improvement with your clients.

Conclusion

Make sure to follow these principles to better acquire new mental health clients:

Availability:  Be Present on Multiple Channels

Make sure you are present online and offline.  You should dominate Google search results for your name.

Instruction:  Teach Your Prospects How to Contact You

Give your prospective clients specific action steps to reach out and set clear expectations about when you’ll be able to respond.

Quickly Respond to New Client Inquiries

You have time to send a text to schedule a prospective client, even on the weekend.  You will lose clients if you take too long.

Prioritize Your Responses from Most Personal & Immediate to Least Personal

Respond to inquiries with phone calls if possible, texts to schedule a call, then emails to schedule a call, and finally social media channels.  Always try to get on the phone unless your prospect is uncomfortable, in which case settle for email exchanges.

Hold Their Hand to Set Their First Appointment But Never Hard Sell

Your goal is to set up your first appointment but make sure you have heard your new clients concerns accurately and can provide high quality service — it’ll be best for you, your new client, and future referrals.

What’s Next?

In Part 2 of our series, we’re going to walk through specific tweaks and optimizations for your mental health provider website.  We send our best new content to our newsletter subscribers, so type in your name and email address below to subscribe.

PS.  Notice those specific action steps? 🙂