January 22, 2025 • 11 mins
Tracking the right metrics is essential for therapy practice owners to turn inquiries into clients and ultimately serve more people effectively. We discuss the importance of a systematic approach to logging inquiries, understanding lead sources, assessing client conversion rates, and establishing a robust follow-up process.
• Importance of tracking lead sources and inquiries
• Understanding client preferences for better service alignment
• Measuring conversion rates from leads to consultations and clients
• Evaluating the effectiveness of marketing investments
• Establishing a consistent follow-up process to nurture leads
Grab the prospect tracking template here.
Meet with one of our coaches
*Intro/outro song credit:
King Around Here by Alex Grohl
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
My name is Craig and I'm the CEO of Desi Financial
Coaching.
Our goal is simple to help yourun a therapy practice that is
permanently profitable.
If you own a solo or grouppractice, we're here to help you
build a business that createsmore time, makes more money and
serves more people.
This is the Therapy BusinessPodcast.
I know you're super busy inyour day as a business owner and
(00:27):
a therapist.
Likely you might be seeingclients Maybe you are the only
person in your business still soyou're juggling client time
with running the business andgrowing the business, which
means that things like trackingour lead flows can fall to the
wayside.
I know I went a long timewithout paying any attention to
this, and it wasn't until Istarted working with a business
coach and they asked me thesequestions of where are your
(00:50):
leads coming from, what'sworking, what's not?
And I just I had no answer forthem.
So we set up a system in mybusiness to track those things,
and now I have customized andcreated a spreadsheet for our
therapy practice clients.
Now this sheet is completelyfree and I'm going to put a link
to the show notes If you wantto snag it.
It's going to all these stepsthat we're going to talk through
(01:11):
today, that you should betracking, are in this
spreadsheet, ready to go, readyto tally up your percentages and
what areas are generating themost leads and what is your
close rate all those importantmetrics.
So, in the show notes, grabthat spreadsheet.
It's completely free, it's justa Google Sheets and it's my
gift to you.
Now let's dig into a few metricsthat I think are incredibly,
(01:31):
incredibly important for you tobe watching.
Number one is what are peoplecoming to you for?
So what service are peoplelooking for when they come to
you?
Now, if you have on yourwebsite an intake form, maybe
they fill out a contact form.
Maybe come to you Now, if youhave on your website an intake
form, maybe they fill out acontact form.
Maybe they're picking up thephone and calling you.
Maybe they're emailing you.
What are they seeking out?
So, odds are, you have multipleservices and if I were to go to
(01:52):
your website, you probably havemaybe not even only different,
like specialties, specificationsthat you're doing, but maybe
different types of therapy, likecouples therapy, individual
therapy, maybe you do intensives, maybe you have workshops that
you do.
So how can we track what'sworking and what's not in those
areas.
(02:12):
It's important that we keep alog.
So if you have an admin takingcalls, for example, make this
spreadsheet something that theyhave open and every time they
take a call, they're asking whatare they seeking out.
Or if they receive an email, orthey're filtering through the
contact forms, what is thisperson specifically asking for?
Are they looking for individualtherapy?
And we're gonna mark that.
Why we want to know this is soyou know what is attracting
(02:34):
people in the most.
That way, we can leverage thatmarketing.
If you have a specialty, maybeyou specialize in trauma therapy
and that is what most peopleare coming to you for, but maybe
you also have this other typeof therapy, maybe it's just
standard couples counseling orsomething different.
That is not really generating alot of people.
It doesn't mean you have tostop doing that, but maybe your
(02:54):
marketing efforts and yourmessaging is really honed in on
trauma, trauma recovery, allthose things.
So using this to your advantageis incredibly valuable,
incredibly important.
The other thing is, you mightdiscover that you know what.
No one is really seeking outthese workshops.
Maybe you're doing workshopsevery quarter or every weekend
or however frequently, andpeople aren't looking for it,
people aren't inquiring about it, you might find that the only
(03:16):
people signing up for it areyour current clients.
This may be twofold Maybe youdecide it's not worth doing
anymore, maybe it's notprofitable enough, you don't
have enough interest, or maybeit is something that you just
stop stressing about doingoutward marketing for and focus
on just telling your own clientsabout it your own client base,
your team's clients.
So, keeping these things inmind, this is really really
(03:38):
important so that we know whatis working, what's not.
What do people want and we canlean into those.
The other thing we want to bemeasuring is how are people
contacting you?
Where are they reaching out toyou?
From?
What are your lead sources?
Some really really common onesare again your contact form.
Maybe it's a phone call, maybeit's through psychology.
Today it could be a directreferral.
(03:59):
Do you have some lead sourcesfrom somewhere?
Do you have a partner that youwork with?
We want to track these.
Now, in the spreadsheet that Iwas telling you about, I've put
a few of the common ones, butyou can add in as granular as
you want.
I mean it could be thistherapist down the road who you
know sends people to you,putting those in there so you
can track.
Where are our leads coming fromIf you do nothing else?
(04:20):
This is probably the mostimportant thing to be tracking
when it comes to your marketingand your lead generation.
Where are they coming from?
We have to know what's workingand what's not.
If you're funneling a bunch ofmoney into ads and it's not
working, this is a good way tofind out.
We have to be tracking thesethings.
If you're running ads, we needto be tracking where are they
(04:42):
converting?
So I can't just look and say,hey, we got a bunch of inquiries
on our website.
That means the ads are working.
Great, we're getting our moneyback.
No, we need to be tracking intothe actual flow that, when
somebody clicks on that ad, arethey ending up on the thank you
page of the contact form so thatI can see did they go all the
way through the process?
Or did they just happen tostumble on your website?
(05:03):
Or did a friend tell them aboutit so they typed it in to their
web browser and landed on itand then booked a call?
You see, we want to be reallyclear.
Are the ads actually coveringit or not?
You may discover that you'regetting almost all your leads
from psychology today, or fromreferrals, and you're spending
all this money on ads and cometo find out, maybe I need to
funnel more energy into morereferral partners.
(05:24):
So, instead of spending allthis money on Google ads, I can
turn around and Host lunch andlearns, or buy lunch for a
therapy practice down the roador for another referral partner,
maybe related to your industry.
So really key knowing thesethings what's working and what's
not, and then how can I leaninto that and leverage it All
(05:45):
right.
So super, super important.
We also want to know theirstatus.
So what ended up happening withthese clients, with these leads
?
Did they turn into leads?
Did they turn into clients?
Did they go MIA?
Did they sign up or do we askyou to follow up later?
We want to track this.
Were they a no-show?
Maybe you scheduled aconsultation with them and they
just didn't even show up?
(06:06):
We want to track all of thesethings.
So making note of what did theysign up for?
Did they sign up?
Where are they in that process?
This is going to give us areally clear perspective on our
close rate Of all the leadscoming in.
How many are turning intoclients?
Why is this valuable?
This gives us metrics.
Metrics are so fantasticbecause when it comes to
(06:28):
marketing, putting ourselves outthere doing sales, a lot of
emotion can come into play.
We can either beat ourselves up, we can feel anxiety about it,
we can feel stressed, we canfeel put it off because we don't
want to do it.
But if we can look at a metricthat says I got 10 leads and we
closed three of them, that meansevery 10 people that come
tapping on our door or in ourinbox saying we are interested
(06:52):
in learning more, three of themwill turn into clients.
So then it just turns into anumbers game.
Well, how do I get 10 moreleads?
What can we do?
And that's goes back to what'sworking in our mode of inquiry.
How are people finding us soleaning into that?
How can we maybe double that,triple that, because that in
turn is going to double tripleour client acquisition.
So the more we have aroundwhat's happening with these
(07:12):
people, the better.
You might even want to trackwhether they're booking
consultations or not.
And again, this all maybe boilsdown to your process.
Maybe your process is they justscheduled that first therapy
session and that's it.
So maybe we're tracking howmany come back for a second call
right.
What is that conversion ratefrom consultation to sign up?
That can tell us where in thisprocess are we missing the mark.
(07:37):
Are we getting leads coming inand booking consultations but
not signing up?
That means maybe something'swrong with our consultation
process.
Maybe somewhere in therethere's a breakdown in our sales
process.
Are we selling well?
Are we really providing thevalue or articulating the value
of what we do to entice them andencourage them to sign up?
(07:59):
If you're finding that not alot of people are booking the
consultations, well then thatmight mean there's a messaging
problem somewhere on yourwebsite, your email list,
whatever you're doing, maybeit's not and articulating it
enough to encourage people toactually reach out and ask for
help.
So there's a lot of metrics wecan get just from that.
So tracking how manyconsultations are we taking out
(08:20):
of all these leads and then howmany are turning into clients
Following each of those steps.
Again, we can work it backwards.
We know 10 leads turns intofive consultations and out of
those five consultations we canclose three of them.
So right, there you have yourmetrics.
If we can get fiveconsultations in the call or in
the calendar every week, then weknow we're going to get three
clients per week coming into ourpractice.
(08:43):
There are a lot of other thingsthat we want to follow up on or
check in on or really tally andmark, but these are the biggest
ones.
If you measure nothing else inyour lead generation process,
this is the one I want you to do.
So I highly recommend you finda form.
You fill it out Now if peopleare booking right on your
calendar.
So, for example, if you go toour website to work with one of
(09:04):
our coaches we don't have anintake form you click the button
and you schedule a freeconsultation call, a free Q&A
call, with one of our teammembers.
On there we have a dropdownthat says how did you find us.
So that way we can measure thattoo.
Then when I go into ourspreadsheet, I can just plug in
those answers from Calendly thatshows how people found us.
So you can do the same thing onyour intake forms in your
(09:26):
calendars.
Add in all those avenues of howdid you find us and the same
thing we just talked about.
If you know a person down thestreet send you a lot of
referrals, put their name inthere, Dr So-and-so, so that way
they can credit them and youknow, okay, I need to nurture
this relationship becausethey're sending us a lot of
business and what can I do toencourage it and to nurture it?
(09:47):
So, really, really important.
But otherwise, use thisspreadsheet Again.
It's in the show notes,completely free, download it,
plug in and just commit to thisyear plugging in names and
plugging in your prospects andtracking them really well.
Then, once you have the leadscoming in, you have to have to
(10:07):
have a good follow-up process.
Now we have a full episode onour follow-up process, how we
check in with clients and how toreally stay on top of them.
I'm going to link that in theshow notes below.
But it's essential that youfollow up with these people.
The number of practice ownersthat I talk to who don't follow
up they reach out once, leave avoicemail and that's it is
(10:27):
astounding.
In fact, I think they say like80% of salespeople only reach
out one to three times and thenafter that they give up, whereas
the stats say between seven and12 touch points is what it
takes in order to get someone tosign up.
So we want to continuously betouching base, signing or
checking in, sending them value,providing value, to just bridge
(10:49):
that gap.
There's a lot of anxiety, a lotof fear, a lot of shame, many
emotions tied to working with atherapist and talking to someone
and admitting that you need orwant help.
So the more we can bridge thatgap the better.
By having this tracked, then wecan take that next step and
start tracking our follow-upsand touching base.
And how often are we checkingin with them and are we staying
(11:11):
on top of them to make sure that, whether it's with us or
somebody else, they're gettingthe help they need?
Thanks for joining us on theTherapy Business Podcast.
Be sure to subscribe, leave areview and share it with a
practice owner that you may knowIf your practice needs help
getting organized with itsfinances or just growing your
practice, head totherapybusinesspodcom to learn
(11:33):
how we can help.
My name is Craig and I'm the CEO of Desi Financial
Coaching.
Our goal is simple to help yourun a therapy practice that is
permanently profitable.
If you own a solo or grouppractice, we're here to help you
build a business that createsmore time, makes more money and
serves more people.
This is the Therapy BusinessPodcast.
I know you're super busy inyour day as a business owner and
(00:27):
a therapist.
Likely you might be seeingclients Maybe you are the only
person in your business still soyou're juggling client time
with running the business andgrowing the business, which
means that things like trackingour lead flows can fall to the
wayside.
I know I went a long timewithout paying any attention to
this, and it wasn't until Istarted working with a business
coach and they asked me thesequestions of where are your
(00:50):
leads coming from, what'sworking, what's not?
And I just I had no answer forthem.
So we set up a system in mybusiness to track those things,
and now I have customized andcreated a spreadsheet for our
therapy practice clients.
Now this sheet is completelyfree and I'm going to put a link
to the show notes If you wantto snag it.
It's going to all these stepsthat we're going to talk through
(01:11):
today, that you should betracking, are in this
spreadsheet, ready to go, readyto tally up your percentages and
what areas are generating themost leads and what is your
close rate all those importantmetrics.
So, in the show notes, grabthat spreadsheet.
It's completely free, it's justa Google Sheets and it's my
gift to you.
Now let's dig into a few metricsthat I think are incredibly,
(01:31):
incredibly important for you tobe watching.
Number one is what are peoplecoming to you for?
So what service are peoplelooking for when they come to
you?
Now, if you have on yourwebsite an intake form, maybe
they fill out a contact form.
Maybe come to you Now, if youhave on your website an intake
form, maybe they fill out acontact form.
Maybe they're picking up thephone and calling you.
Maybe they're emailing you.
What are they seeking out?
So, odds are, you have multipleservices and if I were to go to
(01:52):
your website, you probably havemaybe not even only different,
like specialties, specificationsthat you're doing, but maybe
different types of therapy, likecouples therapy, individual
therapy, maybe you do intensives, maybe you have workshops that
you do.
So how can we track what'sworking and what's not in those
areas.
(02:12):
It's important that we keep alog.
So if you have an admin takingcalls, for example, make this
spreadsheet something that theyhave open and every time they
take a call, they're asking whatare they seeking out.
Or if they receive an email, orthey're filtering through the
contact forms, what is thisperson specifically asking for?
Are they looking for individualtherapy?
And we're gonna mark that.
Why we want to know this is soyou know what is attracting
(02:34):
people in the most.
That way, we can leverage thatmarketing.
If you have a specialty, maybeyou specialize in trauma therapy
and that is what most peopleare coming to you for, but maybe
you also have this other typeof therapy, maybe it's just
standard couples counseling orsomething different.
That is not really generating alot of people.
It doesn't mean you have tostop doing that, but maybe your
(02:54):
marketing efforts and yourmessaging is really honed in on
trauma, trauma recovery, allthose things.
So using this to your advantageis incredibly valuable,
incredibly important.
The other thing is, you mightdiscover that you know what.
No one is really seeking outthese workshops.
Maybe you're doing workshopsevery quarter or every weekend
or however frequently, andpeople aren't looking for it,
people aren't inquiring about it, you might find that the only
(03:16):
people signing up for it areyour current clients.
This may be twofold Maybe youdecide it's not worth doing
anymore, maybe it's notprofitable enough, you don't
have enough interest, or maybeit is something that you just
stop stressing about doingoutward marketing for and focus
on just telling your own clientsabout it your own client base,
your team's clients.
So, keeping these things inmind, this is really really
(03:38):
important so that we know whatis working, what's not.
What do people want and we canlean into those.
The other thing we want to bemeasuring is how are people
contacting you?
Where are they reaching out toyou?
From?
What are your lead sources?
Some really really common onesare again your contact form.
Maybe it's a phone call, maybeit's through psychology.
Today it could be a directreferral.
(03:59):
Do you have some lead sourcesfrom somewhere?
Do you have a partner that youwork with?
We want to track these.
Now, in the spreadsheet that Iwas telling you about, I've put
a few of the common ones, butyou can add in as granular as
you want.
I mean it could be thistherapist down the road who you
know sends people to you,putting those in there so you
can track.
Where are our leads coming fromIf you do nothing else?
(04:20):
This is probably the mostimportant thing to be tracking
when it comes to your marketingand your lead generation.
Where are they coming from?
We have to know what's workingand what's not.
If you're funneling a bunch ofmoney into ads and it's not
working, this is a good way tofind out.
We have to be tracking thesethings.
If you're running ads, we needto be tracking where are they
(04:42):
converting?
So I can't just look and say,hey, we got a bunch of inquiries
on our website.
That means the ads are working.
Great, we're getting our moneyback.
No, we need to be tracking intothe actual flow that, when
somebody clicks on that ad, arethey ending up on the thank you
page of the contact form so thatI can see did they go all the
way through the process?
Or did they just happen tostumble on your website?
(05:03):
Or did a friend tell them aboutit so they typed it in to their
web browser and landed on itand then booked a call?
You see, we want to be reallyclear.
Are the ads actually coveringit or not?
You may discover that you'regetting almost all your leads
from psychology today, or fromreferrals, and you're spending
all this money on ads and cometo find out, maybe I need to
funnel more energy into morereferral partners.
(05:24):
So, instead of spending allthis money on Google ads, I can
turn around and Host lunch andlearns, or buy lunch for a
therapy practice down the roador for another referral partner,
maybe related to your industry.
So really key knowing thesethings what's working and what's
not, and then how can I leaninto that and leverage it All
(05:45):
right.
So super, super important.
We also want to know theirstatus.
So what ended up happening withthese clients, with these leads
?
Did they turn into leads?
Did they turn into clients?
Did they go MIA?
Did they sign up or do we askyou to follow up later?
We want to track this.
Were they a no-show?
Maybe you scheduled aconsultation with them and they
just didn't even show up?
(06:06):
We want to track all of thesethings.
So making note of what did theysign up for?
Did they sign up?
Where are they in that process?
This is going to give us areally clear perspective on our
close rate Of all the leadscoming in.
How many are turning intoclients?
Why is this valuable?
This gives us metrics.
Metrics are so fantasticbecause when it comes to
(06:28):
marketing, putting ourselves outthere doing sales, a lot of
emotion can come into play.
We can either beat ourselves up, we can feel anxiety about it,
we can feel stressed, we canfeel put it off because we don't
want to do it.
But if we can look at a metricthat says I got 10 leads and we
closed three of them, that meansevery 10 people that come
tapping on our door or in ourinbox saying we are interested
(06:52):
in learning more, three of themwill turn into clients.
So then it just turns into anumbers game.
Well, how do I get 10 moreleads?
What can we do?
And that's goes back to what'sworking in our mode of inquiry.
How are people finding us soleaning into that?
How can we maybe double that,triple that, because that in
turn is going to double tripleour client acquisition.
So the more we have aroundwhat's happening with these
(07:12):
people, the better.
You might even want to trackwhether they're booking
consultations or not.
And again, this all maybe boilsdown to your process.
Maybe your process is they justscheduled that first therapy
session and that's it.
So maybe we're tracking howmany come back for a second call
right.
What is that conversion ratefrom consultation to sign up?
That can tell us where in thisprocess are we missing the mark.
(07:37):
Are we getting leads coming inand booking consultations but
not signing up?
That means maybe something'swrong with our consultation
process.
Maybe somewhere in therethere's a breakdown in our sales
process.
Are we selling well?
Are we really providing thevalue or articulating the value
of what we do to entice them andencourage them to sign up?
(07:59):
If you're finding that not alot of people are booking the
consultations, well then thatmight mean there's a messaging
problem somewhere on yourwebsite, your email list,
whatever you're doing, maybeit's not and articulating it
enough to encourage people toactually reach out and ask for
help.
So there's a lot of metrics wecan get just from that.
So tracking how manyconsultations are we taking out
(08:20):
of all these leads and then howmany are turning into clients
Following each of those steps.
Again, we can work it backwards.
We know 10 leads turns intofive consultations and out of
those five consultations we canclose three of them.
So right, there you have yourmetrics.
If we can get fiveconsultations in the call or in
the calendar every week, then weknow we're going to get three
clients per week coming into ourpractice.
(08:43):
There are a lot of other thingsthat we want to follow up on or
check in on or really tally andmark, but these are the biggest
ones.
If you measure nothing else inyour lead generation process,
this is the one I want you to do.
So I highly recommend you finda form.
You fill it out Now if peopleare booking right on your
calendar.
So, for example, if you go toour website to work with one of
(09:04):
our coaches we don't have anintake form you click the button
and you schedule a freeconsultation call, a free Q&A
call, with one of our teammembers.
On there we have a dropdownthat says how did you find us.
So that way we can measure thattoo.
Then when I go into ourspreadsheet, I can just plug in
those answers from Calendly thatshows how people found us.
So you can do the same thing onyour intake forms in your
(09:26):
calendars.
Add in all those avenues of howdid you find us and the same
thing we just talked about.
If you know a person down thestreet send you a lot of
referrals, put their name inthere, Dr So-and-so, so that way
they can credit them and youknow, okay, I need to nurture
this relationship becausethey're sending us a lot of
business and what can I do toencourage it and to nurture it?
(09:47):
So, really, really important.
But otherwise, use thisspreadsheet Again.
It's in the show notes,completely free, download it,
plug in and just commit to thisyear plugging in names and
plugging in your prospects andtracking them really well.
Then, once you have the leadscoming in, you have to have to
(10:07):
have a good follow-up process.
Now we have a full episode onour follow-up process, how we
check in with clients and how toreally stay on top of them.
I'm going to link that in theshow notes below.
But it's essential that youfollow up with these people.
The number of practice ownersthat I talk to who don't follow
up they reach out once, leave avoicemail and that's it is
(10:27):
astounding.
In fact, I think they say like80% of salespeople only reach
out one to three times and thenafter that they give up, whereas
the stats say between seven and12 touch points is what it
takes in order to get someone tosign up.
So we want to continuously betouching base, signing or
checking in, sending them value,providing value, to just bridge
(10:49):
that gap.
There's a lot of anxiety, a lotof fear, a lot of shame, many
emotions tied to working with atherapist and talking to someone
and admitting that you need orwant help.
So the more we can bridge thatgap the better.
By having this tracked, then wecan take that next step and
start tracking our follow-upsand touching base.
And how often are we checkingin with them and are we staying
(11:11):
on top of them to make sure that, whether it's with us or
somebody else, they're gettingthe help they need?
Thanks for joining us on theTherapy Business Podcast.
Be sure to subscribe, leave areview and share it with a
practice owner that you may knowIf your practice needs help
getting organized with itsfinances or just growing your
practice, head totherapybusinesspodcom to learn
(11:33):
how we can help.
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