I want to ask you a question this morning.

If I could GUARANTEE that I would have 50 people every month ring your front desk and ask for information on Invisalign, how much would you pay me for that?

p.s. I need you to know that the majority of those people would be complete strangers and many of them would be conducting a price comparison – so if you weren’t the cheapest Invisalign provider in your post code, there is NO GUARANTEE that they will attend your clinic for a consultation.

Oh – by the way – there are a few more GUARANTEES that I’m not prepared to give you:

1. I cannot GUARANTEE that your front desk team will have the telephony or other communication skills (or the time) to answer the questions these strangers will ask and pull them in for a consult;
2. I cannot GUARANTEE that these patients will proceed without interest-free finance, thereby reducing your net profit margin on the work by approximately 30%;
3. I cannot GUARANTEE that, if these strangers proceed to treatment, they will be happy to mention you and your clinic in their social media channels;
4. I cannot GUARANTEE that these patients will join your membership plan, or will attend regularly after their treatment for long term care;
5. I cannot GUARANTEE these these patients will recommend you to their family, friends and colleagues.

Of course, I shouldn’t be expected to offer any of those GUARANTEES, because my job will simply be to get strangers to your front door – after that, it’s your problem, don’t blame me.

So given that, I refer to my original offer – how much will you pay me for those 50 strangers to call?

Oh – by the way – here’s a real-life example from a client of how these fantastic promises can work in practice:

1. Client invests £1,000 pcm for three months in Facebook adverts for Invisalign;
2. Front desk team receive 13 “qualified” leads for Invisalign;
3. Of the 13, the clinic welcomes 3 potential new patients for consults;
4. To date nobody has bought anything;
5. Client loses confidence and pulls the campaign (not on my advice – on their own initiative).

Would you like to hear more examples like that, including the clinic that invested £15,000 in a three-month implant campaign and completed £5,000 of treatment at a profit of £1,500 on the treatment and a loss of £13,500 on the campaign?

Or the client who couldn’t understand why he wasn’t Google page #1 for Invisalign – until he discovered that his agency were promising to do exactly the same thing for another practice in his post code?

I’ve got loads of those stories.

So when and if you send me something like this (below) and ask my opinion – in future I’m going to save myself some time and refer you back to this blog post. I’ve no idea who sent this document to one of my clients and I’m not dissing their ability to send “QUALIFIED” enquiries.

If you are opening a private squat, you have my sympathy – but I’d still rather you dressed as a tube of toothpaste and stood outside your practice with flyers than invest your hard-won cash in attracting price-shoppers, bargain-hunters, teachers and engineers.

For those with an existing practice, I’d prefer that you invested the time and money in understanding one simple fact.

THAT ALL THE MONEY YOU NEED FOR THE REST OF YOUR CAREER IS IN THE POCKETS OF THE PATIENTS YOU ALREADY CARE FOR AND THE PEOPLE THEY CAN INTRODUCE YOU TO.

And then in training your team to become internal marketing champions.

Here’s the offer that inspired this post.

(In the interests of fair play – I’d be equally delighted to share success stories – if anybody has one?)