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Welcome to "Beauty and the Biz", where we talk about the business and marketing side of plastic surgery, and what a good conversion rate is.

I'm your host, Catherine Maley, author of "Your aesthetic practice - What your patients are saying", and consultant to plastic surgeons to get them more patients and profits. ​

What is a good conversion rate?

It's a question I'm asked often enough so I'm assuming other surgeons also experience this, so I'll address it in this episode.

Here's the question:

Dear Catherine,

I had the same patient consultant for many years and she did a great job.

We made a really good team. I performed several procedures on her through the years so she was a great testimonial and she knew how to credential me as the best. She was also very good with my patients and really good at closing consultations.

I never realized how good she was until her husband was promoted and she moved away.

My current coordinator has been on the job for the past year and we are getting mixed results.

She's nice enough but we don't get the same results I used to get.

My consult conversion rate used to be in the high 70's for years and it's dropped significantly. My coordinator says that's because the patients are price shopping our competitors and our prices are too high.

I'm not sure that's true. I don't know if it's the patients or the coordinator or something else.

Can you tell me what is a good conversion rate?

Dr. W

Since that's a loaded question, we need to unpack it before I start throwing out percentages.

Lots of plastic surgeons are experiencing sporadic conversion rates. Or "feast or famine" months and they're not sure why.

This inconsistency can wreak havoc on your day, your attitude and your pocketbook.

You start questioning yourself and doubting your staff and that's a path to even more frustration.

So, what's really happening?

Well, the bad news is, there's no one easy answer. So many variables go into your success (or lack thereof) when converting consultations.

One practice can play the QUALITY vs. quantity game and experience an 80% conversation rate because the coordinator only works with the hyper interested. So, she sends one follow-up email and if they don't respond, she drops them, but that same practice who is "cherry picking" also can experience big highs and lows in the schedule because they need a lot more leads to cherry pick the best ones..

Or a practice experiences a 25% conversion rate because they play the "QUANTITY vs. quality" game so they see everybody. They don't charge a consultation fee, they have lots of no-shows and frankly, lots of flaky price-shoppers who are not yet ready to to action so the coordinator has to sift through who is a real candidate and who isn't.

So given that, here's a short list of why your conversions "could" be off:

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