Welcome therapists and group practice owners! I’m Nicole McCance, a psychologist turned business coach for therapists. I built my group practice to 55 therapists and multiple 7-figures, and then I sold it.
Can you tell me how many people reached out to your practice last week and where each of them got stuck? Most owners can’t (I couldn’t either when I ran my clinic, and I was paying a human to keep spreadsheets). Every other industry tracks their leads on a visual pipeline. Therapists just never have, until now. I’m walking you through the pipeline inside ClinicMonk™, my CRM for therapy practices, and how it turns lead tracking into what I call a conversion engine.
P.S. Not a huge fan of reading blogs? (I’m more of a podcast girl myself) You can listen to my podcast episode all about this topic by clicking here or watching the video below!
What Is a Lead Pipeline for a Therapy Practice?
A lead pipeline is one screen where every inquiry lands and moves through the stages of the client journey. Your intake coordinator (AKA your admin) runs it, and you can see at a glance where every person is sitting.
These are the stages inside ClinicMonk™:
- New Lead. They reached out and nobody has spoken to them yet.
- In Communication. Your admin is texting, emailing or on the phone with them.
- Consult Call Booked. Where we want everybody to end up (or better yet, booked straight into an appointment).
- Did Not Book a Consult. They had a conversation but are still deciding, maybe looking into insurance.
- No Show or Cancelled. They booked the consult and didn’t make it.
How Leads Land in Your Pipeline Automatically
Three types of inquiries land in the pipeline on their own, and all three get an automatic text and email from your clinic (I’ve written the copy, and you can customize it):
- Contact forms. Someone fills out your website form and lands in New Lead. The text goes out immediately, points them to online booking, and opens a two way conversation with your admin.
- Missed calls. Someone calls, nobody picks up because your admin is in the bathroom or pouring tea for a new client, and they get a text right away with the booking link and a promise to call them back as soon as possible. Missed calls are the leads that get lost the fastest, and as you scale, there will be more of them.
- Online consult bookings. Anyone who books through the ClinicMonk™ calendar lands straight in Consult Call Booked.
Phone calls, faxes from family doctors and Psychology Today referrals are different, because the system can’t know about a conversation happening in real time. So we train your admin to add those leads with a quick lead capture form. Keep using your main inbox for the faxes and referrals (I suggest Gmail), and move every new lead into the pipeline so it can be tracked and converted.
Hot Tip: One trained intake coordinator should be running this pipeline and your consult calls, not your therapists. I explain why in my blog on why your intake coordinator should do consult calls.
Why Speed to the Lead Matters More Than Ever
Gone are the days when you could miss a few leads and they’d call you back. Your conversion rate drops by 8 times when you don’t respond right away, so the pipeline is built around that first half hour.
Every new lead gets a follow up tag that stays green for 30 minutes, which tells your admin this one is hot off the press and the automated text and email have already gone out. Most people respond to a text (I feel bad when I don’t answer one, and your leads do too), so a new lead will likely reply within that window and get booked in the conversation.
If they don’t, the tag turns red. Your admin opens their contact card, sees whether the text was delivered and the email was opened, and reaches out personally, ideally before the 30 minutes are even up. You want to see a lot of green on your pipeline, because green means new leads (yay!).
How to Know If Your Google Ads Are Bringing in Qualified Leads
Google Ads aren’t cheap, so every lead that comes from a Google Ad wears a Google tag right on the pipeline, so you can see at a glance which leads came from an ad and which didn’t. I want you to have that dopamine hit of “I’m investing in this and it’s working.”
The other half of that question is whether those leads are a fit.
Let’s say a lead comes in through a contact form, replies to the text, and moves to “In Communication”. Then your admin learns they’re looking for child therapy and you haven’t hired a child therapist yet, so she marks them Not Qualified and records that they requested a service you don’t offer.
Now your dashboard shows you how many leads came in and how many were actually qualified. If an ads or SEO agency sends you leads and most of them were never a fit, that’s the conversation to have with them.
What Your Pipeline Tells You When Leads Don't Book
Anyone who doesn’t book a consult, doesn’t convert after one, or cancels or no-shows gets a nurture sequence by email automatically, plus your lead magnet. Some people just aren’t ready for therapy yet, but they’ll say yes to a free guide (I’ve written the guide, the opt-in page and the first emails for you!).
The visual part is what changes your decisions, because each stage points to a different problem.
No Shows and Cancellations Are Climbing
Consult calls will always have your highest no-show rate, because they’re free and the person hasn’t met your intake coordinator yet. If four people no-showed last week and it doubled this week, look at availability first. People need to be able to book within 48 hours, and if you make them wait, they don’t show.
Consults Are Happening but Not Converting
If 11 people had a consult and didn’t book, the person running those calls probably needs more training (there’s a dashboard with your intake coordinator’s exact conversion percentage so you can track this).
People Reach Out but Don't Book Anything
If six people reached out and none of them booked even a consult, look upstream. That’s usually the quality of your leads, which means it’s a marketing problem. Talk to your Google Ads or SEO agency right away, or if it’s organic marketing, switch it up.
A Conversion Engine for Your Group Practice
You now have something most therapy practices don’t: every lead in one place, an admin who knows exactly who to follow up with, and a screen that tells you whether the problem is your calendar, your consult call or your marketing.
That’s where life gets easier. Automate your practice and get your time back!
Want more strategies for growing your therapy practice? Follow me on Instagram and listen to the Business Savvy Therapist podcast for strategies and real talk about scaling a 7-figure group practice without burning out.
Your Business Bestie,
Nicole
