Ever wondered how to transition your sonography expertise into a thriving ultrasound business? I’m Jennifer, and this latest podcast episode lifts the veil on the sales funnel – that elusive strategy that could make or break your entrepreneurial dreams.

Learn what this strategy means, why you need it, and steps you can take to set one up in your ultrasound business. It’s all about working smarter, not harder, and I’m here to show you the ropes. So tune in, grab your coffee, and let’s chart the course to your success together.

P.S. Whenever you’re ready, here are 3 ways we can help you start your new ultrasound business, or grow your existing one…

1. Download our free guide. It’s an incredible overview on the ins and outs of creating revenue for your ultrasound business. Grab it here.
2. Join our Ultrasound Business Academy Program and be a Case Study. We’ve got the blueprint for $20k/months (and beyond). Get strategic step-by-step help starting and growing your ultrasound business. No biz experience required. Learn more HERE.
3. Get personalized “best next steps”. And if you ever want to get some 1:1 help on your best next steps in starting or scaling your ultrasound business, fill out the questionnaire and we’ll chat through what to do next and how we might be able to help.

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Transcript:

00:03 – Jennifer Lindsey (Host)

Hey, sonographers, grab a seat and a cup of coffee. Welcome to Ultrasound Business School. I’m your host, Jennifer Lindsey. This is Talking Tech a sonographer’s guide to entrepreneurship. Hey, hey, Jennifer, here! In this episode of the podcast, I am answering a question that so many of you ask in the pre-launch phase of your business, right? 

00:28

So, considering starting an ultrasound business, not sure of all the things that we have to put together in the pre-launch phase, right Before we actually launch our business? One of the questions is: I’m coming from healthcare, Jen. How do I sell my services? How does that work? Giving you a sneak peek today inside one of our webinar sessions where I’m breaking down what a sales funnel looks like and how to put one together for your business. We just opened our Business Foundations Blueprint Bootcamp. Find me on social and DM me the word bootcamp to get on the waitlist for our next session. 

01:11

Here we dive into the five specific steps into the pre-launch of your business. So excited to have all of these incredible sonographers in this round. We are diving into what I’m about to teach you in-depth, excited to show you what a sales funnel is, why you need one for your business, and how to put one together. Okay, let’s get down to the actual sales funnel. Oh, I think you can see. I don’t know me moving my face down here. Actually, let’s see Sales funnels. Many of us in healthcare have never even heard of it. Right, I know I hadn’t when we first started our business. I’m going to use the mobile ultrasound. So this is whether you’re doing fee for service or whether you are doing, you know, your own IDTF, right where your credential with insurance. This is for mobile ultrasound. And the top of the funnel you’ll see again, as I mentioned, this is a funnel shape because you’re putting all physicians in your area here at the top. We’re narrowing them down a bit by saying what services do I provide? Okay, that those particular like, which particular physicians in my area could utilize those services. So we’re narrowing them down even further up before they even hear from us. Ok, we’re figuring out which physicians in my area, in my target market, could potentially utilize my specific services for my business. Then we’re going to take them through a prospecting call. Hezel, can you drop in the chat our sales and marketing, just whenever you can grab that off that Google sheet, our sales and marketing podcast. I’ve got a podcast specific for sales and marketing and it’ll dive a little bit deeper in here. Now in our startup program, our Ultrasound Business Academy, we literally give you the scripts. I have video trainings, all of those things here. We’re just going to do a quick overview. If you want it a little bit deeper, I’ve got it on a podcast that kind of walks through these a little bit more specifically and then implementing. That’s our Ultrasound Business Academy. 

03:19

But the prospecting call we are taking the physicians that we’ve deemed potentially could use our service right because of the types of doctors they are, because of the services we provide. Right, if you only offer Echo as an example. Which physicians order Echo? Those are the physicians we are going to call and we’re going to ask a few questions we want to see do I need to meet with them to pitch my service? Are they qualified to use my service right? So instead of driving around to ask these questions, we can call. It takes much less time and we can do a lot more in, you know, an hour session picking up the phone a bunch of times than we can driving around God’s green earth to a bunch of different offices, right? So it makes sense to do this. On a phone call, we’re asking a few simple questions Do you have ultrasound in your office? Are you independent? Right, because independent physicians are going to have the authority themselves to pick who they work with. As a vet Hospital groups, you’re gonna have to go through the whole hospital hierarchy. 

04:24

It’s easiest to start with independent docs, okay, those that don’t have ultrasound and are independent are qualified to move to the next step down into the funnel. Now, those that aren’t qualified, they’re out. Right. So at every stage we’re pushing people out of the funnel that don’t qualify to move into the next step, and that’s OK. Again, that’s OK for them to move out of the sales. So the next step then is a pitch meeting. So now we’re meeting with the physician. We know they’re potentially qualified right from the prospect call and we’re pitching our services If they have interest, right. We want to move them into a discovery phase and learn more about the practice. This kind of happens in the same meeting. It’s a different step, though, in the sales funnel, because some of them will fall out here, right. If you pitch them and they’re like hate the idea, it’s the worst thing you’ve ever heard. They’re out, right. 

05:27

We’re going to move only the people that are like, okay, this sounds interesting, I’d love to learn a little bit more. We don’t have to sell them at this point at all. We are simply moving them into the discovery phase, where we’re finding out what types of ultrasounds they’re doing and how many, right, so that we can put together a revenue analysis for their practice to show them. This would be for your fee for service, right? If you are doing an IDTF, this revenue presentation would be how much you can pay for rent, right. So the revenue presentation is going to be specific to how your service is actually set up. But here we’re providing them more information on the type of revenue they could be generating having us come in and provide the service, or the amount of rent that we could be paying for their space, because we are going to be billing the patient From that. We’re moving them either out of the funnel or down to an actual closed client or signing a contract. 

06:26

So do you guys see how we are starting with a lot of people? Less, less, less, less. That’s how every sales funnel works. Not everybody comes at the top, goes to the bottom, or it’d be a spreader, but it’s not. It’s a sales funnel. Okay, I’m going to give you a idea for, like, inpatients, in-office patients okay, this has less steps, right, because we’re not out like meeting with each individual patient to talk with them about our service, like we are with physician, right? So your sales funnel is going to look different, based upon your actual business model. So let’s use this as an example. So, visibility and awareness there’s multiple ways we can do that, and I’m going to talk about business building activities here in a moment. 

07:18

Visibility and awareness we want to get our name out there and the services that we provide out. There is multiple ways to do that. When you are looking to provide services to patients that’s your ideal clients, right? You are going to be doing multiple things that are going to be different than if your ideal client is a physician. So here, you’re absolutely going to want to make sure you have a social media presence, right? That is free marketing at its best, okay? So you want to have a social media presence. I would absolutely also be going out to local physicians. Let’s say you’re providing in-office diagnostics, like at your own facility. I would absolutely be making sure that all the doctors in my area knew this was an opportunity for patients to have their services provided. Right, you could also do multiple things, like have vendor booths, things of that nature, right? So we’ll talk a little bit more about that in a second. But visibility and awareness is getting your name out there in as many places as possible. 

08:24

Okay, then once you have, let’s say, patients calling in or you’re meeting with the doctors to talk about referrals, that’s your pitch. You have to have a script for them. Right, For your pitch, you always have to have a script, and a lot of people in sales will call it either an elevator pitch or your 30-second commercial, right, it’s your sales pitch. So you’ll have to have a script put together for that. And then, if the patients like it, they become a patient. So here it’s like a closed client, here it’s a patient, and you can add in multiple other layers to this if you want. Right, Potentially, you have some kind of, let’s say, maybe you do 3D ultrasound and you have some kind of like free guide what’s the best timeframe to come in to have your ultrasound done? And it’s a little like checklist how many weeks are you? You know what I’m saying. There’s multiple ways that you can drive leads, but you always are gonna have a funnel. 

09:20

No matter what business model you have, in any industry there’s always a sales funnel. So you’ll use this exact framework to craft a funnel for your business model. So this is what we wanna know in the pre-launch what do my overall sales funnel steps look like? To get me from everybody in my area to a close client, or from everybody in my area down to a patient who’s paying me right, or I’m getting paid by their insurance company as a patient in my practice, right by their insurance company as a patient in my practice. So everything’s going to have its own, every business model is going to have its own sales funnel, and that’s the thing you want to put together for pre-launch. You don’t need to necessarily know at this point what exactly am I going to say in my pitch meeting. That’s for as you’re getting the startup part set. But here in pre-launch, we absolutely want to know what that sales funnel is. 

10:20

I mentioned this earlier and I’m using the mobile ultrasound as an example, like I did previously. Practices are going to fall out of the funnel. That’s totally wrong. Patients are going to fall out of the funnel all along, right? It’s one of the hardest things to realize. And again, as I mentioned, this is our baby. We want everyone to say yes and we want everyone to think we have the most incredible thing on the planet. And we have to understand people are going to fall out of the funnel at all times. It can feel like we’re doing things wrong when we hear a no or when we hear like hey, love how you have the service set up for mobile, right P for service. Let’s say, as an example I don’t want to bill. It can be hard to take and say, oh my gosh, did I think about this model? I’ve had three of these doctors say this in the last week, say the same thing. Right, we have to understand that people are going to want things differently. I always use- this is my example for this. 

11:19

If I’m going to drink a pop, it’s going to be a Coke. I don’t want Pepsi. I don’t like Pepsi. If all the restaurant has is Pepsi, I’m going to get a water, right? So if the sales funnel is: “Girl drinks Pepsi” at the bottom, this girl has fallen out of that sales funnel. Doesn’t mean I hate Pepsi, it just means I don’t prefer, if I’m going to drink a pop, to drink a Pepsi. Now, if this end game was: “Girl drinks a Coke”. You better believe I’m following all the way through this funnel because Coke is my jam. 

11:54

If I’m going to have a pop, it’s going to be a Coke, right? So understand that. Like it doesn’t mean that I’m over here talking about how terrible Pepsi is. It just simply means that I don’t prefer Pepsi. And, if Coke somehow created a Coke that tastes like Coke, that’s called Pepsi, I would absolutely drink that right. 

12:12

So, we have to understand that when we’re putting this together, we can take that no, I don’t want your Pepsi, right. And say, okay, cool, if I ever offer Pepsi. I’ve got like 10 people now that want a Pepsi. Whatever that service is right. So use that as an example that it’s totally okay that people say no, or that “hey, service sounds awesome- wish it was set up this way”. Because everybody’s different. We all know that’s what makes the world go round, right, there are going to be people that want a service similar to this but set up in a different way, and there’s going to be some that say no, don’t want to do it. And we hate that, especially in the beginning, right, especially in the beginning. We want everyone to say yes, not going to happen. So be okay with that and understand that we want to work through as many no’s as possible. Make that your goal. I’m going to get as many no’s as possible, because if you get a ton of no’s you will absolutely have guests in there, absolutely. 

13:15

Thank you so much for hanging out with me on this episode of the Talking Tech Podcast. I hope after listening you have a better understanding of what a sales funnel is, why you need it for your business, and the steps to take to create one for your specific ultrasound business. If you want more information on our Business Foundations Blueprint Bootcamp, find me on social. You can, if you’re not already following me, find those links in the show notes. Come, DM me the word “Bootcamp” and we will get you more information and signed up on our wait list for our next round. Until then, I’ll see you soon. Thank you so much for tuning into today’s episode. If you enjoyed the information, make sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode, and help us reach other sonographers by leaving us a review. We truly appreciate it and until next time I’m over here cheering you on.