Most dental GHL setups I see do the front half well: missed-call text-back, online scheduling, reminders, recalls. Then production stalls anyway, and the agency gets blamed for "leads that don't convert."
The leak is almost never the leads. It's the treatment that was presented in the chair and never scheduled. The patient leaves with a plan worth real money, the front desk intends to follow up, and life happens. No system owns that gap, so the gap wins.
The fix is stock GHL, no add-ons:
1. A separate pipeline for treatment follow-up, with stages like: Presented - Unscheduled / Follow-up in progress / Scheduled / Completed / Declined.
2. When an appointment completes with treatment presented, the coordinator drops an opportunity in. Ten seconds at checkout.
3. A workflow runs the cadence: task for the front desk on day 1, SMS from the practice on day 2, email on day 5 that mentions financing options, one more SMS on day 12. If the stage changes to Scheduled, everything stops.
4. Declined goes quiet for 90 days, then one polite check-in.
The automation doesn't close anything - it just makes sure a human touch happens on schedule instead of when someone remembers. In my experience that alone changes what a practice thinks of its agency.
Happy to share the exact stage names and trigger logic if it helps anyone.
Matt Larson
Case Acceptance Lab
