How to Rebook Clients Without Feeling Awkward or Salesy
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[00:00:00] Let me ask you a question. Have you ever finished a session, a consult or counseling session with a client or a patient and thought that was a really good visit, but then you never heard from that person again, and it's not because they felt unhappy or they didn't care, but it was because you ended with, let me know if you want to book again.
Now, if this sounds familiar, and you've closed your sessions in this way before, today's episode is just for you, because today I wanna reframe rebooking entirely, it's not a sales skill and it's not about convincing anybody. It's clinical leadership. And I'm gonna show you exactly how to do it in three simple steps, actionable steps that you can walk away with and start applying in your business immediately.
Now, even if you only offer one-off consults and you're not full-time, or maybe you work for a venture backed [00:01:00] company, or you even work in a hospital. Even if nutrition counseling is just one part of your business, like it is for many of our clients here, a dietician boss, and even if you don't rely on sessions for your only income, rebooking still matters because follow up is one of the strongest predictors of behavior change across all of health care.
Clients who have a clear next step stick to it longer, and they adjust faster, and then they blame themselves less when things get messy because life does get messy. And yet this is a moment where most dieticians like me and you. Hesitate and not because dieticians are bad clinicians. It's just because a lot of us don't wanna sound pushy.
We feel like we're practicing a sales skill when in reality we're practicing excellent clinical leadership. The cost of the hesitation that you're feeling to get people to book a follow-up session is considered [00:02:00] unfinished care. So I remember one of my coaching clients at a dietician in her private practice, she worked with somebody who wanted to heal their relationship with food and they had a thoughtful first session and she talked about hunger cues and fullness and letting go of food rules.
And the client did feel understood, but at the end, my coaching client said, you can book again if you want. And I know this 'cause my client told me she said that, but then her client did not book. Four months later, the person actually emailed my client and said that intuitive eating didn't work, and she felt out of control and embarrassed.
But nothing really went wrong. She just noticed hunger, overate, and then panicked. But without a follow up, a normal learned curve turned into this self-blame cycle, and it's not really a dropout problem. It's a leadership gap that we as dieticians can solve for. So the core reframe here is that [00:03:00] clients, they don't fail because they don't care.
They do care. They fall off because nobody told them what comes next. Your job is to recommend the next step, and with confidence, just like physical therapy, just like counseling, just like medication follow-ups, that next step is really crucial.
Nutrition is no different than any other practice and in physical therapy, they rebook. Talk about next steps. I want you to think of that also in your practice. So the three action steps, here's the framework I want you to start doing immediately. Step one, I'm breaking this down for you.
Decide the follow-ups before the session ends. So before you leave the actual session, you should already know when would ideally you like them to be seen again. Is it two weeks? Is it three weeks, or is it one month? So if you stumble on this in real time, it makes you look insecure and it doesn't really help them.
So it's not based on their schedule, it's [00:04:00] actually based on the care. Now you can suggest and they can rebuke, but at least you tried, so don't hesitate. You're more likely to hesitate if you don't think about the follow-up frequency before the session ends. You'll default to asking them, which is so easy to default to, what do you wanna do?
Would you like two weeks or three weeks? Instead, you should be strong and firm and say, three weeks puts us on X date. How does 8:00 AM sound or 9:00 AM sound? And then take a pause and let them fill in the gap. ~So ~I want you to segues into step two to make a recommendation, not a question.
And fear of, again, sounding too salesy like most of us fear. So instead of asking, do you wanna book again? Say, based on what you're working on, the next step is a follow up in two weeks. So we can adjust this and then that's it. Just pause and let them fill in that gap.
Clients relax. When someone [00:05:00] holds the plan, your job is to hold the plan. This is a difference between a seasoned clinician and somebody who's feeling very insecure. Step three, you wanna name what the follow-up is for. So clients need to know why they're coming back, and that's gonna help them remember and stick to the plan.
So you wanna say things like, we'll check how hunger cues are actual showing up in real life, or we'll troubleshoot what feels harder than expected, or this is where people need support. So your job is to normalize the messy middle that we all fall into as humans. So you wanna be. Confident and assertive.
You wanna pause, not fall into an explanation spiral, and then you want to name what the follow-up is for. So how does it show up in different settings? In an insurance setting, it can sound follow up is needed, right? That might be something you've heard or something you do, but again, as needed, doesn't [00:06:00] tell clients when needing help is appropriate.
You wanna think about the care plan first. So two weeks later, something isn't working, the progress can stall and then they don't call six months later, the chart says that. They were lost due to follow up, right? What really happened is nobody said, let's check back in two weeks so we can adjust this together and name what you will adjust.
Doctors do this all the time. They say, we'll see you in two weeks. We'll go over your labs. We'll do X, Y, and Z. That's what skilled dieticians do in their practice. And maybe you have a cash pay practice or you offer cash as well, but your clients say they wanna try it on their own, right?
And I once had a cash pay client say, I just wanna try it on my own first. That's really common. And so let them, months later, this particular client came back frustrated and she said, I thought if I needed more help, that meant I wasn't disciplined enough.
And that really stuck with me because she didn't need the willpower. She just needed [00:07:00] permission to need support. Clear follow-ups, give that permission. So when clients leave early, you don't just lose sessions. You lose that part of the work where change actually happens. Unfinished care is one of the quiet reasons that dieticians and clinicians at large burnout leading the rebooking.
It's gonna protect your energy and it's gonna let your work do the work it needs to do. So if this feels uncomfortable, right now, it's normal. This is part of skill building inside the dietician Boss Library. I break this down even further and give you examples, real language, case scenarios, mock scenarios, even reviews of your.
Ability in your improvement with asserting authority during sessions so that you can lead these moments calmly and work on scripts and then wean away from scripts and have follow ups and rebooking feel natural so that you can get [00:08:00] your rebooking rate, your retention rate higher, which is ideal.
You don't necessarily need to sell more, but you do need to practice. Better leadership skills. So if you wanna stop feeling awkward at the end of your session, this is where I would start. Rebooking is not the end of the session, it's just part of the care. And when you lead, clearly clients don't feel pushed, they actually feel supported, and that's what keeps excellent care continued.
