A worked example: from monthly inquiries to booked consultations

The scenario

A dental practice wants more cosmetic consultations. Inquiries arrive by phone and through separate inboxes; follow-up competes with patient check-ins; the owner has little visibility into which inquiries become appointments.

This example is an illustration of Harbor's approach, not a completed client engagement.

The arithmetic

Say 100 people inquire about a cosmetic consultation in a month. If 40% book and 85% of booked patients attend, that produces 34 attended consultations.

If better first response and simpler booking raise the booking rate to 50% and attendance to 90%, the comparison produces 45.

But if the practice can accommodate only 10 additional consultations, the modeled increase is capped at 10, which means capacity, not marketing, is the constraint to solve first.

What the model is for

The point of the exercise is not the exact numbers. It is discovering which step, inquiries, booking rate, attendance, or capacity, deserves attention before any marketing budget is spent.

Harbor's Growth Review asks about each step with the practice's real numbers, then names up to three priorities. The same arithmetic feeds Harbor's booking opportunity calculator, which any practice can use for free.

What success would be measured against

Response time to inquiries, booking rate, attendance, staff workload, and available capacity. Those five numbers tell you whether the system is working long before a ranking report would.