Almost as long as there have been businesses, there’s been a phenomenon of customers migrating towards the busiest places. It’s even a mantra when traveling: “Eat at the busy spots. The food must be safe.” In fact, the success of franchising is based in part on the idea that people like to go where other people like to go.

Many professionals in service industries have used this principle to grow their business, and it can work in your alternative health practice, too.

One of the simplest ways to implement this is to book two weeks out. When a new patient calls, tell them the next available appointment is two weeks away. Even if it isn’t. If a patient calls to cancel or reschedule? Two weeks. You may have to make exceptions for acute or emergency visits, but you get the idea.

The catch to this is that it takes guts. New CAM practitioners are often desperate for cash, and the thought of making someone wait two weeks when tomorrow’s schedule is wide open seems insane. Here are a couple of good reasons why it’s not as insane as you think:

If You’re Busy, You Must be Good
Waiting to see you creates the impression that you must be worth the wait. After all, you wouldn’t be busy if you weren’t good, right? And your existing patients will notice, and brag to their friends about the “waiting list” for their naturopath or acupuncturist.

It Creates “Appointment Respect”
Your alternative health clients will think twice about canceling or rescheduling when they discover they can’t just pick any slot they like the following day.

Generally, when you implement this procedure, you’ll feel the pain for a couple of weeks in the form of vacancies in your appointment book that could have been filled. However, the dates further out will start to fill in, and you’ll eventually catch up, finding weeks starting to fill in earlier, and seeing fewer cancellations and reschedules.