You should never rely on using just one way exclusively. Rather, you should have multiple ways of growing your business.
Each of those ways should be adding to your business, but you should be able to TURN THE DIAL on each or any of those ways WHEN NEEDED to add value and revenue to your business.
1- Increase the number of customers.
This is the obvious way that most business owners think is their best solution for increasing the turnover of their business.
“I just need more new patients….”
I wish I had a dollar for every time that I heard a dentist say these words.
More leads.
“I just need more leads….”
“I better do some more marketing….”
Indeed, attracting more leads and more new patients to call your dental practice is the obvious way to immediately “FIX” a dental office production problem.
Or is it?
Adding more water to a leaky bucket adds to more leakage.
And turning up the water pressure doesn’t do anything more except add to more leakage, sometimes creating additional leakage points.
There’s no point in trying to attract new clients to a business with poor systems… you will only leak out more of that which you are trying to create…. That is, you will lose loyal customers who love what you do for them.
2. Increase the frequency of visits each customer makes to your business.
If your business is one of “repeat business”, that is, customers returning to see you on a regular basis, then shortening the time frame between their visits will dramatically improve your business.
Have a look at your dental hygiene patients… are there some of those who should be more active in terms of their oral health?
I heard that in the USA, two-thirds of dental hygiene patients visit their dental hygienist four times a year.
In Australia, most dental hygiene patients only see their hygienist twice each year.
Ask yourself this?
If there was no fee charged for visiting the dental hygienist, would your patients visit the hygienist more frequently than what they do now?
OF COURSE THEY WOULD!!
So, if the WANT is there…. All we need to do is satisfy that “want”.
3- Increase the number of purchases per visit.
Are we looking at ways to “add value” to our patients’ visits, by helping them to purchase additional goods and services each time that they visit our dental office.
I’m not advocating doing unnecessary dental treatments, but is there a way that we could be doing multiple treatments on patients during individual visits, as opposed to doing single treatments per visit, spread out over a long period of time?
4- Raise your fees.
Most dentists are fearful of raising their fees, and so fail to increase their fees in line with the Cost of Living, effectively giving themselves a PAY CUT every time that they fail to do so.
Raising the fees for what you do is the simplest and easiest way of increasing your dental practice production, and your dental practice’s bottom line.
Raising your fees is 100% profit.
Strategic GENTLE fee increases are easily accepted by your loyal clientele as being “a fact of life” in business.
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Interestingly, points 2,3, and 4 above are suggestions for internal-driven growth in your business.
They are reliant on you having a loyal base of customers who love, like, and trust you, and feel valued and respected.
Treating those loyal customers with WORLD CLASS CUSTOMER SERVICE is paramount in determining your business’s success in using points 2,3, and 4.
And of course, if you do not have a significant base of loyal customers, your business could simply just be a PERMANENT REVOLVING DOOR, with new customers entering on one side of the doorway and leaving immediately on the other side.
Your business may just need better customer service systems for retaining and pampering all of those loyal patients.
If you intend to try and attract new customers to your business it is imperative that the FIRST IMPRESSION that they have when they make contact with your business is as impactful and positive as possible.
This is why you need your dental office phones to be being answered as best they can be:
“You only have one chance to make a great first impression.”
When a new Patient phones your dental office for the first time and schedules their first visit, you want to make sure that when that first phone call ends they are so looking forward to that first appointment that they are hanging up the phone and hoping so much that your office will be calling them back and bringing that appointment forward.
If your new patient callers are turning into FIRST APPOINTMENT CANCELLERS and NO-SHOWS, you might want to look closely at how well, or how poorly those incoming calls are being handled…
A product like Call Tracking Excellence may be needed, and would definitely benefit your dental practice.
Often what I see is that your business doesn’t need more leads. It simply needs a better system for converting the leads and enquiries that it already has coming in.
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
A lot of dentists try to squeeze the last skerrick out of each and every tube of dental composite, while other parts of their dental practice are bleeding Benjamin Franklins, day in and day out.
What they’re doing when they’re doing this is they are tripping over thousand dollar bills while trying to pick up pennies, figuratively speaking.
With thirty-eight percent of incoming phone calls to a dental practice going through UNANSWERED to a message service or voicemail service, you would think that DOING THE MATHon that would be enough to cause every dentist to wake up screaming and crying in a cold sweat each and every night they go to bed.
But for some crazy reason it doesn’t…
And when you consider that most of those 38% of missed calls don’t leave a message and don’t make an appointment with you, but rather, go on to phone your competitor’s practice instead, the opportunity cost that is wasted right here EVERY DAY in your dental practice is frighteningly scary.
Most dentists are more concerned about saving money on the price of gloves and bibs than they are on the amount of opportunity wasted in the missed phone calls coming in to their dental practice each and every day.
“But I can’t afford to pay someone extra to sit there and just answer the phones all day…”
“My receptionist doesn’t have time to answer every phone call because she’s doing steri between patients when the phone’s not ringing…”
Here’s my take:
At present, your dental practice has a gross income and it has its expenses.
If one extra new patient makes an appointment and is seen, the fee that that new patient pays is nearly 100% profit.
This is because you’re not going to put on extra staff for only one extra new patient.
Your salaries are already being paid.
Your rent is not going to go up because of one extra new patient.
Your utility bills [phone and electricity] are not going to rise significantly because of one extra new patient [your office lighting is on anyway?]?
Really, the only measurable costs of seeing that one extra new patient is dental supplies? Which aren’t much? Maybe 3-4%? [And possibly the occasional bit of lab?]
“But I can’t afford to pay someone extra to sit there and just answer the phones all day…”
“My receptionist doesn’t have time to answer every phone call because she’s doing steri between patients when the phone’s not ringing…”
Here’s my take:
At present, your dental practice has a gross income and it has its expenses.
If one extra new patient makes an appointment and is seen, the fee that that new patient pays is nearly 100% profit.
This is because you’re not going to put on extra staff for only one extra new patient.
Your salaries are already being paid.
Your rent is not going to go up because of one extra new patient.
Your utility bills [phone and electricity] are not going to rise significantly because of one extra new patient [your office lighting is on anyway?]?
Really, the only measurable costs of seeing that one extra new patient is dental supplies? Which aren’t much? Maybe 3-4%? [And possibly the occasional bit of lab?]
So extrapolating out, one extra New Patient per day wouldn’t really impact much at all on operating costs, but would significantly impact on production…
What’s the value of a New Patient to your dental practice?
What does the average New Patient spend on their dental treatment?
How much busier would your dental practice need to be to make putting on an extra team member a viable proposition?
Let’s look at the numbers…
One extra New Patient in your practice might mean an extra three appointments in your schedule each year, for that patient.
If we worked 200 days each year, and we averaged one extra New Patient each day, that would mean we would need to absorb six hundred additional appointments into our yearly schedule…
Maybe we might need one extra dental assistant?
Maybe we might need an extra dental receptionist as well?
The annual salaries for these two additional team members should come to between $80K and $90K [combined].
With an average NP value of $1500 per new patient, one new patient each day added to the practice would add $300K annually to the dental practice billings [based on two hundred days worked per year]
So let me ask you this? Is $300K in and $100K-110K out each year an attractive business proposition for you to consider?
And also, with that sort of positive cashflow result, you could easily engage professional skills trainings for your team with a minimal impact on business profits. [As opposed to providing no training, or DIY training]
Economies of scale.
And of course, while the increase in dental production will be linear in relation to the increase in the number of new patients, the increase in costs are not linear, rather the costs will be appearing as a “delayed lagging step” process.
Your only question should be:
Remember, the unanswered phone is already happening at your dental practice anyway.
And fixing the problem creates immediate positive cash-flow.
Your only questions should be to yourself:
“When do I want to start fixing this problem?”
And
“How much money am I losing each and every day by NOT fixing this problem today?”
Something needs to change:
Nothing changes by magic.
The reason your business is where it is today is because of the decisions made in the past.
And the act of not making a decision, and doing nothing, is in itself a decision.
And a very bad decision.
Whether your business is known as the dental practice that always answers the phone with a smile, or it’s known as the dental practice where the phone always rings out, or where the customer call always gets put on hold; THESE ARE CHOICES.
The option of making a change for the better, today, is your choice.
It is your decision.
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
“Everything Works. What we need to do is find a way to make things WORK BETTER…”
Everything in business is about trial and error.
And also test and measure.
Conducting a business without reviewing what is working and what is not working is just foolhardy and stupid.
Trying to “GUESS” and to make adjustments to your business based on a hunch or a “feeling” is crazy.
Yet so many business owners conduct their business in this nonsensical manner.
Turning up to work tomorrow and doing the same thing that you did yesterday and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.
Analyse your numbers.
Most dental practices have absolutely no idea of their numbers.
These numbers are their Key Performance Indicators [KPIs], and they will provide a snapshot of how your business is performing at any chosen point in time.
Here are the KPIs that I used to look at in my dental practice:
Daily KPIs:
Value of Dentistry Produced
Daily Collections
#New Patient Phone Enquiries taken
#New Patient appointments made from those enquiries
#Patients cancelling already made appointments
Patients leaving following treatment without making an appointment
Weekly KPIs:
Value of Dentistry Produced
Weekly Collections
#New Patient Phone Enquiries taken
#New Patient appointments made from those enquiries
#Patients cancelling already made appointments
#Patients leaving following treatment without making an appointment
What gets measured gets improved upon.
Once we have this data we have a measure of what we are achieving, and with that, we have the ability to look at things we are doing in the dental practice that can change these measurements.
And hopefully those changes we decide upon are for improvement of those numbers.
But without the numbers, we have no starting point.
Collecting the numbers over a period of time will provide us with trends.
Looking at the numbers over time will show us whether what we are doing is in need of improvement, or a change of direction.
Looking at the numbers may show us something that is working well, that we could ramp up for even better results.
The numbers aren’t the whole story…
The numbers don’t tell the WHOLE story, but they do give a significant insight into the results we are getting.
If the numbers are good, we don’t need a story.
But if the numbers are poor, we are often offered up a long list of excuses as to why they are bad.
Usually the numbers will give us a pretty good idea about what is going on.
There’s a reason why they only put little boxes on golf scorecards, and not lines.
And that’s because they only want numbers.
Not stories.
The numbers usually tell the story.
It’s the same in business….
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
“I can’t believe that Monday is going to be the first day of Winter.”
Oh. My. Goodness.
Does this person not own a calendar?
And do they never ever look at it?
As far as I’m aware, June 1 in Australia is the “official” first day of winter…
Each and every year.
And has been for as long as I can remember.
So this means, that from June 2 each year onwards, we’ve all got a WHOLE YEARto prepare for the next coming of the first day of winter.
Comments like this one that I just heard are really quite banal and are in fact a waste of oxygen.
When someone says this to you, this is how you should answer them:
Grit your front teeth together and try to make it look like a smile.
While you are gritting your teeth refrain from telling the person that June 1 has followed May 31 each and every year since time began.
Instead, ask them this:“Sounds as though you’ve been really busy, Bob. What have you been up to?”
Allow Bob to answer with his comment about himself and his own activities, and keep the conversation on Bob and his activities.This avoids the inevitable failure of two people sinking down a very deep rabbit hole while talking about how quickly the year “appears” to have gone.
Actually, because time is a constant, years and months do not pass quickly or drag slowly.
Remember, a conversation with a patient will be far more memorable and impactful to the patient if we can redirect the subject of that conversation to something to do with the patient.
Conversations about things that we can never change, like the speed of time, or the weather, are simply fluff, and a waste of time.
Whenever fluff topics are raised, a skillful conversationalist will easily segway the dialogue away from the fluff and back towards the person they are speaking with.
And that person, once they are speaking about themselves, will now believe that they are talking with a very interesting person.
Because to be interesting, you need to be INTERESTED.
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
