I recently asked a business expert to outline five of the most effective strategies that a dental practice owner could use to enhance business growth for a privately owned dental practice in Australia.
He told me that the success of any business hinges on employing the right combination of available strategies.
Here are five really effective strategies that you could use immediately to enhance growth for your dental practice:
Enhance Your Patients’ Experience:
Prioritise the development of a world-class customer service process that creates a positive experience for your patients.
Firstly, you want to be making every patient’s visit as comfortable and pleasant as possible by creating a welcoming and calming environment in your practice.
This will immediately set your practice apart from other dental practices in your area.
You want to be punctual, with minimal waiting times for your clients.
Your team needs to be managing appointment scheduling efficiently and effectively.
Invest In Digital Marketing:
Having a strong online presence is vital. Your dental practice should have a professional, well-designed website that inspires patients and prospective patients to contact your practice and make an appointment.
Your website should be easy to navigate, and your team details and photos should be easy to find. They should also be professionally done.
Use SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) strategies to improve your search engine ranking, making it easier for potential patients to find you. Consider utilising an Instagram page for your practice as well as a Facebook business page to engage with the community and share valuable social posts, along with the occasional dental care tip.
Email marketing can also be a powerful tool for sharing newsletters, events, and special promotions.
Pick Your Market:
By offering a wide array of dental services, you can confuse your patients about what services you do really well.
It’s impossible to be a master of everything in dentistry. Work out what you like doing, and refer the rest out, or have a visiting specialist do sessions in your rooms if that would work?
Establish a Referral Programme:
One of the most effective ways to bring in new patients is through referrals from existing ones. Develop a referral program that encourages your current patients to recommend your practice to their family, friends, and colleagues.
Community Engagement and Partnership:
Dentistry is a community-oriented service, and forging strong relationships within your local community can significantly boost your practice’s growth. Participate in local events, sponsor local teams or organizations, and offer free information evenings and seminars about dental hygiene and care. Partnering with local schools for oral health education may also be an effective strategy. These activities not only increase your visibility but also demonstrate your commitment to community welfare, thereby enhancing your reputation.
Remember, measuring the effectiveness of these strategies is also crucial. Use metrics such as new patient acquisition, patient retention rate, and revenue growth to track your progress. Be willing to adjust your strategies based on the feedback and data you gather.
Always prioritise patient satisfaction, because a happy patient is always more likely to refer others to your practice.
*****
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.
Last week Jayne and I spent a few days interstate doing a few business things… we were coaching some clients, and we also visited one of our coaches.
Yes, coaches have coaches. How else do coaches get better?
Anyway, during our stay, we stumbled across a great [whisky] bar hidden away down a narrow lane.
Each night before dinner, Jayne and I would visit this bar to enjoy an adult beverage in a relaxed atmosphere before heading off for a formal meal.
The bar was very popular. Entrance and exit of patrons was monitored to ensure the atmosphere of the bar was not affected by crowding or over-crowding.
On our final visit to this bar, on the Sunday night of the weekend, the bar was less crowded than on other evenings and so we were able to be seated at the bar, right in the centre where exotic cocktails were being created, rather than away at some side-table.
Interestingly, on this evening, the behaviour of the barman creating the cocktails could only be described as “stiff” at best.
I would have expected the barman, or any barman, to have a personality, in the Bryan Brown and Tom Cruise COCKTAIL mould. [as in the movie “Cocktail”, where the barmen were entertainers who spoke and conversed with patrons].
This barman seemed to be more engrossed in his craft than in any conversations with patrons, and although he was short with his answers and conversation with the young men seated beside me at the bar, he was even shorter with his responses to Jayne’s questions.
In fact, I definitely felt that this barman chose to answer Jayne’s questions about the cocktails he was creating in short one and two word sentences.
I chose to simply listen.
And I listened in horror…
You see, to me, this barman’s responses showed a very ageist attitude.
And I know this, because I did hear him responding in a far friendlier manner with the three young men sitting beside us at the bar.
The thing is…
When a person chooses to be judgemental, they immediately choose to offend those who they are judging.
And one of the interesting things about being ageist is that the more senior members of the population that some people choose to discriminate against, most probably have children and grandchildren the same age as those members of the population that a younger person may be hoping to impress and attract.
The problem with being judgemental is that you don’t really know who knows who, and whom.
In the dental office…
On the phones at your dental practice, do you have team members who cross the line and bully callers?
Yes, this does happen.
“He’s very busy. He won’t call you back.”
Even if the dentist told the receptionist to tell callers this, frankly, to me, it’s an unnecessary command that has no positive effects whatsoever.
If I was an employee in a dental practice, I’d find a way to be nice to every caller, no matter who they are, because you never know who that caller might know, and who that caller may refer to the practice, whether that caller was a patient of the practice or not.
If I was an employee, I’d never be so arrogant to tell a caller:
“He’s very busy. He won’t call you back.”
You’ll remember how I have previously retold the story that a finance guy shared with me…. and how a dental receptionist screamed down a phone at him and then banged the handset violently on the desk numerous times…. and the finance guy was only doing his job and was helping the dentist to finance a significant purchase…
What gave that receptionist the right to think that it was OK to behave so rudely?
A little bit too much judgementalism, if you ask me…
*****
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.
It says, that if we grow our market, there will be enough available for all who want and need, to be able to live together and survive together without members of our community going without.
It’s about growing the pie…
The opposite of the theory of abundance is the theory of scarcity. In this theory, it is believed that to have the tallest building, we need to destroy all buildings that are taller than ours, and also destroy all buildings that have the potential to be taller than ours.
Rather than us just simply making our building the tallest.
Years ago I asked one of my mentors this question:
I asked him:
“I have a client I’ve coached and helped to more than double their business in less than two years, who has now decided to finish up with using my services and has decided to launch themselves as a ‘self-made coach’. What should I do?
My mentor advised this. He said:
“You can waste a lot of time and energy trying to stop them ripping off your material, but after all is said and done, they’re not you and never will be you, so just keep inventing new material. They will never be able to keep up with you. You are the point of difference.”
He said:
“That’s how McDonalds deal with their competitors…”
Great advice indeed.
In dentistry, there are advisors that have never been a dentist who advise dentists on what to think and do.
In fact, sometimes there are dental practice employees who believe that they know better than the dentist who employs them, even though these employees have never been a dentist and have never owned a dental practice themselves.
One of the things we do…
One of the things that my wife and I do really well as coaches of dental practices is that we help our clients grow their dental practices by keeping and retaining existing patients.
Because as practice owners, it’s exactly how we built a multi-million dollar dental practice of our own.
A lot of dentists believe that the only way to grow a dental practice is by acquiring more new patients. Sadly, while these dentists try to grow the number of new patients coming in the front door of their practice, the number of existing patients leaving their practice via the back door is way too high.
In terms of dollars and time, the cost of acquiring a new patient is seven times the cost of keeping an existing patient.
Why would anyone in their right mind spend seven times more than they need to be spending?
Probably because they haven’t been thinking about abundance…
The great thing about existing patients is…
The great thing about existing patients is that they love us [their dentists] implicitly, and they trust us, and they truly value our expert opinion.
And a new patient eventually will build that love and trust, but in the early days, the new patient is always a little cautious.
Helping a new patient build and establish that trust can often take several years…
As dentists and practice owners, thinking about abundance allows us to focus on the road ahead, and not be concerned so much about the road behind us…
*****
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.
The television remote control is a very convenient invention, but by jingo, by gees, by crikey, it certainly has made people lazy.
In the olden days, before television remote controls, when we needed to change television channels, we needed to get up off the couch and walk to the TV set and turn the knob on the set. Nowadays people just sit on the couch pressing buttons…
It’s the same with phones.
In the olden days, when we used to phone someone, a real person would answer the phone and greet us [the caller], and answer our question and help us.
Today, in the latest versions of automation, you can phone a business, and without the phone even ringing, your call is answered by a message and immediately placed on hold until a real person has the time availability to pick up and actually speak to you…
It’s become very impersonal…
As you know, we listen to recordings of incoming phone calls at our client’s dental practices.
Recently we heard a recorded call at one of our client’s practices where the caller went straight into the practice’s automated phone “system” and waited, and waited, and waited on hold for twelve long minutes before an actual employee answered the call in person… and the caller was doing was that they were phoning up to return a call from the dental practice to “confirm” their appointment for the following day…
That’s pretty ordinary customer service…
Even if you are manually answering all incoming phone calls and having to juggle and multi-task… it only takes a few seconds more to introduce yourself, and find out who is calling and find out the reason for their call.
And when you do, and when you make that personable connection, you can often save the caller the excruciating agony of being “parked” on hold and waiting, especially if the reason for their call is something so short and simple.
Dentistry is not a B2C business. [Business to Consumer]
It’s really a P2P business. People to people.
If you don’t treat your customers as people, and as individuals, and your business acts like a faceless organisation rather than like people working in a business, your business will always struggle.
The choices are simple.
Sometimes all your customers really want is good old fashioned customer service…
And those businesses that continue to give their customers good old fashioned customer service continue to thrive and survive, in all economies…
*****
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.
When you’re in conversation with someone, and actually speaking to them in person or on a telephone, that conversation as it happens is so much more powerful than a back and forth “discussion” via text, or letter or email.
Print conversations are so very one dimensional.
Depending upon the parties involved, a print conversation can go off on a tangent unexpectedly, and that is primarily because the discussion being had is only words on paper, rather than speech.
Speech adds inflection.
Speech adds tonality.
Both inflection and tonality can be difficult to communicate and appreciate in a conversation on paper.
During a written discussion, time can be both your enemy, and your friend…
During a written conversation, having time between comments can be detrimental to the discussion, as it can cause either party to over-think their response, and in so doing, one or both parties may lose the spontaneity of the moment.
Sometimes, short, shallow responses that are not overthought can lead to true insight during discussion..
Sometimes delayed comments that are long, drawn out and crafted, can be stilted, and can close down conversations.
[Having an undisclosed third party “advisor” in a written conversation can be a sure-fire way for continuing a conflict and failing to reach a resolution]
In the work environment…
At work, there are times where things need to be said quickly, actioned immediately, and be moved on from. In these cases, face to face conversations work very well in getting things dealt with and moved on from.
At other times at work, documentation of issues in a clearly written form is imperative to ensure that all present are accepting of the conversation being had, and of the intent of that conversation.
During cases of disagreement and conflict…
Usually during cases of disagreement and conflict between people, nothing resolves the conflict better than just getting on the phone or meeting up for coffee to work through things.
You can’t beat a face-to-face apology and a handshake or a hug in helping to smooth over misunderstandings.
In workplace situations, two parties that disagree can usually find resolution using face to face dialogue and conversation.
Trying to achieve resolution by sending letters, emails, and text messages is usually futile. These are usually only used where one side is attempting to bludgeon the other party into a position of submission. When the instigator’s position is weak, the responder will most often triumph. But there will be no conciliation between the parties [which may actually be a good thing].
If you want resolution…
If you’re seeking to solve and resolve disagreements and misunderstandings, then meet face to face, and walk away as friends.
If you choose to resolve by keyboard or by pen, there may not be a happy ending.
*****
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.
