Blog posts of '2017' 'March'

More than likely, your dental supplier is ripping you off. How can we be so sure? Well, let’s look at the mechanics of the marketplace. As a professional, it’s your job to keep your business—your dental practice—running smoothly. That includes remaining profitable. You want to keep costs low and income high. But that’s what your supply chain wants to do, too. If their profits can be improved by selling you something at an outrageous markup, but make you think you’re getting a great deal, then why wouldn’t they?

Every salesman has a long list of tricks to meet their quota and to earn their bonuses. Ripping you off is part of the equation. Pricing is a relatively murky subject with many shades of gray and very little actual black and white clarity. Prices are typically set at what the market will bear. If a product has competition, then you can compare prices from different sources. And this opens the door to your solution. To keep from being ripped off by your dental suppliers, you need to do one thing summed up by three simple words: “do your homework.”

Doing your homework to keep from getting ripped off is relatively straightforward, but it helps to have a few pointers. Have someone in your office do the legwork for you, researching prices from various suppliers. Naturally, product quality is always a concern, but you need to decide what is truly important and what is merely “nice.” If one product comes with an attachment you would rarely, if ever, use, then why bother? If a different brand or supplier offers the same product without the attachment, but at a substantial savings, then it would be smart to consider making a change to the less expensive option.

One trick suppliers sometimes use is to offer one version of a consumable product at a discount, while marking up a more attractive package. For example, a 5-pack might be offered at a discount, but the 10-pack is marked up. So, thinking you’re saving money buying in bulk, you may end up paying more.

You may know your dental equipment well, but sometimes you get hit in areas outside of your own specialty. That could be office supplies or computer equipment. Say, for instance, you purchase a computer for your front office and that it has the latest processor for fast computing and an HD screen for crystal clear viewing of patient records. Not doing your homework, leaves you open to getting ripped off. If your dental office software requires 8 GB of memory for optimum usage, but your computer system came with only 4 GB, then you’ll have to upgrade your memory. Quite often, systems have their memory slots filled with the existing memory, so you can’t merely add on more memory; you have to yank out the existing memory and replace it with a full-price upgrade. If you don’t shop around, or otherwise do your homework, your supplier could add a hefty markup on the larger memory modules.

The bottom line is that you have to realize that a supplier is naturally going to be looking out for their own profits. Any good salesman is going to want to make you think you’re getting a great deal that makes them lots of profit and helps them achieve their quota that much more quickly. Doing your homework is the simplest way to ensure your own profitability.

In a perfect dental world, your clients would always love you and remain loyal patients throughout their lives. Snap out of it! In the real world, what patients really think about your office can be incredibly fickle. All it takes is one poor experience for one customer to spoil your entire client list. One patient may make it a point to tell others of their perceived injustice. If they think you don’t care, this only makes it worse, and the injustice becomes an outrage.

Sometimes, appearances are everything. This includes visual appearances, but also other forms of perception, too (smell, touch, temperature, behavior). Naturally, you’re not going to please everyone all the time, but you have to remain sensitive to their needs.

Let us say, for instance, that one patient complains that your office is too hot. If they’re the only client who says this, consider accommodating them with a fan turned on low to help keep them stay cool. By taking the extra effort, you make them feel pampered, but also you keep your electricity bill down. If too many patients complain about the heat in your office, perhaps nudging the air conditioning a bit would be a good thing. Don’t always go by your own comfort level.

Another example of perception gone awry involves what patients can do to your office without you knowing. It pays to revisit the client experience frequently. Go through their steps to see what they see and to feel what they feel. This way, you might discover that the front entrance door handle sometimes feels slippery and tacky. Could one of your patients overdo their hand lotion regimen? They could make the experience far worse for other patients and prospective clients.

If your waiting room furniture is becoming a bit threadbare, then plan to have it replaced. But you don’t need to ruin your finances with immediate upgrades. Until the budget can allow for the purchase, consider some thrifty, interim measures, like colorful seat covers. Make certain to get feedback on your ideas before implementing them. At the very least, ask your office staff for suggestions.

In the world of winning hearts, perception is everything. If any of your clients perceive something to be true, your first concern is to show them that you care or that you will take action, not that they are wrong. Sometimes, asking a patient for more information will reveal a misunderstanding, rather than an actual mishap. Sometimes, asking questions, instead of making statements can help a patient come to a new understanding without perceiving you or your staff as a threat.

In order to dig deeper, you need to ask patients directly. As part of their time in the waiting room, have them fill in a short survey. Include questions like, “What would make your visit to the dentist more enjoyable?” To keep your patients motivated, consider knocking off a small amount from the dental bill for the “best” survey picked each month. This could be a low-cost way to keep your patients thinking about how to improve your business. You might even pick from the monthly winners, a winning survey for the quarter or for the year with an even bigger prize. Surveys can give you greater insight into the perception of your patients. Giving them a valuable incentive helps to keep them interested. Not all great ideas or insights happen during the filling out of a survey. Sometimes, the ideas happen later or between visits. Having a meaningful reward may motivate more of your patients to jot down the ideas or perceptions when they come to mind so they can add them to the survey on their next visit.

Having more eyes and ears open to your office’s improvement could help your dental practice go from merely surviving to thriving. So, make it even easier for them to contact you with suggestions and observations. Have a suggestion box in your waiting room with a bright, colorful sign explaining the offer and the need for feedback. On appointment cards, include your office email address or the contact form on your dental office website. Each one of these can help you know what patients really do think about your dental office.

Every dentist wants to increase patient visits. In our current economic environment, more and more patients are opting for insurance plans with higher deductibles. This helps to keep their insurance rates lower, but the ugly side effect is that those patients put off visits to keep out-of-pocket expenses at a minimum, too.

Short of solving the economic problems of the world, how do you overcome this phenomenon? How do you drive in more patient visits?

Outreach and education can help. One thing we know from human nature is that most people have a habit of avoiding pain. This includes avoiding all thoughts of dental visits until it becomes impossible to ignore them. Part of your outreach might include a colorful cartoon to explain how waiting will only create more pain and problems. And it could end up being more expensive in the long run. Tell them how a simple cavity could escalate into the need for a more costly root canal.

For some of your patients, the “stick” of comparative pain may not work; you may need to entice them with more “carrot” of pleasure. For instance, make it easy for your patients to pay for their visits on a monthly payment plan.

Another option might be to barter your services. Say, for example, that you need electrical work for your office or home and your patient is an electrician. One endodontist in California liked his patient’s artwork so much, he gave the client a hefty discount in exchange for one of their paintings.

They key, here, is to look at the problem from the viewpoint of the patient. How can you decrease their pain while increasing their pleasure?

From the standpoint of bartering, consider joining or establishing a barter co-op in your area. If you don’t need electrical work, but need help with a finicky computer system, perhaps some other business in your area needs your electrician patient’s help at the same time that they have a computer expert customer who could fulfill your needs. A barter swap could extend your reach. Such creative, out-of-the-box thinking could keep your patients coming more often, because the hurdles are no longer so high. They understand more completely the risks of putting off a needed visit. And they see the benefits of timely visits.

Share this article with your staff. Have a brainstorming session with them to see what wild ideas come to their minds. Then use those “wild” ideas as catalysts to help your team come up with something which your dental office can implement.

If you’re not familiar with the proper steps in good brainstorming, the following, brief overview can help.

The goal of brainstorming is to come up with good ideas that might not otherwise have been obvious or even possible to imagine. The first phase of good brainstorming involves a “shotgun” free-for-all of ideas. One of your staff should take notes or perhaps record the audio for later transcription. During this phase, criticism is forbidden. Simply start with the first word or phrase that comes to mind. Any and all ideas are welcome, no matter how crazy, irrelevant or non sequitur they may seem.

After two or three minutes of craziness, take your list of words and review them, thoughtfully and with critical thinking. But be sure to throw in a good measure of creative fun, too. Like Albert Einstein once said, imagination is more important than knowledge. Such creativity can take you places you never thought possible. While reviewing your list of “crazy” words, you might ask for each term or phrase, “If this word were the key to solving this problem, what would that solution look like?” From this second phase discussion, you achieve a list of ideas. Again, keep criticism out of the discussion. Creativity is sometimes timid and needs to be nurtured. Criticism comes later.

The third and final phase of brainstorming is where the criticism and discussion takes over. Ask, “How could this idea work? What would it take?”

Brainstorming is a tool. It requires a degree of skill. It can be done in a group or as a solitary exercise. Out of such brainstorming, great ideas are possible, especially if you expect and allow the best to happen. And when increasing dental patient visits is the desired outcome, everyone wins.

When patients are “in the chair” three senses become strongly active, especially for those who are nervous or tense. These are:

1.       Smell

2.       Touch

3.       Hearing

That’s why I’d like to address the importance of having a musical therapy strategy for your dental practice. And surprisingly, it’s not just your patients who benefit from a well thought out background music strategy. Your staff will as well.

After speaking with numerous dentists, it’s become very clear that many practitioners do not have a plan regarding the best types of music to play in their offices. This is unfortunate.

For example, many dentists still utilize the following:

·         FM Radio

·         Satellite Radio

·         CDs

While these options may seem to make sense, none of them give you complete freedom and control over what your patients are listening to. After all, when you go to a restaurant and order food, do you let the waiter decide what you should eat? Of course not. Instead, you make a specific effort to order the most satisfying meal based on your individual dietary needs and tastes. The same goes for your dental practice, and the use of music within it.

So, let me give you 3 tips to maximize the effectiveness of music in your dental office in the interest of making the experience as positive and relaxing as possible for your patients:

1) Strike a Balance

The biggest mistake I see dentists making is that the music they play for their patients is the same music that can be heard by the staff handling administrative duties.

This is a big mistake.

While certain subscription services dentists utilize may play music that’s appropriate for patients, it may not be suitable for staff that are not directly involved in patient procedures.

Would you want your administrative staff listening to relaxing music? Probably not, right? After all, you want them motivated and energetic, not drowsy.

Also, you will want your patients to listen to music that will soothe them and distract them from their potential discomfort. What you don’t want is heart-pumping music that may lead to feelings of anxiety.

So, the solution is simple: Ensure you have one sound system set up for your clinical rooms, and another sound system set up for your administrative areas.

Your waiting area should also have the same music as your clinical rooms. After all, you want your patients to be relaxed from the second they walk in, to the time they leave.

2) Patient Music Considerations

When it comes to relaxing your patients, your first line of defense should always be their auditory sense.

Because of this, you want to totally eliminate distractions such as unwanted advertisements, disc jockey announcements, or any static and unwanted interference.

Ideally, each of your patient rooms should have surround sound and a perfect signal. Something as simple as using an iPod with pre-selected music is a great way to accomplish this.

If you’ve ever visited a spa, you know that a large emphasis is placed on setting the mood with a carefully selected playlist of soothing music. Your playlist and sound setup should be no different.

3) Staff Music Considerations

You want to ensure your staff is listening to music with at least 120 BPMs (Beats Per Minute), but no more than 150 BPMs. You can easily use Google to find songs like this.

This tempo is a great start for keeping your staff in an energetic and productive mindset. Of course, you’ll want to avoid music with explicit content or anything that could be considered graphic in nature. Furthermore, for intensive mental work, lyrics that are too prominent are destructive to mental focus.

Research shows that “intelligible” chatter—talking that can be clearly heard and understood—contributes strongly to a distracting environment. Shifting focus to figure out what someone else is saying is the reason why speech is often considered the most troublesome element of a noisy office. In one study, 48% of participants listed intelligible talking as the sound which distracted them the most.

Trying to engage in language-related tasks, such as writing, while listening to lyrics would be akin to holding a conversation while another person talks over you… while also strumming a guitar. So lyrics are often a no-go in these situations.

Lyrics might not have the same effect on creative tasks that don’t directly deal with “verbal architecture”. This study, which looked at software developers, suggested that music with lyrics might actually have helped their output while working.

The bottom line is to find the right balance of music to effectively match the kinds of activities that take place in the administrative areas of your practice.

4)  Long Playlist versus Short Playlists

The last consideration is the size of your music playlist. While not a real concern for patients, since the duration of their visits are limited, it does affect your staff, both in patient and administrative areas.

There is a debate between whether employees benefit more from shorter music playlists that create predictability, or longer playlists that minimize musical redundancy.

On one side, musical therapists agree that shorter playlists add predictability and less confusion in a working environment. However, repetition can lead to boredom, and eventually, to measurable levels of stress.

Once again, the key is to find the right playlist length for music to best serve the activities of your practice’s patient care and administrative staff.

Getting more patients for your dental practice means more income, and more income means more investment into getting more patients and making them happy. It becomes a cycle of getting more patients, earning more, investing more, and getting even more patients. And the more you invest, the less effort it takes to start this cycle and keep it going!

Fortunately, for dentists of all budgets, it doesn’t have to be that expensive either. Every expense can be easily recouped with the revenue from new patients.  

Aside from money, you need to spend some time and effort collaborating with your team, or even DIY-ing it, to present the best version of your dental practice to your patients.

So what are some techniques to get more patients to your dental practice with little to no effort?

A conversion-optimized website

You need experts or at least some knowledge of SEO and conversion rates. For example, if your website gets 3,000 visits (or clicks) every month, but your conversion rate is less than 1%, your website is not working as it should.

For 3000 visits, your target conversion rate should be at least 3%, or 90 out of the 3000.

Now “conversion” can have several key performance indicators (KPI).

New subscribers to your newsletter? That’s a KPI. More views on your articles, more Likes on your Facebook, or more followers on your Twitter—those are also nice KPIs. But ultimately, your aim is for web visitors to become clinic visitors.

Your website should:

• Answer questions and provide real value. Do you have blog posts for tips and guides on finding a dentist, taking a kid to the dentist, and information about certain treatments and surgeries?

• Have an irresistible offer. GIVE THEM A REASON TO CALL. Real value isn’t just information. It also includes offers like free reports, free checklists, or discounts on dental services!

• Have an easy booking platform, contact pages, etc. No complicated steps. One button for a call. One button for an online booking. And that’s it. They’re done! Don’t give them a chance to close the website before they’re done.

• Be nice to look at and adjustable to different screen sizes. Internet users are highly visual creatures. You don’t need all the bells and whistles, but you do want a nice color scheme and easy-to-read fonts. About 98% of people now use their phones to browse the Internet. Is your website easy to read on a smartphone?

If you hire an expert to overhaul your site’s design and content, you could easily spend at least $1000, but your patients could pay that back for you if you get 3% conversion overnight.

A focus on your prospective clients and what they want and need

What do your patients need? Do you provide it in your website, your newsletter, your social media posts? Is there information they'd want to read about? Is your website optimized to the max so that they can find you?

Your online campaign needs to be benefit-driven. If you focus on providing real value to your prospective patients, you won’t have to “advertise yourself” at all. Which brings us to our next item:

Give them a reason to call. No logos or branding—DON’T begin an ad or flyer with YOUR name or logo. Make an irresistible offer instead.

Your PPC (pay per click) ads, your flyers, your articles—they should all be benefit-driven, remember? Sure, you can and should add your dental practice name, address, and number there, but somewhere at the bottom after the valuable content has been offered and delivered.

For example, suppose you successfully include your flyer in a tenant’s packet (which is awesome!). If that flyer is nothing but your logo, name, and details, it’s going in the trash almost instantly and will be forgotten.

Again, it's about your patients, not you. Hit their pain points and answer to what they need. That is how you grab their attention and bring them to your website and your clinic. Have an article worth reading, a discount they shouldn’t miss.

They're not interested in seeing your name in headlines. The reverse happens: they ignore you.

People are now inundated with ads all day. You stand out by grabbing your audience's attention. And you grab their attention by giving them a benefit, something they want and need. It could be something short and sweet, like a witty and funny cartoon of a dentist joke, or a discount for new neighbors!

This is how you make them remember you and choose you when they’re ready to have that appointment. GIVE THEM A REASON TO CALL. A discount, a risk-free offer, a free service?

Remember, the easiest thing for us to do when we see an ad is NOTHING. But when the ad is irresistible, that's when we do something!

The beauty of this is that you build a list of interested prospects. They want what you offer. They might not be ready now, but when they are, they'll choose your dental practice.

A referral bonus system

Word-of-mouth is still a powerful tool for marketing dental practices. So make it easy for your patients to recommend you to others. Have a review and testimonial form on your website or your social media page.

Track what you do, test everything, and be consistent.

Are your articles getting read and shared? Which sign ups are getting sign ups?

Track what's going on with your website so that you can fix what needs fixing. And be consistent.

Stick to these techniques. Don't stop. Hire a team to oversee this side of the business. Why do you think businesses launch email campaigns? It's not just ONE email that you send to each lead who signs up for your newsletter. The campaign lasts for months. You court your patients continually through emails, your website content, posts on social media; you don't stop.

Establish your brand, letting them see that they can rely on you for consistent and great content online, and it will follow that you’re the best dentist offline.

In the book, “How Google Works”, Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt said that hiring is the most important thing you can do in a business. This goes for your dental practice, too.

The reason is because employees are an extension of you and your services. Hiring the right people will increase patient satisfaction, and profits will increase. Hire the wrong people and you could end up in court. To help you hire the right people for your practice, here are 3 essential tips:

1) What to Look for

First and foremost, you want people with integrity. If you can’t trust what people do behind your back, you simply cannot hire them. You need to rely on references and reputation checks to make this analysis.

Second, you want intelligent people who can solve problems. Knowledge is great, but you are also looking for people with curiosity. This will not only help them solve problems, but identify potential problems and solve them before anything possibly damaging occurs.

Third, you want mature people. Mature people show empathy when needed, and respect other people’s emotions. Mature people also generally have a strong sense of humor, and don’t take themselves too seriously.

Fourth, you want people with good, strong positive energy that will lift everybody up, not drag everybody down. Such enthusiasm will carry your practice through your most stressful times, while making the good times even better. There is probably nothing more damaging to a practice than a staff with a negative attitude.

Fifth, you want people who have the courage to make tough decisions. One of the best ways to test this is by challenging what they know during the interview process. If you give them a scenario with the possibility of a few answers, do they defend their stance intelligently, or do they concede after mild criticism?

A strong conviction is as critical a characteristic as logically being able to admit a mistake.

All of these qualities can be assessed through the job interview.

2) How to Interview Candidates

Interviewing is the most important phase of the hiring process. While you may have a number of qualified candidates applying for your position, the interview phase will determine who is the most perfect fit for your practice.

Before we get started, NEVER hire anyone unless you are excited about them starting. If you have any doubts whatsoever, do NOT hire them. If anything, start the recruiting process over again until you find the right person.

Your staff is what essentially makes or breaks your reputation, and one inadequate hire can be the difference between your success or failure. This may sound extreme, but think of all of the activities and patient interactions that your staff performs on a daily basis. If you hire somebody that is only 85% qualified, that means that member of your staff will only reach an 85% peak of optimal performance on even their best days. When you hire someone, who meets 100% of your qualification for this position, their optimal peak is 100%, and you shouldn’t settle for anything less.

The choice is yours.

When you’re interviewing each candidate, act as if you’re hiring them to eventually lead your company. While this isn’t the reality, this mindset will truly help you judge whether this person will work hard, make informed decisions, grow with your practice, and lead it well into the future.

Never be intimidated if an applicant seems to have traits that you have a shortage of, such as energy. These are exactly the types of people you want!

So, when you’re interviewing each candidate, ensure you ask them open-ended questions that help you understand whether they meet the criteria you are looking for.

For example, tricky scenario-related questions, such as “what would you do in this situation” will help you to understand how each candidate balances duty, ethics, and intelligence to find the right solution to any given problem.

What you are really testing is how they makes decisions.

You also want to ensure each candidate fits your particular culture. A good way to test this is to introduce them to some of your current staff, and see what your people have to say about them.

Don’t forget that while someone may have thrived in another practice, it does not mean they will thrive in yours. Each practice is different, just like each candidate. Also, don’t forget that in a way, the candidate is interviewing you as well, and poor interview performance (being late, disorganized, etc.) could easily scare a great candidate away!

3) Test Your Hire

Finally, you want people who can get the job done correctly, and this brings us to the testing phase.

Attorney Anita York, who specializes in Dental Law, advises you to test each new hire with a 1-day temporary assignment. This way you can supervise how they work, and what level of expertise they currently have within their specialty.

Also, it eliminates your liability of potentially hiring the wrong person.

Ensure that you create a contract that will communicate this arrangement for one day of work for x hours and x pay, which will be paid by the close of business that day.

This way, you can easily ask them not return if necessary, and you will ensure all loose legal ends are tied up before you continue to a new candidate should that be your conclusion.

Also, ensure they do not interact directly with patients during this time. Have them do other specific functions because you should limit yourself to analyzing how they handle themselves with tasks typical tasks, at least until the testing process is over.

Once you see how they work, interact with others, and perform in your practice as a whole, you can make an educated decision as to whether or not they will be the right fit for your practice.

People go online for information, socialization, entertainment, and to find products and services. Facebook has streamlined all of these functions in the most organized and easily accessible ways imaginable.

People can conveniently read all of the latest news headlines, while communicating with a former college roommate, and be posting pictures of their kids for everyone they know to enjoy, all in one place.

It’s truly amazing and powerful, and that power has truly unique benefits for your dental practice.

For instance, you can easily start getting more patients using Facebook.
Here are 5 tips you can start using to drive more patients with your practice’s Facebook page.

1) Have a website
Facebook is almost like a delivery truck for your business. You can create and send messages to your target audience with Facebook, but Facebook should not be your company’s main interface with the public.

The reason for this is because Facebook may not always be as popular as it is today, and you never want a third party resource to control all of your virtual business collateral.
So, ensure that you have a properly developed website with a blog where you can start creating and adding content.

2) Have a message
I have seen dozens of Dental Practice Facebook pages, and they have all been seemingly indistinguishable from one another.

Messages like “Don’t forget to brush your teeth!” followed by several clichéd sales pitches make these pages as boring as they are brandless.

Let me ask you a question: If you didn’t own your practice, would you follow your company’s Facebook page?

Probably not, and the reason is simple: Your page lacks compelling content.

Before you post on Facebook, you must ask yourself: Who is this message for, and will they enjoy it?

The great thing about this is that it’s fun and exciting to be creative!

You want to start a buzz with your Facebook page, and not just send bland updates to your audience. Every post you create should be aimed at being liked and shared by as many people as possible, otherwise what’s the point?

You used to post messages to Facebook just to post, but not anymore.

3) Some ideas for posting and sharing
Here are some great ideas you can start posting to your blog and sharing on Facebook to get new people following your practice online, and then calling your for dental services in the future:

1. Post pictures and stories you find relating to celebrities and the dental work they have had done. Talk about the benefits of having some or all of this work done, and why.
2. Talk about how dentistry has affected major events in history. For example, Doc Holliday was not only a famous gunslinger, but also a dentist.
3. Create a healthy debate by sending out surveys regarding different dental procedures and whether they’re important for different things, such as a promotion.

4) Advertise
Once you have some compelling content that is starting to get attention, spend a few dollars to advertise this post to local people within your geographical scope.
What’s great is that you are essentially paying to have people visit your website, and learn more about you.

Now you can create Facebook ads that target just these people, so you can eventually convert them into customers.
Creating content that informs, entertains, and gets people engaging with one another is always the key to a successful Facebook page that will increase your popularity and your sales.  

Whether you have the right equipment or not could make or break your business. This becomes obvious when your key equipment breaks down and you can’t do your job.

Of course, you will have your dental assistant do all of the daily and monthly maintenance routines to keep your equipment running smoothly. Eventually, though, equipment will break down. Nothing was built to last forever.

Before you purchase new equipment—especially equipment that costs more than $20,000—you need to spend a significant amount of time comparing your options and preparing for whatever transition is required.

1. The Equipment Can’t Be Repaired or Costs too Much to Repair

Perhaps you have a dental equipment repair specialist on call. They may be able to get you up and running again within minutes or hours, depending on what’s wrong. If they need a spare part, perhaps they’ll need a day or two. If your guy says the equipment is beyond repair or that there are no new spare parts, then an emergency purchase may be required. But this is not the best way to make such a purchase.

Any large purchase of hardware, or even software, should be done after careful study of your options. You need a few months to go through the literature, to see appropriate demonstrations, and to build your list of questions to make certain nothing jeopardizes the smooth operation of your dental practice.

2. The Tax Write-off is Too Good

Sometimes, business decisions come down to what the “bean counters” tell you to do. Accountants are typically smart people. They have to be to make sense of the insanity of tax laws and accounting practices.

But when you make the decision to purchase equipment for a tax write-off, make certain you do your due diligence in researching the best equipment for your practice. Here are some of the considerations to keep in mind:

• Costs, of course.

• How soon you’ll be using the equipment. Some dental offices have purchased equipment only to have it sit in storage for months or even years before putting it into use. If it’s late model equipment, this might not be a problem. But if it’s older equipment, soon to be discontinued, then you may not be able to repair it when it breaks down.

• How well does this new equipment fit in with your existing equipment? Is it compatible with your existing system?

3. The Equipment is Critical to Staying Competitive

Let’s say a new technology has come out which does some part of the dental practice business far better than the older equipment. And let’s say that customers are asking for it or leaving because you don’t have it. Ouch!

Before you run out and purchase that new equipment, make certain that your perception of the problem is accurate. How many actual customers have you lost. How many customers asked about the new equipment? If it’s only one percent of your client base, you might be better off forgetting the purchase. But if you see a growing trend that’s accelerating, you may need to make an announcement that your office will soon be sporting the new equipment, too.

When desktop computers became available, few businesses adopted them. It didn’t take long, though, for office computers to become an essential part of most every dental practice. This is not the sort of equipment that patients would ask about, but customers would be able to feel the difference. An office without computers would not be as efficient. Tracking patients, schedules, insurance providers and payments from insurance companies are best done by computer systems.

References:

Carter, Jeff. (ND). “5 things you must know before purchasing clinical dental equipment.” Retrieved on 2/19/2017 from http://dentaleconomics.com/articles/print/volume-97/issue-9/features/5-things-you-must-know-before-purchasing-clinical-dental-equipment.html

Simpson, Kathy. (ND). “Do You Need to Upgrade Your Dental Equipment?” Retrieved on 2/19/2017 from https://sba.thehartford.com/industries/do-you-need-to-upgrade-your-dental-equipment

Nothing can seem more frustrating than doing a great job and having no one recognize the superb work you’ve done.

Okay, we’re not talking about ego. Don’t let that get in your way. We’re talking about awareness on the part of your dental patients. When they see the value in what you do, they become champions for your cause.

Most people would rather not think about their teeth, most of the time. The world is much bigger than that. So, you need to be a part of their desire to put such concerns behind them. They need to see you as a member of their team, helping them get on with their lives. When they see you that way, they will be more likely to refer others to your business.

Giving Credit Where Credit is Due

If you are truly compassionate about your patients and their dental health, then this should all be easy. If you’ve solved a dental emergency for your patient, thank them for coming in when they did. Let them know in gentle terms how dangerous it could have been—what would’ve happened if they had let it go on longer.

Let your patients know that you’re here to help. Let them know that you want to help make their teeth something they don’t have to worry about, but that you need their help in doing so.

It’s the Little Things That Count

If your front waiting room is dirty, this screams to your patients and potential clients that you don’t care enough to clean up the place. If your front office staff are too busy to greet each of the clients as they come in, this also communicates a rather bleak message—the client doesn’t mean very much. That’s their ego, sure, but you have to be bigger and better than that. You have to be bigger than their ego and cater to their needs.

If a patient has to leave your practice because their insurance changes and your practice is not covered, the very least you can do is to spend a few minutes talking with them. Make their leave a pleasant experience. Tell them how much you’ve enjoyed working with them and ask if there is any way to work with their finances to keep their business. There may be nothing you can do, but taking the effort to reach out could mean future referrals from this ex-patient. It could mean getting them back should their insurance carrier change yet again. Communicating with your patients shows that you care.

Also, if you go out of your way to make patients comfortable, they will perceive this as a big plus. If there are techniques or equipment that reduce the amount of pain experienced, then your patients are going to love you for it. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to tell them what you’ve done (no pun intended).

If a prospective new client can’t fit into your busy schedule (and how delightful to be so busy), consider how valuable they could be to your business if you were to stay late to squeeze them in. Imagine ten years of having them as a steady customer. Imagine them referring others to your growing practice because you went out of your way to help when they really needed it.

References:

DentalVibe.com. (ND). Top reasons why your patients leave (and what you can do about it). Retrieved on 2/19/2017 from https://dentalvibe.com/blog/top-reasons-patients-leave-can/

Lotardo, Salvatore. (9/22/2016). “Building a fee-for-service practice: The value-driven alternative to dentistry as a commodity.” Retrieved on 2/19/2017 from http://dentaleconomics.com/articles/print/volume-106/issue-9/practice/building-a-fee-for-service-practice-the-value-driven-alternative-to-dentistry-as-a-commodity.html