I have been helping dentists in developing strategies to help them achieve growth in their dental practice. The growth of your dental practice demands that you should be able to increase the lifetime value of every patient to arrive to such a growth in your practice. Increasing this value means that you should be able to increase the time span that your patient is going to have you as their dentist. To do this, identify the different behaviors of new patients when they come into your dental practice, then leave. In your dental practice, they should fit into a few different bigger categories, then you can slim them down. There are different patients with different needs in the practice. For instance, you have three kinds of patients:
Patient A: He comes in as a new patient, accepts basic standard of care. Then you have this patient scheduled for cleaning 3 to 6 months out.
Patient B: He comes in as a new patient as well, and accepts basic standard of care. However he requires a lot more of work to be done, as he has expressed some interest and desire to have more cosmetic work done…. but leaves unscheduled for next step. So set the appointment for 6 months out ( the cosmetic dentist and office accepts the fact that, “They just aren’t ready yet”… or you’ll try again in 6 months).
Patient C: He comes in expressing interest in implants, cosmetic dentistry, or any of the higher end treatments. But in the end he does not accept the treatment. (What were their excuses? Reason? Real reasons vs. False reasons? Other possible ways to sub-niche these types of patients might be by age; Seniors vs. Boomers; Moms with young children vs. Moms whose children who are out of high school; Men vs. Women; Affluent vs. Non-Affluent).
Ways To Increase The Lifetime Value Of Each New Patient:
To promote the growth of your dental practice, you should develop strategies that will be able to help you maximize the lifetime value of each patient. One thing I suggest is that you make it a point that your patient should receive an e-mail within 24 hours on a minimal basis, thanking them, making sure that they call with any questions, etc.
Attention Is The Keyword!
Remember that we are NOT in competition with other dentists. Rather, we are in REAL competition with the attention span of the prospective patient. So develop ways wherein every person gets your attention and will come to your door and become your own patient.
People Are More “Nomadic” Than Ever Before, And That’s Because They Can Be!
A negative word of mouth can spread with a simple click of the keyboard to hundreds of friends or family, giving a crushing blow. Maybe before, people would just put up with poor or average service, but now we have other options simply by going into the Internet and then typing in precisely what we are looking for. So make sure that you give and present your service to every patient as best as you can.
Dentists Are Now Getting Smarter And Sharper Marketing!
This means that your patients are getting marketed as well! Their loyalties are being challenged, and if you don’t have an “iron cage” built around them, they will surely go elsewhere. So always make sure that your patients stay with you all the way in your practice.
The bad news in the growth of your dental practice is that there is NOT a single simple solution, which means that you should be able to combine solutions that must work simultaneously… and does NOT rely on you personally to execute. If they rely on you, what you have is a job… not a business!
Log on to our website at www.DentistProfits.com and get a free CD and Book titled, “How To Predictably Grow Your Practice 25-35% Every Year While Enjoying More Control, Time Off, And Bottom-Line Net Profits!”.
My name is Ed O’Keefe, and over the past 7 ½ years I have shown over 5300 General Dentists world wide how to flood their practice with patients using my counter-intuitive, yet extremely effective dental marketing, internet dental marketing secrets, and dental advertising secrets that are proven, guaranteed, and unmatched by anyone else in dentistry!
