Dr Phillip Palmer, July 2013 

This last financial year, some dentists have said their turnover was down… that they were a bit quieter than in previous years. Equally, some dentists are reporting record years, and saying that business has never been better. How can this disparity exist? When you look ‘under the hood’ at practices, it’s not that hard to understand what’s happening.

There are really only four ways to ensure that your practice keeps growing: Get more, keep more, do more and learn more. Let me explain: 

GET MORE: Getting more is about attracting new patients into your practice. This involves both internal and external marketing. External marketing is marketing in the traditional sense. For example advertising, signage, mailbox drops, web ads through google and facebook, etc. 

Internal marketing, on the other hand, involves how you are relating to patients within the practice. It is about ensuring that rapport building and service levels throughout your practice are maximised to create the ideal environment to build loyalty for patients and facilitate referrals from them.

A lot can be said for the strategy of building your practice marketing “from the inside out”. This involves spending time first training your team on how to deal with telephone enquiries before you spend money on advertising (which is designed to get the phone to ring). The more you spend on your internal marketing the greater the return from your external marketing as more enquiries get converted (via the improved telephone skills) into appointments who (due to the excellent service levels in the practice) become loyal patients and then in turn (again due to the excellent service levels in the practice)refer their friends.

KEEP MORE: There is an often quoted business adage that the cost of getting a new customer (patient) is 7-10 times the cost of keeping your existing customers (patients). As such, the best strategy for growing your business is often not from getting more patients but from maintaining your patient base in your practice.

Did you know that most practices lose 20% of their patient base every year and don’t know it? Think about it… you are probably getting new patients regularly. But if you aren’t getting any busier it is probably because some/many of your patients are quietly leaving. They may not be asking for their x-rays to be transferred, they are just moving on. Imagine the practice growth that would occur if you simply plugged the patient leaks in your practice...There are a few ways to identify your patient leaks and combat the disappearing patients. You can:
a) regularly survey your patients: If asked appropriately, most patients will agree to do an anonymous survey about their experience in your practice post treatment. It not only provides patients a place to praise your team, but also to vent any possible frustrations they may have (thereby preventing them doing so in public forums and online) and provide invaluable feedback on how you could improve the service levels in your practice.

b) understand the art of communication: a common reason a patient will leave your practice is “they tried to sell me something I didn’t need”. Many dentists feel that they have to ‘sell’ treatment to their patients. Learning how to communicate effectively without a glimmer of a sales pitch ensures that you maintain integrity with your patients and they see you as the solution to their dental conditions, not someone trying to sell them expensive dentistry that they don’t need.

c) focus energy on your regular 6 monthly visits: the bread and butter of many practices is the regular 6 monthly visits/check-ups. These visits not only provide you with opportunities to build loyalty, prevent any dental problems becoming conditions, but also give you opportunities to diagnose problems if necessary. If you have noticed you have a large number of patients who haven’t visited in a while, it is probably worth ensuring your front office team and dentist/hygienist understand and are able to communicate the value of the 6 monthly visits.

DO MORE: Are you referring out a lot of work that could be done by you or your practice, but you lack either the skills or the confidence? A great way to build your business is to be able to do more treatment in house. This can be achieved through learning a new mode of dentistry such as sleep dentistry, ortho (including invisalign), implants etc or hiring a new dentist or hygienist to do these things in your practice. Through this, you may be able to not only keep a lot of business in-house, but also reinvigorate your clinical skills and confidence. However, without the communication skills mentioned above in point 3, you may not get the case acceptance to do these treatments.

LEARN MORE: A lot of dentists spend time worrying about small stuff (I remember once when I was in practice, I focussed a lot of energy on something as stupid as the number of stamps the front desk were using) and not on the KPIS of the business. By learning what numbers to look at you learn what areas of the business to focus and spend energy on.

More and more dentists are coming to realise the shortcomings of their university education lies in the lack of business and management studies. The expectation for many is that they will open a practice within a few years after graduation. But how are you supposed to know how to run a business? What are the numbers you need to keep on top of? What is leadership, what is management and how/when should you do what? How do you deal with the myriad of staff issues, compliance issues, etc. Many dentists discover the answer to these questions through trial and error at the expense of their wallet and the opportunity cost of their time.

Obviously each of these is important in and of itself, but the secret to steadily building your business is to not lose sight of any of them. A combination of getting more, keeping more, doing more and learning more is a guaranteed method to ensure the sustainability of your practice.