How do you make your dental practice resilient? 

In a recent article in INC magazine, venture capitalist Dave Whorton and Red Herring co-founder Chris Alden used the term ‘evergreen’ to describe the increasing number of private, profitable, market leading businesses designed to remain independent for a long, long time.

In other words, they possess abundant, healthy longevity that is grounded in their very nature. To me, that sounds exactly like the high quality, relationship-based practice each of us is attempting to create and develop all day every day in our professional lives.

Whorton and Alden identified seven very instructive characteristics of an evergreen company. I adapted them to be relative to a relationship-based dental practice. Let’s take a look.

How to Create a Relationship-Based Evergreen Dental Practice

1. Purpose

Being passionately driven by a compelling vision and mission. There is no substitute for clarity around your WHY. It is your unique story.

2. Perseverance

Having the grit to get through and past barriers. When you have a long term perspective of your practice, professional career, and life, the short term trials seem much less daunting. Those trials also occupy much less space in what you measure as important. The destination is a fixed standard. The time required to get there is a variable. I call that standard an ‘unchanging point of light.’

3. People First

The people of your world are both the reason for your work and the vehicle to make that work come to life. Surrounding yourself with the best and most talented people available to you is the most powerful accelerator to your practice development.

4. Private

Your dental practice, even with multiple dentists and a large team, is still a micro enterprise owned and operated by practicing dentists within the practice. This makes your enterprise much more agile, responsive, and tactical. It is one of the critical advantages we have over large corporate ownership.

5. Profitability

Profitability is a measure of value delivered to the patient. By building high trust relationships that essentially function as partnerships, the patient is much more likely to choose comprehensive solutions to their problems. This builds productivity and profitability.

6. Paced Growth

Focusing on long term strategies of practice growth and development creates a mindset of investment in people, technology, and skills. This creates a brand and practice culture that are unique in the marketplace with the power to attract and retain great people. These people are your team, your patients, and your interdisciplinary team of specialists and technicians.

7. Pragmatic Innovation

The best dental practices we know continually educate themselves and their patients. They employ contemporary technologies that are critical to their performance and results. They never stop seeking a better way to do what they do. In short, they lead, they innovate, and they teach others to do the same. It is a mindset and a way of life.

It’s been a decade and a half since I hung my shingle. While setting up and decorating my first office, I printed several signs stating, ‘PLEASE POWER DOWN CELL PHONES’ and strategically placed them around the office.

Why Smartphones Work in the Dental Practice

Fast forward to today and my attitude towards mobile devices in the office has taken an about-face. We now harness the power of having them in the clinical area. Where years ago we viewed smart devices as a distraction, today I acknowledge that they are a part of who we are and how we relate. Perhaps they even store some of our Cartesian sense of self within their connections to the cloud beyond them.

I’d love to share a few tricks that use smart devices for obvious uses in documentation and communication, but more importantly, impress their magical power as a tool in behavioral development and patient assessment.

Consider this: A consult appointment has reached a critical moment. You are knee to knee and eye to eye with your patient. Your diagnosis is clear and it is the opportunity to pass ownership of the patient’s condition to them. Your eyes are connected and gleaming — then a loud siren blares from the patient’s pocket.

There are several alternative versions of how this vignette continues . . .

1.  The patient giggles with embarrassment and says, “Sorry I didn’t turn that off Doc.”  

2. The patient halts your conversation, answers the phone with unapologetic alacrity, and discusses weekend plans with the caller, index finger up, signaling “hold-on.”

3. The patient gives a meek apology, answers a call, and speaks softly with their head down. When you return from checking hygiene, they explain that their mother is in hospice care.

4. The patient lowers their eyes, returns a text message, and gives a subtle nod as if they didn’t miss a word of your conversation.

To be continued …

Customer equity in the dental practice is the retention of existing patients and attraction of new ones. This ensures patients can have more of the dentistry they don’t realize they need. So how do you find and retain new patients?

Asking for New Patient Referrals

New patients come from a combination of invitations, referrals, and marketing. You can have much more control over internal marketing than external. This is the environment you create in your practice that incites patients to refer you to their personal networks.

You must create a safe, non-judgmental system for asking for referrals and having those important conversations in your practice. Most importantly, you must choose the right patients to ask, because some will be too difficult or unreceptive to the question. Some may also be patients that you don’t want extensive relationships with. In that case, you may thank them for offering, but make it clear you aren’t looking for new patients with a soft statement.

Asking for new patient referrals is made easy by the fact that you usually know immediately which patients will be receptive. These are the model patients who pay bills in a timely fashion, care about your suggestions, and are just generally amazing for whatever reason.

Identify potential patient ‘marketers’ in your morning huddle on a regular basis. Then pose the question to these patients in a casual, non-aggressive manner. You can be joking, vulnerable, honest, reserved … whatever tone you think will work best with that particular patient. The request should flatter them or feel good to them.

This is how you create and seize opportunities. It can also occur naturally if they compliment you, but there is no shame in being upfront about asking for referrals.

How do you handle patient referrals in your dental practice? Leave your thoughts in the comments! 

Cost vs. Benefit of Building an Online Presence

Blogs are all the rage for company websites and an increasing number of dental practices are using them. You may have already dipped your toe in by starting one or wondered if it’s worth it.

The answer is: Sort of.

What’s a Blog and Why Do I Need It?

A blog is simply a short or long amount of written information added regularly to a specific page on a website (this is getting pretty meta, isn’t it?). It’s a place where people write public thoughts, opinions, etc. Usually, it’s more casual than most other website copy. In the dental practice world, you might use it to explain common questions patients have in more detail, relate patient success stories, or talk about your practice values/events.

Saying you need a blog though is like saying you need a new paint job in the office. Unless the place looks like a barnyard shack and paint is peeling down entire walls, it’s hard to determine exactly how much of an effect the improvement is having.

Understanding the Pros and Cons of a Dental Practice Blog

Blogs – in marketing a business – are used mainly to improve Google ranking. A higher Google ranking for keywords related to your practice like, ‘[insert state/city] dentist,’ means you’re one of the first links a potential patient sees. They aren’t likely to look past the first page.

Your initial instinct might be to post randomly generated nonsense using ideal keywords. Unfortunately, Google is too smart to let people game the system that easily (not to mention it looks crazy next to the rest of your gorgeous website and people will actually try to read it).

Blog content has to be readable and it has to be mostly real/unique. Effective blog posts are Frankenstein monsters of actual relevant content and arbitrary computer info that helps Google do its thing (i.e. keywords interspersed a maximum and minimum % throughout, meta descriptions, titles of a certain length and structure, headings, overall blog length, and so on). There are WordPress plugins that will help you manage the latter.

Here’s the clincher. Your ranking won’t be boosted to any useful degree by posting an ideal blog once a month or once a year. For the system to work, you have to post regularly. The exact amount of times a week or month is unclear, but at least once a week is preferred.

If you don’t have the resources, time, or desire to make decent content and post it often (or have someone else do it), there isn’t much point to doing it occasionally. It’s going to be off-putting to potential and current patients browsing your website if the latest post on your blog is many months to multiple years old. It looks unprofessional and makes it seem like your practice went off the radar for a long period of time.

Basically, if you can’t hire someone for the amount of time it takes to completely paint the wall and/or don’t have the ability to finish it yourself …. well, why even start in the first place?

What has your experience been of incorporating a blog into your practice website? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!

No matter what generation you grew up in, marketing a dental practice with social media can be a deceptively simple endeavor. What we mean is that social media, when done right, is not challenging to actually carry out. It’s not rocket science, but it does follow some rules that are easy to overlook.

Do I Really Need Social Media for My Dental Practice?

Yes, you really do. It’s not that you need a social media presence run by ten professional marketers capable of soaking up dozens of hours and tons of money. It’s that the absence of adequate social media can damage the way potential patients view you when they look you up online or are referred by a friend.

Not having a social media is odd nowadays. It’s the measure by which we as a society determine the popularity and even the viability of a business or practice.

Simple Ways to Maximize Social Media Effectiveness

Personal and professional social media should not be carried out in exactly the same way. This is the most significant issue with many dental practice’s social media accounts.

In a personal profile, it doesn’t matter if: the pictures are posted randomly, the quality is low, the info isn’t particularly useful , and the grammar is poor. That’s basically expected.

Professional social media should be the opposite. It should be curated on a regular basis with high quality imagery and equally high quality writing. Once you’ve done that, you’re on your way to social media that effectively markets your practice. It should embody the same qualities and sensibility you want patients to associate with your particular dental brand.

Your profile provides a look inside your practice that personalizes/humanizes it and encourages communication with patients. This does not mean it is a place to break down professional barriers between practice and patient.

Finally, don’t feel obligated to use every social media platform that exists. You can safely assume that the trifecta of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter will cover the majority of your bases. There are pros and cons to all three. Younger generations are losing interest in Facebook, but older generations seem to love it. Instagram attracts a wide variety of ages that include millennials and younger audiences. Twitter’s shortcoming is that information circulates rapidly; one post a week isn’t enough to make much of a difference.

But like we mentioned before, you don’t necessarily have to invest heavily in social media, attempting to acquire new patients from this avenue. First and foremost, social media simply provides more easily accessible information about your practice to potential patients and should help them be more comfortable choosing you as their dentist.

What do you love or dislike about social media as a marketing tool? Please let us know your thoughts in the comments!

Patient focus groups are useful for truly understanding the experience people have at your dental practice. You can go right to the source for questions you have about patient perceptions, instead of speculating based on your own point of view.  

In my last blog, I introduced the why and how of a patient focus group my wife Amy and I hosted to celebrate our practice’s 25th anniversary. The first four questions we asked invited patients to share their thoughts. Our final question was:

If you could design the perfect dental practice, what would it look like? (2 groups)

Read on to learn what the focus group taught us …

Results of the Patient Focus Group at My Dental Practice

The ensuing conversations and comments from our five main questions were uplifting and empowering for everyone on our team. We all found it quite interesting that their comments were rarely about our dentistry but rather about how we make them FEEL when they are with us. We thanked them for their participation and invited each of them to refer others who share similar values.

While the evening was considered a huge success, the impact came in subsequent waves of influence. With their permission, we proudly display the portraits and quotes throughout the office and on our website (www.huntdentistry.com). Each of these patients have become empowered to refer countless other “A” patients to us. The portraits have become a daily source of inspiration for our team and other patients – “How can I get my picture on the wall?”

The “focus group” concept really helped to reaffirm our practice mission of developing trusting relationships with as many of our patients as possible and helping them become healthier and happier through our compassionate care. We’re all looking forward to our 30-year anniversary!

How would you host a patient focus group? Please let us know your thoughts in the comments!

Hosting a patient focus group can change the way you look at your dental practice. Most of the time, we see our practice not through the eyes of our patients, but through our own. The life of a dentist is hectic, filled with CE, family, and general work hours. At some point, we can benefit from taking the time to learn what commonalities and perceptions our best patients share.

Why I Hosted a Patient Focus Group at My Dental Practice

My wife Amy and I wanted to celebrate our 25th year in practice, so we decided to host a “focus group” of very special patients who represented a wide range of ages and experiences.

With our team’s input, we carefully selected 10 of our “A” patients (engaged, proactive, health oriented, appreciative) and invited them to an after hours reception at our office. The invitation list included some who had been patients for 20+ years, while others were relatively new. Some had completed complex restorative plans, while others had more simple needs. Their ages ranged from 26 to 85.

Questions Asked in the Focus Group Session

We greeted patients with champagne and light hors d’oeuvres. The group mingled while taking turns to have several images created by a professional portrait photographer. These portraits were gifts for the participants.

After a while, we settled in for a session facilitated by one of our “special” patients who prompted the group to think and then share their thoughts about the following questions:

·      What brought you here?

·      What keeps you coming back?

·      What does a nice smile mean to you?

·      What gives you confidence in the Hunts and their staff?

·      Are there any buts?

We rounded out the session with a final question that took a closer look at their ideal dental practice. You can read Part 2 in this series next week, where I’ll reveal the final fascinating question and the results of the focus group.

How do you think a patient focus group would benefit your dental practice? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!