In your dental
practice, you may find
certain challenges in promoting its growth. People come to me and ask,
“What do
I have to do to get new patients?”, or “How should
I resolve my cash flow
problems?”, or even “I've tried everything, but
nothing seems to work. How do I
cope up with this situation?”. If you think that there's so
much challenge
along the way to your dental practice growth, or even asking why you
can't even
get your own dental practice up a notch to the next level, believe me
when I
tell you this: In my own dental practice, I've faced it all, those
challenges
that may arise in the growth of my dental practice... yet I managed to
solve
everything!
As I
always
highlight to my clients,
making use of the Internet would be very helpful in promoting the
growth of
your dental practice. As more and more people are going on-line as part
of
their daily activities, you need to build your own dental website.
Build a
website in such a way that it can increase the traffic of the people
checking
out your website. So, the more traffic you get, the more chances of
getting new
patients in your practice.
Create A
Gameplan:
Another
way to promote the growth of your own dental practice is through
creating a
good gameplan. First, you set the number of new patients that you want
to have,
for example, in a month, so that by doing this you may be able to set
and
target the specific number of patients that you want to have, for say
in a
month (let's say 3 patients in a month, and as time passes by you can
increase
them by 4 or 5 patients a month). Second, set plans on what type of
patients
you want to have in your
dental
practice, based on their status and professions (accountants, lawyers,
engineers,etc.), and having this in mind will help you in setting up
the income
that you would like to earn in a month (how much you would charge for
this type
of patient who is from a certain kind of profession). Third, set up the
number
of referrals you want to make in your dental practice, and to do this,
make it
a point that you will be able to satisfy your patients with your
services that
you offer them, and with this there would be a big possibility that
they will
be able to refer you to their family and friends. And fourth, set the
expected
worth of each of you patient, or this would mean the lifetime value of
each of
your new patient (let's say, for your engineer patients you set a
charge of
$900 for them, for lawyers you set $950 for them, etc., so you would be
able to
set how much income you would want to have within a month or a year).
Develop
Empathy:
Another
important thing that you may
need to develop for the growth of your dental practice is empathy. By
definition, it is an intellectual or imaginative apprehension of
another's
condition or state of mind. You have to have a complete understanding
of the
psychological state of mind of your patient, and they would be able to
sense it
without you having to tell them. By doing this you will be able to gain
their
trust, and they will be more open to share their problems to you as
their
dentist, and they will more likely accept the treatments that you give
them.
Go After
The
Hidden
Goldmine:
What
I like my
clients to focus on as
well to promote the growth of their dental practice is to go after the
hidden
goldmine of their practice. By hidden goldmine, I mean the inactive and
unfinished treatment base in your practice. The best way to do this is
through
certain ways: you can send out 3 step to 4 step direct mail campaign,
offer your
patients credits towards any cosmetic dentistry, do voice broadcast to
your
patient's homes or phone calls, or you can also use e-mails as a
multimedia
approach. Any of these will be very helpful in your practice.
Actually
there are lots of other available options for you in promoting the
growth of
your dental practice, the ones mentioned above are just one of the good
ways of
doing it. Always remember to not rely on only one method. Do
variations.
Combine methods. And you'll see that promoting the growth of your
dental
practice only takes strategy and hard work as well!
