Growing your business from the Inside Out

As we all know, this time of year, dental offices slow down a bit. The credit card payments have arrived, your patients are not scheduling their appointments or they are heading south for a break from the Canadian weather.

Dentists, Associates and Dental Team have more time on their hands and can assist in the growth of the dental practice. There are many ways to grow your practice without the need for expensive marketing campaigns, radio ads and newspaper posts. Utilizing your amazing team and the patients that already appreciate you and the services you provide, is the most effective way to grow your practice and fill your dental chairs.

Long term treatment planning

If you have open time, going through the files of patient who have been in your practice over the past month, both new patients and current, is one of the best ways to fill your days with productive appointments. Opening their treatment plans, reviewing their x-rays and photos, looking at them with a lifetime plan in mind is an exceptional way to promote new business. Once you have a lifetime plan, schedule your patient and their spouse for a half hour LIFETIME PLANNING Consult.

When the patient and their spouse arrive, seat them in the consult room, have the photos and x-rays ready along with a treatment plan that is written in terms that they will understand. Prior to discussing their treatment, do some WKY and get to know your patients better. When do they want to retire, do they want to stay in Canada or go abroad, will they have a benefits package after retirement and is dentistry part of their pension savings? All good questions to open the conversation and discuss treatment needed down the road.

When they leave, make sure you have given them a copy of their plan and email them notes following the appointment to clarify goals and expectations.

Team Training

When there is down time, an exceptional time to bring your team together and ask them what 5 things they would like to learn. Once that is established, spend the time to train your team. If you have a CBCT, teach all the team to take the x-rays and read them, scroll through the images and give them information that the patients would be interested in.

If you have an intraoral scanner, have them practice scanning on each other to improve their scan speed and comfort level.

If possible, dental team should all be scheduling appts from the back to increase case acceptance and decrease hand off miscommunication. A good time to train the team on that skill.

Team Dental Care / BOTOX /Facial esthetics

The best advertisers for your work is your team. Complete composite veneers, BOTOX, facial esthetics and have a focus for each of these offerings each month. The team must speak to at least five patients per day about one of these focussed offerings, this will increase production and make your team happy.