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| All your bites are belong to us. |
The office is impressively well-wired. An iPod powers the audio system while each examination room has a flat-panel display running Dentrix's Mercedes-featured software. It thus shouldn't have surprised me when, about fifteen minutes into the cleaning, the display changed in the periphery. The results were processed and already ready for review. Normal X-ray film images are literally full-scale, that is teensy. These are a quarter-screen big without excessive pixelization. I could see the "amalgam tattoo," a small piece of silver left >25 years ago during a filling. Unlike standard X-rays, it's sensitive enough to determine differences between silver and composite fillings. And if you get bored with that, there are also a potpourri of standard Photoshop adjustments: zoom, fiddling with contrast and brightness, bas relief, and texturizing. All they need to do is add 3-D and we can have keyframe animation of my mouth. (ewwww.)
The big buzz in the industry is cosmetic dentistry. There's no insurance oversight, so the sky's the limit on the revenue potential. A particular article caught my attention. Dr. Tom Orent, whose claim to fame is increasing his practice's revenue 50% over the last two years through proactive marketing of cosmetic dental services, offered ten tips for building a practice. (This is a lead-in to his seminars and services.)
[O]ne of the most common things written on our cosmetic questionnaire is [...] “If you were to have your smile improved, what might this do for you personally and/or professionally?”[...]Wow... this is so totally from Paco Underhill's Why We Buy and Robert Cialdini's Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion books. (Readers under forty may remember my sales parable two years ago.) Dr. Orent nails it when he says these are services purchased emotionally. Whiter teeth won't help you chew food any better, but they may increase your self-confidence, which enhances your chances of getting laid. (See also Maslow's Needs Hierarchy) So will alcohol, which is cheaper, but sometimes has dizzying after effects.
Identifying the patients’ key emotional reason for showing up in your chair is paramount. Lend a listening ear, and learn exactly which emotional key has driven them to your office. They are not there by accident. The secret to your cosmetic and reconstructive practice success lies in identifying the real reason they’re in your chair.
Based on a quick survey, porcelain veneers cost an average of $1,500 per tooth and last 10-15 years.
3) Develop New Patient Phone ProtocolCRM, baby! From what I've observed, automating CRM is hard and expensive. (He is, of course, advocating the more manual method. For a small office, this would be much more cost effective as long as procedures were followed.) A friend's company had moved to Salesforce.com. A few months after rollout, they started looking for a replacement system because they were frustrated with the system outages. What apparently put them over the edge was a lack of integration with all of the accounting and back-office functions.
From the moment the new patient makes the initial phone contact, everything should be scripted and consistent, regardless of which staff member takes the call. What sort of information would you like to glean at this time? What should you be telling them? The use of a phone routing slip is very helpful. Develop a list of the key items you want covered during every new patient call.
5) Marketing Plan -- Roger Levin’s definition: 40 positive, consistent, simultaneous messages! [...] Why reinvent the wheel? There are plenty of folks who’ve done tremendously well marketing dental services. Learn from us. And when you do, follow Dan Kennedy’s advice, “have a propensity for massive action.” Don’t try this strategy or that strategy. Try them all. Yesterday. And track, track, track! Unless you are absolutely certain where every last patient came from, you’ll never be able to make an intelligent decision on where your next ad dollar should be spent.What is the sound of one drip marketing? Hint: like a shotgun, only stickier. The basic premise is to do frequent campaigns, each tracked, in the hopes that something will stick. In the longer term, it serves as a means of getting one's name out and in front of people. My realtor does this, as does the guy who I bought the minivan from three years ago. Initially it's kind of weird, but I realize it's all business.
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| Your results may vary. |
9) Imaging―I could no longer do without Tail that wags the dog. Imaging creates excitement and anticipation. [...] Patients have every reason to feel uneasy about the purchase of major cosmetic dental services. You have a picture in your mind of the final result. Put that picture on the screen and share it with the future owner![...]Once a customer is in, you know their motivations, and they're self-qualified to afford these services, the coup de grace is the technology showing them a mock-up of the proposed results. This is sooooo much more compelling than the stock photography with models. Currently, there are outsourced services that will generate samples in around a week, but the systems are becoming cheap enough that they'll soon be in dental offices everywhere.
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