Trying To Grow Your Dental Practice But Unhappy With Results? Here's Why...
Growth isn't automatic, but can be automated!
3 Reasons Why A Practice Fails To Grow
You may be growing your practice now, but that growth comes at a cost. The cost of unconverted leads and lost opportunities is non-trivial.
1. You are seeing qualified patients, but some (a LOT, actually) don’t accept the Treatment Plan presented. You don’t have a system to follow up on unaccepted treatment plans. [Too many patients don’t accept the treatment plan & you don’t have a system to follow up…]
2. You need MORE high value appointments that will become compliant patients who will pay, stay and refer. You spend money on direct response marketing, both online & offline, but you are unhappy with results because only a tiny fraction of leads generated actually become new patients.
3. You have grateful patients who give you good ratings and reviews, but they don’t generate referrals. They WILL refer you patients if you ask, but you don’t have a system that gently solicits referrals.
You may be growing your practice now, but that growth comes at a cost. The cost of unconverted leads and lost opportunities is non-trivial. When one in four leads book an appointment and one in three appointments become new patients, you have about ten unconverted leads for every new patient you acquire. If even one in ten unconverted lead converts and one in ten grateful patient gives you 3 to 4 referrals a year, imagine what it will do for your practice growth.
Problem with Appointment Automation Systems
Your appointment automation system only works when they book an appointment. What happens when they DON'T book?
Why your current "APPOINTMENT SYSTEMS' fail to deliver practice growth
An appointment automation system that is native to or natively integrated with your practice management system is great for reminding patients about upcoming appointments and even sending out reminder emails and text messages to schedule the next hygiene appointments but these systems don’t do anything to persuade new prospects who do not have patient records established yet. Appointment tools manage appointments booked, they don’t book new appointments… so NO GROWTH.
Problem of patients saying “NO”
Most dental practices invest valuable time, energy, and resources in marketing, but these tools fail to perform WHEN A PATIENT SAYS 'NO'
Why your current marketing ‘systems’ fail to deliver practice growth
Most marketing 'systems' that are connected to your PMS only focus on routine care, hygiene and perio-maintenance routine but fail to persuade patients with unaccepted treatment plans to come back for a follow up consultation. The appointment automation system keeps the relationship going, but when a relationship stops or fails to start the appointment automation systems don’t do anything to address that problem. If you have one in four leads book an appointment and one in three appointment becomes an NP (New Patient), for every NP you get, there are 11 unconverted leads and lost opportunities that go un-monetized. When you spend MORE money on marketing, sure, you get more NP, but you also get MORE unconverted leads. You don’t have money to burn on generating leads that don’t convert… so NO GROWTH.
The problem of grateful patients not generating referrals
The built in tools in the Practice management systems and appointment automation tools generate ratings and reviews, but they fail to overtly ask for a referral from a grateful patient.
Why your current REVIEW and REPUTATION ‘systems’ fail to deliver practice growth
We’ve seen it time and time again. You will SEE, FEEL and HEAR gratitude in your patient’s voice, body language and attitude. You and your staff get hugs, handshakes and high-fives (maybe) and at that time you fail to graciously take a bow and capitalize on this opportunity to coach them on how to identify an ideal patient for your practice and teach them how to introduce your practice using the right language. Many dental practices don’t even have referral tools that the grateful patients can hand out to their friends. Simple techniques like ‘three business card trick’ or ‘letter of gratitude to mom’ are not frequently used in dental practices. No wonder most dental practices miss out on the most lucrative segment of the market: prospects referred to practice by grateful patients.