Over the past few years there’s been a big change in the way dental practices are operating. More people are now entering the private market and so are trying to find ways to attract more patients and compete against their local rivals. The problem however is that while all practice principals will have gained excellent clinical skills over the years, very many lack the business skills to help them realise their practice’s full business potential.
The first thing you need to do is ask yourself: what sort of dentistry do you want to do? Once you’ve decided this you then need to attract the right sort of people to your practice. This is marketing, and it comes in many different forms. If you ask me, ‘What sort of marketing activity will attract me 100 new patients?’ I will tell you that you’re looking at marketing the wrong way. What you really need to be doing is carrying out 100 activities that will give you one patient each, so that if a few of these patients drop out you still have 80 or 90 new patients to treat. Instead of looking for a quick fix you need to build a robust system over time that will give you solid long-term growth.
Digital marketing is a particularly hot topic at the moment. The thing is, it’s not just about having a website, but how you use that website and what you do with it. The same applies to social media. It’s not simply a case of having a social media account, but it’s considering what you actually do with that account, and how you use it to interact with patients and build relationships. It’s all about creating a ‘brand’ for your practice – creating a set of unique selling points that establishes your identity and creates something patients can trust and believe in.
Once you have people coming through the door who are wanting the type of dentistry that you offer it’s then about the changes that you can make to make their experience within the practice as good as possible. These sorts of things depend very much on your team, and having the right team of people who reflect your business values. You can’t do anything without a great team in place so it’s important that you build a team that you can rely on to help your practice grow.
If you’d like to learn more about some of the issues I’ve discussed here – and many more besides – on Saturday 9th November I will be presenting a lecture alongside my wife Bhavna at the BACD Annual Conference. In our lecture, ‘Entrepreneurial Thinking for Strategic Success!’ we will cover many different facets to strategic thinking and business management to help you take your practice to the next level. We will use examples from big business, and some of the world’s most successful CEOs and apply their thinking to dentistry. Leadership in particular is an area we will give a lot of attention to, and we will also explore strategies for eliminating local competition and making your practice really stand out from the crowd. We hope delegates will leave our lecture feeling inspired and reinvigorated, armed with plenty of hints and tips they can take away for strategic success!
This year’s BACD Annual Conference will be held on Thursday 7th, Friday 8th and Saturday 9th November 2013 at the Hilton London Metropole Hotel. For further information call 0207 612 4166, fax 0207 182 7123, email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or visit www.bacd.com
About the author:
Dr Rahul Doshi qualified from Guys Hospital in 1991. He is the clinical director and founder of The Perfect Smile Studios and the Advanced Training Institute, where he teaches Interdisciplinary Comprehensive Aesthetic Hands-On Dentistry. He is also on the Board of the BACD.
