Dental Practice Marketing is crucial now more than ever

Middle Class Riots and Dentists……..

A couple of items of interest this week, seemingly unrelated but actually a lot in common that apply to you, your practice, and your kids if you got ’em.

First some insight by Thomas Friedman on the one social motivator in common from every one of the recent riots from around the world be it the middle-east, Israel, and now UK.  That commonality is a scared middle class fearing it and its’ offspring being left out of attainable and affordable futures.  Old, lazy, middle class jobs, going bye-bye by the millisecond.  Get ready, the fun is only just beginning.  What are you up to in dental practice marketing and getting better at promotion and selling to those who can and will be able to buy your services?

Funny thing is, you can take that same news and apply it to anyone in the service professions as well.  Your future requires a much higher level of operational skills, yes the easy stuff (the dentistry) is still important but in the hard stuff, dental practice marketing (promotion, presenting, and selling your services.) outweighing the others’ import 10 to 1.  While its doubtful dentists will be burning their compressors in anger anytime soon over their sinking futures, those who attack these non-clinical issues ahead of their peers will be the ones who maintain their accustomed lifestyles both in practice and personally.

Wal-Mart discount model ALWAYS comes with problems. 

Whenever, I discuss pricing models and review the littered field of discounters that have come and gone, Wal-mart invariably comes up.  Wal-mart is finally getting out Wal-mart’d by other entities and is feeling the pain.  Besides simply suffering in its category, Wal-mart is painfully learning that consumers driven by cost simply aren’t loyal (sound familiar to those 100% entrenched with 3rd party reimbursement?) and exude the mantra of “what have you done for me lately” at every turn.  Yes, angry cornered dogs can and do still bite and there is plenty of fight left in the behemoth BUT the moral to the story is that he who plays the lowest margin game ALWAYS gets beaten by someone else who will go even lower.

If you’re caught in a decreasing margin game, your choices are:  1) ride it into the ground until you can’t patch the holes in the walls or unclog the toilet anymore, 2) decide to gradually shift what and who you sell to (need specialized tools for that in dental practice marketing), 3) get off one pony and take up another one (sell the dying practice) and move to start one completely fee for service, or 4) hope retirement comes soon.

Education and then some:  Online dental  practice marketing and case acceptance training. 

Some of the most uninhabited buildings in the country are our libraries where information on all manner of topics including how to be successful or run a business is bountiful.  We’re at the tipping point of online education for those who want to step above others in knowledge and know how.

Virtual and Artificial, but 58,000 Want Course at Stanford University
PALO ALTO, Calif. — A free online course at Stanford University on artificial intelligence, to be taught this fall by two leading experts from Silicon Valley, has attracted more than 58,000 students around the globe — a class nearly four times the size of Stanford’s entire student body.

The course is one of three being offered experimentally by the Stanford computer science department to extend technology knowledge and skills beyond this elite campus to the entire world, the university is announcing on Tuesday.

The online students will not get Stanford grades or credit, but they will be ranked in comparison to the work of other online students and will receive a “statement of accomplishment.”

The rapid increase in the availability of high-bandwidth Internet service, coupled with a wide array of interactive software, has touched off a new wave of experimentation in education.

For example, the Khan Academy, which focuses on high school and middle school, intentionally turns the relationship of the classroom and homework upside down. Students watch lectures at home, then work on problem sets in class, where the teacher can assist them one on one.
Excerpted from Original:  The New York Times 8/16/11

This same ability to train online and have your questions handled live by phone or in person with the guru, is now at hand in many arena’s in dentistry both clinically and non-clinically.  We’re proud to be the very very very first in dentistry to have a 100% online case acceptance training course accessible by any dentist on the planet who wants to help more patients, stay ahead of the middle class changes that are rolling through all economies (good, bad, and ugly) and to do all of that with minimal or even no travel.

Introducing the McAnally Selling System.  No excuse with travel or barrier.  Including cost as even a dental student could make the investment….

My program members also get the marketing tools to advertise for patients that need their best clinical skills. The Niche advertising materials help them get more and better patients who need their care.

Check out my #1 top selling book on Amazon.