Dental Practice Marketing-Getting Appropriate Fees for Skill, Caring and Judgement
In my dental practice marketing series I cannot emphasize enough how much you must attract the correct patient who will be happy to pay you for your skill, care and judgement.
Heading back to Miami after a successful Elite meeting. Most members reporting year on year growth, best quarters EVER, etc.
Gave an updated presentation on how to get fees appropriate to advanced levels of skill, care and judgement that quite literally is THE ONE SINGLE presentation that will pay for the entire $60K Elite Program course within 60 days. It is a simple dental practice marketing strategy of checklists which I have developed in my own practice and which I now share with program members. Check out my website here.
My big a-ha was the importance of moving this presentation to day 1 for all new members in the Program so they can get their return and then continue to move on to effective marketing for complex cases and selling ethically to help patients make the best decisions possible about their dentistry. For the past 3 years, it’s been in month 9 of our training program. Shame on James!
Effective dental practice marketing (the ads) and understanding do’s and don’ts with elective case marketing are huge long term money savers—hundreds of thousands in the lifetime of the practice but GETTING appropriate fees is fundamental regardless of whether one “believes” in promotion.
For dentists not familiar with our Programs, here is what awaits. The clock on being independent under reimbursement schemes (in the U.S. in particular is ticking). If your practice is still at least 25-30% fee for service…..the path to a more fulfilled practice, helping more patients, and being well compensated is still a fairly easy one—that is IF you make some smart decisions before your avenues for ethically selling at appropriate fees become more limited by the percentage of your patient base which is discounted by legal contract.
For those who are too deep into discounted plans (85% of the practice or higher being dependent on delta or PPO dentistry), then the first step has to be elevating ethical sales abilities to fund new dental practice marketing for patients outside the contracts. For doctors in this situation who have “high lifestyle costs” and are locked into discounting, you truly face tremendous difficulties. Everyone NOT in that came have very straight forward choices in these matters…..
Appropriate fees allow you the freedom for a lot of things: better lifestyle, more time to work on the business, more time to think, a healthier existence/less injury from doing the dentistry, a better staff, better facility, better CE, etc.
Outside of appropriate fees, how to get them, how to ethically sell (based on behavioral science—yes it exists), most dentists simply do not understand the difference between a “working on building the business” day versus an “admin” day. Getting the two confused is a HUGE limiting factor in whether one ever escapes the business OWNING you. As a simple example, if you are going to Costco on your “working on the business day,” YOU very likely serve the business and are its slave.
Stepping back from the micro…..another deep truth today. Ultimately everyone (dentists or not) has the reality of a race against the clock until the “dash” on your grave stone is complete (born DASH died). The last questions in life will be, did I live, did I love, and did I matter.
It’s truly hard to matter in dentistry, ESPECIALLY for those with advanced skills, if you aren’t serving as many patients as you could be because of deficiencies that are known to you but are not addressed. If it’s a willing choice—it borders on personal negligence! Consider the appropriate dental practice marketing skills that you need…….why not check out #1 top selling book on Amazon.
