You may have heard the abstract concept of working “on” your practice rather than “in” your practice. Meaning that every minute you spend working on tasks that can be delegated is time that you are not planning, strategizing and building the best practice possible.
Being a dentist though, you really do need to work “in” your practice on your very craft. More so than many other small business owners. So how do you accomplish the working “on” your practice part?
The best way to accomplish this is by delegating those tasks that are not within your wheelhouse or are below your pay scale. This will allow you more time to work “on” your practice. For those who like marketing and are pretty good at it, some use their “day off” to work “on” their business. Others hire people like us to help with their marketing or may use several different vendors doing a variety of marketing activities.
No matter what path you take it’s important to remember that if you want to change your results, you need to change your strategy. For us, we are pretty direct and methodical in our marketing process. We work to figure out how the practice can work harder for you than you have to work for it.
There are many ways we accomplish getting your practice to work harder for you. In fact, we’ve created a 30-question, self-assessment called, “How Does Your Practice Measure Up?”
It asks some very direct, (and very revealing) questions designed to immediately expose whether or not your practice could be working harder and more profitably for you. And, if this is indeed the case, precisely where you have the most room for improvement.
It’s the perfect groundwork to help you achieve insight into exactly where you are and also where you could go.
I invite you to take a moment right now and answer the 30 questions on this quiz. You will find your answers and their significance to the financial well-being of your practice to be apparent. At the end of the questions, you can perform your own diagnosis and see how your practice measures up.
We see many favorable practices who are missing the capability to create more income, profits and equity. Often times, creating a new or different strategy to follow, and/or adjusting the marketing you do will bring you the income and profits you’ve always imagined.
How Does Your Practice Measure Up?
1. Do you have a powerful Unique Selling Proposition (USP)* that shines through to your target market highlighting you as THE solution to the problems they have?
No (0) Yes (2)
*USP means being unique, different, extraordinary, distinctive, special in your patients’ eyes. You want to be viewed as the only given solution for the problems your patients are looking to solve.
2. Do you have a formalized, patient referral generating system working right now that your team members use and follow?
No (0)
Yes, we have a referral program but not a system that is followed to get consistent referrals (1)
Yes, we have a referral system that team members use and follow for consistent referrals (2)
3. What percentage of your active patients give you referrals?
0-5% (0) 6-10% (1) 11-20% (2) 21% or more (3)
4. Do you know what your patient attrition rate is?
No (0) Yes(2)
5. Do you know your percentage of active patients (been seen within the last 18 months) to inactive patients?
No (0) Yes (2)
6. Do you have a systematic process of follow up for every new patient?
No (0) Yes (2)
7. In the last year, what was your treatment acceptance rate?
Not sure (0) Less than 25% (0) 26-50% (1) 51-75% (2) 75% or greater (3)
8. Do you have a system in place to follow up on unscheduled treatment?
No (0) Yes (2)
9. Do you have an automated recall system?
No (0) Yes (2)
10. Do you have a patient recall/ reactivation system (beyond an automated system) that your team members use and follow each and every month?
No (0) Yes (2)
11. How often do you follow up once a patient falls off your hygiene schedule?
Never (0) 1-6 times (1) 7-12 (2) 12 or more (3)
12. How many different methods (phone, email, text, mail) do you use to communicate with your patients to get them back on your schedule?
None (0) 1 (1) 2-3 (2) 4 (3)
13. Do you know exactly where all of your new patients are coming from?
No (0) Yes (2)
14. Do you know how to get more new patients from those specific sources?
No (0) Yes (2)
15. Do you know where your biggest source of untapped new patients are?
No (0) Yes (2)
16. Do you know how to go about getting them?
No (0) Yes (2)
17. Do you have a reliable system for getting reviews and getting them where they matter most on Google, Facebook and Healthgrades?
No (0) Yes (2)
18. If “yes,” how many online reviews do you have on these outlets?
0-20 (0) 21-50 (1) 51-75 (2) 76-124 (3) 125 & over (4)
19. Do you effectively and powerfully use your reviews in all your marketing, advertising and sales efforts?
No (0) Rarely (1) Sometimes (2) Yes, they are everywhere (3)
20. How often do you send quality, personal, educational e-mails out to your patients and/or prospective patients?
Never (0) Infrequently (1) Quarterly (2) Monthly or More (3)
21. Do you know the cost of acquiring a new patients?
No (0) Yes (2)
22. Do you know what your return on investment is for each marketing source you are currently using?
No (0) Yes (2)
23. Do you have articles, special reports or books you’ve written use for promotional positioning?
No (0) Yes (2)
24. Do you know who your biggest competitors are online?
No (0) Yes (2)
25. Do you have a mobile-friendly, secure website that is highly personalized with clear call to actions for patients to contact you?
No (0) Yes (2)
26. Do you have effective search engine marketing that generates more patients? (meaning you are not only attracting them but also converting them)
No (0) Yes (2)
27. Do you have special events such as seminars, new service introductions, end of year promotions, patient appreciation events, etc.?
No (0) Yes (2)
28. Do you regularly check out your competitors to see what they may be doing that you don’t or what they are doing differently?
No (0) Yes (2)
29. Do you have a written marketing strategy and tactical implementation plan you continuously apply and follow?
No (0) Yes (2)
30. If “yes,” do you regularly monitor and measure results and performance of each element and make adjustments when performance drops or does not meet the specific goals you’ve established?
No (0) Yes (2)
THE “KEY” FOR INTERPRETING YOUR ANSWERS
Now that you’ve finished the questions in this assessment, here’s what it all means to you:
Tally up all the points assigned to your answers that are listed in the parentheses. Once you get your total, here’s what your number tells you.
- If your total points equal 17 or less, it indicates to you that your marketing is very weak. You have much opportunity for growth, greater income and greater profitability. It is ALMOST ASSURED by following a better marketing strategy. You are most likely realizing less than 25% of your real practice potential.
- If your total points equal 18 to 29, you’re doing an average amount of marketing; but your practice has exceptional room for improvement. You can likely increase your overall performance by 75% or more simply by realizing and implementing the marketing opportunities available to you.
- If your total points equal 30 to 58, you’re marketing at a decent level; but your practice still has incredible potential for improvement and growth. You can likely increase your overall performance by 50% or more merely by better understanding and applying the marketing opportunities you have available.
- If your total points exceed 58, congratulations! You’re a doing a great job as a marketer of your practice and should feel pretty good about how far you have come. But, because YOU do understand the power marketing has given to your practice there may be additional marketing opportunities available to you by taking your strategy and tactics to higher performance levels. Regardless, kudos for the accomplishments you’ve made.
