By: Dan Pisek, Practice Marketing Coach
With dentistry becoming more competitive every day, you need
to be running your practice more and more like a business. After all, along
with being a health care provider, you are also an entrepreneur who has a
vision for achieving success.
I can tell you from my own experience that success in business starts when you have the right game plan and the right people around you. As an avid sports fan, I’m amazed by how many times the team with the most individual talent does not win the championship. The Boston Bruins, New York Giants, Dallas Mavericks, St. Louis Cardinals are the defending champions in their respective sports. But in each of their league finals, these teams all beat opponents that had superior line-ups on paper. How did they do it? They had a winning game plan and a great team to make the game plan happen.
I enjoy taking the role of a practice marketing coach with my clients. First, we create a winning game plan together, and then bring the team together to really “work” the plan. This “bringing together” usually begins with a marketing team rally, where my goal is to begin instilling more of a sales and marketing-minded culture in the practice.
While this team sport analogy may seem like a basic enough concept, I am amazed at how few practices actually work their practice marketing with any kind of team system.
I have a client where the doctor made a significant marketing investment in transitioning his newly purchased practice. The project involved brand and logo design, a new website design and a patient-directed newsletter to inform customers about the exciting changes happening at the practice. Then it was time to begin marketing externally to attract new patients with a professional mailer program. The piece looked great and went out as planned to the targeted local community. Everything was in place - except the team piece. No one had informed the front desk that these pieces were about to land and to be ready for the incoming calls. The phone rang, but the front desk was not ready. With the first mailing of that campaign, our response rate was good, but our conversion rate was only 14 percent. For each of the next three mailings, we were ready, and the conversion on average rose to a very healthy 72%.
Good teamwork starts with good communication. Many practices I meet already have regular team meetings to discuss everything going on with the practice. However, it’s time to make the marketing of your practice part of these meetings as well. You would be amazed at the benefit realized by simply committing a 15 minute block every month to this discussion.
1. LEAD BY EXAMPLE: Walk your talk. Practice what you preach. Set the tone. Communicate well.
2. PUT THE RIGHT PEOPLE ON YOUR TEAM: All it takes is one bad player to upset the chemistry of what we are trying to do. Sometimes changes to the team line-up are required.
3. APPOINT A TEAM MARKETING LEAD: They are playing in the game themselves, and have the initiative and trust from the team to lead the charge.
4. SHARE RESULTS WITH YOUR TEAM: Track the metrics. Get testimonials. Get feedback and share with your group.
5. STUDY THE COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE: Have everyone engaged on your team keep an eye on what your competitors are doing - so to best differentiate and position the brand of your practice.
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