According to the American Dental Association, the average patient is worth approximately $820 per year to your practice. So if you want to build a million dollar dental practice, you need approximately 1,200 active patients (1,220 for you math majors). The key word here is "active".
We’re completing the fourth quarter of our current CEODentist Virtual Academy - a 12-week program in which I help doctors gain control of the business side of their practice by becoming CEO Dentists. Early in this program one of my clients estimated that over the years he has had over 7,000 patients on record who’d left the practice for one reason or another. That’s enough patients to build almost six unique million-dollar practices!
Now those are definitely some numbers that need to be examined. Why do patients leave? And more important, what keeps 1,200 patients coming back year after year?
Craft Your Mission and Vision: You Can’t Build Your Practice on a Shaky Foundation
Right at the start of this Virtual Academy, I was getting questions from participants about when we’d be discussing how to sell.
My response: you can’t even begin to talk about selling until you’ve built a solid foundation for your practice. That’s what the first quarter of Virtual Academy is all about.
In the academy, we talk a lot about mission and vision. We talk about the “why” of doing business. Ultimately, we’re looking to create the culture of the practice. If Starbucks, Apple, Zappos, & Southwest Airlines think it’s important enough to get the people in their organization focused and moving in the same direction, don’t you think you should invest some time into this exercise as well?
Step 1: Create Your Mission/Vision. Before you do anything else, sit down and create a mission/vision for your practice. What are your values? Why are you practicing dentistry? Ultimately, how do you want to touch people?
Step 2: Hire the Right Team Members. When your mission/vision is clear, we can discuss how to find the “A” player employees who will help you deliver incredible value. Again, having a mission and vision helps us choose the right team members; not everyone is committed to going where you want to go. Find out before you hire them and save yourself a lot of energy, effort and money.
The average patient knows nothing about dental work. What they know is whether or not you were nice to them, how much you charged, and if the procedure hurt! A team of “A” players will make the difference as to whether your mission/vision is truly present in your office and affecting your patients for the better.
Step 3: Sell Your Service. Once you’re clear on the mission/vision of your practice and you know exactly what it is that you’re offering, you can sell it. The truth is, you’re not selling dentistry. You’re selling the experience of what it feels like to be in your office. Does the patient feel cared for? Supported? Safe? Healthier? That is what you’re offering the buyer.
In our last Virtual Academy session, I showed a slide with the image of a mission statement that’s hanging in a client’s office. The sign reads: “Our standard is to exceed your expectations.”
I think this is one of the most powerful sentences I’ve read in anyone’s vision statement anywhere. I also think it’s a really tall order.
Anything we do in this doctor’s office we measure against that mission statement. We always ask, “Is the service we’re offering right now going to exceed patient expectations?” If not, we re-examine our strategy.
Keeping Score
In the Virtual Academy, we create scoreboards to help clients track how many people they’re serving and how well they’re serving them according to their mission vision statement.
If the doctor who lost 7,000 patients had been completely clear in what exactly he was selling; if he had built a team from that structure and sold his services from there... he would have a million dollar practice by now.
If you don’t have enough patients or money, it’s not the market or economy... it’s not the impact of insurance... it’s not all the other excuses you keep making... it’s you.
If you’re committed to growing a million dollar practice, Call Us Today to schedule a strategy session. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, and we can show you how it’s done.
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