The Dentist Who Spends the Most Wins! By: Ed O’Keefe, President Dentist Profits, Inc.

If you want to be a successful dentist entrepreneur, you need to have the mindset of a successful dentist entrepreneur. Adjusting your mindset can create far-reaching changes in your level of success. Unfortunately, I generally find that most dentists have several misconceptions that prevent them from enjoying the success they desire.

We’ve all heard the age-old adage, “you’ve got to spend money to make money”, unfortunately most dentists don’t apply this simple business wisdom to their practice. For example, they’ll run smaller ads, mail only a few hundred postcards, change their yellow pages ad from a full page to a half page, buy a cheap website, ignore the use of radio or cable etc, and wonder what went wrong.

Here’s an example: I had a client tell me that he was getting 20 new patients a month from a little quarter page ad he ran in the local newspaper. It was costing him about $30 bucks a day. Approximate cost/month: $900. He said to me, “Why would I increase the size of my ad when I’m getting such great results? It will cost more.”

Here’s why: If he doubles the size of the ad, he may double the price, but he can also expect to double or quadruple the number of patients who respond. When a dentist properly manages new patients, they will come in not just for immediate treatment, but will also become long-term patients of record. Instead of enjoying 20 new patients a month, he now enjoys 40 or 80. In 6 and 12 months he will exponentially increase his profit. As he acquires 40 new patients a month for the next 6 months, he will then have 240 patients, instead of just 120 patients generating referrals to the office. He can then get them back in for more care and regular re-care appointments.

Patients of record are the most likely to respond to any special offers. That fact makes them Your Most Valuable Asset! What you must focus on, whether you are early in your practice or late in your practice, is to acquire patients fast. Here’s another common misconception that dentists have; the value in your practice is not the equipment, it’s the patients! Again, it calls for a change in mindset. Instead of thinking: “How Can I Lower My Cost Per New Patient?” You need to ask: “How Can I Spend More To Acquire New Patients And Make It Extremely Profitable?”

Here are 5 Secrets of Exponential Practice Explosion:

1. Increase your average new patient case value. You need to look at what your average new patient is worth.

Yearly revenue from new patients / Yearly number of new patients = Average worth a new patient

2. Raise Prices Strategically. We cannot deny the most common rule of economics, price elasticity. Which tells us that our prices can be adjusted to get just the right new patient flow.

3. Send a Welcome New Patient Gift To New Patients with a letter that sells them on referring friends and family.
Key point: Every referral you get cuts your “Cost of acquiring a new patient” in half!

4. Send Monthly Offers to Your Patients! Your patients love to hear from you. The recent success of the TV program Extreme Makeover proves the market is ready waiting for many kinds of cosmetic and restorative treatment. It’s all a matter of timing. Your job is to stay in front of them every month with an offer so that when the time is right for them, your offer will be there. The more they come in, the more money you make.

5. Reward Referrals. Behavior that is rewarded is repeated! Check with your state’s guidelines to see if you can let your patients know in advance what the referral reward will be. However, a simple “thank you” can go a long way!

The faster you can get your patients to spend more or refer earlier in the relationship, the more you can spend on acquiring them.

The doctor who can spend more will run a Free Standing Insert (FSI) versus a small ad, which means more people will read the FSI. They can use Radio, Websites, Direct Mail, Cable, and other strategies. What works best in marketing is using multiple medias simultaneously, because different patients respond to different medias.

So to wrap this up: Look for finding ways of increasing the value of each new patient so that you can spend more on acquiring each new patient. Remember, the dentist who spends the most on acquiring new patients will get more new patients faster and dominate your area. Make sure that dentist is YOU!

Ed O’Keefe is the president of Dentist Profits, Inc., a marketing company that has taught over 750 dentists worldwide how to attract high quality patients who Pay, Stay, And Refer! If you felt this article was valuable and you’d like to get more information. I’ve set aside a free report that reveals, “How To Get More New High Value Patients In A Month Than You Now Get All Year…Immediately Without Doing ANY Work! Guaranteed!” To get this free report all you need to do is call our Toll Free, 24 Hour Free Recorded Message at 1-866-231-9450.