Top 10 Reasons Dental Patients Don’t Come Back, or Come at All

Based on what I see, day in and day out, there’s a lot of confusion in the marketplace on what actions, activities, and so on, stimulates your patients to return time and time again to your practice. Too often, we assume (incorrectly) that just because we’ve seen a patient once, they owe it to us to come back.

That is dangerous and erroneous thinking. In fact, that kind of superiority complex can get a business, any business, in a boatload of trouble in a hurry.

No one, and I mean NO ONE, has to return to our businesses if they don’t want to.

So, what are some “killers” you can identify and quickly eliminate in your practice to ensure your patients return AND refer? Here are five of them…

1.) Results perceived (and actual) versus results desired.

That’s right, you have to deliver what your patients want! They’re footing the bill. Give them what they want. Build the relationship with them, and later they’ll be more receptive to what you recommend. Full-mouth reconstructions don’t happen in one visit and neither does building a relationship. You have to deliver the results patients want. It can be perceived or actual, depending on the situation. Nonetheless, give them what they want.

2.) Is it easy to do business with your practice?

It’s amazing to me, the number of companies that have actual “sales prevention” departments. I’ll give you an example: I’ve purchased thousands of dollars worth of pens and cool gifts for my clients from Myron, the specialty pen manufacturer. I emailed them once, asking if I could order a refill for my $3.00 pen that I really like. Here’s the answer, verbatim, from their email:

Thank you for taking the time to express your interest in Myron’s products and services. In response to your letter, Myron does not carry refills or inserts. We advise you to visit your local office supply store to inquire about generic refills or inserts. Or simply call us to re-order new pens and Pocket Pal diaries.

So, here they have an opportunity to make MORE sales to their clients and they turn me away to another store. Are you doing this with your patients? Are you not recommending and carrying a fluoride rinse? Floss they can purchase? Toothpaste? Sonic toothbrushes? WHY NOT? They have to buy it somewhere! Why not carry it, at the very least as a convenience to your patients?

3.) Money issues.

This is a particularly HUGE pet peeve of mine. I abhor businesses, and will not patronize them, if they will not allow me to make purchases with my preferred method of buying: American Express.

I have a VISA and MasterCard, too, but I really like getting the miles and cash back for using my AmEx. WHY do companies insist on not taking a particular kind of credit card? You should take any kind of payment that your patients want to give you. You must realize that you are losing sales and production if you make it hard to buy from you.

Further, if you are not offering financing that YOU control, then you’re missing the boat. You could be earning thousands in interest by offering safe, convenient, fair payment plans that allow patients to get their work done on their terms, and allow them to afford the best dentistry delivered.

4.) Value – Perceived and Actual.

Are you missing the magic moneymaker? The value of a service is determined by how your patients feel when they leave. They tell you how much value they find in your practice by referring others and telling you in your surveys (you ARE sending out surveys to your patients aren’t you?). In the real world, perceived value is worth as much, and oftentimes more, than actual value. How patients feel about the value you deliver is critical. If you fail to gauge this on your practice success barometer, you’re missing out. What do patients GET for doing business with you? Do they just get good service and good dentistry? Or, do they get something more? Come on - use your imagination.

5.) Not understanding the importance of marketing.

You had to assume that I would include marketing in here somewhere, right? Of course. Marketing your practice isn’t something to be taken lightly. It is important that your whole team understands what marketing is all about. It’s critical that they know what the goal of your marketing is, and that marketing a business never stops. It’s constant. Businesses, dental practices included, go belly-up without a constant and predictable stream of new patients. Marketing your practice is a planned event, with planned and predicted outcomes. For example: If you mail out 1500 postcards every three weeks, religiously, you will see a nice, steady flow of new patients rolling in every month, keeping your new-patient-slots full.

6.) Strong patient flow today – Strong patient flow tomorrow.

It is easy, when you are booked out for a month or more and referring people to your friend across the street, to think that you don’t need to market for a while. It’s easy to think that you can take a “marketing break” and start-up again when things slow down. But, why would you ever want things to slow down? That’s crazy! Isn’t the whole point of marketing to get patients in the door and watch your practice grow? If you get too overwhelmed, get people in to help you. Take on a new associate. Hire more office staff. Get a bigger building.

Whatever you do, even if things look rosy now, be sure to realize that there’s a 30-60 day ramp-up period with new patients coming in the door and getting their production and their referrals on the books.

7.) “We didn’t see any results from our first couple newsletter mailings. It must not work for me.”

Truthfully, I have seen newsletters NOT work for a couple of my clients. They’re no longer clients, either. After we found out how they were running their practice and learned about their disciplinary history from their dental boards, it’s no wonder. A blessing from the Pope wouldn’t have helped.

If you expect results from marketing programs of any kind, you and your team have to be 110% committed to their success. It’s no different than adapting a new technology to use in your practice. Your whole team has to be 110% supportive for it to be successful. Embrace change. Encourage change. It has to happen.

Marketing programs and advertising pieces get the phone to ring. Your team must sell the appointment and SELL to the patients once they arrive. There are lots of ways to drop the ball there… And, you can’t blame it on the call generation technique, either!

One thing I’ve noticed about human nature: We humans need to be trained to do things. Seriously. We need to be trained how to be good clients of businesses. We need to be trained how to be good patients that show up on time for appointments. We need to be trained as toddlers how to go to the bathroom, for crying out loud! Now, as adults, thought is not even required.

So, it would stand to reason that you would need to train your patients to refer to you, and that is going to take patience (just like mom had when she was potty training us), to get them to take action, refer, and refer again.

If on that first, second, or even third mailing of a patient newsletter, your results are not where you expected, have patience. People need to be trained! Your patients are no different. Keep telling them what to do, and eventually they’ll get the message. And they will begin to refer.

8.) Mishandling of incoming calls.

This is probably the No. 1 most common problem in an over-whelming majority of dental practices… and other businesses as well.

I don’t have the room, here in this article, to go into great detail about this, but suffice it to say, the easiest way to kill repeat visits, and first visits for that matter, is to mishandle phone calls of all kinds.

Dead air is a big problem with a lot of offices. This mostly occurs due to lack of training, and the people answering the phone are not capable of, or interested in, selling an appointment. If the person answering the phone does not have the proper mindset to sell the appointment, they won’t. Therefore, callers can easily change their minds before making the appointment. Practice. Educate. Review. Practice. That’s what it’s all about. Establish a system in your practice that covers the P.E.R.P.!

9.) Lack of follow-up.

This is another HUGE pet peeve of mine. All you have to do is train your front office staff to follow-up with patients that call and do not schedule for whatever reason. Send out these people information about your practice, why they should visit you versus others and what makes you unique. AND, included a special offer. This makes your practice even more enticing.

Just by taking a couple easy follow-up steps, you could easily save 15-20 patients a year. Patients that you might never have gotten to do treatment on otherwise.

Another area that a lot of practices lack, in follow-ups, is post-op calls and post-op gifts. You have to do these if you expect referrals! Establish some guideline and begin it Monday morning.

Also, review your systems in place for undone treatment follow-ups. Do you have something in place to handle that issue and is it being done?

10.) Too busy. Not enough time to dedicate to patients.

You can solve this problem by outsourcing non-revenue producing tasks. Hire cheap labor (think high school students) to take care of mundane, must-be-done-in-office tasks, like filing. I hear a lot of complaints from dentists that their team is overworked and overloaded, unable to get what needs to be done… done. Here are two solutions to this:

Outsource things like insurance follow-ups and past due account follow-ups. This way, your team will be able to spend more time with patients. That’s what it’s all about, the patients!

So, today, take a moment to consider each of these “killers” and how they might be affecting your practice. Make alterations to ensure that your patients keep coming back to you, time and time again.

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EMC Dental Marketing is a full-service Dental Practice Marketing, Dental Advertising, and Practice Management agency that focusses on solving a dentists top 2 problems - attracting new patients and retaining the patients they already have.

One of the most important business and personal finance lessons I ever learned was this from Dan Kennedy:

The Hole You Give Through Is Equivalent to the Hole You Receive Through.

So, what does that mean exactly? What it means is that if you are a stingy “giver,” the laws of the universe dictate that you will be the last to receive, and you will also receive the least.

You have heard of the saying, “What comes around goes around?”

That’s what I’m talking about.

In the grocery, store when you’re in line, you see the jars with the small holes to slip coins in. Then, perhaps you see one that has no lid. Guess which one AUTOMATICALLY gets more CASH and more coin thrown into it?

…The one without a lid.

The one with the largest hole on top wins. Why? The small lid with the small hole makes it tough to slip large bills into, right? What smart charities have learned is this: The more that goes in, the more that charity or cause can give out.

So, how big is the hole you give through? Have you thought of increasing the size of it?

My mentor in the world of non-profits, Dr. JT Houck, founder of the National Heritage Foundation, is fond of saying, “Give ‘til it hurts.”

I couldn’t agree more. Be cautious, but be comfortable giving. It is part of my personal philosophy to be a good buyer, and you will be rewarded with having good buyers come to you.

My best clients are the best clients of a lot of places. I am a best client of a lot of places. Thus, I am rewarded with a lot of great clients who buy a lot.

So, this week’s lesson: Give to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, support your local homeless shelter, donate to the Boys and Girls Club of America. You CAN afford to give a few hundred bucks, today, can’t you? Find an organization that appeals to you; something that tugs at your heartstrings a bit.

You watch…The minute you send money off to someone that can use it, you will be rewarded with someone coming in to see you that NEEDS dentistry, and are willing to pay for it. It is a strange phenomenon, and I can’t really explain it. I just know that it is that is has always worked. Some call it good karma. You can call it whatever you want. Just take the idea for a test-drive and analyze your own results. Whatever the outcome, it always feels good to give to people that are less fortunate.

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EMC Dental Marketing is a full-service Dental Practice Marketing, Dental Advertising, and Practice Management agency that focusses on solving a dentists top 2 problems - attracting new patients and retaining the patients they already have.

Press releases and free publicity are possibly the two most underutilized marketing opportunities in the dental indus¬try today. Over 90% of all the dental news I see is negative. There is a huge opening out there to promote your business and your brand in a positive way for little if any money. There are steps to take, however, to ensure your practice is being represented the way you want it to.

In your local media, 80% of the news is pro¬vided by press release. Look through the stories in your area paper and see how many are written by staff writers. Everything else is provided by people just like you looking for publicity. Just think, 80% of the newspaper each day is press releases. This is a market that needs your news.

Step one - Decide on your goal:

Dentists see a chance for free publicity and in¬stantly they think, “where do I sign up?” In reality, the only thing worse than no PR campaign is a bad PR Campaign. An ill-focused PR campaign can easily turn into a negative campaign and can get no response at all. Worse yet, it can confuse people about your practice and actually create negative publicity.

What are you looking to accomplish with your campaign? In other words, put together a goal for the efforts. This will help you to take advantage of every opportunity to make your PR efforts a success.

A few sample goals could be:
* I want to attract more cosmetic cases.
* I want to be seen as an expert in my field.
* I want the public to know what I do for the community.

These goals will help to direct your efforts when it comes to publicity.

Step two - See what’s working:

Take a look at what others are doing and getting press for. What is the trend? What are others doing that could lead toward your end goal?

The big trend right now, for positive dental news, is charity work. Two recent headlines – one had a dentist holding a food drive; another told of a dentist’s trip to South America to provide dental care. These are two very different headlines for two different doctors with two different goals.

Notice though, that even though the scope of these two stories was very different, both made it into their local papers, as well as a top-5 hit on Google News.

Check your local papers and do a news search for “dentist” on news.google.com. This will help you see what is working and getting printed.

Once you have a couple of ideas, and have seen what the media likes, move on to step three.

Step three - Decide your approach:

Once the information gathering is complete, take a look at your goal and compare it with the information the media prints. What is the best way to achieve your goal?

If your goal is to build your expert status, running a patient ap¬preciation event may not be the best approach. But, if you want the community to know you and how much you value your patients, a patient/community appreciation event may be just what you need. If you are looking to gain patients, speaking on a local radio program about dental caries is not the way to go.

Also, don’t forget to look for opportunities to gain double pub¬licity for one event. As an example, a practice we work with ran a “free exam for food donation” event for two days early in November. Not only did they announce the event in the release, but they also set a goal of gathering 100 lbs of food. The day after the event they sent out a release announcing they were donating the food to a local food-share program. Two major publicity items, easily produced from one event.

The simplest way to gain publicity and get your release printed is by announcing the hard news in your practice (new staff, new procedures, new location). You can announce an event you are a part of or are run¬ning (art fair, patient appreciation). You can work with a charity through donation, or actual work. Or you can create informational articles for publications to print or subjects you would like to be interviewed on.

Don’t be shy, the whole idea of publicity is brag¬ging about yourself and what you already do in your practice. Also, realize that something simple and ev¬eryday to you, may be a serious event for the people in your community.

Step four - Make Connections:

Take a look at your local media. You may even have some in your practice already. Talk to them and find out who needs your information, and how they would like to receive it.

This is not a time to work in bribes. Sending a present may get a smile and a call, but that’s about it. Find out what your media contacts want, and provide it to them in the format and by the contact method they like. Make your press release the easiest to use, and they will appreciate it.

Depending on your goal, you can also use a distribution service. If you do utilize a distribution service, make sure you will get the list of contacts they made so you can do follow up calls if you wish. The good part about a distribution service is they can take your release and distribute it to many media outlets quickly and easily. This will cost a bit of money, but will save you time, and you will know that the release was sent to the right person by the right method.

Beware of publications in your area that print articles from people who also advertise in the publication. Many publications will streamline the press release process if you are an advertiser, but know that you do not have to spend money to get your press release published. If every article in a publication was paid placement, you wouldn’t have a news¬letter, you’d have a catalog.

Step five - Distribute your release:

Get it out to as many media outlets as possible. Make sure you have CORRECT contact information on the release so the contact can call you if they need information. Also, proof read your release and make sure it is error free.

Also, remember the timing of your article. You cannot put out a press release and expect it to get printed next day. This is a long process, and takes some prior planning. I would allow at least 2 weeks for any release, maybe a little longer. You can always send the same release again a week later, but give the press plenty of time to plan for your release.

Once you distribute a news release, keep track of its publication and your results. Check the media daily to see if your release is getting time. As a free medium, it will take some tracking and adjustment to find exactly what gets coverage, and what doesn’t. Also, make sure you know where people heard about you when they call, so you can track the ROI for your release.

At a cost of free, press releases and a publicity program is one of the best investments you will ever make. Once you get a program started, stick with it and make it a part of your practice marketing plan. Even distributing the same release more than once has been shown to garner media attention for your practice.

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EMC Dental Marketing is a full-service Dental Practice Marketing, Dental Advertising, and Practice Management agency that focusses on solving a dentists top 2 problems - attracting new patients and retaining the patients they already have.

As a service oriented business, you have one main asset your practice that you could not survive without… your patients.

But so many dental practices we see are more worried about where the next mouth will come from; when the next dollar is going to come through the door. All the while, ignoring the dollars (and future dollars) that have already walked in and out of their door several times.

As your practice grows, patients are not listed on a balance sheet, or a profit and loss statement, but they are the most valuable pieces to any practice. Every other piece of equipment in your office can be replaced, but if you lose the patients, none of it really matters.

This is what we call patient equity. The amount of investment of time and quality work you put into that patient is considered an investment in your patient equity. Like a house, having more equity in your patient base leads to a happier practice owner. Then, also like a house, your patient base can truly be considered an asset. As an asset your patient list is something you need to protect in more than one way.

Here are the 3 steps you must take to protect your practice’s #1 asset:

1.) You MUST create a scheduled backup system. A copy of your patient list that is stored somewhere other than within your practice. Put it on CD every month or so, and put it in a safe deposit box.

If your practice (heaven forbid) burns to the ground, or someone breaks in and steals all your computer hardware, this backup will serve as a good starting point to get back up and running. The chairs and computers are replaceable, but the patients’ names and addresses are invaluable, and you cannot risk them.

2.) Your patients’ security must be guarded. Secure the data on your computer server.

Chances are you have patient names, addresses, and even credit card numbers. This information needs to be password protected, as well as encrypted securely even in your
practice software system. Ask your manufacturer how they protect your patients’ information, should the computer be stolen or your internet security compromised.

Should a compromise of information happen, it could mean disaster for your trustworthiness with your current patients, and your relationship with current and future patients may never recover.

3.) You must take steps to maintain the patient/practitioner relationship and improve your patient equity. Protect yourself from losing your patients to other dentists. There are many facets to this, and they include everything from surveys to customer service.

Mark Cuban, Dallas Mavericks Owner and internet billionaire, once said about his basketball franchise, “Everyone has thousands of entertainment choices and we don’t want to create any excuses for them to go and spend their money somewhere else.” This is truly the way you must think in a 21st century service oriented business.

There are more places for a consumer to spend their money today, than there ever has been in the past. These opportunities range everywhere from flat screen televisions, to new cars, to full mouth “extreme makeover” restorations. You need to have the best customer service, the best staff, and do the best work to make sure there is no excuse for your patient to leave. .

Sure, the attrition of some patients due to death or relocation has been accepted, but no controllable excuse should be tolerated. These people have money they are willing to spend with you, and you don’t want to give them an easy reason to go away. You cannot neglect your future receivables. A future receivable is the money your patient has in their mind that they are willing to spend with you, even though they have not signed an agreement for treatment.

As an example, at my next dental appointment, I am going to spend $200 for an exam and cleaning. That is the dentist’s money to lose. If the office does something to lose me as a patient, or doesn’t do enough to keep me from going somewhere else, the practice will lose my $200.

Future receivables, like patients, are not tracked on any balance sheet, and are hard to track at all, but be assured, every patient counts as a future receivable for your practice. Whether it is $200 or $2000, your patients do have an amount in mind that they are going to spend with you in the future.

The future receivables all figure into your patient equity. Take a good look at your schedule book for the next six months and you can get a good idea of what your revenues will look like. That’s your patient equity in action.

There are many steps you can and should be taking to protect this patient equity.

Before you go any further, each of your patients needs to have a solid foundation to build a relationship on. This means customer service, both on the phone and in person, needs to be near flawless. If you have a problem with an established patient, it may be forgivable, but with a new patient, it may lead to a rocky future, or no future at all.

The way to truly set your practice and business apart and lock in patient loyalty is through non-essentials. Providing current patient specials, referral contests, and patient-only events are all considered non-essentials. Utilize different methods to keep your current patients involved when they aren’t physically in the practice.

Other non-essentials include knowing details about your patients such as their occupation, their family, or their hobbies. The more you can entwine your practice in their life, the harder it will be for them to go anywhere else.

Of all of the steps to take, and possibly one of the simplest to provide is a simple newsletter. The patient newsletter can provide a bridge between hygiene recall appointments, and can serve as a line of communication, both outgoing and incoming. It also provides you with a great media to communicate with your patients about the other services and non-essentials you provide. This is the best way to retain and secure a patient in your practice.

In conclusion, make sure to protect your patient base. It is the most important asset you have in your practice. Create systems and provide training to build solid foundations on which to establish a patient relationship, and create an ongoing maintenance plan to continue investment in your patient equity.

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EMC Dental Marketing is a full-service Dental Practice Marketing, Dental Advertising, and Practice Management agency that focusses on solving a dentists top 2 problems - attracting new patients and retaining the patients they already have.

Last September, I decided to finally take a vacation, and headed off to fabulous Las Vegas.

Vegas is one of my favorite vacation spots because it seems as if no one there has a care in the world except what time they’re going to the pool, and what casino they will attempt to win money in later.

As I walked up and down the strip (it seems like you walk more than anything in Vegas), I started to notice something very peculiar about my surroundings. All that seemed to be in Vegas were Hotels and Casinos. Nothing else. No matter what door we walked in, it was still a casino; same horrible carpet, same smoky air, same noisy slot machines that the last place had.

In fact, every place in Vegas was exactly the same business. Hotel and Casino, Hotel and Casino, Hotel and Casino…

So, what created the need to go to any one particular casino? Anywhere my wife and I went, it was just a casino, and we could gamble there the same way we could gamble anywhere else. So why did we trek up and down Las Vegas Boulevard going into each and every place we could? Because, every Hotel and Casino was different.

The Luxor has a pyramid; The Bellagio has the computerized fountains; Caesars has a great mythical theme; The Mirage has an erupting Volcano; Treasure Island has a sinking pirate ship and outdoor bar; and The Stratosphere has a space needle.

All these hotel/casinos, and not a single one of them was the same. Everything had its own UNIQUE way to get patrons in the door. The owner/marketing genius of these places realized that success as a casino relies on patronage, and without other attractions to set them apart from the crowd, they were just a casino. However, add a fountain show, or a pirate ship that sinks, and you get people in the door that, in turn, bring their money.

As applied to your dental practice, how does it compare?

Drive around your city and look at the other dental practices. Same buildings, chairs, and carpet as yours. Those other dentists most likely have the same credentials, as well.

Do you have a run-of-the-mill dental practice - same chairs, carpet, service, and pictures on the wall as the place down the street… Or have you created and promoted the kind of uniqueness that creates word-of-mouth, and curiosity by people, to help draw them into your office?

Look at your local tribal casino. A regular run-of-the-mill hotel and casino, that’s all. This is like your dental practice. Successful, yes. But, has it reached it’s full potential? No.

Now take Treasure Island in Vegas. Hotel and casino? Yes, it is. Successful? Yes… beyond all imagination. They have created an attraction that creates word-of-mouth (I’m telling you about it right now) and creates a need to go there to see the attraction, and probably spend some money. Do you need a pirate ship in your office? It wouldn’t be a bad idea, no one else has one.

But you don’t need one. You just need some simple changes and promotion to show how your dental practice really goes the extra mile to make your patients excited and pleased with you and your practice. Show the public some way you are different than the others, and it will attract them to your office like a magnet.

The computer controlled fountains aren’t a bad idea either. Think of the crowds that would draw.

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EMC Dental Marketing is a full-service Dental Practice Marketing, Dental Advertising, and Practice Management agency that focusses on solving a dentists top 2 problems - attracting new patients and retaining the patients they already have.