End of the year: What to work on

If you are in almost any aspect of the dental business, at this time of year, activity has downshifted from into a speed anywhere from slow to nonexistent.  A lot of orthodontic practices have either shut down operations for the rest of the year or are knocking out some final shorts and longs before settling in.  Suppliers are stopping deliveries to start working on year end inventory.  If you have a general dental practice, some folks may be coming in for last-minute, pre-holiday cleanings and whitenings, but major procedures will probably be delayed until after the holiday season.

Rather than shutting things down completely and spending your days watching A Christmas Story, this is the perfect time to work on projects and initiatives to get ready for the new year.

Specifically, here are the things to focus on:

Marketing – If you do any kind of marketing spending on TV, radio, print or advertising on the internet, you know that you can get benefits (like better placement in the sequence of commercials during a commercial break) and discounts by making a full year of purchases instead of on a monthly basis.  Now is a perfect time to work out your planned schedule and make those commitments.  If business is better or worse than you expect, you can certainly make adjustments to the buying throughout the year.  Two things to keep in mind with annual buys that generally apply across the United States (for those US readers):

1. Most economic experts predict continued growth in the economy for the country at perhaps a bit faster rate than in 2014.  This means that the general economic environment should be similar to what it has been recently (of course, results can vary more as you drill down to more local markets).
2. In the second half of 2015, you will see impact on marketing rates from advertising related to the 2016 Presidential election.  No primaries will be held during the year, but candidates and causes will begin jockeying for position.  That means advertising will be done and a finite number of advertising slots will be occupied.  Consider too, that both major parties will be seeking a nominee, unlike 2012 when Team Blue had President Obama already locked in.

Even if you are not doing major ad spending, you want to start your new year with a bang.  So, the time to put together that New Year’s Resolution promotion is now so it can be ready to run just as soon as the calendar turns and folks recover from their holiday hangovers. 

Inventory – Supply companies, publicly traded companies and other groups in our space are doing it now and you should too.  It’s always a good idea to know where you stand with regard to clinical and office supplies.  Money could be sitting on your shelves instead of in your pocket and that’s not where you want it to be.  If you do see an oversupplied product, good inventory will help you to identify that and make changes to ordering patterns or set up a return of that product.  On top of that, if you suspect that common supplies like toothbrushes, toothpaste and floss are being stolen, an inventory has to be part of the process to root out and solve the problem.

Fix problems – Let’s say that your consultation appointments typically take 2 hours -- and that is absolutely putting your new patients to sleep.  Now, let’s say you want to get that down to 45 minutes.  This is a perfect time to work on that.  You may not want to experiment with the handful of new patients you might have, but with what should be available time, you can work through the different components of your consult process to figure out how to fix them.  Things are quiet and a lot of those outside forces that might cause disruption have gone away until the end of the year. 

Tax planning – Every practice and owners of said practice have a unique tax situation.  Certain of those situations require that elections be made and transactions be consummated before the end of the year to make your tax situation fit with your personal situation and comply with whatever tax laws require compliance. 

Make new relationships – Maybe there’s a vendor that’s been trying to pitch you with the latest new product.  Now, you have the time to sit and listen to that pitch.  Or maybe you’ve been thinking about adding that queuing system or EMR component to your practice management software.  Now is the time to delve into it.  Or, maybe you’ve been reading that exciting blog about the business side of running a dental or orthodontic practice and want to engage those guys to help take your practice to the next level.  Again, now is a great time to do it.

We’ll be around posting updates throughout the year and into the new year, but we’d like to take this opportunity to wish all of you the happiest of holiday seasons.