Call to action: What not to do

Here at My Practice Engine, we are always willing to admit a mistake.  Not only does it make us better as an organization, but it also hopefully helps you to avoid the mistakes that we made as you proceed on your quest for practice perfection.  

Today’s story asks the question: “What’s wrong with this picture?”  The below pictures are from an ad we placed on a bus to promote the opening of our new office in Cancun, Mexico.  

Read more...

Marketing strategy: call to action

Photo credit: triplecurve.com

At any given point in time, I get asked for a quick way to get a volume of patients in the door.  My answer is that other than being famous or having lots of friends who need treatment, I haven’t found a one-size-fits-all guaranteed way to get an influx of patients in the door.  Certainly, others claim that they have found a foolproof way and good for them.

But if I’m asked to come up with something that I would highly recommend in just about every case, I, and a host of others, would recommend a strong call-to-action in the marketing message.  In other words, what reason, promotion, opportunity or deal am I offering to get a patient to come in to my office and not that of my competition?

Here are some of the things I’ve learned about calls to action and what might benefit you as a practice owner or key marketing person.

Read more…

Your new office: less cost, better results

In our last post, we left off with the question of how, in this day and age, with the level of competition that exists for new patients, how can I possibly keep the cost of construction and equipment under $500,000 - $600,000?  

Here, we discuss some methodologies for you to accomplish just that task. Now, by no means do we intend to suggest that you somehow cut corners or have an office that is less than acceptable.  Nor are we suggesting that you have some bleak, stark office that resembles the inside of an asylum.  

Keep in mind that if you start 20 patients per month in a more expensive location, your return on investment and ability to repay is substantially lower than if you spent 40% less on the facility and started 18 patients per month.

Here are some things we’ve seen over the years that help to keep cost under control while allowing to create a professional, inviting environment for patients.

Read more…

New office construction: When does "nice" become too nice?

One obvious observation: you want your office to look nice.  Patients want to spend their appointment time in a comfortable, inviting environment.  Not only does this enhance the patient experience, but it also encourages patients to want to come back and refer their friends for appointments.  On top of that, you and your staff spend a lot of your waking hours in that office and for purposes of morale and energy level, you don’t want to walk into a dump every day.  

The overriding question is what constitutes “nice.”  For some that means Herman Miller chairs, fountains and chandeliers in the waiting room and Italian marble wherever you can put it.  For others, that means clean carpets and a minimum of fingerprints on the walls.  The best solution usually lies somewhere in between those two.

A number of practices operate under the notion that “if you build it, they will come.”  That only works in the movies and only if you build a baseball diamond that people can visit for free.  An uber-fancy office does not necessarily mean that patients will flow in.  This is because patients need a reason to come to the office BEFORE they see the fine interior.  It’s not like a retail store where some great signage and buzz is going to generate walk-in traffic.  For most practices outside of malls, walk-in traffic does not exist.

For some evidence of what I am discussing, a story:

Read more…

Getting your new patients to show up

As we mentioned in our last post, one key to getting a patient to show up for his or her new patient appointment is to limit the time between the call for the appointment and the actual appointment date.  After 7 days, potential patients begin to get antsy and look elsewhere for a provider of services.  

Sure, in a perfect world, it would be nice to tell every potential new patient, “Hey come on in today.  We’ll see you whenever you get here.”  And if you happen to have a nonpatient hole in your schedule, you should certainly try to get that space filled with an interested consult.  Of course, the world is not perfect and the reality is that you have days that are full of patients eager to see you.  Simply fitting in an appointment as vital and time consuming as a consult just isn’t always doable. 

So what to do.  Here are some potential methods to ease that backlog:

Read more…

New patient consultations: how long is too long to wait for an appointment date?

In doing some deeper analysis on data in the US and abroad, we looked more closely at the percentage of patients that show up for their consultation appointments (i.e. the show up rate) and the percentage of consultations that actually start treatment (i.e. the batting average). 

Intuitively, we would guess that certain events would cause a patient to be more or less likely to show up for his or her appointment and then sign a contract after going through a consultation.  Specifically, if a patient calls for a consultation appointment and is scheduled to be seen that same day, the chances of that patient showing up are much greater than if the patient’s appointment got scheduled 6 months from the date of the call.  Pretty simple, right?  If you make someone wait 6 months for an appointment, they will probably find another provider.  Even if you are a major star in the industry, folks want to get started when they want to get started.

But exactly how quickly do things drop off when it comes to the time a patient has to wait for a new patient appointment.  Like banana left in the refrigerator, things tend to go downhill pretty fast.  Here are some specifics:

Read more…

3 tips for hiring and training to maximize staff performance

Unless you’ve hired James Bond, no member of your team is great at everything.  Running your business takes a wide range of skills and finding that absolutely perfect person to handle every single thing is damn near impossible.  Marketing talent may come at the expense of skills with collecting money from past dues.  

We recently had one office manager who had years of experience in the dental field.  She was outstanding in building relationships with patients, handling billing disputes and staying on top of the day to day glitches that befall every office.  But this person did not have a comfort level with the latest tech (like the nuances of digital x-rays) and did not want to push the practice’s social media efforts.  

Clearly, the solution here is not to terminate such a valuable person.  Rather, the answer is to complement the person’s skill set with either the other people or systems.  Note that I did not say to hire someone just because that person may have a skill that no one else has.  Your first consideration priority needs to be on having a properly sized staff.  

Let’s look at some of the considerations in ensuring that your staff has complementary skills.

Read more…