Attracting new patients starts with simple innovation
Here’s rule number one when it comes to new patients, particularly ones who have been avoiding the dentist: they don’t see dentistry the same way that you do. You see it as an important part of their overall health. Most of them see routine preventative dental care as optional – something that many are certainly willing to forgo in our current economic climate.
Why? They see dentists as cold, uncaring clinicians who like surprising them with hidden, unnecessary or unexpected costs, and they see the treatment you provide as painful and frightening. The same extends to your office. In the eyes of your patients, dental practices are sterile and unfriendly. Even if this isn’t how your practice actually is, it’s how they expect it to be.
Solving the Problem Begins with Identifying the Issue
This patient mindset certainly doesn’t make it any easier to get them to call and make an appointment. But don’t blame the patients. Their expectations stem from years of misinformation and miscommunication by other dentists. As a profession, we’re collectively responsible for the lack of education and understanding about modern dentistry, and now we’re paying the price.
So how do you stand out from the pack? Transform from simply being a service provider to running an attraction-based business.
Aaron Ross of Build a Sales Machine helped his previous employer, Salesforce.com, increase their revenue by $100 million. In his book, Predictable Revenue, Ross builds the case that attraction-based businesses are the wave of the future.
An attraction-based business is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a business where success is driven by the attraction people have to it. Starbucks is an attraction-based business. Krispy Kreme is attraction-based. These businesses provide more than just coffee and donuts. They provide an entire experience that people are attracted to.
Giving Patients What They Want – and Need!
The same strategy can easily work for dentistry. You just need to find out what patients find attractive about dentistry. And believe me, there ARE things that attract them to dentistry. Our problem is that very few of us are providing them!
The good news is that it’s not an irreversible process. Dentists across the nation are winning patient loyalty by thinking like patients. They’re making small, easily implemented changes to their businesses to make their practices more appealing and comfortable to consumers, and they’re experiencing profound results.
Implementing QDP in your dental practice gives patients what they are looking for: good healthcare at a perceived value, and provides them with something they cannot get at any other practice.
The number one reason patients give for choosing dentists on the QDP program is that they find their practices to be profoundly more appealing than other dental practices they had experienced. The QDP practices stood out by offering their patients something they couldn’t get at other practices. As a result, the patients’ perception of the entire experience of going to the dentist was improved.