In a recent blog post that I receive daily from the ever thought provoking Seth Godin, he posed a hypothetical dilemna. What would happen to your business if it were suddenly impossible to attract or advertise for new customers? How would that change what you now do all day? Godin followed that with another supporting piece on the difference between strangers and true fans.

I think we as dentists should take his comments as an important “wake up call” as to the way we market our practices. The current trend is to spend lots of money on web-site development in order to create an excellent Internet based message, search engine optimization programs and pay per click programs so that prospective patients can find our site, print ads, radio ads, direct mail – all of these mediums are designed to help us attract more new patients. These days five percent of annual collections is a low to acceptable line item in your budget for marketing.

But what if we decided to spend a significant portion of that money rewarding existing patients? We all agree that a personal recommendation is a much stronger referral that someone kicking tires on line. In a recent Nielsen article, it was stated that 90% of consumers surveyed said they would trust and act on the recommendation from someone they knew. So if we were to spend our money in a bunch of interesting ways that would make our existing patients feel special and appreciated, it seems logical that our referral rates could sky rocket.

Here is your topic for the next staff meeting – “If we had the money, what could we do for our patients of record that is so outrageous, over-the-top, and noticeable, that it would force them to talk about us?” I would love to hear your ideas. I plan to accumulate responses and pass on the best ideas in another post.

Patients will respect your time in direct proportion to the way that you respect theirs. So staying on time each and every day is a must. And while staying on time requires a team effort from all staff members, the doctor bears the ultimate responsibility.

The biggest contributing factor I see to messing up a perfectly scheduled day is when the doctor decides to perform definitive therapy for  an emergency patient. The doctor must resist that temptation. Treat emergencies as emergencies by offering treatment to relieve pain. Placement of a temporary filling, writing a prescription, making a referral to a specialist, taking a tooth out of hyper-occlusion – whatever it takes. That is your responsibility when an emergency patient is squeezed into your busy day. The mission is to spend no more than ten minutes getting someone comfortable, and then getting them re-scheduled for the proper amount of time on another day for definitive treatment.

Once you have kept someone waiting more than ten to fifteen minutes in your reception area or even worse in a treatment room with a saliva ejector hanging out of their mouth, they begin counting up your faults. Don’t give them that opportunity. Don’t be greedy. Take perfect care of your scheduled patients. That is how you stay on time.