Tapas Bar Mentality

My wife and I recently spent a week’s vacation in Spain. We love European cities, and we had a wonderful time. Very enjoyable travel with trains, planes, and automobiles, magnificent scenery filled with architectural marvels. One potential problem for me is that most restaurants don’t even start serving dinner until 9 PM. Well I’m much too old for that! So if you want to eat normal hours in Spain – from Barcelona to Grenada to Seville to Madrid – you go to a Tapas Bar.

Tapas are a wide variety of appetizers in Spanish cuisine that have evolved into an entire culture where one can order many different tapas and combine them to make a full meal. Additionally, three or four people can all order different dishes – a la Chinese food – and share. There are literally dozens of these establishments in every city, but it seemed impossible to differentiate one from another.

That got me to thinking about the challenge that dentists face in trying to separate their dental practice from the competition. Most of you are not fortunate to own a stand alone facility with huge distinctive signage that allows you to stand out and be noticed. So the distinction must come from the heart and soul of what metaphorically “you serve” in your practice.

A caring and considerate and interested staff making each patient feel special could be the appetizer. Extraordinary customer service with attention to every detail in all aspects could be the first course. Honest, comfortable, and outstanding clinical dentistry could follow, and user friendly, affordable payment arrangements could be the dessert.

The “dinner experience” at your practice must be so amazing that people feel compelled to tell others. Seth Godin – an absolutely brilliant marketeer whom I read each and every day – eloquently summarizes and makes my point when he recently wrote that “ideas spread from person to person, not so much from you to them. So find your biggest fans and give them a story to tell.”

The rest will take care of itself.