Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of the Delivering Wow Dental podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Anissa Holmes. And today, we're talking all about how to keep your patients coming back to your dental practice. Now, this is something that's actually pretty important and I'm not sure if you've thought about it recently, in terms of how many patients are actually leaving out of the back door or how many patients are actually leaving every single week without being scheduled. And I can tell you this is something that you're definitely going to want to create a system for because it's really interesting. A lot of people are focused on new patients, new patients, new patients. But if you are focusing on new patients and you have patients who are not scheduling, then essentially your business is not going to grow. It's going to be flat. And so, today I'm going to talk about how you can really think about making sure that your patients are coming back.

So, obviously we can look at marketing and not marketing from the standpoint of getting new patients but marketing to our existing patients. And I absolutely love to think about this and to really focus a lot of attention on marketing to my existing patients. Why? Because they are already trusting us. They have already had great service. They know what our culture's like and they can be walking advocates for our practice. And so, as we start thinking about even external marketing campaigns, we want to make sure that we're always involving our patients.

So, what does that look like? Well, maybe you decide that you want to do a clothing drive. Well, you definitely want to make sure that you're posting that on social media but you want to make sure that if you're doing, for example, a Facebook live video talking about it, on your social media pages, you're also taking a photo of that. You are sharing that link to that video, to your patients in an email and they're seeing what you're doing to serve the community. And also, of course, you're inviting them to participate. You are putting up flyers so that your patients will see what you're doing inside of your community.

And what I love doing inside of my practice and what I love helping practices with is actually having these monthly community engagement campaigns. So, now you can go ahead and really be consistent with marketing internally to your patients.

And as we start thinking about how are we marketing to our patients, we want to make sure that we are 100% being consistent. So, that is looking at having a monthly newsletter where you are sharing what you did last month for the community and what you're doing this upcoming month. Sharing an educational article that is talking about a new service or a service that you want to focus on for that particular month.

And of course, having that link for people to go ahead and schedule online or sharing your phone number or asking that they email you back to go ahead and make an appointment. So, that's another thing that you definitely want to consider.

Another thing that you want to look at in terms of making sure that your patients were coming back is making sure that when they're there, they are scheduling their next appointment. And a lot of times, what I hear from teams is that they are giving patients an option to schedule maybe even for a hygiene appointment and the patient says, "I'll call you back." Well, what I need you to understand is that most times patients are saying that because they don't know where they're going to be in six months. And so, now if you can create a system that says, "Okay, I would love to go ahead and make your next appointment. We can do it at the same time of day on the same day, if that works for you. We'll give you a call a week ahead of time. And if that time doesn't work, we can always move you."

Now, your patients know that they're not going to disappoint you if they are not able to make it. Maybe they're going to be traveling for work. And now what you can do is you can create a system so that every Monday, now your team member at the front desk can call patients who were pre-booked six months ago. And go ahead and remind them that they scheduled that

appointment. And again, if there are any conflicts, now you have a week or a little bit over a week to actually go ahead and get someone else into that timeframe. And you can now just move them. You definitely want to never remove a patient from the schedule. You just go ahead and move them.

The other thing that we can look at in terms of, how do we keep our patients coming back, is really looking at our patient experience. What are we doing so that our patients will become those raving fans, right? And really, really important. One of the things that we look at when our patients are coming in is we want to think about how can we ask them three different ways or three different times, how has their experience? So, the hygienist will ask, the doctor will ask and then the patient goes to the front desk and the front desk team member will ask. Well, what that means is we're constantly thinking about how can we create those touch points so that patients do have an experience that they remember. And it could be things such as having your kid go to the toy box first or having hot chocolate for your kids when they come into the office or giving them an office tour and showing them your core values on the wall. It doesn't have to be something that costs a lot of money but it's something that people will want a hundred percent remember.

So, that's something that you want to also think about. The other thing that you want to think about is, do you actually have a system or tracking system for ensuring or actually knowing how many patients are actually not scheduling each week? One thing that we put in place for our clients, as well as inside of my practice, is a customized scorecard. And one of the numbers that we're tracking in terms of metrics is how many patients who came in last week that did not actually schedule for their next visit and taking it to the next level. What's really nice is that if you can have your scheduling coordinator to go ahead and fill in these metrics inside of your scorecard and now what happens is that they can actually have that time on a Monday to go back into the ledgers of those patients and find out why is it that they didn't schedule. Was it that they were referred to another doctor and they're going to be coming back?

Was it that we need to follow up with them to ensure that we have financial arrangements with them. So, definitely want to make sure that you're having notes when patients are not scheduling and then also have systems so that you can actually track it. Because of course, once we start tracking things, then all of a sudden, it's not going to be okay for us to have patients that are not scheduling. So, now we can go in as a team, we can have conversations about how can we improve and how can we get that number down? And so, that's really, really powerful.

So, hopefully these tips help you to be able to put some different systems in place and to be able to start stirring up some ideas. But you definitely want to make sure that in addition to focusing on your new patients, you're really thinking about your existing patients. How is it that we're creating that great experience for them? How are we putting in those touch points? How are we focusing on internal marketing and how are we creating that system that allows us to hold ourselves accountable to actually getting our patients scheduled.

So, hopefully this helps you. I absolutely love talking about this stuff. It's really, really important. Again, a lot of times we're focusing on marketing and we have so many patients leaving out of the back door, which means that we can sometimes not only have flat growth but we actually have negative growth.

All right. So, hopefully that helps you. If this is sounding like you and you're feeling like you're needing a little bit of help with this, we'd love for you to reach out to us at www.DeliveringWow.com.

You can schedule a free 30 minute strategy call and we can discuss how we can help you to grow your practice and scale it to the next level.

All right, guys, that's it for today. Take care. And we'll see you inside of the next episode

Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of the Delivering Wow Dental podcast. So, excited to be here today. So, today we're going to be talking about the truth about why patients are not scheduling. Why are patients saying, "We will call you back. We will think about it," and how do we actually overcome that obstacle so that we can actually help our patients get the treatment that we're recommending for them.

So, I remember back inside of my office when I would have so many patients say, "I will think about it. I want to talk to my husband." And as we started to look at why patients were not scheduling, I would ask my team "Guys, do you know what's going on?" And they would say, "Well, you know what, they don't have the money," or "The real thing is that right now, they just don't have a lot of time." Like, "They're really busy right now." And as I started to really think about it, I started to say, "There's actually probably something else."

And so, I actually went on this journey a few years ago to really understand advanced psychology and understand why people actually make decisions and why people don't make decisions. And so, I actually invested in working with some psychologists and also working with coaches who actually teach sales and neuro-linguistic programming outside of the dental industry, interestingly to real estate agents. And I went there with this idea that I wanted to understand, how could framework be created for my dental clients so that they could increase case acceptance. And so, that within my own practice, we could do the same. And what was interesting is once we learned what was the real secret, then all of a sudden our case acceptance skyrocketed. And so, I want to talk a little bit about that process and why our patients oftentimes will not actually schedule and why they probably will never schedule. So, no matter how many times we're actually calling them and saying, "Hey, you remember doctor says that you have that bridge to do," or, "You have that implant to do."

And so, the first thing that I want you to think about is the reason why a lot of people are not scheduling is that they are really confused about how they're actually going to fit it into their budget or how they're going to find the time. And so, what's has been really interesting is understanding this process, that once we are now providing the answer to that question that's actually confusing them and how it has actually worked for other people to solve that same problem. Then all of a sudden, that problem essentially goes away or that issue essentially goes away from them. And so, you might be saying, "Okay, Anissa, what are you talking about?" And so, as we start looking at case acceptance. So, one of the things that we teach in our different frameworks. We've got about five or six different frameworks that we teach for different aspects of case acceptance.

But as we start looking at presenting treatment, one thing that I will always ask the doctors that we work with in the teams is, "If you had to go to the dentist seven times or five times, would that be hard for you or would that be easy for you?" And for many of them, they say, "You know what? That would be really hard for me because I have to see my patients. I'd have to find a time to come in and not have patients scheduled." Or if they work for the dental practice, they say, "It would be really hard because I work in a small business and I have to find somebody to cover for me and that would be really hard." And so, as we start looking at, why is it that patients are not scheduling? I started to really think about the time factor and think that, really, patients are just like us.

They're a business owner. They work for a company. They're self-employed and it's really hard. And so, as we started looking at letting patients know that we recognize that this is hard and letting them know how patients are able to get their work done anyway, all of a sudden, a light bulb started to go off in our patients' minds and in the minds of our clients where all of a sudden they said, "Oh yeah. It's true. It's really hard for me to come for seven visits or five visits." Right. Or even four visits. And so, we started to look at one of our frameworks to really discuss this

and say, "Lots of our patients find that it's really hard for them to come in multiple visits."

"And for you, would it be easier for you to come in one or two visits or five or six?" And letting them know that most of our patients have said that it's easier for them. And so, letting them know that you listened to your patients and now you're offering longer appointments where people can just essentially come, one or two visits, if it's possible, depending on the treatment plan and get it all done and out of the way because the fact is that people really don't want to come to the dentist a lot of times. We get that, right. Then now we let them know that we found a solution for them. Right? You don't have to come in five visits. You could come in one or two. And then from there, in terms of the time, now that you've helped them to overcome that challenge of trying to figure out how they're going to actually get it done, the next thing is to think about the money aspect, right?

And so, asking them, "Now that we know that fewer visits are better for you, is there any reason why you wouldn't be able to come in one or two visits?" And so, for many people, they say, "I'd love to do that but I just don't have the money." And we know that already. And this is all a part of advanced psychology. Again, really understanding the psychology of why people make decisions, which a lot of times, it's just that when you just are confused about what to do, you do nothing. It's almost like, "I've been thinking about painting my house for a while now. And I'm not sure what colors to use. So, I just do nothing and they're still white." And so, that's the same thing that happens.

And so, if now you can have someone to come in. If I had somebody to come in my house and say, "Okay, here's a painter who can do the job for you. Here's different colors that you can select. And by the way, we're going to go and get all of the paint. And then we'll have the painter show up with the paint." Guess what? It's done now because we actually have a solution. Somebody has made it easy for me. And it's the same thing with our practice, right? And so, as we start looking at treatment planning, one thing that we can look at is giving those solutions. So, saying, "We know that most of our patients are just like you. They're not sure how they can fit it into their budget in one day but how they're able to do it anyway is, number one, they realize they have a credit card, perhaps even a zero interest credit card. And so, they're able to get it done that way."

"Or number two, maybe they don't have that solution. And so, we've created a plan where you can just pay a little bit over time." And so, that's another great option or a third great option is that we just make a plan today and decide what you're going to do on each visit, when you're going to come, which day of the month and look at how much you're going to budget for each appointment. And now you have a solution. And in fact, we can actually go ahead and pre-book all of your appointments to actually hold you accountable to getting this done. And so, now you provide three options, which are all really good solutions. And now you can ask the patient, "Which one of these options works best for you?" And so, essentially now, instead of them having to decide and come up with a solution, they're just choosing one and either one of those three works.

Okay. So, I wanted to share those pearls with you. There's lots of different frameworks that we teach that have been really transformational for practices. But I wanted to at least share this one framework with you today here, inside of this podcast, because guys, the reason why people are not scheduling a lot of times is that they just don't know exactly how to actually get it done.

All right. So, hopefully that's helpful for you guys. I look forward to chatting with you in our next episode and if you haven't done so already, make sure that you're joining us inside of our YouTube channel, www.dentalbosstv.com. Lots of great videos and tools for you there inside of our channel.

All right, guys, we'll chat soon. Take care.

Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the Delivering Wow Dental podcasts. Now, if you haven't done so already, we invite you to join us at www.deliveringwow.com to take

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Delivering Wow podcast with Dr. Anissa Holmes. We'll catch you next time.

Hi guys, and welcome to another episode of the Delivering WOW Dental Podcast. Today, we're talking all about the best marketing for dentists who are wanting to grow a successful practice. So I absolutely love talking about this topic. As many of you guys know, we have done some pretty cool things inside of my dental practice with marketing. We have for years now been able to get over a hundred patients a month, which is crazy. We obviously keep growing and we've been adding on associates. But the great thing is that we are at the point now where we're not having to really look at much in terms of marketing. So what I'm going to be doing today inside of the episode is actually sharing how you too can get to that point where you have more patients than you perhaps need and more patients coming in without you really having to think about a lot of paid marketing, expensive marketing.

So let's talk a little bit about the journey of a patient and that journey typically will start with them not knowing who you are. As you're bringing them into your world, they are first becoming aware about your practice, about what makes you different about, how you serve the community, about the services that you provide. From there, we are looking at taking people along a journey, from awareness to making a decision to pick up the phone and call to coming in and having a great experience to becoming a patient who's a raving fan, and then ultimately, ideally a patient that will be with us for life, for them and their families, right?

So as we start looking at building out these raving fans, people who can't stop talking about us, because to be honest with you, if we can focus in terms of marketing on creating an army of raving fans, then again, marketing gets really, really easy because they're actually doing the work for us. So the first thing I want you to think about is number one, are you providing a great experience? Are you doing dentistry that you can really be proud of and that people will want to talk about, right? So if not, then obviously that's where we want to start. But once you know that you're providing a good service, then what we want to look at is how can we start the process of getting known in our community?

Many of you guys know, I'm a huge fan of Facebook marketing for a few reasons. Number one is the target demographic of who we are wanting as ideal patients are primarily using Facebook as far as their social media channel. So what do I mean by that? I'm looking at patients who are between the ages of maybe 38, 55 people who are at a point where they are able to take care of investing in themselves in terms of the investment, the financial investment. They're starting to perhaps see their parents age and understand that right now is a time to take care of yourselves, right? So I love using Facebook marketing. It's also super, super cost effective as well. Honestly, I've never seen anything work like it.

We have worked with hundreds and hundreds of practices and what's really cool is they start to build this following in the community where people are coming up and saying, "Oh my God, aren't you the doctor at so-and-so." Or they are having patients coming in and saying, "I've been following you for a while and I've been telling everybody about you." That's so cool and we can get to that point. So you definitely want to look at number one, are you utilizing Facebook marketing? Are you using Facebook effectively to actually showcase what your practice is known for and to get out there and start doing some community service events as well, really showcasing the culture of your practice? Because let's face it, dental practices, many of them, they'll all provide hopefully a similar level of quality of care.