August 2019--Many practices can double their new-patient growth without increasing their dental marketing budget. They can grow much faster without more advertising or PR. And they can do so fairly easily.
In fact, every work day dentists walk right past what is probably their most cost-effective growth opportunity.
This article explains how your dental practice can dramatically increase revenue by paying more attention to the performance of your front-office staff.
Here are 14 ideas for how you can do so.
Blog Contents:
Can you say with confidence how many phone calls your practice receives each week from potential new patients? Or what percentage of callers your front-office staff persuades to come in for a first appointment?
In our experience at Patient Prism, most dental practice owners and managers don’t know these key metrics.
The numbers are important because they tell you how effective your marketing investments have been.
They're more important than many other commonly used marketing metrics because they tell you how much of your marketing investment actually generates revenue.
Let's say your front office receives an average of 120 new-patient calls a month. From those calls they book 30 new appointments. That's a 25% conversion rate.
Does a 25% conversion rate suggest that your front-office staff is doing a pretty good job?
If you're satisfied with 30 new patients a month, you may not be concerned.
But a 25% conversion rate leaves plenty of room for your team to improve.
Look at it this way: Your practice collects no revenue for 75% of the people who call. That means a lot of marketing money is going down the drain.
Most practices don't track the number of new-patient calls they receive. Even fewer watch their front-office conversion rates.
If your practice doesn't monitor these numbers, you're likely to discover a big opportunity when you start doing so.
A front-office staff that's properly coached, trained, and rewarded can achieve conversion rates as high as 75% or even 80%.
Let's be clear. No practice will ever achieve 100% conversion rates.
Conversions of 80% or more are probably not desirable. That's because about 20% of the people who call your office are unlikely to be a good fit for the services you provide. Your front-office staff shouldn't try to book them.
After working with Patient Prism, dental practices often increase their conversion rates to 75%.
Any marketing investment that doesn't produce revenue is wasted money. So if your front office operates at a 25% conversion rate, your practice wastes nearly 75% of its marketing investment.
Any marketing investment that doesn't produce revenue is wasted money.
Productivity (or efficiency) is the inverse of waste. As you reduce waste, you achieve higher marketing productivity and efficiency. The same level of marketing investment produces more revenue.
By improving marketing efficiency and generating more new-patient revenue, you can transform your practice.
What could you do in your practice if you could increase your marketing productivity by 30%?
If your practice is in an intensely competitive area, you can’t afford to operate with high marketing waste. Any practice that achieves better marketing efficiency could eat your lunch.
If you’re concerned about competition from Dental Service Organizations (DSOs), waste reduction offers a good way to strengthen your defenses. Maybe you can even go on the offensive, as you’ll see in a moment.
If you work for a DSO, you’re probably already thinking about ways to cut marketing waste. Stay with me here for worthwhile tips.
An independent practice generates $1.5 million in annual revenue. It spends $60,000 a year (or $5,000 a month) on marketing. That’s 4% of annual production.
Four percent of revenue is at the very low end of the recommended range for marketing investment. Most knowledgeable dental consultants suggest that dentists spend 7% to 9% of revenue on marketing. The suggested percentage should vary with the life-cycle stage of the practice and the growth aspirations of its owners.
Figure 1 shows a “conversion funnel” for the new-patient acquisition process in our example practice.
The dental practice converts 120 callers into 30 new-patient appointments each month. That’s a 25% conversion rate.
Note that the practice wastes 75% of its marketing investment in the conversion point between inbound inquiries and booked appointments.
The waste occurs at the front office, not in the practice’s choice of marketing tactics or channels.
Also note that subsequent conversion points are crucial for revenue growth: Does the new patient come back for additional appointments? And does she stay with the practice for multiple years?
What if this practice could improve its conversion rate to 50%? That would be a 100% improvement over its current conversion rate of 25%.
To improve your conversion rates, you must first focus attention on the performance of your team.
Your front office must commit to answering more phone calls before they roll over to voicemail during business hours. With proper training and coaching, your staff can become much more persuasive in fielding new-patient inquiries.
With proper training and coaching, your staff can become much more persuasive in fielding new-patient inquiries.
With help from appropriate software and better business processes, conversion rates of 65% and 75% are well within reach. One way to increase conversion rates is to hire and keep the very best receptionists:
See what Fred Joyal has to say on that very topic:
Is it worth the effort to improve conversions? Let’s see.
Even with a 50% to 75% improvement in conversions, most dental practices can achieve wonders.
They can book 50% to 75% more new patients a month, without spending a dime more on marketing. In fact, their marketing cost per new patient declines by 50% to 75%, even at the same level of marketing investment.
Let’s see how a 50% conversion rate benefits our example practice. The changes are summarized in Figure 2. It shows the 25% conversion rate as Scenario A and the 50% conversion rate as Scenario B.
The numbers highlighted in yellow are the ones that change from Scenario A to Scenario B.
In Scenario B, the practice now books 60 new patients a month.
Calculation of new patients per month:
120 inquiries
X 50% conversion rate
= 60 new patients a month.
At 60 new patients a month, the practice books 720 new patients a year.
Calculation of new patients per year:
60 new patients a month
X 12 months in a year
= 720 new patients per year.)
With average first-year revenue of $1,250 per new patient, the practice now collects $487,500 a year in new-patient revenue versus $243,750 in Scenario A.
But the practice also loses about 10% of its patients each year to attrition. The calculations for attrition are a little complex, so they're not shown here. For a detailed explanation of all the numbers in Table 2, please download this document, How to Reduce Marketing Waste.
When we factor in 10% patient attrition, the practice achieves net annual growth of $406,250.
Then we add that net annual growth to the $1.5 million in annual revenue the practice had in the prior year, for total revenue of $1,906,250.
That’s net revenue growth of about 27% over Scenario A.
Remember, the practice achieves this 27% revenue growth without spending any more money on marketing.
The practice achieves this 27% revenue growth without spending any more money on marketing.
What might a practice do with the added revenue?
Here are some ideas.
Owners of new practices can pay down debt faster. Or if they prefer to focus on growing faster, they can:
Owners who want an exit plan can increase the valuation of the practice before they put it up for sale.
All owners could improve their personal or family life by:
For each new patient a practice gains, it takes one away from a possible competitor.
If our example practice continues to spend 4% of its revenue on marketing, next year it could invest about $76,000 a year on marketing. That’s about $6,300 a month, 27% more than it now spends.
With more money to spend on marketing, this practice has less to fear from aggressive competitors.
This is what you call a virtuous cycle. It’s the opposite of a vicious cycle.
Some practice owners are ready to capitalize on the opportunity. They may expand their practice, open another office, join a dental support organization, or even look into starting their own DSO.
Or they may simply want to enjoy life more, knowing they’ve achieved the practice of their dreams.
Either way, they have growth ambitions. They aren’t passive. They’ve run the numbers. They’re smart dental entrepreneurs. And they see higher conversions as a clear path to achieving their goals.
Why don’t other practice owners think this way? Here are five common reasons:
For owners thinking their practice doesn’t have much growth potential, one alternative still offers hope:
"They can reduce marketing waste to increase revenue as much as possible."
Then they can use the added revenue to start or acquire a practice in a better geography.
Note that no practice can continue growing indefinitely unless it increases its clinical capacity and throughput.
The full revenue potential of a single-location practice is about $3.5 million. Practices can generate revenue up to that level by increasing their staff and operatories. But for added growth, they should consider opening another office.
If your front-office conversion rates are as low as 20% or 30%, you can improve them without much effort.
Here are 14 ideas for where to start: