Dental Practice Management Consultant on the Three Herds in Your Dental Practice

In this article, dental practice management consultant Ed O' Keefe will share to you the three herds in your dental practice. The dental practice management consultant will give you the definition and importance of each herd in your practice. And this is something that the dental practice management consultant focus specifically at their dental practice website!

Here are the three herds that the dental practice management consultant will share to you:

The first herd in dental practice management is your patient base. This is considered as the most important asset within your dental practice. And it is because, for example, if your building or dental office burnt down today, and all of your technology and everything was burnt down and crumbled to the ground, as a solution, you could literally walk across the street, start up a shop the next day; and if you have a patient base, you will have appointments, you will have people coming in and you will also have revenue coming in. And with this, you will be able to start your dental practice once again! Now, another thing is, for example, if the doctor have any experience where he/she can no longer work, and if they got a patient base, they can bring in another doctor or someone else who can actually do the dentistry, and the doctor can actually be the master behind the scenes, or the business owner, and with this, they can still work! With these facts, you can see that the technology and the staff you can replace, but the one thing that's the most difficult to replace is your actual patient base (that's why you should consider it as the most important asset that you have in your dental practice). So, nurture and grow your patient base, as it is the "lifeline" of your dental practice!

The second herd in dental practice management are the people you currently have relationships with. They are your family, your friends, your alumni, or every single business owner that you participate and have relationships with. Now, one of the things we often overlook are the business owners. We're just so aggressively spending a lot of money on external marketing (which is smart if you're doing it correctly!). I like to tell people this fact: “Well, do you know business owners who already have their own herds?". I emphasize this because if you can do a joint venture relationship, or referral relationship with a business owner, or co-op relationship, where they spend money and you organize it, and wherein you get a free advertising, you can have a ton of patients coming into your practice from other business owners! So, it is necessary to take care and nurture this herd as well in your dental practice.

The third herd in dental practice management are what we call the “interested but not ready herd”. In other words, they are what we call your "lead" in the business. For example, let's look at a scenario in cosmetic dentistry, where you call on a cosmetic patient and ask him this question: “Are you embarrassed by your smile?”. Then you give him 2 options/choices – first, he can call directly to the office just to set up a consultation; and second, he can come in and get him to call toll free order message hot line number, or have him go to a website to get a frequency awareness report. Then as time goes on, that group of people who requested would build up in number. And over a year, you might have 3,000 people or 5,000 people who are on your list. The good thing about marketing with these people and getting a ton of leads of people who are interested is that we know that they're really interested! That's why they requested for a report, which means that they're interested of whatever it is that you have to offer them! Then for your business, you can have headache sufferers; you can go and market to Implant patients; you can do Cosmetic Dentistry, etc! In here, you'll be the one to decide on how you want to do it. That's why it's also important to take care of and nurture this herd in your dental practice.