Bulletproof Dental Practice Podcast Episode 4

Host: Dr. Peter Boulden

Atlanta Dental Spa

Guest: Jeff Hopeck

Killer Shark Marketing

Title: How to Get Conversions from Advertising with Jeff Hopeck

Subtitle: Creating a System for Answering Calls To Track Missed Opportunities

Key Takeaways

• Advertising is important but must lead to conversions.
• Dentistry is an untapped industry when it comes to online advertising. There are tremendous opportunities for referrals in dentistry.
• Call trackers are great tools to help identify missed opportunities.
• The challenge: Listening to phone calls at the end of the day is not ideal for dentists who have a full practice during the day.
• A possible solution: Killer Shark has a proprietary software, Shark Talk, that listens to every call and categorizes them for your dental practice. Then sends missed opportunities to your email inbox.
• You can be missing opportunities by not recording and listening to every call even if you are doing well as a practice.
• People don’t call your office and just book an appointment. They call and ask questions to qualify your practice versus other practices they see online.
• Training is important for everyone including your reception service.
• Most practices have scripts but don’t have management accountability.
• Sometimes you don’t need to do or spend more on marketing. You need to identify how to solve missed opportunities.

Tweetables:

“It’s not just about picking up the phone and answering the call, it’s about executing on this data.” - Dr. Peter Boulden

“Data is nothing without execution.” - Dr. Peter Boulden

“You can’t fix something that you don’t know is broken.” - Jeff Hopeck

Resources: 

Website: sharktalk.me

Books:

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Productivity Tool:

Google Calendar 

Bulletproof Dental Practice Podcast Episode 3

Host: Dr. Peter Boulden

Atlanta Dental Spa

Guest: Dr. Marvin Berlin

McKinney Dentist.com

Email: drberlin@gmail.com

Title: Having a Sought After Dental Practice with Dr. Marvin Berlin

Subtitle: How to Grow a Large and Sustainable practice

Key Takeaways:

• Control your attitude and effort everyday.
• Be willing to do what others are not willing to do.
• When at work, focus on your patients.
• Execute the systems that you create everyday.
• Same Day Dentistry: some patients have needs that has to be taken care of on the same day they walk into your clinic. Just offer to do it for your patients instead of letting them walk away.
  • Treating patients immediately shows that you are willing to work around them versus the other way around.
  • McKinney System: Every new patient is booked in the hygiene department for exams, X-rays, etc. and gets the service they want on their first visit.
• Investigate where you say NO to your patients’ requests and find ways to change it into a YES. This may involve changing certain systems and practices.
• Categorize marketing into two: those that cost money (like TV ads, magazine ads, direct mails, etc.) and those that don’t cost money (like waiting room videos, etc.).
  • Tip: Go local. You can show your TV ads in local theaters for more targeted audience.
• Call your patients at night.
• Ask patients to leave reviews for your practice online. Make it easy for them.
• Ask for referrals from patients you like.
• Engage with your social media fans.
• Create valuable online content that patients can use i.e. ebooks.
• Follow up interested patients with personal touch points i.e. personally email them.
• Have a mentality to take care of emergencies.
  • Useful Strategy: Visit nearby pharmacies, give them cards and tell them to give the cards to anyone who buys medicine for toothaches.
• Remove barriers for patients to visit your clinic i.e. online / virtual consultation.
• Be emphatic to patients. Learn to read their body language.
• Being bought by a large corporation has a lot of advantages such as marketing and administrative support.
• Young dentists can benefit from affiliating with large practices.
• Things are changing fast and it’s good if you can get corporate support.

Tweetables:

“When you work, work hard.” - Dr. Marvin Berlin

“If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.” - Dr. Marvin Berlin

Resources

Waiting Room Videos - www.waitingroomvideos.com

Book

Bible

Wealthy Barber by David Chilton

The Gray Men by Mark Greaney

Productivity App

iPad

Bulletproof Dental Practice Podcast Episode 2

Host: Dr. Peter Boulden

Atlanta Dental Spa

Guest: Dr. Mark Costes

Founder, Horizon Schools of Dental Assisting

Founder, Dental Success Institute

Author, Pillars of Dental Success

Title: Expanding Your Practice Through Acquisitions featuring Dr. Mark Costes

Subtitle: How to Expand Without Getting Burned Out

Key Takeaways:

• Not having the right systems in place results to burnout and breakdown. It causes exhaustion.
• Building multiple practices can help you predict a good return but you need to put the correct systems in place.
• Investing in dentistry business puts you in control.
• First time buyers have to consider a lot of things before buying their first practice such as demographics like strength of practice, physical location, etc.; history and reputation of the practice.
• Do not expand before your flagship practice is the way it should be.It should have reproducible systems that are ironclad and that you can replicate in your remote practices.
• Consider the pros and cons when deciding whether to use brand extensions or keep the original brands of the dental practices you’re acquiring.
  • Pros can be that the acquired dental practice can piggyback on existing reputation while cons can be that it’ll be harder to sell in the future and reputation management is more critical.
• Determine your exit strategy in order to know your buying strategy.
  • There are 3 definitive ways to sell a practice: sell to corporations, sell to private equities and sell one practice to one time buyer. Each have different returns and different criteria.
• A dental practice that is run well can earn huge profits.
• There is no template way to determine if you need to rebrand a dental practice. It depends on the situation.
• Things apart from the P&L to consider when buying:
  • Purchase a dental practice that is near where you’ll live.
  • Consider buying a more expensive practice with good history of revenues.
  • Buy a practice whose dentistry services are something you like or know how to do.
• When buying, consider if there is an opportunity to grow. Consider an underperforming practice. Look for the upside such as ability to market digitally.
• Podcasts are great way to learn how to improve your practice.

 Tweetables:

“Begin with the end in mind and re-engineer, otherwise it will be re-engineered for you.” - Dr. Peter Boulden

 “We [dentists] are the luckiest in the industry because of the tangible asset we have.” -Dr. Mark Costes

“Determine your exit strategy in order to know your buying strategy.” -Dr. Mark Costes

“Build your company as if you’re selling it even if you’re not.” - Dr. Peter Boulden

“Dentistry is the darling of private equity right now.” - Dr. Mark Costes

Books To Read

Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink

The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes

Apps

iPhone Calendar

Dr. Peter Boulden shares his goals for the Bulletproof Dental Practice Podcast, and what listeners should expect to hear and learn.