[00:00:00] Let’s say the nature of the inquiry is something like this. Hi, my name is Prav. I’ve been suffering with these loose dentures for the last 20 years. I’ve been wearing the same dentures for that period of time. I’m walking around with a stick identity glue. I can’t eat the foods I love. I’m embarrassed and I’m absolutely terrified of the dentist. But I know I need to do something about this. And I’ve just read about implants on your website. Can you help? And after I send that inquiry to your practice, how do you receive the inquiry and how do you respond to it? The answer is I get a massively varied right from the principal not having a Scooby-Doo. What happens next? Because they’ll say something like this, Oh, yeah, we give him a call and we follow up with them. But the depth of the answer is not much further than that. Okay, so they inquire at ten. When do you call them? 1005 11:00 that day. Do you leave it till the following day? During them in the evening? Do you try them in the morning? You try them at lunchtime. Do you send them a text message? What are the words that are in that text message that entices that patient to say, Yeah, this is the first choice for dental implants in my area. This this clinic has dealt with me in the right way. Do your team have the emotional intelligence to tap into the fact that perhaps a dental phobic hadn’t seen a dentist in over 20 years and would respond to that inquiry by saying, Dear Prof. Congratulations on taking the first step in 20 years to getting your smile back on track. We’re here to help you, and I would be absolutely delighted to speak to you about your dental implant journey and how we can get you eat in the foods you love, throwing away that denture glue and smiling with confidence. Once again.

[00:02:02] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts Payman, Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

[00:02:19] Welcome to the dental latest podcast. Today’s solo episode with me and I thought we taught marketing rather than giving you my top ten marketing tips or Top ten communication tips, how to convert patients, you know, or whatever those topics might be a thought. What might be more valuable is to take you through the process. That we go through, all that I go through and potential clients go through when they inquire to engage my agency in helping grow their practice or business or help or engage in just me to help them. Right? So that me or me and my team, either through my agency, the fresh or through my personal website, Ofcom, the nature of the inquiry is often something like this. I want to carry on earning the same amount of money, but work less, spend more time with my children. It might be I want to do another 50 Invisalign cases a year so I can chase that apex target. It might be that they want to place another hundred or 200 implants a year, grow the bit of their practice, get their practice ready for sale and exit by leveraging and improving the profitability of it and get the structure of the business right or exit whatever they want, whatever it is they’re looking for. I pretty much do the same job as you that you would do as clinicians, and they assess the foundations. I assess the landscape and ask a bunch of questions that are not only thought provoking for my clients, but also help us get to the answer of, well, is that what they really want? Why do they want it? And How are we going to get there? So just as a patient would walk in your surgery and say, well, you know, they want the beautiful new smile, or they’ve got loose dentures and they want implants and whatnot.

[00:04:17] You’d need to carry out comprehensive mouth assessment. You’d need to look what’s going on under the bonnet. So you take x rays, you do scans and things like that, and then only after then you could put together a comprehensive treatment plan which would detail the work involved, what the potential resource would be on, what the risks would be. And that’s exactly what I do day to day. So a client comes to me and they say, I want to grow my business. And the questions that I come forward with are the ones that help my clients think about what it is they actually want, but also make them think, have they got the infrastructure? Have they got the ability and the bandwidth to do? The level of dentistry to convert the number of patients and have the team behind them to deliver what they’re asking me for. So it’s all good and welcome into me and saying, Hey, I need another new I need an extra 100 implant placements or need an extra 150 Invisalign cases, whatever it is.

[00:05:32] Have you got the space in your diary? Have you got the team to process the leads and the enquiries? Have you got the follow up systems in place, etc. etc.? Right. How much clinical time do you have? How much whitespace is in the diary? Are you willing to put more hours in? You know, there’s loads of questions that revolve around infrastructure. Is that infrastructure there? So if you’re sat there as a business owner or an associate and you thinking, I want to grow, I want to grow my business, just take a step back. Think about your infrastructure. And what I like to do is just draw a flow chart of my patient journey and start with just one patient a day. Imagine you have that one patient and you wanted to give them the perfect patient journey. What would that look like? And then multiply that up. Have you got the bandwidth? Have you got the nursing capabilities? Have you got the people, the concierges, or the people who lead ninjas, as I call them? Right. Who follow up those patients in terms of the inquiries, follow those treatment plans that don’t convert. Keep in touch with those patients during their journey. Is that infrastructure in place? So there’s two pretty powerful questions that will ask a client, depending on the timeframe that we’re thinking of and depending on their goals. I will ask this question in one or two ways. Say Prav. If we were to look back three years from now.

[00:07:04] What must have happened both personally and professionally, for you to be really happy with what you’ve achieved. And I’d ask the same question, but say in 12 months time. Right? Now, the key thing here is that by asking that question, you can open up a whole conversation that could go on for at least an hour, if not longer. What must have happened personally? What must have happened professionally? Because those two things go hand in hand, right? We’re not robots. So this things in your personal life that have to give these things in your professional life that have to happen, and where do you want that balance to sit? So it really gets you thinking about what does that look like in three years time? If I was only doing this, I’d consider myself an absolute failure, right? So this is what must have happened in three years time or 12 months time for to be a success. And in their own words, my clients will tell me what must have happened. So I implore you to do that. Get a piece of paper and just scratch down what needs to happen. In the next three years. Looking back. If me and you were having this conversation. For you to say I’m really happy with my success personally and professionally. Once we set the landscape with that, we start looking at the infrastructure of that client’s business. What’s the staff or the team makeup like? What’s the bandwidth for handling more inquiries? What’s the systems and processes in place right now for the way they handle their inquiries? What capacity is there to grow within the practice clinically? How much clinical work are you doing that’s similar to what you want to do? How much of your diary spend doing everyday check-ups where it could be spent doing higher volume work? How would you get rid of the check ups out of your diary? Because these patients have been with you for 510 years and they don’t want to let you go.

[00:09:17] What’s the process of letting that go to make more space in your diary? These conversations will weave in different directions, depending on who I’m speaking to, how long they’ve been a business owner. Are they a squat? Are they a, you know, a long established practice on what it is they want to achieve? The other question, which I think is probably one of the most important questions, if you answer it thoroughly, is if I was to inquire as a patient tomorrow and let’s say the nature of the inquiry is something like this. Hi, my name is Prav. I’ve been suffering with these loose dentures for the last 20 years. I’ve been wearing the same dentures for that period of time. I’m walking around with a stick of denture glue. I can’t eat the foods I love. I’m embarrassed and I’m absolutely terrified of the dentist. But I know I need to do something about this.

[00:10:20] And I’ve just read about implants on your website. Can you help? And after I send that inquiry to your practice, how do you receive the inquiry and how do you respond to it? The answers. I get a massively varied right from the principal not having a Scooby-Doo. What happens next? Because they’ll say something like this, Oh, yeah, we give him a call and we and we follow up with them. But the depth of the answer is not much further than that. Okay, so the Enquirer ten, when do you call them? 1005. 11:00 that day. Do you leave it till the following day to ring them in the evening? To try them in the morning? To try them at lunchtime? Did you send them a text message? Do you fact you try different methods of communication? How many times do you follow up with them? How many voicemails do you leave them? What language do you use in that voicemail that you leave when you send him a text message? What are the words that are in that text message that entices that patient to say, Yeah, this is the first choice for dental implants in my area. This this clinic has dealt with me in the right way. Do your team have the emotional intelligence to tap into the fact that Prav was a dental phobic, hadn’t seen a dentist in over 20 years. I would respond to that inquiry by saying, Dear Prof.

[00:11:50] Congratulations on taking the first step in 20 years to getting your smart back on track. We’re here to help you, and I would be absolutely delighted to speak to you about your dental implant journey and how we can get you eating the foods you love, throwing away that denture glue and smiling with confidence once again. And so the response and the conversation that sort of twists and turns from that is essentially what I would call my digital patient journey. And your digital patient journey should take into account that a lot of these patients who are spending, you know, north of let’s say north of three grand, right on any kind of dentistry. Many of them will have been making or will be in the process of making that decision over a long period of time. So when I asked that question, what happens next? And they say we call them and we text them and we email, and then I’ll say, What if it goes to voicemail? What if they don’t respond to the text? And what if they don’t respond to email or call them again? When? A week later. What if they don’t respond? And the answer is often that, well, if they’re interested, they’ll come back to us. The really good practices might follow up for a week, maybe two weeks, and then we’re dead in the water. I’m just going to digress for a moment and I want you to really think about.

[00:13:33] The last really expensive thing. You build a house, a car, a watch, a luxury item, something where perhaps you need to think hard about. Do you really deserve it? Can I really afford it? And do I need to take a loan out of finance, out to pay for it? Most of us are not impulse buyers under this situation. Right. When I ask clients this question that, you know, how long did it take before you decided to buy your, you know, your super car or this new home or even that, you know, the holiday of a lifetime? The answer to that question is often months, if not a couple of years. And I think we need to step into our patient shoes is when they’re inquiring about treatment that is considered in their mind to be expensive, to require finance, to require taking a loan. They’re not most of them are not going to make that decision in a week, in two weeks, in that time frame under which you’re chasing them. Okay. And so, you know, in my business, we’ve been building a CRM system for the last 15 years. And for those of you don’t know what CRM system is, is a piece of software that allows you to manage the digital patient journey and follow up patients over a period of time. And, you know, there’s all different shapes, sizes and flavours of CRM systems, right? I’ve created my own that revolves around my journey.

[00:15:19] But the important thing here is that what length of time is your follow up journey? Are you following these patients for two or three weeks or you follow it up these patients for two years? And I would implore every single one of you to think about all of those patients who you only followed up for, let’s say two weeks, three weeks, even four weeks, a probably hot to go ahead with treatment six, nine, 12, 18, 24 months later when they’ve actually made the jump and decided to go ahead with treatment. Out of the hundreds of thousands of inquiries that have made their way through our CRM system. We believe from the data that 3% of the inquiries that land today are what I consider to be fast lane buyers. So they’re ready to buy today and there’s nothing you can do to stop and buy into. They either walk in with their wallets wide open and say, I want you to fix my teeth. Another 15% of those buyers are going to buy or those inquiries are going to buy some time between today and the next 90 days. That could be in five days time. It could be in ten days time. It could be in 30, 60 or 85 days time. Right. But that block, a 15% of your potential inquiries are buying between now and the next 90 days. What’s really interesting is that cohort of patients who make up the vast majority of those patients who are going to go ahead by some point between today and the next 18 months.

[00:17:17] And that comprises over 50% of your audience. And the remainder go in and buy two plus years later and you might be sat there thinking, well, perhaps chat in a load of shit because, you know, we convert loads of our inquiries, right? And we get loads of patients coming through the door and we convert most of our inquiries. I’d like to challenge that. And it also like to like to think about the following if you ever had that patient that comes in for a consultation. Disappears into the woodwork 12 months, two years later, pops up out of nowhere and says, Let’s go ahead with treatment. Oh, that treatment plan that you sent me a year ago. Is it still valid? I’d like to go ahead. Circumstances change. They move from the slow lane to the fast lane. They transition from being a buyer who’s going to take 18 months to make a decision to a fast lane buyer, who’s going to go ahead with treatment today. And so the point I’m making here is that if you’re following up your patients in the right way, make sure you follow them up for 18 months to two years after they’ve made their initial inquiry. Have a robust strategy for doing that. Have a strategy that’s not going to piss them off and annoy them because you’re following them up too frequently and too often.

[00:18:46] But I have a strategy in place, so they know you’re here, and when they’re ready, they know what need to jump back on Facebook or Google. Because you’ve been in their inbox, you’ve been on the end of the phone and you’ve just been trying to help them during that period of time, nurturing them, sending them content that they find is helpful and useful during that journey. So what do we do in my practice? Well, ordinarily, when an inquiry comes through the door, we call them straight away. But the first thing we do for every single inquiry and it’s automated. So no one actually does this, it’s all completely automated by the CRM. This will send them a text message. They’re Prav. Thank you for inquiring about dental implants. When’s a good time to talk? Text messages. We keep them brief. We keep them micro conversational. Emails have a little bit more depth and volume to them, and all we’re looking for in response to that text message is a time. Tomorrow at 2 p.m., tomorrow at seven. Next Wednesday at four, I’m on holiday. Approximately 30% of those automated text messages that we send out to new inquiries get a response. If you get a response, you’re one step forward to getting closer to a consultation. If you get a response to an email, you’re one step closer to getting a patient in for a consultation. So we send a text message, we send the email.

[00:20:27] How do we prioritise who we get back to first? Well, naturally, those who’ve texted us and ask for a specific callback say we’ll call them back first. If you don’t respond to that text message, when someone says tomorrow at 2 p.m. and you try and call them at 2 p.m.. What do you think the likelihood of them answering this next to Slim because you’ve not confirmed that appointment and it seems like such an obvious thing. The text that patient back and say I’m going to call you tomorrow at 2:05. I’m really looking forward to speaking to you. Prof. So confirm that respond by text message. We’ll have emails going out to those patients, but imagine I didn’t get a text message response. What I’d then do is follow up with that patient and call them. 4 to 6 times. And that follow up with an ethic and if I keep going through to voicemail right I ring them on a different day of the week, the different time of the day when I’m following up. So I might ring them at 10:00 one day I ring them at lunchtime, the next day I ring them after hours, another day between the hours of five and eight. Another day I might follow them up on a Saturday morning. And why am I following them up on different days of the week and different times of the day? Because I’m trying to increase the probability of getting hold of that patient.

[00:21:55] And what am I trying to do when I get hold of that patient? It’s really simple. I’m trying to sell them something, and sales is simply earning the right to make a recommendation based on trust. Right. So all I’m going to do is speak to that patient, have a conversation with them, build some trust with them. Convince them that we’re the right clinic for them to at least come in and have a consultation, have a conversation with one of our clinicians, and then see if it’s the right clinic for them. And that is all I’m doing. When I get hold of that patient during that journey, I’m trying to increase the probability gain hold of him. I will send out spaced out emails to that patient during the period of time, trying to book them in, following up by sending them relevant before and after cases. Video Testimonials. I’ll take screenshots of Google reviews that patients have left me. And I’ll send them in an email if I get to the end of that period. And let’s say it’s been, I don’t know, 20 weeks, 25 weeks, something like that. And that patient has not responded to a text, an email, a phone call just dead in the water. Then it’s time you break out or we break out what’s called our Break-Up email and I’ll send the patient an email. So the general sentiment would be something like this.

[00:23:21] The subject line will say, Sorry, Prav. So we’ll have the patient’s name in and I’ll say, Sorry. You see that in your inbox? You’re going to think, What the heck is this? And then the body of the email will say something along the lines of Dear Prof. Over the last four or five months, I’ve tried to call you. I’ve tried to text you, and I’ve tried to email you several times. I was only trying to help you if you Dental inquiry. But for some reason, you never got back to me. I’m guessing. That of offended you? And for that, I’m sorry. But if there’s anything that I can do to improve my communication, please help me understand why I did wrong. 40% of non-responders now immediately respond to that Break-Up email. About half of them will tell you they’ve gone somewhere else. Or it’s not for them. That’s cool. At least we got closure on that. But about half of them come back and say, Hey, you know what, Prav. I’m ready to go ahead with treatment now or. It’s not me, it’s you. And I’m just not quite ready yet. But don’t worry. When I do decide to go ahead with treatment, you’ll be the first to know. So we’ve got a structure for that follow up process when a patient inquires. And then what about when you eventually book them in for a consultation? What communication goes out to your patient at that point.

[00:24:58] Just send him an email explaining what’s going to happen next. Or do you just leave it to chance and say, we’re looking forward to meeting you? Always take this back to the day that I went for my. Actually, I’ll come back to that in a second. Think about your own practice if it’s a private cosmetic practice or wherever your practices. And let’s assume this patient’s going to be coming in to your practice because their own dentist doesn’t do this implant procedure or whatever it is, and they haven’t stepped in a practice like yours before. They haven’t experienced what your experience is, so to speak, and they used to a different level of service. Do you think it would be helpful to explain to them what to expect next? Give them an idea of who they’re going to meet when they step into the practice. What’s going to happen? They’re going to fill out a medical history. They’re going to be greeted by this person. They’re going to be offered a drink. They’re going to be taken to a private waiting area where then they’re going to meet a smile expert or a TCL. Following that, they’re going to meet the dentist. We’re going to take some photographs. We’re going to look inside your mouth. We might take some X-rays, etc., etc.. This stuff that happens in a consultation or an assessment because you’re doing it day in, day out. It’s like child’s play. It happens all the time.

[00:26:22] But in their world, it’s completely foreign and it’s part of your customer service experience. I feel that we should be telling our patients exactly what’s going to happen next. And I was just going to go back. So I was going to circle on to this point earlier and I’ll mention it now. I remember when like the pandemic kicked in and we could first get our COVID tests. And I remember booking it on my phone. I was anxious at the time. I remember that. And we were you know, we were all fearful at different levels, at different times during the pandemic, for whatever reasons. Right. But I turned off my COVID test, and I’m told to rock up at this car park. And as a signal, it’s a bit like the car wash, right? The dudes waving me on drive to the line. It’s quite aggressive. And then he gives me the sign to win the window down and then he says, No back window. So we’re watching the window and he launches a COVID test through my back window. Now, at this point, I’ve got to leave my foot on the brake, reach to the back of my car, grab the COVID test, and then he’s pointing to go to another car park and slope. Some dude comes and bangs on my window and says, Do you know what to do? And I’m like, I ain’t got a clue. I was you know what? I was anxious at this point, right? So he says, Read the instructions.

[00:27:43] We all know how to do a COVID test now. But you remember the first one you did. You don’t know how far to stick your nose. You need to you’ve got to do it till it hurts, you know? Anyway, it was it was an experience. Had I known what was going to happen, I would have been more comfortable. Now, I know it’s not as terrifying as going for your first COVID test, but I like to draw that analogy because these patients don’t know what they’re about to experience. But as part of good customer experience, I think we should be informing our patients what is going to happen next. One of the best ways I’ve seen this done is actually to record video from the patient perspective of what is going to happen next and send that out in an email or potentially a WhatsApp or a text message. So the patient comes in for the consultation and you deliver that amazing consultation and you say to the patient, Right, here’s your treatment plan and I’m not going to know the ins and outs of all the questions and how deliver the perfect consultation in this podcast. Other than to say it was a great consultation, patient leaves with a treatment plan and says, I need to go away and think about it. What I want you to think about is how many open treatment plans are in your clinic right now.

[00:29:04] Do you know over the last 12 months, how many patients have you consulted with that didn’t go ahead with treatment? Out of those patients that didn’t go ahead with treatment, how many of you reached out to beyond a three month period, a three month wait, six months later, nine months later, 12 months later, you see when clients come to me and say, Hey, Prav, I’d like to grow my Invisalign book, I’d like to grow my implant book, I’d like to get more patients through the door. There’s often this low hanging fruit that is sat there waiting to be picked and me throw in more leads or more inquiries in at the top end is just going to rip these leaky, bookish right open. So it’s really important that our follow up process, even post consultation, is super robust up to two years. Again, these patients are going to take a long time. Some of these patients didn’t take a long time to make this decision. And you want to make sure that these patients are choosing you to go ahead with with that decision and convert. Right. I know in my clinic, probably one of the most emotionally intelligent human beings I know, Marc NORTHOVER, who’s my business partner in in a couple of my practices in the Midlands area, I’ve known him to pick up the phone himself, not the CO, not the lead ninja for him as the clinician to pick up the phone three, six, nine months later and go, Oh, Mr.

[00:30:37] Smith, it’s Mark. You came to see me six months ago. Nine months ago. How are you doing? Me? Just ringing to see how you getting on. Have you thought any more about it? See if there’s anything I can help you with. Would you like the opportunity to come in and see me again? And, you know, when he does those cheeky little calls in between patients at the end of his day, at the start of his day, and he’ll just eyeball. It’ll keep his eye on these patients and then go. He’ll go as he says his you know, in his own words, I’m going special ops now. I now sit there and eavesdrop on the conversations that Mark has with our patients. And that coming from a clinician and all we can say, okay, well, we don’t have the time or we don’t have the energy to do this. In fact, another client of mine who who I think about and he’s since sold his practice a long, long time ago, a guy called Anthony Coyne in the Liverpool area. He used to follow up his own patient inquiries and his conversion rate was phenomenal. Now, I am not for one second saying that as clinicians and dentists, I want you to turn into treatment coordinators. Right. But let me tell you, if you’ve got that high ticket patient, that special patient you’ve made a bond with and you think, you know what, I just need to pick up the phone to get them over the edge.

[00:32:02] There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. And it will provide an additional layer of service and communication that they will be unlikely to be getting from somewhere else. So just think outside. Think outside the normal realms of what you would ordinarily do and perhaps make it a thing. And so you follow up your enquiry. Follow up journey is really, really important and this numerous ways you can do this, you can use spreadsheets, you can use a CRM system and there’s loads out there. But whatever it is that you’re using, make sure you’re nurturing these patients for months, make sure you use them. Multiple communication methods, text message, email, WhatsApp and you’re communicating with them along their preferences, right? The younger kids these days, they prefer to communicate on voice notes and perhaps that’s the way to communicate with some patients because they prefer that type of communication. So let’s imagine we’ve got all of our. How should I put it? Communication strategy in place. And there’s one more thing I’ll add to that. The point in the patient journey where that patient is taking the biggest risk and making the biggest decision is when they say yes, and that’s the moment we really should be celebrating. So no, at the end of treatment, some of you might give your patients flowers or a gift or take these selfies and whatnot, right? I think the moment for celebration is when these patients put their trust in you and they commit.

[00:33:51] And at that point, they say yes. Because as we all experience buyer’s remorse when we’ve bought something that we think perhaps do I really deserve that should have I spend that money on myself, right. For me, you know, I might walk into a walk into a store and buy myself, I don’t know, an expensive hoodie or t shirt or whatever. Right. I guess I step out there because it took me ages to decide which one I was going to get right. And as I step out there, I’m thinking to myself, I should have bought this. Do I deserve it? Should I go back and get a refund? Well, guess what? The stakes are much higher with high ticket dentistry. And I think at that moment when they say, yes, it’s time to celebrate, to give that patient a gift, at that point, celebrate and say a thank you is going to have much, much higher impact than at the end of treatment. Why advise my clinicians to do it? Take some time out and write in that patient personalised notes, a thank you card and in that thank you card, something along the lines of Dear Prof. It was an absolute pleasure to meet you today and thank you so much for putting your trust in me. I am really looking forward to the first time that you bite into an apple again.

[00:35:25] Prof. Well, the dentist. Prof. Right. It’s a prof. Right. But you get the idea. You fill out that card and you pop it in an envelope and it goes into the post and arrives at that patient’s house a day or two later. But what’s really important about the envelope that you send that card in? As it shouldn’t be a white envelope and it shouldn’t be a brown envelope. It should either be in a bright brown colour or what I like to call it is the golden envelope, a gold envelope. And as that lands along with their whites and browns, they’re going to spot that straight away. It’s the first thing they’re going to open. And when they open, that’s a heartfelt letter. Notes from their dentist saying, I’m just looking forward to helping you and thank you so much for putting your trust in me. What do you think will happen to the buyer’s remorse at that time disintegrates? What do you think the first thing that they will be saying to their patients, sorry, what do you think the first thing that they will be saying when they walk through the door? Going to be talking about that letter. They’re going to be talking about that now. And you’ll have built an additional depth of rapport and trust with that patient. So moving on to marketing strategy, now, you’ve got your follow up process in place.

[00:36:47] You know how you pay. You know how to give your patients that ready black Breck glow where they feel absolutely amazing. Right. What about your marketing strategy? So we say start with the lowest hanging fruit. How many consultations are you doing a day? How many of those consultations or you know, what should we say at Check-ups? How many check-ups do you do in a day? Right. How many check-ups do you speak to them about cosmetic dentistry or the state of their teeth, or how you could improve them once it that came from payment? My co-host on this podcast, he always tells me, Do you know what? If you want to double your whitening, just start taking the shade of every patient’s tooth that walks through the door and just say to them, This graph today, we’re going to do something new. We’re going to document and we’re going to take the shade of your teeth today. And here’s a shade guide. And the dentist issued a mark on this guide where you are. We’re doing this because we’ve realised that over time as we all age our teeth get darker and some patients want to do something about that. So let’s see where you are and how your teeth change over the next few years as you’re with us. And we’ll keep that on your record. So we take that through, we document it. We’ve already said if you want to do something about it, you can double your whitening results overnight.

[00:38:06] Yeah, double the amount of whitening you can do overnight. What about scanning every patient? You’ve probably heard it 100 times, right? If you’ve got an INTRAORAL scanner scan, every patient that walks through the door, you will definitely do more orthodontic treatment. But how practical is it? How many scanners have you got? Is that scanner free when someone else is getting scanned and there’s a there’s another patient who needs to get scanned. It’s not always practical, but we can set micro goals. What about in the morning huddle? Identify it every day. We’re going to scan three patients that we would not have otherwise scanned today and then change that to four or five. See how far you can stretch it, right. We’d have to start by scanning every patient, scan three patients a day, scan four patients a day, scan five patients a day. Identify which patients you’re going to scan in the huddle. Tell that patient when they come in for their assessment, Hey, we’ve just got this new scanner and we’ve decided that we’re scanning our special patients. Normally 150 quid for this scan, but you’re getting it completely free. So we’re going to scan your house, scan your mouth, and we’re going to document the position of your teeth, where they are and how they move over time. And look at this simulation. It shows how easy it could be if you ended up having orthodontic treatment. If that’s something you were interested in, you’ll do more orthodontic treatment.

[00:39:39] Tiff Qureshi spoke to me about how he generates his pipeline of a line bleach and bond patients, but is fortunate to be in a practice where he’s been seeing patients for probably around about two decades now. And I think what he does is he takes a photograph of every tooth using a intraoral camera, not just one of those basic cameras that you can wave around and take a photograph of each tooth. And then he talks to his patients about the concept of continual tooth movement and how the majority of patients in their adult lives, their teeth, are going to move over time. And as they move, their envelope of function will get constricted. And that will lead to chipping of their teeth. The edge cases patients. Believe it or not, these patients walk through the door for their consultations. Then they ask if what’s my envelope of function looking like today? Because he’s educated them in a really simple way. But as he’s done that over the last ten, 15 years, his orthodontic patients, his aligned leech and bomb patients have been generated not through Facebook ads, not through Google ads, but through just having structured conversations with patients. You know, and I can sit here and say, look, I’m in the business of running Google ads and Facebook ads for clients. Right? This is what we do. By advice. All of my clients get the basics done first.

[00:41:15] Squeeze everything you can out of what’s already in front of you, and then elevate it with the other bells and whistles that are open to you. Okay, so we’ve talked about patient conversations and what you can do to increase your mind, increase in ortho and those sort of things. Structure your conversations, what’s in your waiting room or your or your patient lounge? Have you got pictures on the wall of patient smiles that you’ve transformed? Have you got a photo album or a book? Have you got points of sales literature about orthodontic treatment? Do you make the most of it? Do you talk about it, or is it just stuck on the wall for your patients to ask? All of these things are talking points. So training your reception team, training your front of house, how to feel comfortable about engaging in conversations where these patients are going to feel sorry, engage in conversations where these patients are going to feel comfortable, and where your team are going to feel comfortable selling to these patients and feeling confident. Funnily enough, I was running a I was running a business course, the business mindset and mastery course at the Ice Academy a couple of months ago and was a couple about a month ago. Anyway, one of the questions that came up, but it wasn’t the topic of the course, one of the main topics. If somebody asked me, how do you ask for Google reviews? Right? What’s the structure and the strategy of that? That’s another marketing strategy.

[00:42:49] How would you create ambassadors? Because what’s the reason that patients choose you? Often they’ll go, they’ll Google you, they’ll look at your reviews. Sometimes your reviews find them, your reviews improve your Google local rankings, all of those things. So how do we increase the quality and the volume of Google reviews? Sure. This software out there that can automate this for you, right? I truly believe there isn’t anything that replaces the human touch and software can supplement that human touch, but actually genuinely asking makes all the difference. How should you ask? Well, I’d hate to ask in a way that was saying it’s all about the practice. So if I said to the patient, Hey, guess what? Our business grows because people like you leave reviews for us. So I’d like you to leave me a review so we can grow more. What’s in it for the patient? Absolutely nothing. So the way we twist that, twisted that round on that course that day is when I was asked and it was Neera who asked me, I believe I said, Well, look, you’ve got to look at it from the point of view of the patient. What’s in it for them to just slightly tweak in that conversation and say to that patient, look for us. So let’s say let’s look at the structure. You can only ask a patient for a review once there’s been a positive conversation.

[00:44:20] Right? Ask for some feedback. Wait for that moment in their journey and you’ve not got to wait until they’ve completed their smile makeover. You’ve not got to wait until the bond appointment. Right. There’s probably loads of patients in your practice who are having hygiene on a six monthly basis who’ve been coming in for their routine check-ups. They’re all game for leaving reviews as well. And so you identify who you’re going to ask for a review. You identify who’s going to ask them for review. We usually do that in the huddle, and then we task ourselves of asking, let’s say, half a dozen patients a day with the aim of getting one review a day. So we task ourselves with that. Let’s say you set yourself a goal, right? And the structure is this you have a positive conversation with the patient. How’s it going? Prav are happy with you. Smile on May. I’m over the moon. What’s the level of service bid? Oh, Kelly’s been excellent. She’s looked after me. You’ve all been great. Do you know what, Prav? I think your story and what you’ve got to say about your journey could inspire other nervous patients just like you were before you came to see us to take action and pluck up the courage to get their confidence back, just like you did. Would you feel comfortable writing your story or documenting your story in a Google review or a Facebook review? You see saying to that patient that they can do something for someone else, they can inspire someone else, they can help someone else to understand the service that we deliver or whatever it is.

[00:45:58] Not only does it help them make that decision and make it more comfortable for them, but it’s easier to ask, you know. And shortly after that, of course, I did. I got a text from near a WhatsApp from Nero Manian and she just said, You know what, prof? Our reviews have gone through the roof. And you know what? For the first time in whatever it is, two decades of being a practice owner, I now finally feel comfortable asking patients for reviews. So go ahead and do that. And if you do, go ahead and do that and it works for you. Message me and let me know. So we move on with our marketing strategy. We know we’ve covered all of the low hanging fruit. We’ve got a great communication strategy in place. We know what conversations to have with our patients. Are we creating content in-house? Right? What do I post on Facebook? What do I post on Instagram? What videos do I record? What photographs do I take right? Do I need to get a company in to record some professional video testimonials? What would say again? Set yourself some goals and start creating content. Try and find that person in your practice. For us, it’s usually a nurse or a treatment coordinator or reception team member, usually younger side of our age brackets of the people in our organisation who are a bit more social media savvy, comfortable posting on Instagram, creating real stories and all the rest of it.

[00:47:31] But we’ve got to produce the content and what would the content that I feel works best and resonates best with patients, obviously, before and after transformations, right? That works incredibly well. But just taking a document in the every day pulse of the practice selfies with patients where we’ve got clinician and patient together. Selfie in a dental environment works incredibly well and it works so well that we use these images for sponsored ad campaigns. Well, these images also attract other patients by themselves. The patients that we take the images of, post the images on their own feed, share the images we tag them in. And creating that content is really easy. What you do, you set yourself a goal and you say, I’m going to take one photograph every day and post it on Facebook and Instagram. Then we’re going to move on to two. Then we’re going to do a video a week and move on from that. But just one step at a time. And the one thing I learned from posting selfies with patients on social feeds is those selfies attract patients, more patients who are like those patients that you have taken selfies with and without putting too fine a point on it. In our practice in the Birmingham area, we had a lady who came into the practice, a Pakistani lady in traditional wear, a headscarf, silversmiths, you know, just just traditional wear.

[00:49:15] That’s the easiest way to describe it. And we took a selfie with her and we posted it and guess what? Her tribe came in and we started attracting more females like her in traditional dress. Why? Well, perhaps because they felt that one of my tribe go in there. One of my lot. I go in there, and from that they felt comfortable in that environment. And similarly, if I saw a short, fat, bald bloke having a selfie done in the practice, that might make me think. Do you know what that place welcomes? People like me. I’ll go in there to work the tree. Moral of the story as many selfies that are as diverse as possible in age, race, religion, breadth, depth, colour, skin tone. Beautiful. Not so beautiful, you name it. Blonde, brunette, whatever. Right. Make sure that your caption are wide, diverse range and you will attract that diverse range of patients as well when it comes to content creation. And then the next thing. Once we’ve covered all of that, we’ve ticked all the boxes. Communication. Internal Marketing’s on point. Patient communications on point. We’re squeezing our leads for 18 months, 24 months. We’ve got a great CRM system in place. My team have had great training. I’m going to digress again now. Probably one of the best ways in which you can learn about your business is by listening to the phone calls between patients and your front desk, or leads to both inbound and outbound calls.

[00:51:17] In modern day practices, we should be recording both ends, both incoming and outgoing calls. You sit down and pick 20 calls at random. As a business owner now, if you’re a business owner and you want to work on your business today, this is probably one of the most powerful things you can do in your business. Download. 20 phone calls. Ten inbound, ten outbound at random perhaps self select anything that’s over 60 seconds and listen to them. You will learn so much about your patients. You learn so much about your team, but you’ll also learn that you’ve got so much work to do because there isn’t the practice. In my 16 years of doing this, does it matter what communication courses they’ve been on, who’s school of training they’ve had, what TKO calls, they’ve been on every practice team that answers the phone has got room for improvement. You listen to those 20 calls and you put a plan together for your team. In my practice, when we grew, before we exited, right, we grew the valuation of the business tenfold. And I would say one of the contributing factors to that. Was every single month we would download those calls. We would play them back to the whole team. We would coach the team and we’d rinse and repeat every month.

[00:52:54] Eventually they started coaching each other and we became amazing on the phone, and that’s what helps us convert more and more and more. What did we do? We tweaked the conversation. Yeah. Don’t call Mark, a clinical dental technician. Nobody knows what clinical dental technician is. Let’s call him a denture expert who’s been handcrafting dentures for the last 30 years. And what’s great about the work that Mark does is he makes teeth look unbelievably natural and fits perfectly. And so we tweet the conversation, we tweet the narrative as we got better and better and better. And what you find is that over time, if you listen to your calls, make that habit, make that part of your business process when working on the business is that you just elevate the nature of your conversations, improve your conversion rates, and grow your business massively just through improving your communication. Going back to the last part of when a client comes to me and says, okay, so can you help me with Google and Facebook? Can you help me grow my business? Okay. So why is it that the majority of clients or potential clients that we consult with, you know, we kind of what we say to them is if your sales process isn’t up to scratch, we won’t work with you because we know that the results of what we deliver is highly reliant on what your team does and know. I know that and I can say that as both an agency owner and a practice practice owner, I know what happens on both sides of the fence and so often we send potential clients off to do their homework, find a lead manager to manage the inquiries.

[00:54:45] They don’t have the infrastructure in place. They don’t have the team in place to handle inquiries. So they come to me looking for inquiries. I ask them what they’re going to do with the inquiries, and they sit their rabbits in the headlight and say, I don’t know, pref, go and hire that person. First piece of homework. Whether you engage yours or engage someone else, go and hire that person. So you foundations get your infrastructure right in a couple of months time. Come knocking on our door again and let’s see if we can work together. It’s really, really important. And the vast majority of people we speak to, we can’t work with simply because their infrastructure is not in place. We want to be we want to make sure everything that we deliver is powered by a team that can deliver on the other side. So we get to the external marketing piece, right? That’s the easy bit. Okay. Because your external marketing strategy revolves around a few different things, increasing your reach locally through search engine optimisation, Google reviews and that sort of thing, increasing your visibility in the Google local part, local search terms when someone’s looking for a dentist near me or, you know, dental implants in whatever town or teeth whitening or invisalign or teeth straightening and whatever.

[00:56:01] And then you’ve got on your actual website, there’s quite a lot that you can do without actually spending any money in driving more traffic to it. So before you start driving paid traffic to your website. Have a look at this. Things that you can do to increase the conversion rate. Right. Perhaps you can install a chat bot on your website. Right. You know, and have that chat bot built in a way that supports your business. You know, whether it’s whether it filters patients out based on price first or whether it asks relevant questions along the way. Having a structured chat bot on your website can make can make a big difference to conversion rates. What the Call to Action Sale on your website? Is your phone number clickable? What’s the mobile experience like? The vast majority. The vast majority of patients going on your website will be on a mobile test out on your phone, click the buttons, navigate around, go on your Invisalign page. What do unique selling points say about you? If you just got a page that’s quite generic about Invisalign on your website, or does it sing about you? Does it contain before and afters your best before and after? So has it got video testimonials on their Google reviews from patients who’ve had that treatment? They’ve left them for you. Just critically analyse your real estate, your website, and see if you can squeeze a bit more out of it.

[00:57:27] Then we go to pay traffic to main sources of paid traffic that we utilise today. One of them is Google ads and another one is I think I should be calling it better ads, but we know it better as Facebook ads and that covers obviously Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. In terms of ad platforms. Right, or placements. And on those platforms, the simplicity behind them is this you produce an advert or a piece of creative that talks to your audience who is suffering from some sort of pain. And either your copy or your imagery screams out to them and says, We can fix your pain. You then exchange. That advert that patient exchanges their contact details with you through a landing page or a contact form on Facebook or Google or whatever that lands in your CRM system or your inbox. And the whole follow up journey kicks in where you follow in that patient for, say, up to two years. Right. And there may be the early discovery phase at that point. Key differences between Facebook and Google ads or meta and Google ads. Google ads have a much, much higher intent. Right. So if I jump on Google and I’m looking for, you know, all on for dentist in Manchester, I know for a fact what I want the web page that comes up attracts me and I’ve got a high level of intent.

[00:59:05] If I’m on Facebook and an advert jumps out to me, says we do same day teeth but free consultation. The intent is totally different. You’ve just jumped out at me, right? It’s like reading a newspaper and seeing an advert. I didn’t pick the newspaper up to read the adverts. I picked the newspaper to read the news but jump on Facebook to see what my mates are up to or other nosy on the stories. However, I’m not going on. They’re looking for ads while I do because I’m a marketeer. But you get the point. That’s not our intent. And so the quality of enquiries when we’re looking at Facebook versus Google a like night and day, in my experience, well, there’s certain things that you can do to tweak that quality right by the message, by the copy, by being more discerning. So, you know, a lot of people talk about getting a high volume of low quality leads from Facebook. There’s things that you can say in the copy that deters impatience. Put the price in there. Some people put the price in there because they want to be known as the cheapest provider in the area. Your copy may say something along the lines of, Do you know what? Discerning patients come to our clinic because they’re looking for somebody with over 20 years experience, somebody who doesn’t cut corners, doesn’t compromise on technology, and wants to deliver world class results for their patients.

[01:00:34] And if you’re interested, we’ve got a few consultations available where you can come in and meet our dentist and away you go and you may offer a complimentary CR. It may be a paid consultation, right? The people who are on Facebook are the same as the people who are on Google except to one group. They’re looking for you and the other group you’re looking for that. And those are the two key differences between them. There’s loads of people out there who run successful Google and Facebook ads for dental companies. Right. And there’s loads of really, really reputable people out there who do it. But my advice to my closing thoughts are this, that before you even decide to dip your toe in the water and start spraying your money into the Mark Zuckerberg Fund and fuelling Facebook or funding Google, start with the low hanging fruit. Get your foundations in place, get your systems and protocols in place. Invest in a good CRM system whereby you can follow up your patients for 18 months. Two years. This easy for you team to follow up with. Make sure your team are well trained. Listen to the phone calls. Download those 20 calls today. Listen to them. I promise you learn so much about your business and if you’ve got any value out there today, share this episode with someone who you think might get value out of it today as well. Thank you.

[01:02:12] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts Payman, Langroudi and Prav. Solanki.

[01:02:28] Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this file, you must have listened to the whole thing and just a huge thank you both from me and pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we had to say and what our guest has had to say, because I’m assuming you got some value out of it.

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