It’s common for people who start a small business to try to handle the myriad facets of that business themselves. Often, that’s due to a lack of funds to hire out the various tasks. Many times, though, it’s a control thing – the person who has the most invested in the fledgling company’s success wants to make sure that everything is done properly.
If you own your dental practice, that might have described you when you started out. But if your practice has been a going concern for more than five years, it shouldn’t describe you now. Here’s why.
Dentists Make Money By Doing Dentistry
Here’s a very incomplete list of things that don’t directly make dentists a single dime.
- Inventory
- Ordering supplies
- Payroll
- Personnel
- Accounts payable
- Insurance issues
- Sterilization procedures
- Marketing/practice growth efforts/search engine optimization/paid media
Think about your hourly rate. Odds are that it’s between $75 and $90. If you specialize, your rate is probably higher. But it’s only the hours you spend actually practicing dentistry that bring in money. Every hour that you spend on something else does one of two things: it cuts into your revenue, or it cuts into the quality of your life.
It’s A Question Of Numbers
There’s only so much of you to go around, so it just makes sense to focus exclusively on making money. One area where dentists continue to go astray is in their marketing. Whether it’s because they’ve been disappointed in the past by results from various vendors, or they just like the marketing side, dentists can waste numerous hours each week deciding on which specials to run and in which media.
Remember, getting your phone to ring doesn’t directly make you any money. You make money by seeing patients and solving their dental problems. However, if you’re taking a price-based approach to attracting new patients, your average case value is likely to be fairly low.
If you’re doing your own practice growth promotions, and you’re having to work too hard and too long to make any real money, it’s time to hang up one of your hats.
SmartBox has helped more than 4400 dentists over the last 1o years to get the new patients they want — patients who stay, pay, and refer. Patients who represent far higher lifetime value to the practice than a half-dozen one and dones.
If you’d like to learn more about what SmartBox can do to help you grow your practice, schedule a Practice Growth Call. It’s not a sales call in any sense. You and Ashley Best – one of the top practice growth experts in the country on anyone’s short list – will discuss your goals, your current approach to marketing, your competition and what’s working (and not).
Following the call, an entire team of experts will prepare your Summary of Findings and your Practice Growth Roadmap.
No one at SmartBox can do what you do every day. And there’s not a practicing dentist in the country who can do for your practice what SmartBox will. Hang up that hat and make money.