Best Startup
If you are a dental professional; you certainly might have given a thought to starting your own clinic. Many professionals after their rigorous education years, jump into starting their own dental business, which is reflected by the fact that there are over 189,000 dental practices in the United States today.
However, being proficient at the dental job and being equipped with the required skill set is not really enough to run a dental practice smoothly. Apart from performing a wide array of dental procedures, you need to know the ins and outs of a business as well.
There are certain dental business mistakes that when avoided can make your business thrive like never before. However, if these mistakes persist, they can bring you significant doom.
Therefore, to guide you through; we have shortlisted the 6 biggest business mistakes that can greatly influence the success of your business.
Read on to know and avoid them as far as possible!
1. Focusing too much on dental services and ignoring the business aspect
It is expected that being a dentist you will have a strong urge to treat your patients impeccably and ensure they are fine. This compels most dental professionals to constrain their focus entirely to dental procedures and overlook the fact that they are also running a business and need to pay heed to other aspects as well. When you run a dental business, you need to approach your job comprehensively, take into account and monitor all the operations, from the front office attending patients to the back-office’s accounting and tracked records. You should definitely not compromise on the quality of service but also have your business under control.
2. Not investing in the training of staff
Your staff reflects your dental service. A jovial, empathetic and forbearing staff can retain and be inviting to new clients. The same will be reversed if your staff is dull, irritated and impolite to the client. Skipping on or neglecting training the staff can be a grave error. Staff is the first point of contact with the patients and they dictate impression formation. You will have to screen through potential candidates to select the most suitable staff for you. The process, however, does not end there. The staff needs to be consistently trained to polish and develop their skills to meet the patient demands. Though the training might cost you quite a bit; it is an investment into building your reputation. So, avoid skipping on training your employees.
3. Using poor pricing strategies
When running any business; pricing is a great determinant of its success. The high number of dental practices that are set up displays how competitive the dental business is. In such a competitive market, you just can’t be stubborn about a high price. Clients will definitely approach other dental services. Further; even a low price can be problematic as you may not be able to generate enough revenue to run your practice smoothly. Therefore, you need to incorporate strategies that are beneficial to you as well as the patient. You can bring in dental membership plans wherein patients are asked to pay annually and receive many benefits.
You can introduce dental membership software which will ease the process of collecting and keeping data in one place thereby saving time, effort and expenses.
4. Not paying attention to marketing
Marketing is a pillar of success for businesses. Your business needs to reach the population to gain patients. This is why overlooking marketing can greatly impact the progress of your business. Quite a majority of people surf the internet to find good dental services so make sure when they stumble upon your service, it is worth it. In a digital world, having a social media presence, a well-developed website, and good content is all very essential to stay afloat in the competition.
5. Having a bad chairside manner
Dental treatments are pretty anxiety-inducing. The thought of keeping the mouth open for a long time and having it worked up on by tools is something that not everyone can tackle. Therefore, when a patient visits you, it is vital that they are reassured and made comfortable. To achieve this, you need to have an exceptional chairside manner. It is not okay to be judgemental to the patients for not engaging in oral care or not conversing with them at all. This will lead to an unsatisfying patient experience. They need to be asked about past dental issues, and the environment should be such that they feel like they’re being taken care of and their treatment is in the right hands.
6. Taking in too many patients
The best way to improve your business is to increase profits which many dentists wrongly interpret as having greater patient intake. However, as the number increases, your responsibilities go up too, which can lead to burnout in no time, impacting your productivity. So, try and focus on rendering quality treatment rather than treating quantity. Even if one patient has a stellar experience at your clinic, it is enough to succeed.Mistakes are quite an inevitable part of any business. However, they equip you with the knowledge of further prevention thereby facilitating immense growth in the end.
