The Best August Ever!
Lessons From Aesop
By Tom Rich, MBA, GG12 Senior Practice Analyst
(a barbecue, TV, etc.), and a stack of entry forms. The idea is to make it fun for your team and those who stop by your booth. Find at least one before the end of August, and then register two more before the end of September. • New move-in campaign: According to the American Dental Association, most new patients join a dental practice during the end of summer. It makes sense. Most of these people have moved and just settled into their new homes, they’re going through the checklist of getting the family ready for the school year, and they’re shopping for a dentist. Now is the time to get the new move-in list and direct mail them. Become friends with a real estate agent, and give a gift (e.g., $100 off any procedure) to everyone who moves into your area. • Patient appreciation day: This is the existing patient version of the street fair. Make it fun. Invite everyone in your patient database to the park. Have burgers and hot dogs, someone painting faces, and games or contests for the kids to play. Here’s how to make this even better: Tell your patients they can bring their friends and neighbors. • Hygiene recall and reminders: Start by sending appointment reminders earlier than you normally would. The key here is to encourage patients to come in now, when you’re slower and have more openings in the schedule. That way, you have availability later, when there’s more demand. • Remaining benefits notice and back-to-school promo: Get patients thinking about you and how they can maximize their benefits now , while they still have time on their side. By the way, you’ll also send this again in September, October, and then one last time in November, because the more you remind your patients, the more they remember to take advantage of their free treatments. These are just a few proven methods you can start using today to make this the best ending to summer you’ve ever had and finally see how the hottest months can actually be the hottest months for your practice. EXISTING PATIENTS
Each month, your practice’s revenue goes up or down. It’s not your fault… all practices are cyclical, mostly because the months and seasons are not created equal. Most dentists recognize that, with the end-of-year and start- of-year rushes to maximize benefits, winter is the gift that keeps giving. Autumn is the ramp-up to the winter heyday just as much as spring is the wind-down from it, which leaves summer as the low point in production — for most practices. August can break your practice’s performance. The slowdown of appointments means there’s a corresponding decrease in revenue. Here’s the thing: We don’t have to accept the common thought that August is the worst part of the year. You can reverse and even leverage the seasonal downturn. Really smart dentists realize that now — the sweltering dog days of the end of summer, aka August and September — is the time to step up and double down. Rather than fall into the temptation to coast through the doldrums of the final days of August, they know the seeds they sow now will make the rest of their year. But it’s more than that, because when the last few weeks of August are used strategically, they act as a springboard to make the rest of the year even better.
So what can you do right now to make the rest of summer the hottest for your practice?
You do what others aren’t doing. It’s the real-life version of Aesop’s fable No. 373, “The Ant and the Grasshopper.” When everyone else is playing, struggling, and waiting… that’s the time to strike. Because when you do what no one else is doing, you get results that no one else is getting.
Here are a few simple ideas on how you can fully take advantage of August.
NEW PATIENTS
• Street fairs: People are out, so logic suggests you go
where they are. Get some Popsicles, water balloons, a prize wheel (with prizes for both kids and adults), a grand prize
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