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Aside from providing excellent care to your customers, the key to a successful and financially stable dental business is to minimize outgoings while maximizing your income. This sounds simple enough, but sometimes it can seem like the toughest challenge, especially when competing with other dental clinic in the same area offering the same services. However, with some smart strategies and a creative outlook, it is possible to overcome lean periods and grow your business.
Whether you are concerned about your clinic’s financial situation or looking for ways to grow, here are five steps to a more profitable dental clinic.
Maximize capacity and efficiency
A vital part of your strategy should be to increase how many patients you can treat. For example, you could take on another member of staff or add a new treatment or hygiene room. Of course, these will bring added costs, so weighing this against the potential return on the investment is important. Alternatively, you could look for ways to streamline your clinic’s efficiency through quicker processes, improved communication, and better organization.
Offer treatments with bigger margins
Have you taken a good look at the profit margin of the treatments and procedures that you offer? You may be focusing too much on low-margin procedures when others – such as cosmetic dentistry – might bring in more revenue. Before adding a new treatment to your clinic’s provision, you should make sure you have considered all elements, including costs to your clinic and how much time they will take to perform, as this could impact their efficacy as revenue drivers. You could also consider selling dental care products to your customers, such as water flosser attachments for toothbrushes, highlighting water flosser advantages when you discuss their hygiene routine.
Attract and accept new patients
To grow your clinic, you should attract and accept new patients whenever possible. Strong branding and an effective marketing strategy are key when trying to bring new patients to your service; it does not necessarily have to cost much money. For example, building a social media following and creating engaging content can be highly effective if you have someone to invest their time in the practice. A website built with SEO could make you more visible in search engines when people in your area are searching for dental treatments.
Upskill your support staff
Your dental nurses and assistants could bring additional revenue into your clinic if you give them the skills that they need to perform additional treatments. In addition to their usual tasks, they could also be responsible for building rapport with patients, offering comfort to those who are concerned about treatments, carrying out x-rays, or other smaller parts of treatment.
Invest in a CRM system
The happier your patients are, the more likely they will not only return to your clinic again but also recommend you to friends and family. Of course, unhappy patients will make their opinions even more widely known, and a bad reputation can be incredibly difficult to recover from. A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software solution could help you to manage your customer communications more effectively, create more targeted marketing, and maintain contact long after the patient has left, strengthening the relationship. Click here to see some popular CRM solutions for dentists.