Growth routes

How can you successfully grow your business? There are many answers: increased prices for customers, reduced costs, more marketing, and investing in technology, to name a few. But it is crucial that any growth plan maintains your brand image and your own ethos is not compromised by the actions you take.

For dental practice owners, growth is always the goal to stay ahead of the competition and abreast of the constant changes in technology and patient tastes. But in a challenging landscape, finding the right path for your practice’s future can be a tricky endeavour.

First steps to success

If you are looking to grow your business, the crucial first step is to make an honest assessment of where you are now. This includes looking at:

Income – how much revenue is being made on a monthly/annual basis?
Outgoing costs – rent / mortgage, insurance, utilities, staff salaries, expenses and equipment.
Patient feedback – regularly checking online reviews is essential to improving performance and patient satisfaction. Replying to these reviews also reflects how open you are to feedback and helps you understand which areas can be improved.
Staff feedback – whilst some staff members may be more open with their feedback, others may be quieter. Checking in on the dental practice team and finding out what is and isn’t working for them can guide you towards the appropriate solution; sometimes anonymous feedback can lead to more honest responses about how to optimise the daily workflow.

Please the patients

The easy option for practice growth is to raise the prices of treatments, but this is not sustainable. Hiked prices rarely appeal to patients, especially during extended periods of economic uncertainty. Having established and consistent treatment costs, or offering payment plans, provides a level of financial security for patients, ensuring regular appointments and boosting the practice image as a place that puts its patients, rather than revenue, first. By doing so, revenue can still increase due to positive word of mouth.

Promote value

Rather than overcharging patients to generate more revenue, instead offer more valuable services. Along with reviews, numbers paint a picture on how well the practice is doing with the treatments it is providing. One way to determine which services are most financially beneficial is to analyse the competition and also the average daily yield of each dentist, done by checking the income over a month / year and dividing by the number of days worked. Like patients, each dentist is different, from the treatment types to the length of each appointment.

For instance, Dentist A may generate £1,000 a year and Dentist B may average £1,200. The superior performance of Dentist B may be because of they deliver a higher number of cosmetic dental treatments, for example, whereas Dentist A focuses more on routine check-ups; this may encourage you to focus on providing more cosmetic dental treatments as it is clearly more lucrative. Alternative suggestions could be specialist pathways like periodontal care and orthodontic services. If following this route, adjusting the practice marketing and hiring / training more dentists who can deliver these treatments would therefore be a reliable way of ensuring growth.

Coach support

An effective way of growing your practice is through the support of a dental business coach; someone who can give a second opinion on your decisions and guide you towards a successful and sustainable growth plan. Acting as a mentor figure, business coaches can improve practice profitability without impacting your relationship to the patients, providing ongoing support and advice with every decision.

The Clyde Munro Linchpin Programme is an excellent training opportunity that allows you to achieve more for your practice, with guaranteed revenue increases that don’t come at the cost of compromising your values. Led by Dr Barry Oulton, the course is no risk and all reward, with Clyde Munro there to refund the full fee of the programme once you increase your hourly revenue. The fantastic 12-week course will reduce stress and boost your professional and personal life for a truly unmissable opportunity.

Highway to success

There are many roads to growing your practice, making it essential to take the one that best aligns with the interests of your business. Whether offering new treatment services, focusing on patient experience or using a financial mentor, be confident in your business growth plan.