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Endo Mastery

Tag: Marketing Tip

Recommended Reading

Legacy Life Consulting, co-owned by Endo Mastery CEO Cynthia Stamation and husband David Stamation, is an executive, personal and affluence coaching firm with over 25 years’ experience helping clients elevate their vision and journey to living a life that they love. Recently David has written some great articles that will surely connect with many endodontists. Here are two for your holiday reading list:  

Perfectionism: I’m Not Perfect!

Many of us chase perfection relentlessly in ourselves or expect it from others. But here’s the truth: striving for perfection goes against human nature. Why do we invest so much energy in its pursuit?

Drama: It’s Not in the Job Description

When drama enters the workplace, how do you address it professionally? What does it reveal when a consistently dramatic employee remains unchecked, drawing attention, creating tension and disruption?

Marketing Tip: Fresh Holiday Wreaths

Delight your referring offices with the festive spirit by gifting them beautifully crafted holiday wreaths. The vibrant wreaths not only add a touch of seasonal cheer to their spaces but also serve as a thoughtful gesture, expressing gratitude for their continued support. As a charming and unique gift, these wreaths symbolize the warmth of the holidays and the strong professional relationships that make the dental community thrive. Check with your local farm, florist, and nearby Christmas tree lots for purchasing options.

Marketing Tip: Thanksgiving Pie

Whether pumpkin, pecan or apple, dropping off a pie at referring offices is a great way to kick off the holiday season. You can download the low-cost digital printable below or create your own to express your gratitude. 

Another idea is to use Thanksgiving to deliver your “major” annual appreciation gift to key referrers, rather than waiting until the December holidays where it can get lost in the tide of gifts that referring doctors often receive around the same time.

Marketing Tip: Summer cool down

Our extra hot summer continues, and you can bring your referring offices a delicious cool down treat! Gather a selection of ice cream sundae toppings in a basket or cookie jar, along with some pints of favorite ice cream flavors, and bring an ice cream sundae bar directly to the team. 

NEW: Clinical Team Training

The clinical flow of the endodontist is highly dependent on having a great team of dental assistants. Great dental assistants offload routine tasks from the doctor and fully support them to focus on incredible patient care, clinical efficiency and practicing in an enjoyable environment.  

 

Endo Mastery’s new clinical team training program is designed to elevate the clinical team so that every assistant supports the doctor at the highest level. This program includes patient triage and assessment, preparing the patient for the doctor’s arrival, clinical efficiency and 4-handed assisting choreography while the doctor is treating the patient, and completing all the notes, reporting and post-treatment details with the patient. The program includes complete practice-specific documentation in a Practice Clinical Manual that aligns the current clinical team and makes onboarding future team members so much easier.  

 

This comprehensive advanced training is now part of Endo Mastery’s full coaching program for new clients and Mastery Circle clients enrolled in coaching. For more information, contact Debra Miller, Director of Coaching at 1-800-482-7563 or email [email protected].  

Marketing Tip: Patriotic gift bags

These flag-themed gift bags and wrapping bring the patriotic spirit to any referral gift. Fill them with sweet treats or picnic themed items like barbecue sauce and the ingredients for s’mores!  

Marketing Tip: Bunny Tails

Ever notice how powdered donuts look like bunny tails? Easter is just a few weeks away, wrap powdered donuts or powdered donut holes in individual bags and treat your referring offices. You can deliver bags of donuts in Easter baskets! The free printable shown above is available from Frog Prince Paperie (along with other great marketing and gift bag ideas to browse on their website). 

Marketing Tip: St Patrick’s Day

March is right around the corner. Wish your referring offices good luck with scratch off lottery tickets. Place the lotto tickets in St. Patrick themed ticket holders available online as a digital download. 

Marketing focus: plan now for holiday gifts to referrers

It’s less than 60 days until the busy holiday season begins. Many doctors will send referrers a gift for the holidays as part of their annual marketing strategy, but they fail to make the most of the marketing opportunity. Here are some key questions and recommendations. 

Are gifts necessary or recommended?

It depends on your current marketing strategies. If you have a great marketing coordinator with a systematic approach to visiting all your referring practices throughout the year, your referrers are probably fairly well informed all year long that your practice appreciates them. It’s really a personal choice for you as part of your doctor-to-doctor relationship with the GP.

 

If you don’t have a marketing coordinator following a systematic approach, then your marketing activities throughout the year are probably quite minimal or sporadic. In that case, a year-end gift could be very important and probably advisable.

How much should you spend?

There are two camps of opinion on how much to spend. The first camp says that if you have a good marketing system where you are investing in marketing activities, including doctor-to-doctor activities (such as taking a referrer to a sports game or other activities), then a flashy gift at the end of the year is probably overkill. A personalized message along with a thoughtful gift like a nice bottle of wine or gift basket is completely suitable.

 

The other camp says that the gift should be obviously meaningful in the context of how much an individual GP referred during the year. A GP who refers 50 cases to you deserves some special recognition (and extra spending) versus a GP who refers 6 cases to you. It is a slippery slope though because once you set a precedent with a high value gift, it’s hard to back down from that in the future.

 

Overall, we lean toward having a great year-round marketing systems and then, if you do send a year-end gift, that it be modest without being extravagant.

When is the best time?

The whole point of a gift is to communicate a message to the referring doctor that you appreciate and value your relationship with them. If you wait until the second or third week of December (or later), your gift is going to get lost in the mix. It’s the busiest time of the year with their family. Everyone else (from their accountant to other specialists they refer to) are also sending gifts at the same time. Yours will be one more on the pile.

 

The best time to send this kind of gift is right around Thanksgiving or just before, which is well ahead of the masses of cards and presents from others. It gives you a head start, and your gift could very well be the first one they receive of the season. So, it will get noticed, which is what you want. Also, a gift of appreciation and gratitude ties in very nicely with the theme of Thanksgiving. That means the best time to start budgeting and planning your gifts is now, especially if you are going to try to give personalized gifts for your key referrers. It takes time for those ideas to percolate.

How should it be delivered?

If you don’t have a marketing coordinator, then you will probably need to mail gifts to your more distant referrers or have them delivered from where you ordered the gift (such as for a basket). If you have a marketing coordinator, it’s best that they hand-deliver gifts for those referrers that are a distance away.

 

For referrers that are closer to you, it is recommended that you personally visit those doctors, which is something you should do at a minimum at least once a year. It gives you a chance to connect with the GP’s front desk team, have a few minutes of face time with the doctor to generate goodwill. This is especially important if you are not face-to-face with them any other time during the year. In one day, you can probably drop in on 15 or so practices without too much effort.

Remember that 90% of marketing is teamwork

Year-end gifts can be a nice touch in a marketing system, but no gift is as influential as your practice team. What they do throughout the year by communicating with referrers and taking care of patients effortlessly guides the entire referral relationship. And a great marketing coordinator makes sure that practice-wide effort by you and your team is noticed throughout the year.

Marketing focus: 3 mistakes that lead to unhappy patients (and referrers)

An unhappy patient spreads their unhappiness. They report a poor experience back to their referring doctor or clutter up your Yelp and Google reviews with 1-star ratings. If you scan those reviews, most of them are the result of factors within the control of the endodontic practice. Here is what you and your team need to avoid:

Failing to address their fear

The word “specialist” generates a certain level of anxiety in every patient. Anything that requires the care of a specialist sounds complicated and serious. The phrase “root canal” generates an even higher level of concern. Root canals have a historical connotation of discomfort that no longer matches our clinical processes but endures in the public mindset as dental mythology.

 

Certainly, an endodontist’s chairside manner is vital to calm fearful patients and bring them down from their anxiety orbit. But the mistake that most practices make is assuming that it is only when the patient is in front of the doctor that their fear can be dispelled.

 

Addressing the patient’s fear needs to begin from the moment that patient calls the practice to book their appointment. It is absolutely essential the administrator receiving that call has a warm and caring demeanor. They have to project calm confidence, superb knowledge and totally informed certainty about every concern or hesitation the patient has. Reassure the patient that the doctor is the best endodontist, and they will receive treatment easily and quickly.

 

In this way, starting with the phone call, the team can telegraph calmness to the patient, so the patient feels “these people know what they are doing.” Done at the highest level, even before the patient walks in the door they will feel gratitude and privilege to be taken care of by the best.

Lack of same-day appointments

Americans are not people who like to wait in line, whether that is for a coffee, to check in at the airport or hotel, or to get a root canal. Furthermore, when they are in pain, their tolerance for any delays virtually evaporates. And with endodontic pain in particular, even one day of delay (and a sleepless night of discomfort) seems like an eternity.

 

A patient in pain wants the pain addressed immediately, and a referrer with a patient in pain wants the pain addressed immediately too. That should be the #1 awareness that your scheduler should always have. Your team needs to be adept at assessing and triaging the patient’s level of pain in the first phone call. They need to show empathy for the patient’s pain, so the patient knows their pain is your priority and you’ll take care of them as quickly as possible.

 

Then, your scheduling strategy and template needs to have the appointment openings built into every day to accommodate necessary same-day treatment emergencies. No doctor likes to see openings in their schedule, but strategically leaving time reserved for urgent care means that emergency patients will be thankful, not annoyed by waiting. Plus (importantly), when referring doctors know they can count on you for same-day treatment of pain, it is the greatest practice- and relationship-building strategy ever.

Financial surprises

Just like the word “specialist” invokes the feeling in patients that care will be complicated, it also invokes the feeling that it will be expensive. Patients need total financial clarity in advance so they can be prepared.

 

Financial clarity particularly requires your team to be experts at determining the patient’s insurance benefits for treatment, so you can give a very close estimate of their co-pay prior to the patient’s arrival. Even if the patient is just coming in for a consult, they need to be prepared for treatment on the same day, so the estimate needs to be prepared in advance.

 

Remember, if the patient is undergoing treatment at the GP concurrently, insurance limits can shift benefit payouts overnight. An expert practice administrator stays abreast of every detail for the patient. Patients truly don’t understand the ins and outs of their insurance.

 

The two biggest mistakes when it comes to finances are 1) not giving patients a co-pay estimate until they are in the practice, and 2) giving them an estimate based on inaccurate insurance information and then surprising them with a higher required co-pay when treatment is performed.

90% of marketing is teamwork

Great practice marketing is far more than just doctor-to-doctor outreach. It means involving the whole team in marketing goals and getting every individual on your team to be aware of how they influence patient and referrer satisfaction.

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