Everyone Wants Good Patients, so where are they?
As per my previous blogs (one about dental marketing generally and the other about selling and packaging dentistry), I’m writing about some of the things I learned about dental practice marketing after attending a seminar hosted by Laurie Slater of Fortune Management at a Hilton hotel in Vaughan last Friday. Laurie and the guest speaker, the electrifying Fred Joyal (co-founder of 1800Dentist in the U.S.), gave fantastic presentations about marketing your practice. And I don’t want to steal their thunder. But I do want to point out a thing or two which I picked up along the way which made me pause for thought.
Now, first thing’s first… get this book from Amazon right now:
This is Fred Joyal’s book and it basically contains everything you need to know to get started on marketing your practice.
Now, back to what I learned by listening to Laurie and Fred.
Where are all the good patients?
Fred Joyal stated, quite bluntly, that the High IQ dental patient is a myth. Everyone wants them, but they are nowhere to be seen. And here’s why:
As you can see, everyone wants someone in the top right quadrant: they have the highest dental need and the highest dental IQ. But in reality, these people are already someone else’s patient. They may be loyal. Dentists try to attract these types of patients and when they get them, they don’t readily let go.
So what does that mean about the other three quadrants? The unattractive types of patients who avoid, procrastinate or only come in when there’s an emergency? Well, there’s opportunity to be found in these patients, so you shouldn’t turn them away. They might indeed become the ideal patient over time. If you recognize the long-term value these so-called undesirable patients actually bring to the table, you can focus on converting them into ideal patients. Yes, it takes time. Yes, you have to educate them. But at the end of the day, you’ll have an army of high dental need + high dental IQ patients!
