Empowering Dental Entrepreneurs: Keys to Practice Growth and Patient Satisfaction

At Fortune Management, we've spent over 35 years working with dental practices across the country. As the most established and trusted team of coaches in the industry, we've discovered that when we give dentists community, strategy, and personalized leadership support, incredible things happen. Not only does your practice flourish, but your life does, too. Today, we're sharing insights from Mila Givens, one of our expert Fortune coaches who brings years of dental industry experience to help empower dental entrepreneurs just like you.

The Foundation of Patient Communication

In our years of coaching dental practices, we've discovered that exceptional patient relationships begin with three fundamental principles that can transform your practice.

Active Listening: The Heart of Patient Care

"Remember, this is a service industry," Mila emphasizes. "Your patients need to hear and know and feel that you heard them." This simple yet profound insight is the cornerstone of every successful patient interaction.

Active listening means being fully present during conversations with patients, showing genuine interest in their concerns, and acknowledging their feelings. When you truly listen, patients sense that you care about them as people, not just as cases. This foundation of trust is essential for building long-term relationships with your patients and your community.

Understanding Patient Values and Rules

Mila points out that "nine times out of ten, patients make purchases and decisions based on an emotive response, and then they use logic to justify it." This insight should transform how you present treatment options in your practice.

What are the rules and values that your patients need to consider when making decisions about their care and quality of life? By understanding what truly matters to each person sitting in your chair—whether it's comfort, aesthetics, longevity, or financial considerations—you can tailor your communication approach to address their specific priorities.

Giving Patients What They Want, The Way They Want It

This doesn't mean changing your recommended treatment plans or discounting your services. Rather, it's about using quality communication techniques to present information in a way that resonates with each patient's decision-making process.

"I'm not telling you to discount the treatment or to change the treatment plan," Mila clarifies. "It's in using quality communications and understanding your patients' rules and values that you can communicate in a way with them that creates an emotive response so that they know they're making the right decisions for themselves."

When patients feel understood and respected, they're more likely to accept treatment recommendations and become advocates for your practice.

Developing a Strong Practice Identity

Mastering Your Brand Identity

At Fortune Management, we've observed that many dental practices struggle to define and communicate their unique identity. "Be really clear on the branding identity," Mila advises. "Now their branding identity is not just so much their logo and their website, it's what patients say about them every day."

Your brand is the story patients tell about your practice. It encompasses your philosophy of care, your team culture, and the patient experience from the first phone call through treatment completion. Every team member should understand and embody this vision consistently.

"Is everyone on your team emulating that vision?" Mila asks. "You see, growth of a practice can be holistic if you're communicating effectively and the branding identity, your story, is being communicated from the moment the patient answers that first call and is all the way through your facility."

When your entire team aligns with your practice vision, patients experience a cohesive journey that builds trust and fosters loyalty.

Avoiding the "Secret" Practice Syndrome

Even practices with stellar reputations can remain hidden from potential patients. "If you've mastered your branding identity and people in the community are saying fabulous things about you, but you don't have a fantastic website and you're not doing any social media, then news flash guys—you're a secret," Mila points out. "How long do you want to be a secret?"

In today's digital landscape, word-of-mouth alone isn't enough. Your excellent reputation needs amplification through strategic online presence that authentically represents your practice's unique qualities.

Strategic Marketing for Dental Practices

Effective Marketing Investments

Marketing your dental practice requires thoughtful investment, not just expense. "Ideally, you want to partner yourself with a marketing company that can embrace your story, your brand, and help you get that out there into the community," Mila suggests.

Your most important marketing asset? "The best investment you can make is in a website that tells your story, because from there every other marketing effort is going to be going back to that landing page," explains Mila. Your website serves as the digital hub for all your marketing initiatives, providing potential patients with a comprehensive understanding of your practice philosophy and services.

Social media complements your website by humanizing your practice. "Patients don't buy dentistry," Mila reminds us. "They buy the practice, they buy the community, they buy you. What can you put on your social media that creates an emotive response for your patients?"

Showcasing your team's personalities, community involvement, and patient success stories (with proper permissions) helps prospective patients connect emotionally with your practice before they ever walk through your doors.

Common Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Through our extensive work with dental practices, we've identified several marketing pitfalls that can undermine your efforts:

1. The "Free" Trap: "Some of the main marketing mistakes that I've seen practices make is that they post the word 'free' across all of their marketing," Mila notes. This approach often attracts price-shoppers rather than patients who value quality care.
   
   
2. Unfocused Marketing: Practices sometimes "spray marketing all across the community hoping to get anybody and everybody to come into the practice." Without a clear target audience, you're likely to waste resources on people who aren't ideal fits for your practice.
   
   
3. Choosing Based on Cost Alone: "The second thing they do is they look for the cheapest option for marketing," Mila observes. "What kind of a return are you expecting to get when you're not actually getting the exposure to the patients that you want to see?"
   

Quality marketing that speaks to your ideal patients will yield better returns than bargain approaches that fail to resonate with the right audience.

Overcoming Limiting Beliefs

Shifting Focus to Patient Values

Many practice growth challenges stem from internal barriers rather than external factors. "It first comes down to beliefs," Mila emphasizes. "Beliefs that you have about patients, beliefs that you have about money, beliefs that you have about insurance."

At Fortune Management, our coaching helps you recognize and transform these limiting perspectives. "As an executive coach, we help you shift your focus away from the little tiny things, which are money, and really focus on what are the patients' values, what are the rules of engagement for them, what's emotionally the most important thing to them," Mila explains.

When you align your approach with patients' priorities, financial concerns often resolve naturally. "Everyone invests in themselves because they believe in themselves, and when you acknowledge a person's decision to become healthy, the world is your oyster," Mila says. "Your only work is to make sure that you can get them on the schedule quickly."

The Front Office Experience

Creating a Seamless Patient Journey

Your front office team creates critical first and last impressions for patients. "The front office is the immediate human contact for that patient," Mila points out. "The front office then has to emulate the branding identity."

However, patient enrollment isn't solely their responsibility. "In a well-coached office, the sales is not just the responsibility of the front person—and I actually don't even like that word 'sales,'" Mila notes. "The enrollment is done throughout the entire team."

When clinical team members effectively communicate value and build trust, the front office role shifts. "If the patient is completely enrolled and getting the best care for themselves, the front office team just needs to acknowledge the patient and the decisions that they've made, make sure that they can find a way for it to become affordable for them, and get them back on the schedule to get healthy."

Leveraging Traditional and Digital Marketing

Asking the Right Questions

Even with evolving technology, some traditional marketing approaches remain powerful. "What traditional marketing still works well? Internal marketing—asking for referrals—always works well," Mila confirms.

The difference today lies in delivery methods. "If you have an opportunity to ask a patient for a referral with a QR code right smack dab in your face, digitally they'll be able to get to you faster," she explains. "That's the only difference between 1980s and today—you could actually pick up your phone with a QR code and make it work."

Smart practices are embracing these technological enhancements. "Some of my younger offices actually have the QR code on their phones," Mila shares. "Remember, everything is marketing, and if you are a dentist in the community and you meet somebody that you would like to introduce to your practice, make sure you have that QR code on your phone."

Discovering What You Don't Know

One of the most valuable marketing strategies costs nothing: simply asking patients how they found you. "In the circle of knowledge, there's the things I know that I know—which is I got to ask for referrals—and there are things that I don't know that I don't know—how do I get my branding identity out there?" Mila explains.

"The things that you really don't know that you don't know is how people are actually getting the information. So why don't you ask? Ask your community, ask your patients: 'Hey bud, how did you find out about the ball game today? Do you watch TV? Do you listen to the radio? Hey bud, how did you find me? Did you look for me on the internet? Did you ask a friend?'"

This direct feedback provides invaluable insights about which marketing channels are actually reaching your target audience. "This landscape of marketing is constantly moving, evolving, and changing," Mila acknowledges. "Find out from your patients what you don't know that you don't know."

Transforming Your Practice Through Proven Strategies

At Fortune Management, we've seen firsthand that quality communication and asking the right questions are the keys to empowering yourself and your patients to make good decisions. These fundamentals drive practice growth "not just organically, but in a way that's measurable for yourself and for your team."

Our expert coaches don't just know dentistry—they're trained in the art of coaching, ensuring you get real guidance from real professionals. With our community, strategy, and personalized leadership support, we help dental entrepreneurs like you execute in an empowering way, so you can achieve your goals in a way that works for you.

Ready to transform your practice? Connect with our team of Fortune coaches today and discover how our 35 years of industry-leading experience can help your practice and your life flourish.