An Important Ingredient to Fee-For-Service Dentistry

Episode #366 with Dr. Barrett Straub

Regardless of where you are in your practice, you need to differentiate. But where do you start, and how do you effectively market to your ideal patients? Today, Kirk Behrendt brings back Dr. Barrett Straub to share three parts of the five-step process for differentiation. With these tips, you can create a strategy to market to the patients you want! To learn what makes a great differentiator and how to communicate it to your patients, listen to Episode 366 of The Best Practices Show!

Main Takeaways:

Step one for differentiation: identify your core customers.

Step two for differentiation: identify your core competencies.

Step three for differentiation: identify your weaknesses.

Patients value differentiators that can be seen, touched, felt, and experienced.

How you communicate your core competencies to patients is important.

Don't invest time, money, and people into your weaknesses.

Be intentional about interpersonal skills, marketing, and how you talk to patients.

Quotes:

“The beauty of dentistry, it’s the greatest profession on Earth. And one of the reasons that it is that is because we can design it any way we want. We have choices, and one of those choices is to participate in PPOs or not to participate in PPOs. And the reason to not participate in PPOs, for me, was to control how I wanted the practice, how I wanted the flow, what type of patient I wanted, how I wanted my day to look and feel.” (4:58—5:31)

“I want my decisions to be between me and my patient, and I want our goal to be about health and dentistry. I love that I don't ever have the conversation, ‘What does my insurance cover?’ And I don't ever — not ever — but I rarely have the negativity about diagnosing treatment. I don't have, ‘Well, your insurance is going to cover this, so we’re going to do that crown.’ It is more of a, in my opinion, straightforward discussion about your dentistry, your health, and what you want for your health.” (6:07—6:43)

“[Fee-for-service] is not for everybody. And there are many different ways to run a very successful, satisfying dental practice. And so, I don't want anyone to hear, ‘You have to go fee-for-service.’ Not at all. However, differentiation is an idea that is very near and dear and at the top of the list of every marketing department in all businesses in all of America. It just hasn't been for the last 50 years, until recently, in dentistry.” (8:19—8:46)

“Dentistry, historically, hasn’t been big in marketing. Maybe 50 years ago, they didn't need to market. It certainly was frowned upon 50 years ago. Probably up until 20 years ago, it was very, very frowned upon. But marketing and differentiation go hand in hand. And you cannot effectively market yourself if you haven't differentiated yourself.” (8:49—9:17)

“If you are marketing yourself saying the same things that every other dentist is, ‘We do crowns. We’re cosmetic dentists. We have great customer service,’ everyone says that. Now, we’ve just gone down the road of making ourselves a commodity. However, if you can truly differentiate yourself, if you can have actions and words that are special and unique and you market that, now you have effective marketing.” (9:18—9:43)

“How do you know if you need to differentiate? Number one, do you want less PPO and more fee-for-service? Even if you're never going to be fully fee-for-service, most are going to say, ‘Boy, yeah! I'd like a few more fee-for-service and a few less PPO.’ You need to differentiate. Do you want more loyalty from your patients? Absolutely. Who doesn't want more loyalty, no matter how they pay you or no matter what insurance? Yes, you need to differentiate. Do you want to be seen as special? Do you want to be seen as a...