Did you know that 50% of Americans don’t visit the dentist regularly? Not to mention, a dental patient goes to an ER every 14 seconds and many of those emergencies can be handled in a dental office or triaged by teledentistry.
How can you capture more opportunities in this untapped market?
You need a comprehensive sales strategy — here’s what it entails and how to create one for your dental practice.
What’s a Sales Strategy?
A sales strategy informs how you position your dental practice and services to a target market so you can differentiate your offerings. It should outline clear objectives and guidance to ensure that everyone in your practice agrees when they interact with prospects. You should also include growth goals, key performance indicators (KPIs,) buyer personas, and competitive analysis in the document.
A modern sales strategy should take a patient-first approach, addressing your prospects’ unique circumstances and their needs at each stage of the marketing funnel so you can tailor an experience that will turn more leads into patients.
Critical Components of a Dental Sales Strategy
An effective dental sales strategy should include the following:
1. Unique Value Proposition
To turn more leads into patients, you have to clearly articulate the real value your services can deliver to them. You should go above and beyond the nuts-and-bolts of each treatment and focus on your prospects’ needs. Address what they want and communicate how your offerings can solve their challenges to differentiate your practice from others.
2. Urgency to Change
Your biggest competitor is often not the other dentist down the block, but the “status quo” or other things that your prospects may want to spend their money on. Your sales strategy should identify why your prospects should take action right away instead of waiting or not making a decision. Then, you can layer this urgency with incentives (e.g., a discount if the prospect commits within 24 hours) to effectively elicit action and drive conversion.
3. Compelling Success Stories
Our brain lights up when we hear stories. While getting the facts straight is important, you should weave in patient success stories to make the sale experience more memorable. For example, paint a vivid picture of a before/after scenario or illustrate the contrast between the prospect’s current challenges and what’s possible with a compelling narrative.
4. Patient Education
When you educate the public, you build trust and your business will speak for itself. Using dental management software with a robust patient engagement module, you can send out mass emails to share valuable information with patients and prospects. This can help you elevate your reputation and credibility while staying top of mind.
5. Patient Journey Stages
Your sales strategy should map your interactions with potential patients to where they are in your dental marketing funnel. In particular, focus on addressing the psychology of prospects in the decision and action stages — for example, what are their fears and objections? What do they need to know to take action?
6. Follow-up Process
The money is in the follow-up so make sure your sales strategy includes a process to check in with prospects after a sales conversation. You should also ensure that new patients show up for their appointments and complete their treatments. You can use dental practice software to send out automated appointment reminders via text and email. tab32 also offers a Revenue Discovery module to help you automatically follow up on incomplete treatments.
7. Patient Retention
It’s cheaper to retain a patient than to acquire a new one. Plus, existing patients who already trust you tend to spend more. You should have a strategy in place to educate current patients about your latest offerings and get them to return for re-care appointments. For example, our patient communication feature automates re-care reminders and allows patients to book their appointments via an online scheduling tool to minimize friction.
Conclusion
To get the most of a comprehensive sales strategy, you need to support it with robust dental practice management software designed to deliver a patient-centric experience at every stage of the patient journey. Request a demo to see how tab32 can help.
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