Welcome To This Brand New, Original Series Featuring 3 Dental Marketing Leaders In An Uncensored, No-Holds-Barred Discussion That Cuts Through Misinformation & Confusion, Providing The Clarity You Desperately Need For Marketing Your Practice The Right Way, Right Now
In this episode, we dispel some common myths surrounding DELEGATING MARKETING to your staff. You will learn:
- Why the CEO (Yes, you the dentist, is the CEO of the practice!) of the company must always have her/his finger on the pulse of marketing above everything else
- How often you should be checking your numbers (way more than you think you should be)
- The not-so-obvious reason why staff members can almost never be marketing experts
- Why unmonitored delegation can result in major mistakes (and thousands of dollars in lost opportunities and wasted spend pouring out the door)
This one video alone could MASSIVELY improve your bottom line.
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2. Read The Transcription Below (if you prefer to read)
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Learn How To Get A Custom Marketing Plan To Beat Your Town’s Competition By Clicking The Link Below: https://lsfd1.wpenginepowered.com/action-plan
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TRANSCRIPTION:
Graig: Let’s talk a little bit about staff involvement in marketing and selling of services and part of that’s communication as well. I have some very strong opinions on it and I’m curious to see what you think and even maybe a little bit about what you do in your business in terms of how involved are they in the marketing, what type of power do they have, what type of procedures are you letting them do in terms of selling different cases and so on. How far do you let that go?
Chris: We always value our team members that we’re able to have in our practices. Just because someone is a great office manager, just because someone is a great scheduling coordinator, a finance coordinator doesn’t mean they have any expertise in marketing. Perhaps some dentists in their fifty’s might think well my manager is thirty years old, so they must know about this Facebook thing. Not necessarily. There is a science and art form to a successful marketing and yes, they may know more about Facebook and social media than you do but that doesn’t make them a marketing expert, it doesn’t mean that the efforts that they’re going to put forward are going to be attracting the right patients or quality patients.
So delegating that to your team is not always the best move. Just like I don’t assume that my office manager is a C.P.A. therefore I don’t need an accountant. I don’t assume my office manager is a marketing expert and just say well you go figure that out.
Graig: I think that is a perfect parallel because my opinion on that is actually very similar to yours and I think for me, one of the issues becomes- it’s sort of like the next man or woman up where doctor’s extremely busy, maybe a little stressed out, can’t take on anymore on his or her plate so the next man or woman up is someone on the staff and whether it’s office manager or an assistant or whatever it may be, it’s sort of the ‘hey, you go figure this out. I’m maxed’.
To add to your point, they may have absolutely no marketing experience or very little to the point that there’s very far and few between even analyze what’s good what’s bad and what ends up happening is the employee wants to do a really good job because you assign them with this task and they want to do a good thing, so they dive right in and they get really far down the rabbit hole in their tinkering and then there ends up being mistakes and then ends up being more of a costly endeavor for you to fix. You may have to hire someone like us to come in and remediate the situation which by the way happens all the time.
We had a conversation about this at dinner where we talked about how the C.E.O. of a company which is the business owner, is the dentist majority of the time needs to always be involved and have a pulse on the marketing and selling of their brand, of their services, of their business, no matter how big you get and I think that is where you can’t just pass it off and never look at it again. It has to have a system to it, there has to be checks and balances and if you’re involved in it, you’re going to get a feeling when things aren’t really working. If progress is stalled or the employee has put it on their low priority list which can happen, I’d rather do accounts receivable than marketing.
So I’m going to put the marketing, I won’t get to that till two months. And you’re busy practicing so think it’s happening and you forget about it. So I think you have to always be, as the business owner, as the dentist, you have to always be involved in marketing decisions in terms of who you hire. If it’s an outside agency, you have to be involved. You have to be the decision maker. Maybe you have your O.M ferret out some information for you and that’s fine but you need to be heavily involved in there because that’s how some bad decisions get made.
Chris: Yes, marketing I think you would agree isn’t just an on switch. What’s market now? Here’s some money. You have to have some input, actually a fair amount of input on the type of patient you’re looking to attract and what the vision in the brand of this practice is, what your goals are. You can’t just be completely removed from it.
I think it’s great because you’re hiring an expert, so they’re going to have that expertise to know how to execute what you’re looking for but you have to let them know what you’re looking for and say hey, this message might be a little more off brand for me and this is one that I think our office is capable of handling.
Graig: Yes, and I often think that when an office manager or staff member is heavily involved in marketing that without the doctor’s supervision and really making sure those metrics in place, are we looking at what are our return on investment is, how many new patients came from that vehicle and have a running spreadsheet of production produced from those different segments of marketing and if you don’t have those things in place, you’re not reviewing them, then you either need to make a decision if you’re going to take that away from that person or you’re going to reduce responsibility or maybe you’re not putting all of those things on a spreadsheet and you need to be doing it.
You need to be reviewing those weekly because it will get pushed lower on the priority list and we know that to be true. People will avoid things that maybe they’re not totally qualified to do and it will sort of you know sit by the wayside.
Chris: The place for a team in marketing efforts in my opinion is to help make sure that the systems are in place so that when this patient does come to your practice that you’ve attracted and they’re asking questions about sleep apnea or implants or whatever it may be, your team is prepared to say oh yeah, the dentist does that sometimes. I mean no, this is a yes. We are so proud of the people that we’ve been able to help. I mean that they’re on board and keeping that message that was started with the marketing going when they’re now in the practice. That is critical to have every member of the team be able to keep that enthusiasm and that energy going.
So, is the team important in marketing? Absolutely. It’s a part of the chain of leading from marketing to case acceptance and execution, but I wouldn’t just say turn over all the responsibilities to your team to figure out how marketing works.
Graig: I think that’s a really good point because when you look at it, marketing is designed to get the phone to ring and in my opinion, that’s where staff is the most valuable. You really can’t do it all in house. I mean in reality, it’s very hard with all the technology that’s out there. You really did need to have a good agency that can help you with that, I mean that’s just kind of the world we live in now.
I think if you let that agency do its work, and marketing do its work and the phone rings, that’s when like you’re saying those people come in prepared to answer the phone appropriately, enthusiastically, can answer some questions but not over educate because we may turn someone off because we know that you can explain it better than they can once they’re there and then making sure that the appointment gets booked efficiently and we’re not letting someone get off the phone without an appointment because we see it time and time again generating hundreds of phone calls but there’s a giant thought when the phone gets answered or it falls through at where they try to set the appointment and in my opinion, that’s where the team- that’s their marketing, that’s their selling, that’s where they should shine.
Chris: And it’s a critical role.
Graig: That’s where the conversion happens. Like you said about leads, if the phone call’s a lead, we need to make sure that we have all of our scripting in place, our processes for booking efficient appointments, not letting people get off the phone in particular ways without making some sort of commitment, even if it’s a loose commitment because you paid to get that phone call and that’s another thing, think about the monetary when it comes to marketing; you’re spending to get that phone call. So every time that phone rings, even if it’s an existing patient that’s still money you’ve spent to get that phone call because you retain them and so on, so you need to treat that as a valuable piece of the pie and I would absolutely be making sure that any marketing efforts that you’re doing, the phones are being answered appropriately and those systems and checks and balances are in place even if that person’s been with you for twenty years, twenty five years, sometimes you have to make a tough decision and maybe move them into another position or unfortunately you may have to move on but that’s your hard earned money making that phone right and I wouldn’t want to waste it.
Learn How To Get A Custom Marketing Plan To Beat Your Town’s Competition By Clicking The Link Below: https://lsfd1.wpenginepowered.com/action-plan
I want to help you put an action plan together to get your practice moving in the right direction. Do NOT be a stick in the mud, who refuses to change. This year can be that year for change. Let’s do it!
One word of WARNING: This action plan will disappear with out notice! So don’t delay.
Check it out by clicking the link below:
https://lsfd1.wpenginepowered.com/action-plan
Be Bold And Make Things Happen!
Graig Presti, MBA
CEO Local Search For Dentists®; A 4X Inc 500/5000 Approved Dental Marketing Agency
PS- Life does get in the way but THIS is the simplest way to keep patients on track, reactivating patients and SPARKING that REFERRAL fire all in one fell swoop with almost ZERO effort what so ever….
Check it out by clicking the link below:
https://lsfd1.wpenginepowered.com/action-plan
One of my private clients (who will remain nameless) is already breaking his competition in half ….buying practices, just killing doctors who won’t change.
So, if you’re struggling with making heads or tails of what to do that can specifically help you grow your practice then this action plan is a “glove fit for you”.
Check it out by clicking the link below:
https://lsfd1.wpenginepowered.com/action-plan
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