Gary Bird and Alex Nottingham JD MBA discuss marketing strategies and other great tips for private dental practices – focusing on targeted marketing, patient availability, effective scheduling, building patient rapport, and more.
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About Gary Bird
Gary Bird is the founder and managing partner of SMC. He brings in new patients for DSOs and dental groups. He is also the host of three podcasts: Dental Marketing Goat, where he provides actionable marketing advice; Full Arch Advantage Podcast, which focuses on closing more full arch cases; and Dental Rift, a weekly show that covers trending topics in the dental industry.
About Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA
Alex is the CEO and Founder of All-Star Dental Academy®. He is a former Tony Robbins top coach and consultant, having worked with companies upwards of $100 million. His passion is to help others create personal wealth and make a positive impact on the people around them. Alex received his Juris Doctor (JD) and Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Florida International University.
Episode Transcript
Transcript performed by A.I. Please excuse the typos.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (00:00.478)
Okay, we’re about to begin and we’re going to go live with Gary Bird. So let’s get our live stuff rolling here. All right. So we are going live on Facebook. We are live. We’re going live on YouTube and we will be live momentarily on LinkedIn. That’s kind of running behind, but it’s going to get there. Okay.
So let’s begin our podcast. Welcome to Dental All -Stars. I’m Alex Nottingham, founder and CEO of All -Star Dental Academy. And with me is Gary Bird, founder and managing partner of SMC National. Our topic today is fun. It’s beat a DSO Titan with a $5 ,000 marketing budget. Please welcome Gary Bird.
Gary Bird (00:51.066)
Thanks for having me on. Super excited to talk to you today about this topic. I think it’s really important. The market is definitely changing. I think everybody knows that, but what can you actually do about it? What can you control and what things can you not control?
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (00:58.622)
Yeah.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (01:02.942)
Well, let’s unpack this sizzling title. These DSO titans, who are they? This $5 ,000 marketing budget because look, DSOs, corporate dentistry, they’re big, they’re large, and a lot of the private dentists, the smaller dentists that single practice multiple location, but not like enormous is kind of who we serve, the private practice. And they’re concerned. They want to be able to compete.
with those economies of scale and all the private equity money going in there, I know you’re a pro at this stuff. So unpack it for me, educate, I’m all ears.
Gary Bird (01:38.81)
Yeah, man. Yeah. Okay. Let’s do this. So first of all, something to understand when Heartland opens up into the novo, so a brand new practice, they’re going to be spending on average $25 ,000 to $40 ,000 a month on marketing. That’s not for signs. That’s not, that’s just for digital and mailers. That’s it. And they’re going to do that for six months to a year. That’s what you’re competing against. Like that’s what is up against. And really it’s not like,
single location versus DSO like it was back in the good old days. I remember when I got in the dental industry, that’s what it was. It was like single location guys hated the DSOs and it was like this DSO versus single location. Really now what you have is more of a private equity versus private money. What does that mean? Well, when I open up, if you and I open up a DSO, let’s pretend we’re dentists, we open up a DSO or a practice, we’re good. Yes, yeah, and we’re gonna go to a bank.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (02:30.654)
Let’s do it. Dr. Bird and Dr. Nottingham, here we go.
Gary Bird (02:37.082)
And the bank’s going to say, cool, I’ll give you guys a look. And then the bank leaves us alone. We run the practice how we see fit. And you can do that for an extended period of time. You can open up many practices this way, but the main takeaway there is the bank doesn’t tell you how to run your business. You decide how to run your business. So we are going to say, we want amazing culture. We want to treat our patients this way. We want to treat our, you know, spend this much on marketing, these kinds of things. Those are all our decisions to make. When private equity gets involved, that’s not the case. They have a very
they’ve invested a ton of money into big companies and they want to return on their money and they’re gonna get a return on their money. That’s what they’re good at, right? So they may make you do things that you don’t like. And this is where the term corporate dentistry comes from that drives people crazy, right? And people get mad. So when I talk about DSOs, titans, I’m not talking about the four to 19 offices. That’s the smaller DSOs. That makes up 37 % of the DSO market. And that’s not who I’m talking about.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (03:14.206)
Mm -hmm.
Gary Bird (03:36.762)
They’re in the private practice side of it, right? Those are not.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (03:37.022)
Right. And that’s where I have this term called DSOs doing it right. And that would be the ones because like you’re saying, they can control the way they want to run it. They’re not beholden to the shareholders. And I’ll say this before I forget, but in law school, in business entities, 101, the only legal right of a corporation, if you have multiple shareholders, is you must make a profit.
Gary Bird (03:53.498)
Yes.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (04:05.438)
that is your duty, that is your responsibility. You start doing some funny stuff about, I wanna do good things for the community, and it’s not there to make money. You’ll be fired. If you’re an executive, you can be sued. A lot of things, because you’re not, this might even go to the producer duties to the shareholders. You can get in big trouble. You have to make money. And so even all this charity stuff. What’s the best, what’s the best image of the shareholders and the,
Gary Bird (04:22.202)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gary Bird (04:26.49)
You not only have to make money, you have to do what’s best in the interest of the shareholders.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (04:34.526)
charter is to make and what is that the only measurable way of what’s good for shareholders is to increase their value making money.
Gary Bird (04:41.722)
Yeah, so you have the small groups, that’s the four to 19, that’s 37 % of the market. And then 13 % of the market, so this is gonna make up 50 in total, is 20 to 49 locations. So those are like your medium DSOs. So you have the small DSOs, you have the medium DSOs, and then you have the large DSOs. So this is 50 to 150, that makes up 14%, and then you have the jumbo and then the mega.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (04:47.398)
that’s good to know.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (04:52.894)
Right?
Gary Bird (05:10.458)
And those are your 150 to 300 offices, locations, and that makes up about 40 % of the market. So half of the DSO market, or close to half of the DSO market is still private money. Most people don’t realize that. So when we talk about DSOs, we have to clarify. So what I’m talking about are those bigger groups that 150 to 300 locations with private equity money to really be able to…
spend money in a way that you just can’t spend and you’re not gonna be able to compete with them on that front. So what else is the DSOs really good at? Because we can we got to understand this and number one is they’re really good at a process and economy of scale. So like administrative processes. If you ever gone to like a Pacific Dental, they’re really good at a lot of their processes. That’s just what they’re known for and they copy and paste it and they take it to office to office. They’re really really good at that. Heartland and a lot of people hate Heartland, right? Like I know that.
There’s a whole Facebook group, if you wanna go check it out, called Stop Aspendental, and not Hartland, I said Hartland the first time, I’m sorry. Aspendental, a lot of people don’t like Aspendental. There’s a whole Facebook group about Stop Aspendental on Facebook, and it’s all, I think it has 18 ,000 people in it, and it’s all patients that are just mad at Aspendental. But they’re good at some stuff, they’re really, really good at some stuff. What’s Aspendental good at?
they’re really, really good at recruiting. Why? Because they use the de novo model. And so they have to be good at recruiting. That’s how they grow. So they open up offices where other people won’t. And they do that by recruiting dentists that will go to markets that others won’t and opening an office. And that’s pretty much their marketing strategy, right? And so I did a whole podcast with John Murphy on this and he shared his whole recruiting strategy on there. And it was pretty cool. I was really blown away by it, to be honest with you. And it was very, very impressive. They’re amazing at that.
And so again, I know a lot of people are like, well, I don’t want to be an Aspen dental or I don’t patients might say, whatever. They’re really good at that. Okay. The other thing they’re really good at is a new location launches. Heartland is amazing at that. And also, I’ll be honest with you, Heartland is one of those DSOs. When I talked to the doctors, they all seem really happy. I’ve interviewed tons of Heartland dentists. And that’s why I was like, I mixed up the name there on the first one. Heartland dental, I do podcasts with their dentists all the time. They’re like, I love it here. I get all the support.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (07:26.75)
Yeah.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (07:36.03)
Well, what’s nice about Heartland Dental from what I know is they keep the practice intact very much. So if it’s already, even if it doesn’t take certain insurances, the culture, the name, they just kind of just improve their management. Versus Aspen is everything’s the same brand.
Gary Bird (07:51.514)
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly. Yeah, you nailed it. And also you get to be the owner still with Heartland. Right? So it’s so that’s how they retain doctors is your your partner with them, right? And so they do a great job at new location launches, right? They just spend a ton of money. They got that really figured out. And so these are these are all amazing things, right? They’re also a lot of the DSOs are really good at insurance negotiations, supply processes.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (07:58.974)
Okay, cool.
Gary Bird (08:21.274)
negotiations, I hate that stuff. Like if I owned a dental practice, I literally would say, I don’t ever want to do those things. They’re also good at training leadership, HR, payroll process. Nobody on this, nobody listening to this likes that. I bet you nobody here is like, man, I can’t wait for to upgrade my HR process or my payroll process or my, you know, those kinds of things. So those are what they’re really good at. The other thing they’re really good at is segmenting data. Now this is something that we do.
that help us level the playing field. So what do I mean by segmenting the data? So first of all, leads are not the same as qualified leads. And qualified leads are not the same as scheduled appointments. Scheduled appointments are not the same as new patients. So what do I mean by that? So most dentists that are listening to this right now just go, I got 40 new patients this month and I wanted 50. What happened? Marketing’s broken. Well, maybe.
Maybe marketing’s broken, or maybe you’re not answering the phone, or maybe when you do answer the phone, you don’t answer the phone the right way. So the only way to actually figure that out is to actually segment your data. So what we do, we use a company called trackable .io, and it’s an integrated platform, it’s a CRM for Dennis, and what you can do is you can actually see all of this. So you can actually see how many leads did I get, and what was my cost per lead, then you can see what my cost per qualified lead was.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (09:45.918)
Mm.
Gary Bird (09:48.794)
Because not every lead that contacts your office is a qualified lead. Now doctors get really mad about this. I had a doctor one time on Facebook say, see you call patients leads, they’re not leads, they’re people. And I go, I get it, but you can’t call them all patients all the way through because they’re not patients yet. They’re not patients until they come into your office.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (10:05.15)
Right, patients only become when the relationship, actually they’re probably only patients once they even come to the door. They’re not even patients talking to them because you have not, this is illegally probably, you have not accepted that right of taking care of them. Like a patient comes to me, they’re not a patient to me in relationship because they’re not my client, correct.
Gary Bird (10:11.546)
Yes, door.
Gary Bird (10:19.258)
Yes, exactly.
Gary Bird (10:23.194)
Yeah, or even a customer comes to you. They’re not your client. You’re not like, hey, this is my coaching client. You’re like, this is a potential client, right? But they’re not a client. Yeah, so it’s patient is the same thing. They’re not patient until they’re a patient and that’s when they walk through the door. Yeah, you could call them a prospect. So yeah, whatever you like. I just wanted to call that out because I already know this is making some.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (10:31.614)
correct.
Good point. Yep.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (10:39.166)
Are they okay with prospect? They’re a prospect? Whatever you like. Okay, lead.
Lead is fine, I don’t know what lead is. I get sales, you know, stuff, but okay, there we go.
Gary Bird (10:49.53)
Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so, so lead versus qualified lead. So if you get 500 leads a month, you want to how many of those were actually qualified? That tells you if you have a marketing problem. But if everything’s just a lead, then you can’t really figure out if you have a marketing problem. So you want to know what your cost per lead is, what your cost per qualified lead is, then you want to know what your cost per appointment is. So if I get 100 qualified leads,
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (11:15.102)
Very good.
Gary Bird (11:18.778)
and my cost for that is, you know, 100 bucks, and then my cost per scheduled appointment is $200, that means I’m only converting 50 % of my opportunities.
So you wanna be able to understand, well, what’s my cost per qualified lead? And then how many of those are actually converting into appointments? But we really don’t even care about appointments either. That just gives us clarity of where to focus our training if there’s something broken that they work with you and you actually help them solve this now. But then what we really wanna know is what is our cost to acquire a patient? And this is the next step in the journey after the appointment that tells you how many people no showed.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (11:46.718)
Mm -hmm. That’s right.
Gary Bird (11:59.45)
That’s either gonna tell you you didn’t do a good job on your phones or you didn’t do a good job of scheduling people fast enough. If you put people too far out, your cost to acquire a patient goes through the roof. If you put people closer to their call date, your no -show rate goes down and that means your cost to acquire a patient goes down. So this is something that if you get really good at it, you can actually look at data as a leader and go,
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (12:18.27)
Makes sense.
Gary Bird (12:28.282)
I know exactly where the problem is. It’s a marketing problem. I get a lot of leads, but not qualified leads. I know exactly where the problem is. I get a lot of qualified leads, but we’re not, our cost to appointment’s too high. We just need to train our team better with Alex. Or I get a lot of, my cost to appointment is really good, but my cost to acquire a customer is too high. That means I’m probably scheduling people too far out, or I need to change the way I’m answering the phone. I need to work with Alex on block scheduling and things like that. So.
There’s easy ways to get really, really good at that. So what are some things that we can do to compete against these DSOs and really level the playing field? Remember when that cruise ship sank in Greece? Do you remember that when they tipped over and sank a couple of years ago? Yeah, it was really bad. Okay, so that’s a DSO. A DSO is like a big cruise ship trying to turn. Okay, now a DSO has some great benefits and I listed a lot of those already.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (13:09.242)
Yeah.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (13:18.27)
Makes sense.
Gary Bird (13:23.93)
They got the coffee shop, they got the gym on the cruise ship, you got the treadmills, you got the suite, you got a spa, like there’s a lot of cool stuff about a cruise ship, but you can’t turn a cruise ship really quickly. If you do, you end up crashing like that one in Greece did, where they couldn’t turn the boat fast enough. Your practice, the people listening to the show, you’re a speedboat. You don’t have the coffee bar, you don’t have the gym, you don’t have all the fancy stuff.
but you can pivot on a dime and you can make massive changes in your organization really, really quick. And the big guys can’t do that. If they try to, they’ll end up crashing into the rocks, right? And so that’s where your advantage is. So here’s a couple of things that you can do that you could pivot on. I’m gonna give you six of them if we have time. I think we’re good on time. So, okay, I’m gonna give you six of these things that you can do that you can pivot on really, really quickly and make a huge difference. Number one is.
And this is so simple. You’re going to hear this and you’re going to go, that was the stupidest thing. Why are you even telling me this? But it’s, it’s a big problem. Answer your phones. Answer your phones. Okay. You say, I know that already. I know I need to answer my phones. No, you don’t. That night national average is 35 % unanswered call rate during normal business hours. Here’s the other thing you go. Okay. Well, I’m going to try to fix it. There’s a problem. The most missed calls come at lunch. Why?
Because if I’m a working mom and I wanna schedule my family for a dental appointment, what am I probably gonna call on my lunch break? Yeah, and guess what? You send everybody on break at lunch. So you either need to stagger your lunches, but if anything, you should have everybody there from 12 to one answering phones, as many people as possible. Not giving everybody shutting down the office 12 to one to go get Mexican food, right? Like you gotta plan that. Here’s the other problem. Patients, if they’re not calling at lunch, they’re calling in the morning.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (14:56.094)
Launch, yeah.
Gary Bird (15:18.81)
And if they’re not calling in the morning, they’re calling in the afternoon when they get off of work, when you’re not open. So you’re missing all of these opportunities because you’re not being, you’re not being, you’re not aware of when you actually need these people to be available. You don’t need 24 seven staffing. You just need to be available when the patients are gonna want you. That’s.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (15:37.598)
I did a podcast about Think Like a Fish. So this idea of instead of trying to think like a fisherman, which is the dentist or your life, think like your fish, your patients, where are they? Where do they go eat? And you’re right, they’re your avatar. They’re not calling when you want them to call. They’re calling when, and just put yourself in their shoes. They’re working. I don’t think their boss wants them calling the dental office. It’s gonna be during lunch. It’s gonna be before. It’s gonna be after.
Gary Bird (15:55.93)
Yeah.
Gary Bird (16:03.066)
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (16:06.142)
And so that has to be manned either by people on call or you’re using a really good call service that can that can support you. And but even like for me, if I’m calling and I know it’s an answering service, it’s like, you know, so I mean, those are some things that you’re going to have to to play around with and be mindful of. So I agree. Absolutely.
Gary Bird (16:24.602)
Yeah, that’s a great point. Yep. So here’s the next one. Know your market. So you should be able to map out all of your competition onto a map. You should be able to see your population and your income, and then you should be able to plot those against the patients that you want to continue to attract. What do I mean by that? We, we, we do this all the time and there’s other people that do it out there. We do it for free for people. So if you want those reach out to me, but we will take your area. We’ll take your office. Well, then put the population.
the income and all of your competitors, your direct competitors. And then we’ll put where all your patients are existing, the last 12 months of your new patients, where those are coming from. And so I know a lot of people are gonna be listening to us audio, but you can kind of picture that. What that does is it shows you, I need to go get more new patients from over there. I need to get less from over here. I need to, I haven’t been getting enough from over here. I need to focus over here. Cause it’s right next to my office. And it actually shows you where to market. I wouldn’t market.
anywhere without one of these, like ever, if I was a dental office. Most people just do it blind and we call it, it’s called a pray and spray. So it’s like, you just, they go, yeah, five mile radius. Yeah, that’s another one too. So you just put a circle around your office, five miles, and you’re just like, run the ads, do the marketing. And it’s like, okay, well, but what about, are those all really good patients? Can they afford your treatment?
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (17:33.662)
I call it pay and pray.
Gary Bird (17:51.77)
Are you already getting new patients from that area and do you want more of those kinds of new patients? So those are really easy to build. We love doing those for people. And that’s one way that you can really compete because…
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (18:03.07)
Yeah, just so you know, while we’re doing this live and podcast, depending on when you’re listening, we’re getting quite a bit of a movement on Facebook. So I’m getting some comments here. I’ll digest them as you keep talking. But I think your title was quite provocative, Gary. We’re getting some movement over here. Continue.
Gary Bird (18:11.226)
Let’s go.
Gary Bird (18:17.754)
Let’s go. Okay, cool. All right, let’s go. So, okay, here’s another way to be competitive against DSLs. Be open when they are closed. Be open when they are closed. Now, this doesn’t mean that you have to, I know what private owners think. Gary, you’re telling me I have to work Friday, Saturday, or Sunday? It’s not what I’m saying, okay? I’m not, but there’s other ways to do it. But think like using your fish analogy. If you go in the heat of the day to go fishing,
like when it’s one o ‘clock and the sun’s out, you’re probably not gonna catch a lot of fish. You gotta get there early when the water’s cooler because the fish like it and they come more to the surface, right? Okay, there you go. Okay, so how do we do this as an office? Number one is you know when patients wanna come into your office. They all book those spots. The second you open them, they get filled, right? So number one, you have to protect those for new patients. If you just let existing patients take all of your spots on your schedule,
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (18:50.686)
That’s right. nice analogy.
Gary Bird (19:13.306)
that you’ve already treated and probably aren’t gonna need treatment, and then you’re kicking your new patients out way down the road, you’re gonna lose. And here’s the other thing, your existing patients don’t mind, I don’t mind when I already work with a dentist and it’s just for routine checkups and just cleanings and things like that, I don’t care if I wait an extra month, makes no difference to my life at all, like zero. But to a new patient, it means everything because they need you right at that moment. And they’re gonna end up going somewhere else. So,
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (19:21.374)
Good point.
Gary Bird (19:42.554)
All you have to do is figure out when your patients already wanna come in, you already know when those times are, figure out how to protect those spots for them, it’s called block scheduling and blocking awesome spots for them, and then open up more of that capacity if you can, meaning get another hygienist at that time, in the morning, in the afternoon, in the lunchtime, on the certain day. Whatever those days are, focus on those days, open up capacity.
you will compete like gangbusters. Here’s something that’s a competitive advantage today that was not a competitive advantage before COVID. If you can see patients for hygiene same day, next day, and do treatment when they come in to see you, most dentists can’t do that right now. They’re putting patients way out. So that’s a huge marketing competitive advantage.
All right. Number next. We good. Are we doing okay, Alex? Okay, cool. CTA is in patient financing. So what’s a CTA? So I recently, yeah. Called it action. Good. So, so I recently worked with a doctor. This was a doctor. He’s a younger doctor and he’s out of, where’s the out of Houston. And he worked with a ton of marketing companies, never had any luck. And he was really getting frustrated and really mad and disappointed to be honest with you. And so I did a whole podcast with.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (20:32.766)
Doing great.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (20:39.422)
action.
Gary Bird (20:59.642)
And he had his highest new patient month ever. So his previous high ever was about 24. He had 55 in the second month of marketing with us. There’s two things and he had his ROI was through the roof. So I did a podcast with him because I kind of wanted to understand what was going on here. So there was two things that changed. Number one, we put aggressive CTAs on his website. So what does that mean? He was taught by older Dennis that you can never do a compelling CT call to action.
for like a cleaning or an exam and x -ray or a consultation because it just makes you look cheap, right? It makes us look cheap. It makes dentistry cheap. But what the older dentists got wrong and wasn’t right about is that patients don’t view it that way. That’s just how dentists view it. Patients are just looking for value. So they’re just gonna call whoever is closest to their office who has the best Google reviews and whoever has the most reasonable price for hygiene or examine x -ray just for that first visit.
And even if they have insurance, they’re still looking at it and going, they’re $59 or $99 for that. That looks like a reasonable office. And they assume that all of your other prices are reasonable. And that’s how they come in. If you get this wrong, you will get no new patients. And I cannot stress this enough. So here’s what I see happen all the time. And this is what he was doing before. Doctors are like, fine, let’s put on the website, we’re gonna put a $224 cleaning. No one’s gonna come to that.
When everybody else in your market has a $99 cleaning and you have a $249 cleaning, who’s gonna be the idiot that’s like, I want the one that’s $150 more. Nobody, ever. Now, Dennis go, well, it’s gonna attract shoppers. This is where we go back to targeting. Everybody’s a shopper. Every new patient is a shopper. Every single one of them. Just like every Dennis is a shopper. Alex, I know when they come to you, they shop you. They go, how much does it cost? What’s your competition? They do the same thing to me. Why?
Not because they’re cheap. They have money. It’s because they’re looking for value and they’re asking questions about the value to figure out who to pick. Same thing with patients. Now where you can get this wrong is if you do a $99 cleaning and then you target low income areas. Yeah, you’re going to get a bunch of Medicaid patients that can’t afford treatment and you don’t accept their insurances. That’s bad. But if you do, but and that’s the spray and pray strategy and that in a lot of, unfortunately, a lot of marketing companies have done that in the past. So,
Gary Bird (23:22.106)
then it doesn’t end up equaling good results and the dentist get ticked off. And this is what happened to Dr. Hamblin. So what he did is he lowered his CTA, we targeted the right areas, we got the patients in, and then here’s the great part, you’re gonna love this. He used patient financing to close all of his patients. And he did it with a strategy called saving rather than setting, okay? You don’t wanna use patient financing to save a patient, you wanna do it to set a patient.
What do I mean by that? Here’s what most dentists, the people listening right now, this is what most of them do. Not your clients probably, but like a lot of just randoms out there that are trying to make it. What they do is they say, hey, Mr. Patient, you have $3 ,000 worth of treatment that you need to do. Do you want to do it? And the patient goes, I’ll go home and think about it, which we already know what that means, right? You didn’t do a good job explaining. And then you come in and you go, we got patient financing. And it feels very icky.
Phil’s almost kind of car salesy, right? Like what dentists, hey, don’t do that. That is the worst thing that you can do. The proper way to do it is to say, hey, Mr. Patient, you got $3 ,000 worth of treatment. Here’s what’s going on. You educate them. And then we have a couple different options for you to make payments. You can pay cash. You can also, we also have financing and your payments, your monthly payments would be around this, this or this. Which options do you think would be best for you?
rather than asking yes or no question, now you’re actually setting them up. Now why don’t dentists, why do dentists hate this? They hate it because they go, but Gary, if I do that to all my patients, then the patient financing company is gonna get a cut of everything that I’m doing, I’m gonna lose money. That’s a, well, you’re also losing all the, how many people are you losing at the back door?
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (24:58.75)
So what?
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (25:05.15)
Yeah, I did a podcast with Larry Gazzardo, our head instructor, about the new generation wanting multiple ways, Apple Pay, credit card, whatever. And I think you’re stepping over dollars to get pennies. I think you just got to look at the big picture. And also these big corporate giants, they’re doing it. Why are you adding another barrier to make it difficult to give you money? And you make a ton of money if you put that into cash or CD or the market. So you’ll make your little 3 % back.
look at it like a marketing expense. The other thing I wanted to comment on, it’s so true about we get kind of ticked off, all of us when we are commoditized and we start sitting compared, you’re a dental marketer or you’re a consultant and dentists, you know, the same thing is like, well, they’re being come on. We all, and here’s what I would say, human psychology, that’s what we’re going to start doing first. And I like what you said. Everybody’s a shopper. So true. And in their own way. Now,
What we do at All Star, and we also encourage our dentists as well, is to start changing narrative where you’re not a commodity and how does it happen? So part of it’s your marketing. And then also, here’s the thing. Yes, you’re gonna get, with Gary’s system, some of these prices, you’ll get their attention. Sometimes you have to do the rattle to get people to you. Now, you’re still gonna get, even without clever marketing and the brilliance of Gary, okay?
in terms of the CTAs, even if we just get people to come and call anyway, because even if there’s no CTA, they see the nice website looks good. I’m calling. What do you charge for X, Y and Z? So what we teach at All Star is we have a process, we call the great call process and we talk all about it on our for free on all of our podcasts, all of our podcasts, you can find it out. And the whole idea is we’re looking to build rapport. When we get to know them, and they like us and they trust us, then we answer their question.
And they’re never gonna get an experience like that anywhere else. I was talking to my wife about, I wanna get an HMO insurance company. And I tried calling them and I saw what that experience is like. So I pay out of pocket, I use a health share, so I don’t deal with that. So I’d rather pay more and I pay out of pocket for dental, okay? Although I get a lot of things for discount because I’m in dentistry. Anyways, so besides that, the point is is that once you…
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (27:23.23)
break that pattern of price shopping or just shopping and they become a relationship with you. They trust you. Now it’s something different. Now you stand out. That’s very important. And Gary, and of course in a podcast, Gary and I can’t give you the whole thing. Gary’s just giving you like the big picture of training, but you got to train at a great degree and great level. I know Gary does it with his clients, with his team. And Gary used to be a phone skills instructor years ago or a teacher. And so,
Gary Bird (27:39.77)
Yeah. Yep.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (27:52.862)
but the level of knowledge that you have to have, and in terms of every process that Gary laid out, the phone call conversion, broken appointments, what’s happening, and then when they come in, there’s no magic script that we can give you that’s gonna work. We’re giving you pieces, but you’re gonna have to train in detail and role play where you, when it becomes embedded, so that patient has an amazing experience, and you become the logical choice, where nobody,
And I’ll tell you this, the big honchos, the titans, okay, are not going, that’s the one thing, Gary, you’d work a lot with DSOs and big corporate offices. You know, as I do, they’re not gonna invest in that type of detail with their team. They will invest in training at a high level, but they will not allow you to spend too much time on the phone. They look at macro numbers. And when you’re a smaller DSO or private practice, small proper, whatever, single location, whatever.
You have the ability to invest in your team at a very high level. And so you’re going to see the difference of the experience. And that’s the key.
Gary Bird (28:55.098)
Yep, you do. You’re the speedboat. Yeah, 100%. And also too, one of the things with price shopping is this. People can only price shop the things that they understand. So you can’t really price shop marketing because it’s like, well, what do you mean by marketing? Are you talking about ads? You’re talking about budgets for other things we talk like SEO, like you got to get really, really specific. So in dental, you can really only price shop a couple things. Hygiene is one of them. It’s everywhere.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (29:22.11)
Sure, sure.
Gary Bird (29:22.81)
So like implants is another one that’s been, you know, people are really commoditizing. All you have to do if someone calls in and says, well, how much is a crown or how much is a filling? Let’s use the easiest one. How much is the filling? Well, that’s a great question. Get their information. Who do I have the pleasure of speaking with? What’s the number in case we get disconnected? Let me ask you a couple of questions. How many surfaces is that on? The filling that you need, how many surfaces? I don’t know.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (29:40.35)
There you go. Yes.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (29:48.734)
So what you just did, Gary, is what we call at All -Star, the transition statement. We did a whole podcast on that. So the whole point, what he just did, this is miraculous. And I remember when we first met Gary with Heather, Heather was like, wow, I mean, Gary really does a lot of the things that just naturally that we teach, which is beautiful. And what you did with transition statement, you just, it’s actually an NLP. It’s a state change or basically you, they’re focused on being commoditizing. You just broke them out of their state.
You just, you change it and they didn’t even see it happening. You said, you know, we’ll say, how can I better assist you? Or you change them. Tell me more about this. They’re asking you the price. You didn’t say no. You just shifted the power back to you with a question. And now they’re talking and they’re like, Gary’s kind of a nice guy. He’s listening. He’s really interested in me. Cause when you call the Titan, they’re going to, they’re going to, they’re going to either give you a price or say, we have to see you. But Gary spent all this time with me.
Gary Bird (30:20.378)
No.
Gary Bird (30:26.426)
Yeah.
No. Yes.
Gary Bird (30:37.242)
Yeah.
No one else did that.
Gary Bird (30:46.81)
Yep. Now watch this. Now watch this. I’m going to flip it at the end. So when they say, I don’t know, when they say, I don’t know how many surfaces is it on? that’s okay. You know what? A lot of our patients don’t know that, but honestly, it’s impossible for anybody to give you pricing over the phone without that information. So let’s do this. Let’s get you in for our consultation. We’ll take a look at it. We’ll tell you exactly what’s going on, what works better for you mornings or afternoons.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (30:47.198)
You know, and tell me.
Okay.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (31:07.102)
and that was good, you kind of deflated what you’re doing there. You deflated there, again, I’m price shopping, and then you put a seed of doubt in their mind. you know, cause that’s the thing, they don’t know what to ask. So this is an ask price, and you just said, well, you really can’t answer that. And I can help you, and hey, I’m gonna help you, I’m Gary, I’m your friend. I’m gonna help you answer that. I’m gonna help you get what you need done, because look.
Gary Bird (31:19.226)
No. Yes. Yeah. Without that information.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (31:33.374)
Yes, they are price shopping, but behind that they have a problem that they want a solution. And if you can be their advocate and they believe you’re on your side, however you do it, however you get there, we have our way, Gary has his way, there’s similarities and many others, however you get there, once they, hey, hi, Gary, once they, I saw you said hello on Facebook, once you build that rapport and you know that Gary is on your side, Ulster’s on your side.
Gary Bird (31:38.362)
Yes.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (32:03.454)
then the rest is now it’s just yours not to mess up. Okay, and just keep and the entire team. Every they will eventually see through the armor if you’re deceiving them. The entire team has to care and be trained and do it right.
Gary Bird (32:18.394)
Yep, 100%. Yeah, totally with that. And so that’s really, really important is that you gotta be able to get these people in, you gotta be able to answer the phones, you gotta be able to answer their questions. And one last point on this whole thing of shopping. People only are gonna shop on the things that they know what to shop for. So just like what we were talking about, like the cleanings, examine x -rays, they can’t compare pricing on fillings, crowns, and all those kind of things.
because it’s just not out there. So you got to be competitive. What I tell people be competitive on the things they can compare for. And just so you get the call. But then charge the most for everything else. Like because they can’t they’re not it’s like oil changes versus changing your carburetor. No one knows I don’t know.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (33:00.222)
So you’re saying it’s kind of like a loss leader in a sense, like look at it like it’s a way of starting the conversation and saying, I’m not really making money on this. I’m making money on the other things. But at least it starts, it starts a conversation for us to be able to serve them. That’s, it’s great.
Gary Bird (33:10.522)
Yes. And doctors.
Exactly. And it’s also, and it meets them where they’re at. Patients know they’re supposed to get their teeth cleaned. They know that. So they’re going to always ask about that. So you need to be competitive in that area. They know that they need to come in and get an x -ray probably because my tooth hurts. They already know that. So you need to be competitive in that area. But it’s kind of like this, just so dentists hate the word loss leader. So you’ll never, that’s why I always avoid that term. So I’ll explain it this way. It’s like an oil change. If you need an oil change,
you your market every market is different but in your market it might be the roof is 99 bucks if someone’s trying to charge $300 you’re not going to go get an oil change there but you have no idea how much they charge for Pirelli tires you have no idea how much they charge for carburetors to be replaced I don’t even know if cars have carburetors anymore but like you have no fixing your bumper or whatever you have no idea how much that cost and neither do they until they get you into the shop so what do they do they give you an oil change and guess what?
They make no money on the oil change. Nothing. They make money on everything else once they get you onto the rack. Dental is no different.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (34:16.926)
And I think with dental marketing, you gotta try a bunch of things strategically and see how it makes you feel. I mean, one great thing about you, Gary, is you’re in a lot of the marketing companies that we associate with and great thinkers is we’ll try different things that work for you in your office that you feel comfortable with. So I mean, I have a lot of clients, Gary, that will not wanna do the $99 thing. There’s no way.
and there’ll be another way that we can market. There’s not one way to get it done, but you have to be authentic. You got to act with integrity and you have to, and Gary, right, we’re on this. And I think we can kind of conclude with this whole subject. This is assuming you are training your team to a very high level. So we have an online training system at All -Star. Gary trains at a great degree at his company.
Gary Bird (35:02.266)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (35:10.078)
There’s wonderful consultants out there that coaches and training that you’ve got to have your team trained on phone skills, on customer service, on case acceptance and do it the right way. Gary and I are big on sales training is not going to, and we say, you know, sneak a car sales, sales training is not going to work. we’re advocates against that. So Gary, thank you so much. We have a lot of fun here on social media and seeing you live as well. Thank you for joining us, Gary.
Gary Bird (35:28.026)
Yeah, yeah.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (35:37.15)
Gary’s got an amazing podcast. Is it Gary Bert, the dental marketing theory? Is that it? Your podcast? Yeah, very, very nice podcast. One of the top podcasts in dentistry.
Gary Bird (35:43.546)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, dental marketing theory, yep, yep. Love having you on, you did a great job when you came on. We really enjoyed the conversation.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA (35:52.158)
Yeah, thanks, Gare. And remember to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. Follow us live on Facebook, YouTube, as well, and LinkedIn. Get the episodes as they are released. Share with your friends. And until next time, go out there and be an All -Star.
