Alex Nottingham JD MBA discusses Marketing Mistake #3: Discounting can attract price-focused patients and strain profitability.
Resources:
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.
00:02
This is Dental All-Stars, where we bring you the best in dentistry on marketing, management, and training. Hi, everyone. I’m Alex Nottingham, founder and CEO of All-Star Dental Academy, and we have a series going on, the six marketing mistakes. And in today’s episode, we’re talking about discounting. Let’s do a little review. So we started with the first marketing mistake is doing what everyone else is doing. And if you do what everybody else is doing, you’re going to get…
00:31
what everyone else is getting, and that’s poor results. And we were reviewing these concept of, what is everybody else doing that’s getting them the poor results? Well, they’re not marketing at all. They’re putting out fires. They’re not tracking their marketing. They may go without the first and choose the first option versus looking holistically at multiple options. They’re, and this is the most important, they’re not providing great customer service or phone skills. They’re not training at all.
01:01
or they’re doing the dreaded I know it all, or they have a fear of taking action, a fear of poor results, and so they don’t even move with respect to that. So it’s very important that we mark it, and that’s the theory behind it, and do it well, and see what the best in the business of doing and what we want to replicate. Not do what others are doing, do what the best are doing. Now, you can look at others, and if they’re getting good results, model that, and model beyond
01:31
just in dentistry, what are the best in the world doing? Then we looked at the second marketing mistake, trying to market to everyone, because if you try to market to everyone, you get no one. And I use the example in that episode, and I’ll put links below in the show notes to both of the prior episodes, but we talked about this idea of think like a fish. We gave a story of the fisherman and how to be the legendary fisherman, felt like a fish, not like a fisherman.
02:00
And so with the patients, what type of patients or fish do you want to attract? Do you want to attract patients that want high quality customer service, or they’re just looking for a discount? Or what’s the lowest price? And we have to adapt our ads and what we do from all of our marketing to our customer service to attract the right fish, the right patients. So let’s look at discounting. That is the third marketing mistake. Now here’s the thing.
02:30
There’s a difference between goods and services. They’re not the same. And Larry Gazzardo, our head instructor, will often say that we have to be careful not comparing retail establishments, which are goods, to dentistry, which is service. You’re providing a service. And the goal is not to become commoditized, where patients are dictating to you the treatment that you should provide.
02:58
and how you should price your product. You’re the professional. It’s a service that you’re looking to help them. And when you’re focusing on discounting, when your ads are doing that, and we’ll talk about that in a moment, who are you attracting? What are the fish you’re attracting? What are the patients you’re attracting? And the more you discount, the more volume you need to perform the service. And that often can be a problem with insurances, and we’ll talk about that in a moment. And if you…
03:27
are discounting or taking a lot of insurance that isn’t providing you enough value in return or margin in return, your quality might diminish because you can’t afford the best labs and the best technology and products. And this could also impact your patient relationship. And now back to with insurance, as I mentioned, some insurances may provide you more than others, absolutely. But you have to look at that. You have to look at…
03:56
your different insurance companies and are you making money on them and are they profitable where you can do the type of dentistry that you want to do? And we have coaching programs that help dentists lessen or remove their dependence on insurance and I’ll tell you this we never help somebody get on insurance we’re always trying to get them off insurance because typically it’s not a great deal for you the dentist or the patient. So consider this are you discounting?
04:25
And if you are discounting, by how much? Is it something you’re doing by your specials, or is it insurance imposed where you have to discount? And how does it affect your bottom line? You have to know your KPIs, or key performance indicators. What type of clients or phish are you attracting with these discounts? And I use phish and patience as an analogy. What are you attracting with the discounts? If you’re discounting, are you attracting patients that are thinking
04:55
price versus quality of service. And then if you are discounting, how much more, or if you’re taking insurance, how much more do you have to produce to be able to cover that margin gap? Now examples of ads. If you are having an ad, $50 exams and x-rays, what type of patients are you attracting? Often dentists don’t know that their discounting is really hurting them and they’re working very, very hard
05:25
cover these situations. Sometimes they’re losing money on patients. Who wants to work for free? And consider the short term versus the long term effect. Yes, the discounting may bring people in now, or not providing great customer service, or manipulating patients may be good for the short term, but the long term, you’re gonna pay for that. So if you’re good at discount, know the impact. We typically advise to avoid it. And I like to point you in the direction of a webinar that we do.
05:54
All- backslash webinar. We’re gonna teach you great customer service skills on the phone and scheduling to help you attract the right personnel. We’re all about relationship focus, service focus, not sales. So with the, when you think about your marketing, it’s not just the marketing itself, that’s part of it, but the marketing extends to the phone and the entire patient experience. So All-
06:21
and you can take advantage of the complimentary training of the webinar. And certainly like, subscribe, share the podcast with your friends and until next time go out there and be an All Star. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Dental All Stars. Visit us online at Allstardentalacademy.com
