Reviews are overrated. If that’s all you’ve got to show for your hard work.
Sure they are beneficial and I would like for you to have a lot of them and to get more every single day. But, there becomes a real problem in your practice when your focus is not the highest priority.
I run into practices every single day that can tell me more about their online presence, about their yelp reviews and about their google rankings than they can tell me about their case acceptance, about their daily collection goals and about their target value based scheduling goal.
It saddens me to see people become distracted by things that aren’t the most important aspect of your practice. They certainly don’t pay the bills.
Yes, you need and deserve an online presence. The bigger, bolder, more credible the better. But the fact is, if you are getting the majority of your patients from referrals (which you should be), then what matters is your patient experience, your patient pictures, testimonials, the reviews sitting in your reception area, or the reviews being mailed out to your new patients before they ever walk through the door.
Last week, I talked to an arrogant, know-nothing doctor who thinks he is exceptional since their practice is getting dozens of new patients (the number many practices would beg for), and yet his production is rather pathetic. His dollars per new patient is simply embarrassing.
He bragged about his success, longevity and fancy website, and yet he has nothing to show for it. He only has part time hygiene after decades in practice. Yet, I don’t fault him or judge him because many are in his boat.
The problem is he is misguided and stubbornly proud when his results are ridiculous because he has been following all of the wrong numbers.
New patients as an example; give me a break. Nobody cares how many new patients you have, they only care how healthy you made those patients, how many smiles you sold and how many lives you changed.
The sheer fact that our industry even tracks new patients without tracking new patient treatment, smile makeovers and total diagnosis per comprehensive exam; which are the only numbers that will tell you how well you are doing.
And obviously, collections, case acceptance, number of patients walking through your door every month and dollars per mouth you are achieving.
You can pretend to be offended by my illustrative statistics. If you are, you are simply not a professional. If you don’t like talking about the results you are getting, then I sure hope you are volunteering your time.
Because dentistry is a business. You invest in your skills and your team and your practice and your equipment and your career and your patients. And they are suppose to invest in your benefits and the pathway to health you take them on.
It’s very simple and I repeat this statement probably at least a few times a day: you can’t deposit reviews – google won’t pay your bills, only the money you put in your bank account will.
Case acceptance, scheduled treatment, investments by your patients for your care…that’s what makes the world go round. Patients can like you and share all about their experience, but rest assured you’ll be judged by how healthy and how excellence their smile looks as they do.
What matters at the end of the day is not how many patients are talking about you but how many are actually doing something about what you recommended, taking action on your advice and trusting in your relationship with their money not just their reviews.
This week and every week, I hope you and your team are focused on what really matters: how many patients say ‘yes’!
