by Dr. John Nosti, on 8/11/16 10:35 AM
In my previous post on cosmetic dentistry (here), I discussed the benefits of offering teeth whitening to your patients as an incentive to commit to more treatment. Now, I’ll get into more options for using bleaching to your advantage.
Make Bleaching Your Go-To Patient Offer
Begin the process of making your practice more lucrative by increasing your bleaching numbers.
Discount, discount, discount. Drop your price to between $150 and $190, then have your staff use their relationships with patients to suggest how great a deal teeth whitening is.
There is some risk to this approach. It requires that you are willing to take the potential loss of profit from your lowered price, in favor of saving lost chair time and developing patient interest in high dollar esthetic treatments.
In my opinion, whitening does lead to other cosmetic procedures.
Another way that you can increase your numbers is to bonus your bleaching. You’ve already provided an incentive to your patients, so why not do the same for your staff?
Case in point…One year from October to December, I ran a bleaching bonus in the office. In addition to the low price of bleaching, I gave the staff a $75 bonus for scheduling new whitening appointments. The catch: The whitening had to occur independent of the doctor and hygiene main schedules. In those three months we saw more teeth whitening than we had for a period three times that long earlier in the year.
"In those three months we saw more teeth whitening than we had for a period three times that long earlier in the year."
The added benefit is that you can set things up so that the staff must work together as a team (this will aid their professional development and improve the efficiency of your practice).
I made sure another condition was that the staff would need to coordinate so that impressions were taken by the floating assistant of hygienist. This would happen while someone else set up for the next patient on the schedule.
Then the bonuses were divided based on a percentage of hours worked compared to total hours. You’ll need to give your staff clear instructions and teach them the best way to speak about bleaching with patients. Then, you’ll be able to remove yourself from the equation.
The rewards of this type of bonus are not seen immediately, but over time it should lead to more dentistry.
CMS Clinical Director Dr. John Nosti practices full time with an emphasis on functional cosmetics, full mouth rehabilitation, and TMJ dysfunction. His down-to-earth approach and ability to demystify occlusion and all ceramic dentistry has earned him distinction among his peers. He has lectured nationally on occlusion, rehabilitation, and technology (JVA/JT and T-scan).
To learn more about Clinical Mastery’s approach to improving the quality and quantity of restorative and cosmetic dental cases, go to our website at www.clinicalmastery.com.
