Dental Practice Advice on Dental Colleges, Boards, Consultations, and Your Competition

dental practice advice

Here is sound dental practice advice:

The Dental industry…like many industries, functions in a bubble.

Each has its own economy, politics, and agenda.

…and like many industries, Dentistry as a profession is segmented.  [As a very important aside, your patients as consumers of dentistry are becoming more segmented based on demographic need and economic changes in the middle class–this dental practice advice is something discussed at length in my newest book The Dentists Unfair Advantage Volume 3 -The Ultimate Guide to Niche Dental Marketing.

Within the profession, you have the dental educational system, the post-graduate dental education system, a regulatory system, your peers, and you have consultants and vendors. Most don’t agree with one another. Here is some free dental practice advice:

Add ‘em all up and what you end up with is confusion.  Confused Dentists create confused consumers.  By the way, it’s not just us dentists creating confusion but the other big licensed professions (attorneys, accountants, physicians, etc.) are doing just as “good” of a job!

So, how does a sole practitioner feel confident that what they are doing will work in the real world? It’s simple.  Aside from being ethical and compliant, ignore the chatter.

Focus NOT on the industry but on the real world:   THE MARKET.  What do patients really want and need?
None of the groups listed above PAY YOU……but THE MARKET does.   Hmmm….any light bulbs going off?

Another gem from my dental practice advice bag is that dental practices don’t have “new patient” problems. They have a positioning and communication problem…one that can’t be solved with more “philosophy,” more gimmicky services that the buying population cares little for, more Facebooking, etc……It’s a bit difficult to understand why so many D.D.S.’s have a problem giving patients what they want based on simply having good listening habits.

Yes we teach this (what you need to be listening for) as part of our world class MBA level ethical sales training available for an almost free full access 14 day trial.

More dental practice advice about post-doctoral education!  While these programs are far more in tune with “best clinical practices” as compared to the dental school, the advanced post-doc CE courses/instructors/directors are still just as clueless of the need for marketing and selling as any dental school faculty.  This oversight on their part is far more egregious than what’s being left out of basic dental school programs because these advanced programs exist in “real world land.”