The price you set for your treatments represents the value of your services. If you focus on profit you will lose, since you will care primarily about the short-term gain. Success comes when you focus in real value and excellence.
Value is expressed as equal to benefits received (tangible or emotional) over expectations (price).
There are two ways to increase the value of your services:
1. The common and boring way — By increasing benefits without changing the price, or by reducing the price without changing the benefits.
2. Or the creative way — By being different!
As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.” With these words, Emerson is expressing the importance of being unique.
Being different is a strategy that we can follow in business levels. Another is to be a cost leader and offer the lowest prices in the market. This kind of strategy has two disadvantages:
- Some colleagues will imitate you very soon by offering lower prices
- Your patients will not perceive you as professional in the long run since you don’t upgrade your services by investing in new technology or continuing education.
Research has shown the main reasons companies lose customers:
° 68% Company indifference
° 14% Product dissatisfaction
° 9% Lower prices elsewhere
° 5% Developing new relationships
° 3% Relocation
° 1% Death
This survey clearly shows that the most profound reason for losing patients is the company’s indifference compared to its competitors.
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CONSIDER READING:Who said dentists aren’t salespeople?
The best strategy that will allow you to add value in your services and gain the desirable competitive advantage is to be diverse and different, and there are many ways to achieve this.
- Promote care and compassion — This cannot be achieved only through words. You cannot just say to your patients that you care. People have to walk out of your office absolutely shocked by how much attention you show them.
- Number of servicesoffered
- Level of customer service — Not only you but all your staff members should deliver the same message to your patients — how unique and valuable they are!
- Location — Our clinic should be in a location surrounded by people that are willing to pay for our services.
- Convenience — Some people have certain time limits in their schedule so they might prefer to come to the office during the evening or on a weekend. You decide if you want to meet the demand of these patients. What you can do is offer the option of convenient hours.
Dentists are professionals, therefore we should increase our profits in this competitive era and be different in a creative way that results as our practice being seen as unique!
Dr. Anna-Maria Yiannikos has been practicing dentistry for more than 20 years in Cyprus, and she is a pioneer in the field of dental lasers and cosmetic dentistry. Her clinical research about dental lasers received a Golden Award in ISLD Congress in Berlin 2006. Dr. Yiannikos has two Masters Degrees, one in lasers (MSc.), and an MBA, and recently completed a Master Clinician Programme in Aesthetic Dentistry at UCLA.