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There are some simple numbers that Dental Offices need to know, that a lot don’t know.

And if you don’t know them then your blitheringly and blindly stumbling along with your career, your profession and your life, wandering in an aimless direction towards the Holy Grail of retirement.

Frankly, if you don’t care about these numbers how can I even believe you care about your family, your future, and even your patients?

I am constantly amazed at the large numbers of dentists who don’t have a handle on their numbers.

That’s like planning a holiday, but not knowing where you really want to go, and not knowing exactly where you’re starting off from?

That sounds incredulous…. but there are people, dentists out there who don’t know these basic bread and butter numbers.

1. Average New Patient Two Year Value

How much income does a new patient bring to your Dental Office?

On average, when a New Patient sits in your Dental Chair, what dollar figure are they worth?

This is a very nice figure to know. When you know this figure, your office then knows that when the phone rings, and a new patient appointment is scheduled, then we’ve added that amount of money, on average, to the collections of this Dental Practice.

At least!

So conversely, when the phone goes unanswered, or when an appointment is not scheduled for a New Patient enquiry, we’ve now just taken that New Patient Dollar Value, and ripped it up in front of our very own eyes.

Because that’s income we’re not going to get now.

At my Office, we knew this number on a year-to-year basis, because we tracked our New Patients *IN DETAIL* so that we were able to assign this value.

And assign it a value you must.

You cannot guess this figure!

Not if you want to get anywhere at all successfully…

2. Number of New Patients

By source.

How many new patients do you get?

And from where?

By day, by week, by month?

This is the fuel that drives your business. You can’t run a successful business without knowing this number exactly.

What’s your best month for New Patients?

How does this same month compare with that same month from last year?

How are this year’s New Patient Figures compared to last year?

What’s the trend?

And what are you going to do about it?

A crop farmer knows how many crops, how much wheat, corn, barley he has to plant to bring in how much income for his family.

He knows how much, per square foot, each paddock is worth.

Yet a lot of dentists don’t know….

And that’s just stupid!!

When I ask dentists these two simple questions they either don’t know, or they give me round numbers.

And when they give me round numbers, they’re just guessing…

When I ask how many new patients, they tell me a number ending in zero.

“20.”

“30.”

“40?”

These are simply guesses…they don’t know!!

What’s a new patient worth?

They say:

“About $2000.00”

“About $1500.00”

More guesses…. they don’t know!!

If I was setting up a Dental Office I’d be setting up right next door to one of these “Don’t Know” Dentists.

Because they have no plan..

Stumbling along blindly is no plan.

Hope is no plan.

“I don’t know” is no plan…

* [Next week we’ll discuss more metrics, including the dollar value of a regular patient, and the retention of that patient…

The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.

Email me at david@theupe.com

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