Part III: Dr. Mark Costes' Practice Growth Bootcamp

Quotes & Notes:

The bottom line is we have a huge bank of patients that fall out of our active patient base and never hear from us again.
What we do is anyone who is past 12 months, we put them in a very specific system of reactivation.
It is much easier to get that patient who has already been to your practice than some stranger to respond to some external ad.
Generate a list of people that have been out of your office for more than 12 months, from newest to oldest. Then write a series of letters that say basically this:
- “Hey, this is Dr. David and we miss seeing you around here. We know that life can get away from you but we haven’t seen your beautiful smiling face for the last 12 months (or however long it has been). As a ‘get reacquainted offer’ we would like to offer you a free exam and x-ray if you come into your cleaning. So if you call before X date we will give you this free cleaning and x-ray.”
So you want to reach out to these people four times reminding them that the deadline is rapidly approaching and that they can come back in.
I spoke about my offsite assistant in a past interview with you. My offsite assistant is responsible for the birthday card program, the reactivation program, and the referral program.

The ADA did a study and the top three reasons that people don’t follow through with an appointment or don’t go to the dentist in the first place are because of time, fear of pain, and fear of money.
As far as money goes, we have flexible payment options that go as far as three months of internal financing.
There are a million different ways to administer painless anesthetic. And if you can master the best way you will build your practice faster than any other procedure that you learn how to do.
We have a ten-minute rule at our practice. We make sure that when the patient is out of the reception area, within ten minutes of their appointment time and greeted by some sort of provider. And then we always strive to get them out within that hour/ half hour allotted patient time.
Be sure to check out the dental success summit, which takes place on March 20^th and 21^st in Scottsdale Arizona at the Scottsdale Resort, if you want to hear more from Dr. Mark Costes.