Being Unique

After reading Chris Barrow’s blog entitled ‘whinge’ I thought I would write a few comments of my ownThis blog made me realise that I am glad I am unique in the training that I provide – Treatment Coordinator training.

I spent a great deal of time thinking about setting up my own business (should I, shouldn’t I?) before I decided to take the plunge – the greatest risk of my life to date, because, let’s face it – being in full time paid employment, with a great basic salary entering my current account every month, 8 weeks paid holiday a year and amazing bonuses, is pretty risky to say goodbye to! Yet the reason I knew I could do this was because I had a unique service that I could offer the dental world. My first plan for my business was solely to provide photography training, in-house. I then realised that the Treatment Coordinator training was another niche in the market. Both of these services I had been undertaking for years in practice – as a client told me the other day, I walk the talk.

I could have set up my new business based on a copy of other successful consultants – I can teach sales skills, and communication skills etc but I chose not to.

Chris’s blog made me to say to myself – ‘I am glad to be unique’! The same should apply to dental practices. The dental practices that want to be different and capture the local market have unique USP’s. They are what I call forward thinking practices.

Unique USP’s are providing dentistry for busy people, having a treatment coordinator and providing free of charge consultations, providing new patients with a portfolio of their smile, half price whitening on Wednesdays etc, not as one team member recently told me “our USP is that we have a website”.

You do not want to be the same as all other practices in your area. You need to see what’s around you, spend time looking at other practices websites and constantly driving your business forward. Every day you and your team should be asking yourself: why should the new patients choose us and why should the existing patients remain active?

Sometimes practices forget that the patients pay their bills so that the practice can pay its bills – and the largest bill is always the wages!

So start thinking and get your team involved – what really makes you unique?

Laura