28 Sep 2015  •  Practice Management, Our News  •  2min read By  • Emma Sillars

Ringing the Changes

Converting telephone enquiries into consultation bookings is no easy task for the front desk team at any dental practice. I recently attended a workshop on this very topic, delivered by Director of Medenta, Richard Collard and gained some great tips which you can easily implement within your own business.

1. It’s not all about selling treatments over the phone – first of all, you need to get the patient through your door so that you can start to build a relationship with them. To do this, make it clear how being a patient at your practice will benefit them. Also, build the value of the initial consultation over the phone by explaining exactly what they’ll be getting for their money, rather than just telling them how much it will cost.

2. Record and Measure – when Richard asked each practice in the room how many enquires for treatment they received per week, combined with the average cost of this treatment, the average value around the room equated to £2.6 million per year! How much of that potential revenue is your practice actually getting? Without measuring the number of enquires received, how many enquiries turn into consultations, and how many consultations result in treatment plans being taken up, you have no way of knowing.

3. Make it clear there’s a potential new patient on the phone – A simple and effective way of making the whole team aware that someone is on the phone to a potential new patient is to have the new patient enquiry form produced on a piece of yellow paper. That way, everyone knows to leave them in peace!

4. Use open and closed questions effectively – Closed questions work well when you need to gain commitment, for example, to book an appointment. In contrast, open questions are great for building the relationship with the patient, and finding out exactly what it is they want and why.

Why not have a go at introducing these simple steps into your own practice to turn more telephone enquiries into consultations. If you want to find out more about Richard’s next workshop, have a look at our events page for further details.

Get all blogs delivered to your inbox

By subscribing to our blog, you agree to receiving our monthly blog update and newsletter. You can unsubscribe at any time. The security of your personal data is very important to us and we will never sell your data to other companies. You can read more about how we protect your information and your rights by reading our privacy notice.