The following article is excerpted from the December 2015 issue of Jerry Jones Direct’s Practice Profit Insider™.
I’m grumpy today. Why? It’s tough to fix stupid. Some people just do not think clearly or much at all. (But, they’re good at games on their cell phones, so that’s as good, right?) On a call today with a long-time consultant and referring partner to my company, I had a good laugh over a guy that is so misguided he doesn’t understand that A) He shouldn’t be the one pulling old ceiling tiles down in his remodel project; and B) He shouldn’t enroll his dad, a shoemaker, to do his practice marketing, especially after sinking a couple hundred grand into his new location… You might be thinking, “Yeah, Jerry, but won’t he save money doing some of the demo himself?” Or, “Maybe his dad is a great marketer of shoe repair and making and I’m sure shoe leather is just like selling pain and the high cost of dentistry?” If you are thinking either one of those, hey, SLAP YOURSELF awake.
My dear Member, why would you do $15/hour demo work when you should be engaged in $500/hour dental work, which could well save from a puncture in your hand or finger with a rusty old nail, or, be most surely exposed to asbestos from the ceiling tiles?
As to point B above, I’m sure dad’s heart is in the right place and he wants to help his kid out, but with such a huge investment of time and money on the line, has it not yet occurred to the kid that it’s a major risk to go on the cheap and get a few new patients here and there from Chamber Meetings and a “Repair your old shoes and get a free dental exam?” vs. quickly filling your practice with qualified patients that are ready to fix their problems? Yes, you pay Jerry Jones Direct, but in return, you ideally get a faster, more direct route to large numbers of new patients, which means, you get a quicker, higher ROI.
MOST DO NOT UNDERSTAND the faster money moves the better the potential for a huge ROI. Lacking understanding, most invest/spend less and struggle for a year or longer, to achieve what they could in a matter of a few months.
Let me re-state that so you don’t miss it. And, I’ll provide an example. Let’s say you have $5,000 to invest in marketing. In month one, you invest all $5,000. At the end of the month, after carefully tracking your new patients from the marketing you paid for, you had $10,000 come in.
If you’re like Dr. Darold Opp with a 43% overhead on that $10,000 of income, you subtract your $5,000 marketing expense and your 43% overhead ($4300) and you’re left with a total of $700 PROFIT, or, 14% ROI on a $5,000 investment in 30 days. Annualized, that’s a 168% return.
You can’t get that kind of return ANYWHERE ELSE. Now, if you’re smart, you’ll roll that $5,000 again and do it all over. At the end of about 7 short months, that $5,000 you’re playing with every month is now all profit. In other words, if you can remain consistent and diligent and follow exactly what you’re told to do, you’ll have your original $5,000 back in your own pocket at about 7 months, and, every month from there on out, that $5,000 you’re spending on marketing is from profits only…you’re no longer playing with your money – it’s, as they say in the casinos, “house money.”
Anytime you can get your sweet little self in a situation where you’re playing with HOUSE MONEY, you’re in the pole position.
Before I go on, think about how fast you could grow your practice and marketing budget if you deployed the original $5,000 and the $700 profit? That’s $5700 going back out in month 2. If the numbers repeated in month 2, in month 3, you’d re-deploy not $5700, but, $6400. Month 3, your marketing budget would grow to $7100. And, you’d never have more than your original $5,000 principal at-risk since you’re playing with house money for the other $2100. By month 7, your marketing budget would be $9900!
And still…you’ve deployed that original $5,000 7 times, gotten it back 6 times, and you’d have more new patients, too! What’s more, in month 7, you’ll see the patients for re-care from month 1. So, now, your ROI from that group of patients skyrockets even more!
Problem is, most in business, most dentists don’t think like this. They lack the discipline or understanding or ability to pull it off, just as they lack the discipline to have practice systems developed and enforced. And, most lack the ability to predictably invest and re-invest the same $5,000 into patient-getting and even retention activities.
Just like the doc that, to save a few bucks, changes his own oil, mows his own grass, does his own demo, etc. He never gets rich. He just makes enough to keep his wife off his back, spending every dollar he makes.
For more information and to kick your new patient marketing into high gear, register for the upcoming Jerry Jones Direct New Patient Extravaganza, here, or, call: 503-339-6000 for a FREE Information Package.