Two things you can do now to stop the patient loss/hemorrhaging

My last blot post was about bringing awareness to the massive loss businesses suffer when they don’t focus on keeping their existing customers or patients.

87% of your patient loss is due to 3 big reasons, all of which you can control!

After all, statistically speaking, you only lost 1% to death and 3% to those moving (Unless your practice is at a military base, of course, or a senior living center, and I have two Members in those situations – different challenges, there!).

And, the biggest reason patients never return to your practice?

They feel as if you don’t care about them. They feel you’re indifferent whether they return or not.

Or, perhaps, in some cases, they can’t handle the arrogance or “talking down” they get when they’re lectured.

(If that’s you, Bub… if you think you’re Gods-gift to Dentistry, remember, not a single patient of yours gives two sh*** about you, until they know you give two sh*** about them. So, my suggestion, address that attitude of yours, first.)

Here are two things you can do to coagulate the blood, stop the bleeding, halt the exodus:

1.) Send a printed monthly newsletter via the mail. If you’ve never done this, you’re missing out on the biggest secret to keep your patients surrounded by an “iron cage” and keep them from wandering out of the pasture. (Contact JJD for more information. We’ve been mailing patient newsletters to improve retention, increase referrals, and improve case acceptance, for over 20 years!)
2.) Offer that Olive Branch a few times a year to those who haven’t returned in 13 months.

Here at JJD, we have a couple options for reactivation. We have a letter to send to patients who only showed for that initial appointment and never came back. We all have those, right?

We also have a series of communications that go out for those who have become inactive over time.

What if you ONLY ever improved retention by 5% or 10%? What if you reactivated 5 to 10 patients each month on average?

What if your reputation improved? What if your practice started growing from more referrals than you ever thought possible?

All good problems to have, dear reader.

Anyway – here’s a letter we crafted recently for one of our Members that I wrote about earlier. You’ll see what’s it’s intended to accomplish after reading it.

Use it. Leverage it. See what happens. Sending a single letter like this will only cost you a dollar or $1.25. You can mail 1,000 of them for far less!

Get on it. Stop losing your patients and take action, today.