How to Use Network Marketing in a Dental Practice

In this episode, we had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Phelps and picking his brain about how to use network marketing in a dental practice. Dr. Phelps is an entrepreneur and general dentist who owns multiple practices in the Charlotte, NC region.

He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1998 with a BS in biology and in 2003 he graduated Magna Cum Laude from the prestigious Nova Southeastern University, College of Dental Medicine in Ft. Lauderdale Florida.

From 2003 to 2010 his passion for business and his flair for marketing and promotion showed through when he increased the revenue of his practices ten times. Then in 2013, when most of the dentists were struggling to produce what they had from the year before, Dr. Phelps’s practices grew by $2,000,000. 

One of his secrets was a passion for the science of persuasion and how to ethically use Dr. Robert Cialdini’s Principles of Influence to set the stage for his patients to say YES to the requests he and his dental team ask of them.

Having received the honor of being named a Certified Trainer in Dr. Cialdini’s Method of Influence, Dr. Phelps offers an exciting two-day course to educate you on the principles, show you how he uses them in his practices, and how you can incorporate them into your business. Be sure to listen to our interview with Dr. Phelps. You may be surprised to learn what you can immediately apply to your own practice for little to no cost!

What you’ll find in this episode

The “DIY” Building Blocks

• How to spend one hour of your time and $135 a month to get 30-50 new patients
• Why you absolutely need to have multiple avenues of sources to attract your ideal clients
• The decision you need to make when starting a new practice (BEFORE you create your business)
• How to separate the good from the bad in finding a good partner in marketing
• How Dr. Phelps “scratched his own itch” by creating a call tracking system
• How Dr. Phelps reverse engineered the problem with missing calls at dental practices and went on to solve the problem with Call Tracker ROI
• The interesting statistic Dr. Phelps spotted discovered missed calls with one of his private clients (and the simple change that caused that client to get 20% more clients practically overnight)
• The problem caused by other call trackers that are based on speculation and not factual proof
• Why you need more than 1 phone and phone line per front desk employee
• The powerful thing Dr. Phelps figured out by sharing call data with your team that causes accountability and improved metrics (by double or triple the amount)
• The easy way to ease-out poor performing employees that don’t plan on advancing your business
• The number 1 thing dentists don’t do that creates a bad work environment, poor treatment acceptance rate, and a stagnant business
• How to avoid making your team ‘freak out’ about tracking metrics and working towards improving big business practices (and how to get them to make a powerful commitment)
  

Using Your Community to Your Advantage

• How to know the exact type of events your patients would want to attend
• How Dr. Phelps leveraged social events to spread the word about him and his practice
• Why you should feel safe being in front of your target audience in the places they hang out
• The conversation that’s uncomfortable (but necessary) to have with clients who didn’t use your services
  

The Dos and Don’ts of Marketing

• The method Dr. Phelps uses to figure out how to get more clients, find patterns in his existing clients, and understand their mindset so that he can find more clients like them
• The questions you NEED to ask yourself when identifying your target market
• Why you need to be spending money on marketing your practice
• The type of marketing you need to be doing if you’re going to be spending money on growing your practice
• The WRONG way to go about marketing when you’re investing in growing your business
• Why marketers might not give you the actual truth to justify the expense of hiring them
• How your team affects your marketing spend (and what you need to keep an eye on internally to track and measure it)
• Why Dentists are naturally bad at building relationships with marketers
• What fact Google discovered when running a study about missed calls from new clients (and what those potential clients end up doing)
• What happens when you don’t capture your target markets attention the FIRST time
  

How to Make the Most of Your Time at Seminars

• How Dr. Phelps discovered educational seminars, his journey to mastering the skills, and how he used wine and cheese to pack his events.
• The interesting thing Dr. Phelps discovered by asking strategic questions to attendees at his seminars

Free Episode Bonus

Dr. Phelps is a marketing genius, and I was taking a ton of notes while he was sharing his insights into how to find, select, and market to your target audience.

I’ve re-listened to the show from today, combined it with my notes, and created a quick exercise you can do RIGHT NOW to put Dr. Phelps’s advice into action. If you’d like that sent directly to your inbox, simply click here.

My favorite quotes from today’s episode- Click to share on Twitter!

• On the ‘safety’ of grassroots marketing: “The reality is that most of us haven’t created enough freedom in our practices that will give us the time to think about these things.” – Dr. Chris Phelps
• “When you get free time you suddenly start wondering about what you’re gonna do next.” – Dr. Chris Phelps
• “You always have to start with: who is your target market?” – Dr. Chris Phelps
• “I don’t care if 3 people show up, or 100 – it’s still a ‘win’ in my book.” – Dr. Chris Phelps
• On finding new clients: “If you can find out where they live and where they hang out, it can be a very powerful thing for you.” – Dr. Chris Phelps
• “There’s no one thing that’s going to get you the number of patients you’re looking for.” – Dr. Chris Phelps
• “I can’t give you one thing to get you 100 patients, but I can give you 100 things to get you 1 patient each.” Dr. Chris Phelps
• “I believe marketing is like fishing with multiple fishing poles vs. sitting in a deer stand trying to get one deer.” – Dr. Chris Phelps
• “Find your way in front of your target market and ask them: ‘why did you buy this?’” – Dr. Chris Phelps
• “I’m not afraid to hear “no” because I’m going to ask more questions.” – Dr. Chris Phelps
• “What’s not measured does not improve.”  – Jonathan VanHorn
• “The number 1 thing we don’t do in dentistry is get enough commitments out of people.” Dr. Chris Phelps
  

Resources

Dr. Robert Cialdini’s Principles of Influence

Call Tracker ROI

How to use wine and cheese to attract new patients (Book Launch)

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