Dear Dentist, How will your 2021 look like for you?

The year 2021 is just around the corner and it is just the time to create a business work plan for the coming and challenging year. Before we talk about how to build a business plan for a dental clinic, it is worth asking: why do you even need to build a business plan for the coming year?

Well, building a business plan for a dental clinic is like building a treatment plan for a patient at all stages. What would have happened if you had not performed the treatments for the patient according to an advanced organized treatment plan... Would the treatment have been successful? Most likely not.

The same goes for business management of the dental clinic - if you build a business plan, and work according to it, it is likely that the business management of the clinic will be successful (and so will you bank account ...). But if you work without a pre-determined plan of action, and according to improvisations and "gut feelings", you will most likely fail, or at least have partial success.

What is a business plan? A business plan for a dental clinic is actually a strategic action plan, which consists of three steps: 

1. Analysis of the current situation. 

2. Analysis of the findings. 

3. Building a short-term and long-term action plan.

Step 1 - Analysis of the current situation - This step is in fact a contemporary "CT scan" of the clinic in the business-marketing-organizational-financial aspect. The analysis of the existing condition should examine all the internal and external components of the clinic and carefully examine the function of each component. The goal is to identify what the clinic is strong at and most importantly, where it is weak and needs to improve.

Here are some examples of components / data that each clinic should check: What is the sales and profitability curve in the last 24 months? was there an increase or decrease in 2020 compared to 2019? What are the outputs of each doctor in the clinic? Does the clinic work with the right staff in terms of quantity and quality? How much are the lab expenses in relation to the turnover?

Also, what is the ratio of income to the clinic from preservative, restorative and surgical treatments? treatment price lists need updating? What are the success rates in closing treatment plans? How many new clients come into the clinic each week? Examining the marketing and advertising channels in terms of cost versus benefit,  What is the money collection status in the clinic, are there many financial debts of the clients to the clinic? How the clinic handles in  terms of appointments, customer service, defining areas of responsibility between the staff, analysis of competitors, strengths and weaknesses of the clinic, etc.

This stage of analyzing the current situation is critical to the success of building the business plan: The clearer the problems and based on accurate numbers rather than feelings, the easier it will be to find the most effective solution to these problems. Identifying the problem is 50% of the solution.

From our experience in building business plans for dental clinics, the biggest problem at this stage is that naturally, clinic owners are not objective about their clinics out of a mixture of emotions, old habits, internal politics, etc. Therefore, in most cases they fail to identify the clinic's real problems. That every dental clinic owner declares "I know exactly where the clinic's problems are!"

2. Analysis of the findings: do you know the feeling that you are looking at the patient's CT scan? It's exactly the same. Here it is worth analyzing the data that emerged from the analysis of the existing situation: What failures exist and prevent the clinic from reaching its potential? Which matters require immediate response and which require long-term strategy?

For example: if the closing percentage is low / if the number of new patients entering the clinic is low / if the money collection situation is poor / if the clinic wastes too much time and energy on unprofitable preservative treatments / if advertising does not deliver the goods / If the level of profitability is low / Your price level is too low /etc.

If this is the case, is it any wonder that the clinic is failing to reach its potential?

3. Building a strategic work plan for the short and long term - the findings that emerged in the previous stage should be translated into operational actions. Clinic price level too low? Decide to raise them by 10% in the first stage. Are closing treatment plans low? We need to look for a way to train those who close treatment plans or change the sales chain. Is the number of new clients entering the clinic too thin? Need to launch a campaign to bring in new patients. Most of your patient database is "old" and has not visited a clinic in the past year? You need to launch a telemarketing campaign (RECALL) in order to return them to the clinic (or at least some of them), etc.

The work plan should include a list of operational actions, including action times and goal setting - when to do? By who? In addition, what are the goals we want to achieve? For example, to solve the clinic's "old" database problem: "We will be telemarketing in early February for all patients who have not visited the clinic in the last 4 years. We will assign Maria's 2 weekly shifts for two months deal with it exclusively. "

Building an annual work plan is not a simple thing - it requires time, planning and professional thinking, objectivity, etc. However, it can do miracles and wonders for the business results of 2021, so I suggest you do it.

Our vast experience shows that dental clinics can realize their full potential only if they work in front of a professional and orderly work plan that clearly identifies the problems in the clinic and includes the right and most effective solutions.

"Dental Clinic Business Solutions Company" has been running business plans for dental clinics around the world for 15 years. Do not hesitate to contact us and benefit from the vast experience we have accumulated so that you can build a professional business plan that will make the year 2021 the peak year of your dental clinic.