Lessons from a day in Cirencester (a riff on enthusiastic nurses and asking for more business)

Let me share with you a couple of lessons from yesterday.

Firstly, I want to thank Emma and Mikaela, dental nurses from Cirencester Dental Practice.

They were asked to join my meeting with Principal Ross Cutts and Practice Manager Gay Cutts with the objective of introducing Instagram as a new social media channel to share patient and team photographs and videos.

I had just spent some time with Ross and Gay, explaining that in the last three months I have seen an explosion of dental Instagram activity.

There and then in the meeting, they opened the practice account, created all the settings and posted their first photo (you can find them at cirencesterdentalpractice).

They then accepted the challenge to become Instagram champions in the practice and cajole everyone else into spotting opportunities for content.

Along the way, they taught me a thing or two about managing business accounts in Instagram.

Thank you ladies for your infectious enthusiasm (if only we could bottle that).

Lesson – there may be untapped talent and inspiration already on your payroll and just waiting to be asked.

Secondly, after our GDP Study Club evening (kindly supported by Straumann), I was asked how to generate more STO sales to existing patients and more recommendations from existing patients to their family friends and colleagues?

Ready?

ASK

1. A = attitude. Prepare yourself to ask for business and referrals. Prepare yourself for the knock-backs when patients say “no thanks”. Prepare yourself to relentlessly market yourself day after day for years and years. Prepare your own feelings of self-worth and confidence, a prerequisite to success. Prepare yourself by studying your day list every morning and identifying suitable candidates for a conversation;

2. S = skill. Get the communication skills training that will be necessary. Don’t ad lib. Take this seriously and get on to Ashley Latter’s courses, read books and blogs on ethical selling skills, ask your peers how they do it when you are sat with them at post-graduate courses or conferences. Ask me (if I’m your business coach) to share ideas with your clinical and TCO team on how to open fruitful conversations;

3. K – knowledge. Know what you are talking about when it comes to the dentistry but also when it comes to answering all of those quirky FAQ’s that patients come up with. Don’t practice in the final – rehearse.

Lesson – all the money that you need for the rest of your career is in the pockets of the patients that you already know and the people that they can introduce you to.