Dr. Michele Simpson is a general dentist based out of Wilmington, North Carolina. As an independent practice owner, she's ultimately responsible for marketing, leading her team in delivering a great patient experience, and closing cases. She does all this in addition to performing her clinical dentistry work!
She has spent a great deal of time working with patients who visit her practice unaware of what a procedure will cost to get them financed. Her goal is always to figure out how to get them to proceed with treatment. She wants to grow the implant production aspect of her business without going through a labor-intensive workflow that includes following up with and educating patients who respond to marketing ads.
Dr. Simpson explains how “we spent a lot of time working with these people, trying to get them financed, trying to figure out how to get them to proceed with treatment seeing a lot of patients and not really getting into closure with them. In the end, we were just spinning our wheels and we were burned out.”
Her dream of avoiding burnout while consistently closing high-value cases was beginning to feel impossible to attain.
Problem/Struggle:
Dr. Michele Simpson had a history of working with other companies to market her business. She hired companies to handle marketing aspects like basic web management, Facebook ads, Google ads, SEO, and all the other essential pieces of the marketing puzzle for her business.
At one point, she was paying her marketing partner based on each patient that came into the office. She started running into trouble as many patients began coming into the office without money or any idea what their procedures were going to cost.
As Dr. Simpson and her team spent a lot of time seeing patients and working with them to get them financed to proceed with treatment, she started getting burned out and wasn't even getting closure with her cases. She knew there had to be a better way to bring in new patients without having to spend all her time educating and guiding them.
She began seeking out a marketing partner that could take care of marketing her dental practice as well as following up with the patients who respond to the ads.
Like many of our clients, Dr. Simpson needed a competent team member to answer patient questions like:
- What treatment options do I have?
- What will my treatment cost?
- What are my options for financing?
- What is the process for replacing my teeth?
- Why should I choose your practice to do this treatment?
By working with a marketing company that could also guide and educate patients, Dr. Simpson and her team would have more time and energy to focus on other aspects of the business as well as increasing their level of patient care.
Solution:
Driven Dental Implant Marketing has a specific system called the Virtual Patient Advocate Program, which employs a team that works virtually to guide and educate patients who respond to their marketing efforts. VPAs educate patients on their possible treatment options and costs so that they know what to expect ahead of time before they book an appointment.
Without Driven Dental’s VPA, patients would often show up to an appointment only to find out that they can't afford the procedure they need. It’s then up to the doctors and staff to help patients find financing options. The team at Driven Dental works hard to ensure that when a patient comes into the office, they know what procedure to expect, what they want, and how much it will cost.
Dr. Simpson immediately felt that the professionals at Driven Dental and she made a great team. They allowed her to free her team up from lead qualification while still bringing in a steady flow of high-value implant cases. Most of all, she was glad that she didn’t have to waste valuable chair time with patients who aren’t able to move forward with treatment.
Results:
After working with Driven Dental for just three months, Dr. Michele Simpson noticed that she wasn't only saving a lot of time, but she had some great new patients come in. Their number of case acceptances increased, and for the first time since she started her business, she had several patients come into the office already knowing what they want.
They were educated about the procedure they would likely require and knew what the cost for it would be. Not only that, but they already had financing too. She was able to book these patients while cutting out a lot of the labor work that she had been doing.
In the first three months of working with Driven Dental, Dr. Simpson closed $103,800 through seven cases. These cases included one that was worth $25,000, which was the first case she closed at such a high amount in her career.
Dr. Simpson says that working with Driven Dental has "been totally worth it, and we've really loved it." Working with Driven Dental has produced outstanding results for her business while helping her save precious time and allowing her to focus more on her dentistry work.