Dental Marketing Authority, Clarence Close specializes in keeping dental practices chairs full of paying patients. He’s skilled in dental marketing, targeted traffic generation, and profitable sales conversions.
Clarence’s Pocatello, Idaho based team of dental marketers recently helped one of their dental clients to grow their practice by $50k within twelve weeks of promoting just one specialized service.
Clarence who proudly states “I am your Dental Marketing Partner” had some great points to share in his interview.
PBI: What’s your official business name and when did you get started?
CLARENCE: I started 5 years ago as Marketing Partner Online and due to the demand for marketing services in the dental field specialized into Dental Marketing Partner
PBI: Why did you decide to go down the road of self-employment?
CLARENCE: Though self employment is initially more difficult, the rewards in impacting the lives of business men and women as well as the financial benefits of self employment outweigh working for someone else. I have more creative means and outlets to solve problems for businesses to help them succeed.
PBI: How did you actually get started? Did you start full-time, part-time or build up to it while working a full-time job to tide you over?
CLARENCE: Initially I was very interested in the possibilities of marketing for others online, so while I was employed I would spend time in the evenings learning and applied the lessons to myself. With the little time I could put into my efforts I was amazed at the results, then the light came on that I could actually impact business for others and I got excited. 2 1/2 years ago I got the opportunity to go full time.
PBI: How have things developed since business day one? Have you diversified, or have your services remained the same?
CLARENCE: Though I can offer a full range of services, through trial and error I have found some things are at the bottom of the list as far as impact on my client’s business. It is the 80-20 principle. 20% of what I do has 80% of the benefit to my clients. Though the other 80% is necessary, I always go for the highest benefit first. Together we collect information then develop a marketing strategy plan that will increase revenues and free up my clients time while relieving them of that constant nagging stress about their business operations and profitability.
PBI: What area of your business would you like to see improve within the next 6 months and why?
CLARENCE: I have two areas where I will be growing, high quality outsourcing and bringing on board qualified sales people. The first is to relieve me of time for my family. I need to take my own advice and let qualified people do more of the work. The second is so we can reach a broader market and help more dentists have successful practices.
PBI: How are you improving on that area?
CLARENCE: We find dentists in all phases of their business. Some are just starting out and had very little training in the practicalities of running a business, but a lot of training in how to take care of people’s teeth. Others have been in business for some time but are not seeing the profitability they expected and are even afraid to take a vacation because they could lose 10s of thousands of dollars in revenue if they are gone even a week.
Then there are the ones that have come to the end of their career and want to retire. At all stages we can offer consulting on how to get started, increase new patients, increase transaction value, convert phone calls and marketing campaigns into paying patients and raise the value of a practice so when you retire, you have a substantial return on your life’s investment.
PBI: What’s your best tip for someone considering starting a business in your industry?
CLARENCE: Take some time to understand the pain dentists are experiencing by just talking to them without having an agenda. If you know someone that knows a dentist, see if you can get an interview and dig deep, determine if you can spot and track their difficult situations. Seldom is a practice running smooth or simple. Once you find out their problems, their pain, then see if you have the expertise or can team up with someone that has the expertise to solve their problems.
PBI: What’s the most popular misconception that prospective clients have about your industry and what’s the correct answer?
CLARENCE: “I don’t need a marketing consultant, we take care of that in house.” So let me get this clear, you do your own marketing, your own staff training on converting phone calls, you have phone scripts and all your staff knows exactly how to use them to convert calls to appointments, you train your staff on the latest offerings you have in the marketplace so they respond correctly to callers seeking to redeem offers, you have a good recall program to get people back into your office, you have testimonials of your patients and prominently posted on your website and you have incentive programs in place to encourage your staff to up sell services that will bring in an additional $100,000 per year income? And of course, you have time and like doing all these things well and your profits are rising? Is that what you are saying?
PBI: Who is your ideal client?
CLARENCE: A multi-dentist office dental practice that wants to grow their business but know their best efforts and profits are spent practicing their profession. This dental office is already spending money on marketing without getting the results they desire or expected and they are paying their staff monthly but are not taking home a paycheck or taking home a small paycheck themselves.
PBI: If you had a chance to say one thing to a brand new client, before they met you in person, what would it be?
CLARENCE: Before you contact anyone about marketing, you need to know where your money is going. The success of your practice is not that you have money in your checking account every month. The real success of your practice is how well and profitable does it run without you. Then the real money will come.
PBI: Thank you for a very informative interview Clarence.
Dental Marketing Partner can be found at http://DentalMarketingPartner.com
Contact Details:
Clarence Close
clarence@sendmepatients.com
Dental Marketing Partner
DentalMarketingPartner.com
(208) 240-4684
