It’s my favourite time of the year. I love nothing more than Wintery walks, Christmas films and festive markets. However, for our accountancy team, December and January is the busy tax season, often spent chasing the last of the tax returns to make sure they’re filed and paid before 31st January. They are super organised and have their weeks mapped out to a T so I’m always confident it will be a success.
For years, I’ve worked with the sales and marketing arm of the business. It seemed in the past, at this time of year, dentists weren’t too keen on talking about moving accountants or developing a new marketing strategy for the year ahead. However, this doesn’t mean we’re sitting around twiddling our thumbs and making cups of tea! I thought I’d share some of the things we do when you feel that lull that you can implement in your practice.
GENERATING OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE NEW YEAR
This is the best use of our time, rather than focusing on what we don’t have now we’re looking at the opportunities we’ll have tomorrow. You’ll be getting a Christmas card from us and if you’ve not spoken to us in a while, look out in the post or your inbox for some offers and new products we’ll be launching very soon.
Equally, it’s a great time for your Treatment Coordinator (TCO) to contact everyone on your list that came for an appointment but didn’t take up treatment or perhaps you have some January offers you can promote now to get the diary full for when you’re back to work after time off in December. We’re told January is depressing but it doesn’t have to be if you’re busy and hit the ground running.
REFLECT ON THE PAST YEAR
A new tradition we started last year and will be continuing from now on is to write down the moments you remember from each month of the whole year. Go through your diary and anything else that tells you what you were doing at that time. Write down the key things from each month. It might be a successful event you organised or it may be a negative time where you were low on treatment uptake. Write it all down and present it back to key members of your team you think it would be helpful to share it with. Reflect on how you performed and what you would like to improve for the year ahead.
PLAN FOR THE YEAR AHEAD
You looked back, now you need to look forward. In dentistry, you can take advantage of all the Hallmark holidays from Valentine’s Day to Halloween… you’ll have an offering to suit! Map out each month and what you’d like to focus on. If you don’t know where to start or you need help implementing, get in touch with our marketing team.
THINK ABOUT THE TEAM
Often something lost in all the chaos of running a business is planning things for you and your team to enjoy. Map out some key times of the year you’d like to plan something and what you’d like to focus on. Engaging with your team is essential for your business growth, without them you will struggle to scale up and make improvements – you can’t do it all! You don’t have to do anything extravagant but even having half a day out of the practice with your team to discuss how you’re going to start implementing a new sales process or treatment offering will make them feel valued and part of the process.
We wish you all a very happy festive season and look forward to working with you in 2022. If you’d like to find out how we can help you at every stage of your dental career, get in touch. One of the sales team would be more than happy to speak to you.
