In difficult economic times, business owners often find themselves looking for the next new solution – the freshest thinking or latest technology that will make all the difference. However, with the UK economy still feeling tough, the solution may lie in extremely long-standing wisdom.

I remember when Team Sky first raced ahead to win the Tour de France in 2012, flying in the face of decades of British humdrummery. As the team began to dominate the sport, everyone wanted to know the secret of their success – after all, our “shortcut behaviour” means we’re always looking for that one easy trick, pill, or method that will solve our problems.

In reality, as coach Dave Brailsford explained, Team Sky’s victory wasn’t down to any one thing in particular. It was the result of slowly accumulating “marginal gains”: many small, seemingly insignificant things, such as rider diet, rider psychology, aerodynamics, and training routines. When you hear this, the story of the team’s sudden, skyrocketing success feels somehow less exciting. Their so-called secret became replicable, but unfortunately, only with a lot of hard work.

And this isn’t an isolated example. Even before this, Sir Clive Woodward credited the England team’s 2003 Rugby World Cup win to critical non-essentials. This is a concept that he, in turn, learned from Yehuda Shinar, the business thinker who famously unpicked the idea of thinking like a winner.

So, what does this all have to do with dentistry? Well, what you might not realise is that all these people are indebted to the dentist and author Dr Paddi Lund. I’d recommend his book The Absolutely Critical Non-Essentials to anyone; in it, he outlines how to systemise all the little things in a business, to create a big impact on customer experience and perception. Subtle markers of a high-quality service might be as trivial as how your practice serves tea, or whether you have fresh flowers on show when patients walk in. Yet over time, these things snowball into an overall impression that’s positive.

Beyond the surface, there are countless things you can do that collectively make a big difference to your practice’s performance. And with the climate feeling tougher for dentists, it’s more important than ever that your whole team takes care of the non-essentials. For instance, how successful is your inbound call handling system? A few years ago, it was passable for a dental practice to sit back and wait for patients to flock to them. Now, it’s important that you’re actively answering the phone, responding to enquiries, and tracking leads. Individually, they’re small steps, but together they form a clear roadmap to monetising your actions. The main priority is to be sure you actually take them.

Of course, these tasks are only examples of the marginal gains open to you. Perhaps you’re doing all these things when it comes to initial enquiries but experiencing hold-ups elsewhere. Perhaps you’re having issues with patients not turning up, or treatment plans falling flat. Or maybe you really are ticking all the tiny boxes (if so, well done – we can probably help you save tax). To decide if you have work to do, there are three key questions to ask yourself

Are you happy with your practice’s profitability? 

Is it performing at the level it should? 

And is it growing at the rate it should?

We see lots of practice owners suffering in silence, but if you’ve answered ‘no’ to any of these questions, help is available. When your head is firmly down in daily dentistry, it’s often hard to contemplate investing time in other areas. But making space for marginal gains really is worth it – with returns entirely disproportionate to the effort you’ll put in. So, if you’d like our help or advice, just get in touch to speak to our team.