Posted by Amy Carbone on Mar 30, 2022 9:00:00 AM
Dental practices rely on their patients for growth — and intergenerational loyalty is a great way to expand your reach.
When you have an entire family that enjoys coming to your practice, you can work to maintain and grow that relationship with future generations. Here are three things to consider when you’re working to create intergenerational loyalty within your practice.
1. Start with Your Current Patients
Your current patients provide you with an incredible opportunity to create intergenerational loyalty. Once you have built rapport with your patients, you’ll know more about them and potentially the people in their lives, which gives you an opportunity to connect with those individuals for their dental needs.
Whether you’re encouraging your patient’s siblings, adult children, or spouse to make an appointment, this is an effective way to have a positive reputation with an entire family. By serving more members of the same family, future generations are likely to become familiar with you, remember their experiences with you, and be more inclined to go to a name they know rather than having to seek out a new dentist.
To consistently encourage intergenerational loyalty, your practice should show all patients incredible service, a great atmosphere, and an enjoyable patient experience, which we’ll discuss further in detail later in this post.
2. Create a Referral Network
Whether you’re a general dentist or specialist, your patients will likely need services from another dental provider at some point. By working together with other professionals in your industry, you can have a mutually beneficial relationship that leads to referrals.
When your patients go to other practitioners and have a positive experience, it will reinforce their trust in you and your dental practice, which incentivizes them to continue returning to you for their oral health needs. This can create intergenerational loyalty, as well, as the same referrals may come from the same family.
The more you engage with your colleagues, the greater ability you have to create a trusted professional network that provides your practice with patient referrals.
3. Maintain a Positive Environment
Many of your patients will be nervous about coming in for their appointment, especially if it’s their first time coming to your practice.
Generational loyalty itself can help you address and relieve the dental anxiety your patients may be feeling.
It also allows you to be prepared ahead of time. When you work closely with your patients to understand their fears, you can start focusing on what will help them feel better any time they come to see you.
The atmosphere of your dental practice can help relieve your patients’ nerves. By creating calm, comforting spaces in your waiting room and operatories, you can minimize their concerns before their appointment even begins. No matter their concern, speaking with your patient to relieve their fears and create a positive environment helps your current patients and those they may refer to you in the future.
Growing Your Patient List
By establishing intergenerational loyalty, creating a referral network, and reducing patients’ fear about dental appointments, you can help your practice grow.
We’ve created an in-depth ebook on how to grow your patient list, which includes information on how to develop and target your ideal patient type, build your website presence, earn new patient referrals and more. Access our e-book today and continue growing your patient list!
About Treloar & Heisel
Treloar & Heisel is a financial services provider to dental and medical professionals across the country. Our insurance and wealth management divisions assist thousands of clients from residency through retirement. We strive to deliver the highest level of service with custom-tailored advice and a strong national network.
