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Join the Practice Growth Rebellion with Jay Abraham
If you want faster growth this year, the most profitable place to look is not another ad platform. It’s inside your practice. Most orthodontic and dental offices are sitting on six to seven figures of recoverable production that’s leaking out of everyday operations. Missed and mishandled calls. After-hours and Friday coverage gaps. Pending and declined treatment that no one is nurturing. Slow response to web leads. You don’t need brand new demand to grow. You need to capture the demand you already earned.
Find the Leaks You’re Ignoring
Start with call reality, not call assumptions. Most practices underestimate how many calls are missed, how long callbacks take, and how many “we tried once” leads are labeled bad. Even one missed new patient call per day can add up to hundreds of thousands, even over a million dollars, in lost annual production. You feel those misses as empty chairs and a crowded “we’ll think about it” list.
Look at after-hours and Fridays. Patients live busy lives. If your phone routes to a dead end during lunch, late afternoon, or long weekends, you’re training ready buyers to give up. That’s not a marketing problem. That’s an access problem.
Action you can take this week:
- Pull a simple daily report: total inbound calls, missed calls, returned calls, consults booked.
- Listen to a sample of recordings to hear what patients hear. You’ll feel where trust is built or lost within the first thirty seconds.
- Set coverage rules for lunch, late afternoons, and Fridays. If you’re closed, who answers, how, and how fast.
Win on Speed to Lead and Disciplined Follow-Up
Internet leads aren’t “bad.” They’re fast-moving. The clock starts the second a form is submitted or a chat pings your site. Call within one minute and your odds of connecting and qualifying jump. Wait five minutes and the results fall off. Wait an hour and you’re now trying to revive a cold conversation.
Persistence matters. One text and one call is not follow-up. Plan at least six thoughtful contact attempts that combine phone and text. Most conversions still happen by phone, because a human voice builds trust, handles objections, and guides the next step. Text supports the call. It doesn’t replace it.
What good looks like:
- SLA for new web leads: dial within one minute, then work a six-touch cadence over several days.
- Every step logged. If you can’t see it, you can’t coach it.
- Simple, empathetic language. Lead with why now matters for the patient, not why your technology is impressive.
Professionalize the First Conversation
Too many practices put their most valuable revenue moments in the hands of the least trained team members. That’s not a people problem. It’s a leadership problem. Treat first contact like a clinical skill. Script the opening. Role-play objections. Practice tone, pacing, and the ability to listen and reflect back what the patient just said.
We see dramatic lift when teams focus on trust and understanding before education. Long technical explanations early in the journey tend to produce “I need to think about it.” Short, clear, patient-centered conversations produce booked consults and smoother financial discussions later.
How to level up fast:
- Two focused training days to master scripts, objections, and handoffs. This is a baseline, not a ceiling.
- Coach to specific moments. Openers. Insurance questions. “We’re shopping” scenarios. The words you choose change the outcome.
- Hire for empathy and coach for clarity. The right person in the right seat outperforms any gadget.
Reactivate What You Already Earned
There’s gold in your pending and declined treatment list. People don’t say no forever. They say not now. Life changes. Budgets open up. Confidence grows. A simple, respectful reactivation rhythm of texts, emails, and calls with a fresh reason to act will fill your schedule without new ad spend.
Keep friction low so a yes today can become a start today. That means insurance verification is ready, financial pathways are clear, and your team is comfortable guiding same-day starts. When the path is prepared, momentum increases. When it’s not, momentum dies and you add another name to the “we’ll follow up” list that rarely gets touched.
Your 60-day reactivation sprint:
- Clean the list. Tag pending vs declined, adult vs child, and last contact date.
- Create a three-channel sequence. Text for speed. Email for context. Phone for commitment.
- Offer a simple next step. Free rescan. Payment conversation with options. A specific open slot this week.
Grow With Margins in Mind
Production is exciting. Profit pays the bills. Aligner lab fees can quietly erode profit even during record start months. Watch case mix. Negotiate pricing. Use buying groups or alternative systems where appropriate. Keep a healthy balance with bracket cases. The goal is not more starts at any cost. The goal is sustainable growth that funds your team, your tech, and your future.
This is where the growth trifecta matters. Marketing creates demand. Tracking software shows what actions happened and what outcomes followed. Coaching turns visibility into better behaviors. Run all three and you get more starts and better margins. Run only one and you’ll feel stuck.
Influence With Integrity
Selling in healthcare is not about pressure. It’s about leadership. You believe your outcomes are superior. You have a moral obligation to help more people access them. That starts with influence grounded in empathy, clarity, and consistency. When patients feel heard, they listen. When they see a simple path, they move. When your team shows up trained and confident, follow-through becomes natural.
There’s also a mindset shift here that frees you to grow. Calling a lead within a minute is not pushy. It’s respectful. Covering lunch and Fridays is not hard-selling. It’s being available when patients actually need you. Reactivating pending treatment is not pestering. It’s service, delivered at the right time with the right tone.
Bring It Together
Most practices don’t need a bigger top of funnel to hit their goals. They need a tighter system that captures what they already earned. Audit the calls. Tighten coverage. Speed up the first touch. Train the first conversation. Reactivate prior interest. Protect profit while you scale. Then, and only then, pour on new marketing to amplify a system that works.
If you want help, we can map this in a single working session. We’ll show you where the money is leaking, build the speed-to-lead and reactivation sequences, and coach the language that turns interest into starts. Zero hype. No silver bullets. Just a simple, repeatable way to grow with integrity and give more patients the smile they want.
