When I offer “Lunch and Learns” to dental clinics in Dubai, one of the first questions I get is EXACTLY what strategies I can bring to the table to grow their practice. Here’s one of my FAVORITES to start with…and it requires NO additional ad spend. You might have to repurpose one current administrative staff member or hire a new one.
For the past two years, “Clinic Assist” was focused on US dental clinics.
There is a term, and it’s not used in Dubai at all, called “Unscheduled Treatment.” This is a running list of the total amount of treatment in the past month that was not scheduled by patients when they were in the practice. Their treatments were explained, and for whatever reasons, the patient walked out the door without scheduling it. Often they would say things like “I’ll think about it.” or “I need to talk to my wife/husband/partner and get back to you.”
Generally, it’s because the cost of the treatment is high and they might some time before they commit 4,000-10,000 AED on a key treatment to fix a few crowns and fillings. They probably understand that it’s IMPORTANT to their health, but they just don’t want to commit to it on the spot.
I can relate, because any purchase over 4,000 AED I generally don’t commit to on the spot, especially if I was just presented the price for the first time. However, if I knew about it in advance and saw the value, I’ll happily spend almost any amount to fix my health.
Here are the 5 key steps to setting up a system for follow-ing up on “Unscheduled Treatment” or “UT”
1) Put all the Unscheduled Treatment on a CRM
Start by taking ALL of your Unscheduled Treatment from the past 30 days and putting it in a trackable system.
This could be a google sheet, but a simple CRM program (I use Pipedrive) is far better and not expensive.
If you start with the quick and easy solution, Google Sheets, you’re going to put a few columns that note a few key categories
- Patient Name
- Patient Phone Number
- Patient Email
- Total Value of all Unscheduled Treatment
- Previous Contact
- Next Contact
- Details of UT
A few notes:
- Total Value of UT: For the total value you would include the entire cost of the treatments, even if it’s multiple phases. For example, if a patient needs two crowns and each one is 4,000 AED, then you’d put 8,000 AED. If it’s veneers, you’d put the cost such as 20,000 AED, etc
- Previous Contact: This lists the most recent contact made by your staff. Include the date and what happened. I.e.: “20/12/24 Phone call, sent WA text.” Or “18/12/24 spoke to Manish and talked about treatment, asked for a breakdown and followup next week.” This column is just a tab of EVERY previous contact so we can be organized and aware of all of the communication with patients.
- Next Contact: This is the date (and if you want, include the time) of the next outbound contact. I suggest one reach out per week. Two is sometimes ok, if the patient is responsive and wants a followup. I.e. “27/12/24 followup” is a reminder to your staff to call on that day.
- Details of UT: Here you want to include the details of the Unscheduled Treatment including: the total cost of each phase, the teeth that need the treatments and more. It could just be as simple as: Tooth 3: Filling, Tooth 7 Filling (600 AED each). You need to be ready to talk about some general details on the phone if the decision maker answers.
Each day, your administrative assistant will call up the patients and record what happened.
This person will track how many contacts were made that day, and how many patients were spoken to over the phone.
I recommend Pipedrive, which costs about 280 AED per user per month, because it sets up all of these notes and reminders in a very streamlined way. All of my clients (and each of my companies) are on Pipedrive because it allows you to easily pull reports on how many contacts were made each week without relying on manual tracking.
Here’s an example of Pipedrive in the picture below, with the names removed and in USD dollars of work we did with a previous client in the US. If you clicked on each “box” which is called a “deal” you’d get a breakdown of the treatment and what happened each time we called the patient.
2) Create A Simple Script For Follow up
Once your list of patients is setup, you’re going to need someone to follow a good script. At Clinic Assist, we can help with that.
Here are some key components of a good phone script for UT followup:
- Script the first few sentences. (I save my favorite phrases for paying clients but you want to quickly introduce yourself, explain why you’re calling and ask a key question.)
- Include a quick guide for each type of treatment that details what the procedure is, how much it costs and the long-term benefits. Also add information about what happens if it’s NOT taken care of. Keep it to basic treatments like: Fillings, Sealants, Crowns, Bridges, Implants, Veneers, etc. We need enough details for an admin to speak confidently about
- Objection Handling for common questions like:
- “Can I do this later?”
- “What financing options are provided?”
- “I’m not sure about it…”
- “Let me talk to my partner first…”
3) Hire (or Repurpose) A Key Admin For Following Up
Now that you have your script and your list of patients to call, it’s time to get someone to CALL.
Here’s what I DON’T recommend: Giving it to your front desk receptionist and tell them to “Make calls, when they can.”
Here’s what ends up happening: They’ll say “I didn’t get a chance to call because I had to talk to patients that were checkin in or scheduling their next cleaning.”
Instead you have a few options;
Schedule Time For UT Follow-Up: This includes 1-2 hours per day when this person steps away from the front desk, into a private room (ideally) so he or she can just make calls. The average person can make 10-20 calls per hour when you factor in calling, talking to about 10% of people that pickup the phone, sending a follow-up WA or email and logging what happened into your CRM.
Example: You have your front desk admin Jacob call for 1 hour, each day for 6 days. That’s 6 hours x 15 calls per hour = 80 outbound calls per week.
Hire Someone Just for UT Follow-Up: If you have a LOT of treatment to follow-up (i.e. 2 million AED + in the last 12 months), it could be worth your while to hire someone purely to follow-up. Working 5 days a week, and spending 6 hours a day calling is 30 hours x 15 calls = 450 calls a week. If you reached out, politely and respectively, to 450 patients a week to help them with their dental issues, how much would your clinic grow if you scheduled 10% of that a month?
We helped one clinic in the US increase their outbound calls and they had a bump of 40,000 AED in the first 30 days!
4) Rehearse, Record and Practice
Before hitting the phones, you want to get some practice in with your new caller.
Record: Do you have an AMAZING staff member who is incredible with patients on the phone? Record a few of their live phone calls with patients. Save them in your script and have someone transcribe what they’re saying. Their tonality, style and pacing will be recorded for future admin to follow
Rehearse: Have your office manager spend a few hours training your caller. This is easy to do with role play, and it’s better to have someone practice the whole system that starts with a phone call, then includes a WA message or an email and lastly recording what happened in the CRM.
Practice: It’s better to practice at least 15-30 minutes each day for the first week with someone who isn’t a live patient. Give helpful feedback.
Then you can have your caller dial out, but be sure to review them and give helpful tips and criticisms. Also have them record a few calls so you can review them each day. (We use Loom.com, which is a simple screen record software).
There are many many details to this part, but this overview will help you out.
5) Track The Results WEEKLY
Each week you want to get a few key data points from your Unscheduled Treatment caller including:
- Outbound contacts made last week (ideally 400+ per week for someone full-time)
- Decision makers spoken to (ideally 15% of all calls)
- Scheduled Treatment (with deposit): Ideally 10%
- Treatment completed: Ideally 50% of all Scheduled Treatment
- Said No
A CRM like Pipedrive tracks this pretty easily once it’s setup and is better than manual tracking from a google sheet.
Run this system and make sure the outbound contacts are resulting in a good percentage of new treatment in 30 days.
With the cost of an admin in Dubai being relatively low, you should be able to see a 3-5x return after refining the system.
If you’d like more help to increase your Dubai clinic’s revenue using powerful techniques like this one from Clinic Assist, I’ve got more info at ww our main site www.clinicassis.ae