Many dentists looking at expanding their current business practices may not realize just how versatile dental equipment has become over the years. Gone are the days of having only one type of office seating, tray system, and light source. There are options out there for almost every practice looking to expand or relocate these days. It is now possible to upgrade old equipment with modern-day technologies that provide patients with the most advanced care available while increasing efficiency in your business practices through remote support, wireless capabilities, and high-definition imaging systems.
Below are some important steps to consider in business expansion and office moving for dentistry.
Negotiate the Offer to Lease
As a dentist, you are well aware that office space is expensive. You may have been tempted to purchase office equipment and supplies from dental suppliers who give leasing office equipment an option. While taking advantage of this option frees up some cash flow, the larger question of ownership still needs to be answered. When does office equipment become used office equipment? Not only might the value of your equipment depreciate over time, but it can also affect future loans if they finance used office equipment. Under these circumstances, it might make more sense to consider commercial property for lease for dentists rather than investing in office furniture and supplies.
Review and Negotiate Your Office Lease
Suppose you are relocating, expanding, or opening a new location for your dental practice, one of the most important decisions in finding the property that best suits your needs. Consider property inspectors, property managers, and commercial realtors to help you find a property that matches your criteria.
The first step in finding the perfect place for your dental practice is deciding where you want the location to be. Once you have decided where you would like the office space to be, there are three things you should do before signing a lease agreement. Your first step should be looking at photos of the proposed dental office space location to ensure that it is what you are looking for. Get measurements of the different rooms and confirm that they meet your needs.
Rent is typically the most expensive monthly expense. Get everything in writing so that there are no surprises later on. Do not be afraid of asking questions about anything that seems unclear or not stated in your lease agreement. If you need help, hire an attorney or small business consultant to go over all aspects of your lease with you.
Landlords will give concessions if they feel like they might lose your business to another landlord who is also courting you. You may want to consider shopping around and getting at least one other offer before committing to anything.
Do not sign a dental office lease agreement until you have read and understood everything in the document. Look for clauses that will limit your control or responsibility of any rental or property management aspect.
Ensure You Have Enough Term in The Current/Old Location
One of the big risks that new business owners face is that their company will not be profitable enough to maintain itself. This can result in a complete failure for a new enterprise, as well as causing a significant hardship for those who worked hard/wisely to build up investments and savings. So, what steps should new business owners take to try and guarantee the success of their new business? One of the best ways new business owners can ensure they do not lose everything they own is by ensuring they have sufficient term insurance on all current debts and liabilities.
Term insurance provides you with an affordable way of protecting your existing loans and financial obligations against any possible redundancy or death during the early years of your new business. Term insurance is often used to protect outstanding mortgages, new business loans, and similar financial arrangements. This is particularly important in our new digital age, where it has become possible for new businesses to relocate or expand their operations to new cities or countries with the help of the internet.
Whether you are looking at relocating your new business to expand sales opportunities in new geographic territories or simply looking for new investment opportunities in alternative locations, the fact remains that the relocation of a new enterprise can represent significant risks. For example, what would happen if you relocated your state-of-the-art dental practice to discover that all of your existing patients decided they liked their local dentist just fine?
Luckily, plenty of new or newbie entrepreneurs have already made this mistake and know how important it is to make sure your new business has sufficient term insurance in place. So, if you are looking at expanding/relocating your new dental practice, make sure you understand the importance of protecting such a valuable new investment, e.g., new roof prices with adequate term life insurance coverage, before making any decisions about relocation or expansion.
Hire an SEO Agency
As your enterprise continues to expand and grow, it becomes more and more difficult to handle all aspects of the operation by yourself. When this happens, you should look into hiring an SEO agency that can take some weight off of your shoulders.
An excellent choice would be a company specializing in dental search engine optimization (SEO). It will become very challenging, if not impossible, for someone with little or no experience in SEO to understand all the strategies involved in gaining prominence on dental listings such as Google’s local listings while providing high quality and unique content for your patients and potential new patients.
When choosing SEO agencies, ask them about their experience with dental websites and what they can do to help improve your site’s ranking on search engines like Google or Yahoo! Some tactics that will help get more of the top rankings are, providing good writing, relevant information, creating authority through writing tips and guides for dentists and utilizing online tools such as Press releases (PR) once a month.
It is also important to choose an SEO company that understands the importance of giving back to the industry by providing new information about dental strategies and techniques to help patients better understand how they can improve their quality of life. If your company develops an informative site with engaging healthcare content, more people will want to reference you for their dental needs.
Hire A Local Sign Company
A local sign company had an opportunity to present its audio-visual communications product line to a new dentist. The presentation will include components of developing and redeveloping the new office’s branding, branding materials like signage, how it works with social media marketing efforts, Facebook, etc., website design, mobile-friendly, and email campaigns, as well as some other intangibles like support for grand openings, trade show booths to everything visual related for the running of the business.
As more dental practices expand into multiple locations due to increased demand, consistency across all clinics needs to be increased. Office managers are rebranding every location simultaneously to create a cohesive and easily recognizable business to reduce patient confusion.
As technology has advanced, the need for branding even within a single office or clinic has become more important than ever before. Today’s patients want to know about their doctors and dentists in much the same way they would when shopping for any product or service. There is a lot of information available online, so your practice must make a good first impression both on and off the web.
Update Online Profiles and Accounts
Like most other small businesses, dentistry businesses have grown in number in the past years. The growth of these dental clinics can be attributed to the increased awareness of people of oral health care. People are now more conscientious about their teeth than before, which is believed to have significantly contributed to the increased demand for dentist services nationwide. With so many changes within this industry, you must stay ahead of your competition by keeping up with dental trends and current demands.
If you wish consumers to share positive reviews about your clinic with others, you need to share even more information with them. This means creating your social media accounts and updating every post on them at least twice each week. It doesn’t matter whether you focus on Facebook, Twitter, or even Snapchat; what is crucial here is that you try to create as many connections as possible.
If you recently purchased anything new for your clinic location, you must share this proudly with your followers. New dental equipment can range from an X-ray device to even a toothbrush sanitizer machine. Sharing the first-time use of these devices will help other dentists gain insight into how they could improve their practices too, by purchasing similar devices for themselves.
Consider Other Marketing Materials
It would be better to spend more money on advertisement flyers than hiring a celebrity endorser who does not mean anything to the target market. The great thing about this promotional material is that it can be customized according to your preference. You can choose the dental services you offer, your contact numbers, and your business logo for authenticity.
Some dentists give away some brochures during the initial consultation or when they introduce themselves near an event. These brochures contain very useful information such as testimonials, mission statements, hours of operation, equipment lists, and many more. Usually, they are printed in color so that people will take more than just a quick peek.
Another marketing material that might interest you is the business card. You may print as much as you wish for free and even customize the design according to your preferences. Whatever materials you choose, make sure they promote your practice efficiently and effectively. Do not underestimate its power because it may help attract dozens of clients within weeks. Remember, though, do not put up an ad or brochure if your office does not adhere to the standards set by these materials too. You would not want to end up closing it down due to lack of customers now, would you?
To expand your future as a dentist and achieve more, you need these materials. They do not only serve as reminders but also give people the courage they need to take action and try out what they have been curious about for years. Business is all about exposure and if you plan on doing business in another place soon, make sure to prepare and leave behind those marketing materials.
From small beginnings, a business can expand and grow as you wish. However, as it does so, the number of tasks that need to be attended rises and leaves less time for other duties such as marketing and promotion.
As your company grows, you must start recruiting people who can deal with these tasks. You might decide that dealing with all aspects of marketing and promotion yourself is not always the best option and would benefit from delegating some responsibility to an employee or even a contractor.
Have a Well Thought Out Plan
Business expansion is not something that can happen overnight. It takes some time, particularly if the business has yet to make a name for itself. Businesses have unique requirements when it comes to planning their expansion. A roofing contractor does not necessarily need an architect, but they need someone who understands roofing work and the costs involved in roofing projects.
You may even want to engage commercial roofing contractors before engaging architects to have more knowledge about how much your roof project will cost. But this would depend on your needs and expertise and the kind of roofing project you will be undertaking. Once you have decided to expand, you should consider how this may affect your current business setup.
Will it change the way that things are done? If so, then it is high time for a revamp at the workplace. This may include minor renovations such as new carpets or paint for more commercial properties or changes such as changing some equipment or even expanding your workspace. It is important to always keep in mind that whatever you do, it must benefit your employees and clients and not just yourself and your ideas.
Business expansion is no longer just a goal but an obligation for all small to medium-sized businesses. It is simple math and good business that three percent growth year over year outperforms flat revenue every time.
