Dental Partnerships and their importance to the modern dentist.

99% of all dental graduates goal is to have their own successful dental practice and create their own business.
I am the same.
The biggest problem is making your dental practice different or more noticeable than the dental practice down the street from you. One of the most popular ways to do this is to make your prices keener/cheaper than your local competitor. The problem with this method is that is can quickly lead to a downward spiral of price cutting and special offers. This leads to the defeat of your objectives of creating a successful and profitable dental practice.

So what do we do?

Here at HappyDental we have taken the approach of partnerships and collaboration projects to enhance our brand and make us a dental practice of choice based on more than just price.

One of our first partnerships was with Scheutz Dental of Germany, we identified they have some great products. For example, TemDent, which we have introduced to all the dentists in our practice. By identifying this product and discussing with Scheutz Dental our ideas we have successfully partnered with them and we use their products in our dental practices and give them credit as a partner on our website. Another benefit of partnering with them is we are the first to be introduced to their new products and ideas which enables us to stay ahead of our local competitors.

Another key to success is making your dental practice different or more attractive to the local patient base. We have achieved this by partnering with a UK based company to provide our own dental plan, HappyDental Plan, which is the first of its kind here in Romania. Dental Plans are hugely successful in the UK and USA but unheard of here in Romania. Basically the patient joins your dental practice as a member for a fixed yearly fee which entitles the member to discounted rates on all the dental procedures the patient will have during their yearly membership. The benefit to us as a dental practice is with 1000+ patients paying us a yearly membership fee of €100.00 which improves our cash flow and our overall profitability. The members also benefit from discounts we arrange with complementary business’s such has beauty centres and health clubs.

The next key for success is collaboration with other dental practices that have services we don’t have. For example we collaborate with a dental practice that specialises in dental surgery, a skill set we don’t possess, and this enables us to have patients who need surgery to stay with us and the dental surgeon visits with us as we arrange the appointments. We KEEP the patient as ours but still provide the patient the services they need. We do this for our orthodontic patients as well. From our side we collaborate with other dental practices providing our cosmetic dentistry skills in Lumineers to their patients in their dental practices.

The next step we are looking to take is affiliation partnerships. This will be the biggest challenge for us here in Romania as it will for dentists in any newly developing country. We have a strong brand, Happydental, which we are marketing using Social Media and traditional local advertising. We want to expand our dental practices from two to over fifty in the next 10 years all across Romania. We intend to do this by offering affiliate partnerships to suitable dental practices in Romania who want to join the HappyDental brand. Each affiliate will benefit from our partnerships, our marketing and by being able to offer our dental plan to their local patient base. We have a dedicated marketing, advertising and buying team who will continue to promote and expand the brand HappyDental which will in turn benefit our affiliate partners.

So are you a stand alone dental practice? Do you feel you have to cut prices to compete with your local competitors? Well step back and think differently about how you operate your practice and try and implement one or two of our ideas and see the benefits that partnering brings.