Revenue Growth Technique No 5: How to Hire An In-Person “Patient Specialist” To Call 400 Dental Patients & Prospects A Week

To read my ongoing series on Revenue Growth Techniques for Dubai Dental Clinics check out parts 1, 2, 3 and 4. This is the most important post because it outlines a key position to dramatically improve your sales.   It's what I call the "Patient Specialist," which is essentially a sales position who will call your current patients and prospective patients to follow-up on key services to grow your revenue.   Most clinics have a huge issue in which follow-up is very low or almost nonexistent. Patients DON'T get followed every week for 6-10 times on very important things like:

1. Treatments presented to help their oral health like Fillings, Sealants and Crowns
2. Prospective patients who filled out a form but didn't complete their first consultation
3. Adding a new google review to help grow the practice's visibility
4. Asking current patients for referrals

And so much more. Here's what doesn't work:  asking an already busy administrative assistant to follow up with patients by phone and Whatsapp 100-200 times a week.  This is because they're already swamped dealing with incoming phone calls from patients and providing customer support for people in the office. You need someone dedicated to patient followup who is ALSO good with phone sales. Here's how to do it

1) Put an attractive job posting on Indeed.com

In the UAE, there are lots of job postings on Indeed.  I prefer in-person "Patient Specialists" because you can monitor their results, train them more easily and give them more of a sense of a community then hiring someone 100% remote.  You can transition this position to become partly remote, but it's better to hire and train in-person when starting out. In the job posting, you want an attractive salary that ALSO includes some element of commission.  I suggest about AED 6,000 - AED 10,000.  This includes about 60-70% base salary plus another 30-40% in commissions to equal that total amount of 6k-10k.  This helps reduce the financial risk on your end and costs you less, but also will be attractive to someone with sales experience. You want to aim for 3 qualities

1. Phone calling experience (i.e. someone at a call center or customer support center who is used to making hundreds of calls a week)
2. Proper sales experience  (i.e. someone who had to sell something…not just talk to customers)
3. Great phone English and etiquette.

I could write a whole post on how to write an appealing job posting, but be sure to have pictures of your clinic and explain how your practice is growing and is a fun place to work at.

2) Learn To Interview and Hire Successfully

You want to aim for a quick 15-minute interview to start.  You can use a calendly.com link so that candidates you like can book a meeting on your calendar at your convenience.  You'll know within 5-10 minutes if they're a good fit or not.  In this interview you want to ask about

• Their experience talking to customers
• Real-life examples of services/products they have sold
• Why they want to join your clinic
• What research they've done about your clinic

If this goes well, you can invite them in for a 45-60 minute in-person interview. In this interview you want to see how they present themselves and whether you could see if they'd be a good fit for your clinic.  I like to ask questions about their resume and learn their 2 and 5 year goals. Next you've got to do a reference check, which requires making at least 2 calls to 2 previous employers to see how they did in previous positions.   Then you can hire…but you're not done yet.

3)  Train the Patient Specialist for one month

In the first month, you need to have the Patient Specialist learn your SOPs and especially how to follow a script and answer objections. This person should shadow 20-40 calls from your current staff on how you talk to patients You should roleplay with this person at least 20 times, using different scenarios. You need to show this person how to use your dental software and other systems. Finally, you need to shadow this person as he or she makes calls, and while providing constructive feedback. It's a good amount of work, and at Clinic Assist, I have a lot of experience to share on onboarding a new Patient Specialist.

4) Setup a system to track weekly and monthly progress 

KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, show you with clarity whether your new Patient Specialist is doing a good job or not.   You can track outbound calls, convert new patients and new scheduled treatment using Pipedrive or ANY CRM. Each week you'll have a dashboard to look at the key 5-7 numbers and then you can make informed decisions accordingly. I can't go into all of the details, but book a meeting with me at the link below to learn more.

5) Refine the Process as Needed

Don't expect your first Patient Specialist to succeed if you've NEVER done this before. It'll take longer than expected.  You might have to fire someone who isn't working out. The script will need changes. You might have to retrain a few times. Also don't OVERWHELM one Patient Specialist with too many things to follow-up on.  Choose 2-3 key services to start with and get really good at it. I help service businesses hire and train remote sales reps so they can make an extra $20k-$25k per month without writing SOPs and spending time on 90% of the hiring process and it only takes 90 days, book a call with me to learn more. www.winwinwitheric.com