Staying successful as a Dental Expert in a competitive environment

By Dr. Namrata Rupani, Founder & CEO Capture Life Dental Care.

Oral health and dental hygiene are increasingly becoming the primary focus among the masses as hygiene is reinforced in the backdrop of the pandemic. With a growing demand for hygienic and safe dental practices, there is also a welcoming rise in dental health practitioners and oral health care specialists. In my experience, “healthy competition among dental practitioners produce beneficial and path-breaking opportunities to build bridges and overcome challenging barriers”.  As an oral health care specialist, my goal is to create an effective and continuous oral health practice among my clients. Hence it is important for dental practitioners, to study the market and stay relevant in a competitive and changing business environment.

Key essentials to establishing a successful dental practice

Below are a few qualities that are necessary to start and sustain a nutrition-based consulting service in a competitive market.

• Identifying and embracing your niche to create leverage is the quintessential starting point. This involves identifying a unique set of offerings and differentiating based on the competition and local market practices. These strengths should be unique, identifiable and beneficial to all clients that are likely to step into your dental clinic.
• Consistency in building a helpful position among the competition would need commitment and embracing the excelling qualities in one’s practice and services. Applying these strengths will need time and effort for it to grow and mature before becoming a major part of your unique value proposition.
• Strategy is key to help clients differentiate your services from the competition. With some research within the local market, one can derive the necessary market needs and competitive offerings. This type of competitor research will highlight best practices that can be incorporated to help your clients.
• Discovering white space within the dental practice will help distinguish and deliver the needs of the local market. Post the white space identification, building and implementing unique solutions that plug these gaps will help establish your dental practice.
• Relevance is the key while strategizing and requires specialisation and communication skills. These strategic networking skills are indispensable to help build awareness of one’s services and present the varied solutions being offered. Since the oral health industry is constantly changing every day, staying updated with the latest innovations and technological breakthroughs significantly helps in providing the best dental services.
• Being socially active in the community and industry ensures authority and credibility in the area of oral health and hygiene. Activating powerful social networking tools work brilliantly by highlighting one’s techniques and showcase testimonials that demonstrate result-oriented dental practices and connecting with other . Connecting with other practitioners and supporting their dental practices also benefits in helping one reach prospective clients that need your expertise in your specialised field. By building lasting relationships with other practitioners and clients, one can increase influence and spread awareness to prospective clients. This even facilitates building more collaborative and innovative solutions instead of aggressive competitiveness.
• Exceed expectations by going above and beyond the call of duty to create lasting relationships with patients. Going the extra mile to develop a solution for the patient and providing the latest in technology and dental care will help establish your unique offering in the market. Listening to the patient’s practical issues are more important than ever. Closely monitored follow-ups and feedbacks at appropriate points can establish lasting and sustainable client relationships.
• Ethical functioning of healthcare business and practice will give strength to achieve one’s dream even within a competitive environment. As a practising dental specialist, staying true to one’s philosophy and belief provides vital input during the initial years of dental care practice.
• Respecting competition will help and give birth to innovation and improved dental practice. By recognising the right competition and responding with creative solutions to offer a better service, one has to move out of our comfort zone and that helps establish a distinguishing factor.

Staying relevant and successful amidst the competition

Staying successful and creating a competitive advantage in such a populated market is ridden with unsurmountable hurdles. However, offering exceptional customer service is one of the best ways to create a competitive edge for your dental practice and stand out from the competition. Meeting these challenges requires the highest level of professional ethics along with tenacious business management skills. A successful dental practice will need to be active on a day-to-day basis, constantly exploring solutions that can deliver greater efficiencies and solve numerous challenges in serving patients. An entrepreneurial team of dental professionals and their staff relentlessly pursue innovative and healthier ways to be the best every day.