Another few thoughts
Visit your non-client offices once a month or every two weeks even at first. Don't go without a reason though. Not an excuse, but a reason.
This month you may have a 'focus on' immediate rpds, next month a 'focus on' softliners. Not a sale with price reduction, just a flyer that points out your diferentiators, special skills, in depth training, or arcane knowledge of the techniques. The UPS store is your friend here. Make up your flyer and they will print it full color for you. Get in the habit of doing this and Voila! You just started a newsletter!
Every time I go to an office, unless it's to pick up, I leave some candies. Every marketing trip, or flyer delivery, relationship management visit. Every one. This gets the reception staff to at least be happy to see you. And they are! Get some sugar free candy too, or the docs may jump your case, but most are quite fine with sugar free if they oppose it otherwise.
Not something for summer, but on a cold day, find out how many are in the office, go to StarBugs, McDonalds, Tim Hortons, where ever, and get every person a large coffee, black, and enough cream and sugar that everyone can have 2 of both if they want. A caution: I did this not knowing that all three docs in the office were Mormon. No caffine allowed for religious belief proscription. But they laughed about it and had no problem as it brightened up the staff and a happy staff runs better.
I generally practice what I call 'viet cong business methods' in short use your competitors strengths as your strengths, turning theirs into weaknesses. Turn your weaknesses into strengths.
They are huge, handle high volume, have lots of the fancy equipment you drool over in catalogs in a beautiful building. That cuts both ways. They may not be nimble; they may not be able to give personal service levels of detail to every case; they may not have time to talk about a high complexity case for an hour, in the pratice, with the doc and patient; they have a HUGE overhead.
Where you may be able to do more with less, and can certainly have a far lower hard budget on how much you *must* make/spend to stay open. This also allows for some unbelievable flexibility. You can make on the spot decisions instead of 2 or three layers of managerial approval required. You may be able to survive on less great work where they usually are doing lots of medium level work.
Also, continuing to develop greater general business, advertising, and sales/customer interaction knowledge and ''sense" will be easier for one person than for a management staff of 25 and a UPS driver delivering a busted up box and who is running behind every day.
Search this site from your favorite engine for marketing, business growth, etc. Almost all of them will respond with links to only here if you use either host:dentallabnetwork.com or site:dentallabnetwork.com after your search terms. Some use one, some the other, but most will 'take' one of them.
I'm sure there is so much more that some smarter people know and do, and more that is now automatic enough that some of us don't realize we do it, but that's enough to give you some ideas at least.
Now, did you read E-Myth, do a business plan, get advice and support from a lawyer and accountant as was suggested to you by others here?
Not trying to pop your balloon or be an ass. I just, this weekend, am crossing my 2 years open mark and I know how much those steps opened my eyes and how stupid I felt afterwards.
If I can suggest more books, nxlevel (thanks
@sidesh0wb0b ) is very enlightening and they have one that will nearly build a business plan for you as you fill in the workbook if you haven't yet made one. They have their own website, just search.
That's about all I'm good for on this one. Keep working at it and you'll develop ideas and tricks of your own to share. I wish you all the best in your endevour and congradulate you on passing the 6 month mark.
Edit: As Columbo said, 'Just one more thing.'
No method, technique, or gimmick works for all of us. Just like we all have minor differences in how we carve anatomy, we all have different business styles and interaction abilities. Otherwise it'd get pretty boring, aside from there'd be not only no reason, but no way to fit better with an office than another lab.
When you get shot down, just remember, you need work from *a* dentist, not *that* dentist.
And it looks like time to hide my keyboard again.