One of the easiest and most appreciated things *you can do to stay in contact with patients is to send them "Thank you!" *notes for referrals and acknowledgment notes for something they have done.

(*Your personal handwritten notes are much more effective than canned or team member notes - "Gee, my dentist took time out of his/her busy day to send me this note!". Team member notes, in addition to yours, add to their effectiveness.)

This is one of the best, time tested ways to build your dental practice. L.D. Pankey, DDS to Tom Peters to Nido Qubein to Bob Frazer, DDS to Mike Schuster, DDS have recommended this over the years. It is especially effective with your Class I, blue, blue bird or top 100 patients.

Handwritten notes (and addresses) are the most personal and best way of communicating. Typewritten notes or *e-mails can be viewed as canned or spam are usually discarded.

Keep a stack of note cards (Hallmark type cards or cards with your name on them i.e. "From the desk of") available at your desk and send the notes to:

or

or anything else that comes to mind.

(*e-mails can be very effective if you find items/links/info on the internet that you think would be of interest to your patient. An example; yesterday, I sent an e-mail blurb to a Realtor neighbor on baby boomer preferences in buying new homes. I immediately received a return e-mail and phone call thanking me and requesting the link to the item I sent him. It took me 2 minutes max to do this.)

Encourage your team members to read the local papers and magazines for items on your patients.

Do this with colleagues, your specialists, friends and family (especially your parents) also. They will appreciate the notes as much or more than your patients.

If you already use notes, please go to the discussion forum www.spiritofcaring.com to shares how you use this great practice building tool.

Bonus Tip:

One thing that worked very well with people who referred someone to us was to include - with the Thank You note - a gift certificate from a business of someone in our practice. The amount was usually $25.00.

We received more positive comments on this than any other practice building thing we did. It was a win/win/win for us, our referring patient, and the patient from whom we purchased the gift certificate.