Whether or not you tend to be a habitual “resolution maker” each January, the start of a new year has a way of naturally getting us thinking about what lies on the horizon and how we’d like to see the months ahead shake out. If you find yourself musing about what 2025 has in store for your practice, January is the perfect time to outline the goals which will lay the foundation to ensure your vision becomes reality as the year unfolds.
To help get your wheels turning, we’ve gathered 9 goal ideas guaranteed to help steer your practice’s ship towards success in 2025. Each of these recommendations can easily be tailored to fit the needs of your individual business and will truly come alive once you sink your teeth in and add your own signature!
1. Refresh Your Physical Space
Making tangible, physical changes to your facility is a surefire way to help your clinic feel fresh and vibrant in the new year. Small-scale strategies could include rotating out tired art and décor, swapping faux plants out in favor of real ones, and of course, giving the whole place a thorough cleaning so things start to sparkle again.
Strategies with a mid-tier effort and investment level could look like upgrading and replacing the furniture in your lobby, or setting up a complimentary refreshment station with snacks and drinks for your patients.
And, if this is the year to “go all in,” a large-scale space-refresh mission could look like a complete remodel of your existing square footage, or exploring moving to a new space to better fit your plans. If a major overhaul is something you’re considering, reach out to your Patterson Dental representative to learn how we can partner with you on everything from office design to financing.
2. Refresh Your Digital Space
Just as it’s important to welcome your customers into a clean and well-kept physical space, it’s also vital to consider the way you present yourself digitally. When is the last time you’ve given your online presence some love? Make this the year to dive into all things digital.
A great place to start could be a website refresh, as your website is often responsible for the first impression your practice will leave on a potential new patient. Make sure your home page reflects your care philosophy and features recent photography and perhaps even video. Consider hosting a photoshoot for your team, so everyone can have an updated headshot that shows off their beautiful smiles in your “about us” section. You may also consider adding a blog plug-in to your website and exploring content marketing.
How is your social media presence looking? This is the perfect time of year to create and populate a content calendar, so you remember to stay active online, and give your community a reason to continue visiting and engaging with your accounts. Besides a social media audit, it would also be a great time to assess the state of your SEO efforts, any paid ad campaigns you may be running, and your online reputation management.
3. Assess Your Equipment
Nothing ruins the productivity and flow of a bustling dental practice day, than a piece of equipment being down. You likely made significant financial investments when bringing equipment into your practice, so it makes sense to continue investing, to make sure that it serves you well both now and into the future. Treat your tech to a diagnostic visit from a member of our TechEdge service team. Specifically trained on dental equipment, our service technicians will keep your equipment running at peak performance.
After taking stock of things, you may decide that 2025 is the year to introduce some new equipment into the mix. Being able to offer cutting-edge services through modern technology like all-tissue lasers and 3D printers would certainly be a powerful strategy for setting yourself apart from the competition. Of course, we offer fast, flexible financing that’s worth exploring as you undertake your assessment of needs and wants.
4. Get a Better Idea of Your Finances
Speaking of financing, the start of a new year provides a wonderful opportunity to wrap your arms around your practice’s financials. Would you like to increase your customer base by a certain percentage? Grow your pharmaceutical business by a particular dollar amount? Make progress towards recouping the return on investment (ROI) on a recent equipment purchase? In order to know where you want to head fiscally and be able to track your progress, you first must have a solid understanding of where you are!
If you, like many dental health professionals, got into the industry because of a love of patient care versus a love of crunching numbers, you’re not alone. And thankfully, there are many resources available to assist with the brass-tacks side of things. For example, as part of our partnership with Aprio, LLP, Aprio’s team offers timely access to accurate financial data to support you in being better informed, building wealth, and achieving higher levels of profitability.
5. Help Your Team Advance
What better way to ensure that 2025 takes your business in a positive direction, than by investing in one of your most precious resources: your people! Showing your team members how valuable they are through helping them advance in their careers will make them feel empowered, like their expertise matters to you and to the practice, and will likely also increase buy-in and decrease turnover.
First, making time for one-on-one conversations with each of your team members to understand where their interests lie and where they see their career trajectory headed, will help you get a handle on how best to help them achieve their goals. From there, the options are plentiful…give team members the opportunity to represent your clinic at a large-scale industry conference like DS World, send them to a more local, hands-on training opportunity, or gift your team with access to the Patterson Education Center, our new online, multifaceted resource offering continuing and non-continuing education that can support you in growing a productive, efficient and modern practice.
6. Attract New Customers
Growing your patient and customer base is one way to directly expand your bottom line in the year to come. January offers a prime opportunity to outline which strategies you’d like to employ in order to bring new business your way – and you can even work new year messaging into your marketing efforts! New year new customer specials, complimentary new year whitening treatments, $20.25 off your bill in the first few months of 2025 … the possibilities are endless.
Some additional ideas include offering free clinic tours to prospective customers, using window signage to lead with the offerings that set you apart from other clinics (fear free accreditation, chairside milling, single-visit dentistry, etc.), and partnering with other local businesses on mutually beneficial cross-promotions.
7. Get Involved in Your Local Community
Getting more embedded in your local community accomplishes more than just increasing a sense of belonging. It gives you opportunities to expand your network, solidify a positive reputation, give back, and win new clients.
What might this look like, practically speaking? Let local Scout groups visit your clinic to earn their dentistry merit badges. Present on various animal oral health care topics at local elementary schools. Participate in local parades and festivals. Sponsor local events and charities. You may even consider spending an afternoon with your team at a local coffee shop and having a caffeine-fueled team brainstorm session.
8. Get Organized
It’s much harder to envision your practice’s fresh future, if your space is currently bogged down with clutter and disorganization. The beginning of a new year is also a great time to begin a new focus on organization and clutter reduction.
One area that tends to be a big offender in the dental practice space? Paper! Consider ditching pesky paper stacks for paperless solutions where possible. Make your own payments electronically and encourage clients to do the the same. Opt for a paperless check-in experience, paperless post-op care protocols, and paperless storage of OSHA-required safety data sheets through a service like AutoSDS.
Another space that can easily fall into disarray is the pharmaceutical storage area. Besides impacting workflow, this can present issues with compliance as well. Maybe it’s time to explore some custom cabinetry to help with storage and access. Patterson offers many customizable options that support streamlined workflows, improved organization, increased comfort for staff and patients, and an enhanced look and feel of your space.
9. Prioritize Team Wellness
For many, the start of a new year inspires feelings of renewal and hope. If, however, your team is already struggling with issues like burnout and exhaustion, this may not be the case. A great goal for 2025 would be to prioritize the overall wellness of your veterinary team. According to Doctor Heidi Hulon, CCFP, MHFA, CPPP, there are 8 dimensions of wellness that make each of us whole and fulfilled. Focusing on these elements of wellbeing will help you lead a happy and healthy life. Ranging from emotional wellness to physical and financial wellness, it is important to keep them all in healthy balance.
Making time and space for team members to connect with one another on a personal level is another smart strategy, and if you’d like additional guidance, This page of the ADA website will connect you with wellness-focused articles, apps, other industry resources to aid your team wellness journey.
We hope these nine goal ideas sparked inspiration, as you look to create the vision of what a successful and thriving 2025 looks like for you and your practice. Do you and your team set aside time to outline new goals every year? Any big ones we missed? What is something you’re looking forward to in 2025? Let us know in the comment section below, and best of luck to you goal-getters!
If there is anything we can do to help bring your vision of success to life, reach out to your Patterson representative any time.
You must be logged in to post a comment.