Brett Allen (00:19)

Hi, Brett Allen here, host of the Marketing32 show where I connect with leading dentists, dental influencers, and industry experts to uncover the latest and greatest to help your practice grow and thrive. This episode, as always, is brought to you by our team here at Marketing32. We are the only dental marketing team that I know of that is truly invested in your growth. We have that performance guarantee, so if you’re not growing, you don’t pay us. We really want to partner with practices and help them grow and add value. Learn more. You can go to Marketing32.com.

We set up a quick discovery call, see if this is a great fit for both of us, and we’ll set you straight. Quick shout out to Trish Jones. Recently had her on, a new friend of mine. She’s all about educating teams on dental lab materials and how you can implement that process to educate your team so you reduce reshapes, reshades, all that overhead that can come with mistakes with labs. So check that episode out if you want to learn more about all of that stuff and what Trish Jones is doing.

Excited to have a new friend of mine, Ryan Corby on the show. Ryan is the CEO and co-founder of Smile Advantage, a dental membership and payments platform built as a better alternative to the big box membership companies. Instead of the per patient pricing and limited flexibility common with the largest competitors, Smile Advantage offers a flat fee, unlimited member model, deeper PMS integration and smarter automation to help practices keep more of what they earn.

Ryan, welcome to the show. Glad to have you on.

Ryan Corby (01:52)

Yeah, thanks Brett. I’ve been looking forward to chatting with you and your team ever since I see you floating into my sphere of social media somewhere along the way. And I’m glad we’re, we’re here to actually connect and talk business.

Brett Allen (02:03)

Me

too. I, you know, this is fascinating. I didn’t realize the impact that memberships can have for a practice. I know we had Megan Lohman, co-founder of plan forward on the show. talked a little bit about that and I’m excited to go deeper with you on how memberships can help a practice and how you guys are different. So this will be fun.

Ryan Corby (02:22)

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I’ll kick us off just a little bit of backstory about SmileVantage and kind of how we started. My two business partners are practicing dentists. So, you know, like many great successful small businesses, it was built out of a need to sort of service themselves. My backstory is sort of a marketing guy, tech guy, and I was partnered with them and kind of cross paths through some other circles several years ago and decided to sort of take on a growing SmileVantage together and sort of bring my

business marketing automation sort of techniques into them with their idea. But originally, like you said, memberships are a great value for practices and in their practices, they really started seeing the writing on the wall, 2012, 2014, 2015, that reducing the dependency on insurance and really more going fee for service and membership model was definitely the way of the future.

all the benefits to their practice, which we can kind of get into the weeds a little bit about, but they kind of just started doing memberships on their own, the manual way we call it, or the DIY way, and tracking it in Eagle Soft and spreadsheets and sticky notes and all that fun stuff. And then, know, as they were thankfully successful with it, ⁓ starting to see patients and members slip through the cracks and payments getting missed, they started seeing sort of the need for, you know, more of a tool to manage it.

Brett Allen (03:14)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Ryan Corby (03:38)

looking at all these other systems they have in their practice about tools and software that they have really sort of making sense. So that kind of continued our journey to sort of build something really that would work great for them. And then that kind of just spread through colleagues and friends and through the industry. But from day one, you their goal was to build something that they would be comfortable and excited to to tell their colleagues and friends about, ⁓ not just to like functionality wise and the model of membership, but really ⁓

Brett Allen (03:50)

Mm-hmm.

Thank

Ryan Corby (04:07)

a financial model that works best for them. And so that’s kind of where we decided to take a little fork in the road with the one or two other competitors that were sort of a little ahead of the game with us with developing software. And it really was that pricing model. And at the time they had shopped around and said, should we build this ourselves or should we go sign up with one of the companies that’s established? And ⁓ they quickly found out how expensive that would be with how successful their membership had been already. So that’s kind of where we went with building our own tool.

Brett Allen (04:26)

Right.

Ryan Corby (04:36)

And at that fork in the road, really our decision was to ⁓ stick with the flat feet model for the software. And that’s one of the biggest differentiators with us, the tech stuff, know, kind of ponies back and forth between our companies. But we decided from day one, we wanted something that would increase every new member, would increase the ROI of the practice and not sort of nickel and dime the practice as they grow because we want them to be successful and they want to be successful with it.

Brett Allen (04:42)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Ryan Corby (05:04)

So that’s a big thing that we decided from early on. And that was sort of just scratching the surface with the software. And that’s kind of where we’re at. So we always like to say we were just like Megan coming from the industry at Plan Forward, know, we saw a need in her little world of the clinical side of it and seeing the need and the impact for patients and practices. Obviously, we were with that same belief and how we do things a little bit different. Like I said, it’s a pricing and we still are operating in the practice. So we get to use

Brett Allen (05:19)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Ryan Corby (05:33)

day in and day out beta testing with our own offices. So that’s really good feedback. We get a very, very quick feedback loop from what works and what doesn’t. ⁓ And we’re just constantly evolving what our software can do and fix the needs that we need for ourselves. Better management, better communication, quicker turnaround time with the processing applications, better automations to keep the system working better. that’s really what we spent a lot of time and effort in there about why and why we started Smile Advantage.

Brett Allen (05:50)

Yeah.

Yeah, that’s cool. Thanks for the backstory. I love that you’ve taken that approach of just a flat fee and not a per member pricing model. ⁓ I can think of so many different software tools out there that the practice has to incorporate just because it’s smarter, but that just adds to the overhead. know, all these different analytics tools, patient messaging, PMS, ⁓ review generating platforms. There’s so many different softwares that are entering the dental space.

And, you know, I had one of our clients talk to us. He’s like, man, I wish there was like a one shop, everything in one. But I think the downfall is that is you wouldn’t have as great of a tool, right? Jack of all trades, master of none. So I do think it is valuable to have ⁓ great platforms and pay that fee. But I like that your pricing is just flat. We have

Ryan Corby (06:45)

I agree. Yeah.

Brett Allen (06:57)

There’s different billing platforms out there that can charge you the percentage, you know, the merchant processing fee. They collect that percentage. There’s newer ones coming on the scene now that are flat fee based on total volume that you’re doing. that anything that I is coming online where it’s, it’s truly a value add for the practice, like you guys, that’s just a flat fee to use the tool. think that’s great.

Ryan Corby (07:21)

Yeah, you know, and early on membership was sort of just this like leftover, like if you don’t have insurance, you don’t have anything else, then we have this like thing that we call, you know, it’s like the cheapest car in the lot. Like that is afterthought. If you’ve got nothing else, we’ve got this savings plan and we’ll put you on that. And it’s sort of like the last option. And you know, our opinion is long gone or those days. I mean, there are offices that still say that and think that, but you your membership should be.

Brett Allen (07:32)

Yeah.

Right. Right.

Ryan Corby (07:48)

your leading thing. Like that’s what you do first. If you have insurance, you can use it or vice versa. And so that being said, it should be first and foremost at your practice and therefore it should be growing not, we’ve got six patients and it’s just an afterthought sort of thing. Yeah, it should be a front cell. Yeah.

Brett Allen (08:02)

It’s just a down sell. Let’s, let’s

talk about that. So how are you, you mentioned earlier, you know, you guys are doing some things to really help this be successful for practices. What are some of those strategies that Smile Advantage implements to really help you take a membership plan at next level, even use, you know, to get off of insurance if you’re wanting to switch to fee for service.

Ryan Corby (08:27)

Yeah, a couple of things. There’s the tool side of it to make our tool, and I say the tool, our platform, ⁓ more seamless with the tools that they’re already using. Like you said, there’s just a plethora of different dashboards and screens and logins and all this stuff that they’re already having to manage. And so we realized that every new tool that’s put in front of the team is another potential hurdle or lack of use or whatever. So we really try to tie into the practice management software ⁓ as much as we can.

Brett Allen (08:41)

Yeah.

Ryan Corby (08:55)

and put a lot of time and effort into that so that things like, you know, within our dashboard, they can see the patients, all their patients that are on the schedule for the day and see a readout, which ones are members, which ones are not, which ones have an insurance listing listed. And then in a single click, they can see that patient on the schedule. And that’s all real time sync for their day, their schedule. And in one click, they can create that, basically sync and create a membership and create that patient and add a membership to them. And then they’re linked.

Brett Allen (09:04)

that’s helpful.

Ryan Corby (09:24)

permanently with their, I’ll just say Eagle software, their practice management software from there going forward. So we just started realizing where are the hindrances. They talk about their membership to patients and patients say, I want to sign up. And if that’s complicated and they have to log in here and do that, you know, it’s less likely that they’re going to do that. So we’re trying to figure out how do we remove those roadblocks? What is the natural flow and the workflow of the practice? And so that’s just one of, we call that today’s appointments. And, ⁓ you know, not only helping them

create new patients, it’s showing what opportunity they have. But also in that same screen, yeah, it’s a very easy upsell. And they know that, okay, Ryan Corby is coming in at nine o’clock today. He’s in here for an emergency exam. And it shows that right on the schedule listing in our platform. And then the team can think, cool, hey, let’s talk to Ryan when he comes in today. ⁓ He’s not on the membership. He doesn’t have an insurance and he’s here for an emergency exam. Let’s make sure we talk to him about the membership. And then one click and they can do that. ⁓ The other is

Brett Allen (09:55)

Yeah, to upsell. Yeah, sell them in.

Thank

Yeah.

Ryan Corby (10:22)

You know, as smart as the software can be, there’s still patients that totally skip their billing or they don’t pay. And another hurdle for practices is servicing the patients or treating the patients that in theory don’t have an active membership. So if their payment failed or whatever. again, they should check the dashboard and our dashboard will show if a patient’s inactive or expired or lapsed whatever. And in theory, the front desk should say, hold on, we need you to pay before we treat you sort of idea. ⁓

Brett Allen (10:38)

Yeah.

Ryan Corby (10:49)

We saw that as a hurdle. So back to that today’s appointment screen, it shows a patient that’s on the schedule that is expired. So it’ll also say, ⁓ Brett’s coming in at two o’clock today and has a big red flag. know, like PMS has some flags that will pop up. ⁓ His membership is expired. He’s on the dental adult plan. His membership is expired. So let’s catch Brett when he comes in here and make sure he’s brought up to speed. So again, serving that.

Brett Allen (11:10)

Right.

Ryan Corby (11:14)

information up to them very clear, very easy. They

can take action if they need to or want to, but they’re not required to take some action as well. again, just kind of, those are the little nuances that we really try to understand the real workflow of the practice and what are the pain points that they have and what’s realistic that they are going to do and you’ll follow up with, and then truly just try to make that as easy as possible. So yeah.

Brett Allen (11:25)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that’s cool. Do

you have any like advice for our listeners in terms of, okay, I want to implement a membership plan or maybe I’m new at implementing it. I just got started. How do I get this out there? How do I get patients to say yes to this? How do I let them know about it? And what kind of best practices are there to really sell and grow a membership plan?

Ryan Corby (12:00)

Yeah, I really see two ways, and I think this is just in general for growing practices. I’ll kind of speak to what we do more internally side, and then I’ll throw it back to you, be the marketing guy to talk about the external side of marketing. But when the clients sign up with us, we do kind of help them with some internal marketing sort of resources. when they decide what their whole membership is gonna be, we design some brochures for them, some sign up forms, some postcards, we give them. That’s another thing that we do a little bit different. We fully customize those printed brochures.

We ship them to the practice, it’s all branded for them. That’s part of their ⁓ membership with us, is they get that so that they’re handing those out to patients, whether they’re going into hygiene bags or just putting them on the counter. So they have that sort of internal ⁓ component or media that they can market to patients. And then we also have sort of a marketing library of other internal marketing sort of things. If they use something like ⁓ dental intel engagement or revenue well, or we have a couple of email templates and some sort of content that help them.

Brett Allen (12:35)

Right.

Ryan Corby (12:54)

promote their membership internally to their patients. And if they really wanna go next level, they can sort of get into the weeds with some of that filtering to send email blasts themselves to uninsured patients or to everyone or add in rope open enrollment time. We see a pretty effective route ⁓ is at open enrollment. Everybody sends out their expiring insurance or ended the year benefits or open enrollment, right? We have some really smart offices that also use that to say,

Brett Allen (12:57)

Mm-hm. Right.

Yeah, right.

Right. Yeah, we’re approaching that time. ⁓

Ryan Corby (13:22)

Hey, if you have insurance, it’s going to lapse or expire or whatever. However, before you renew your membership, I mean, your, insurance, should, you should consider dropping your insurance and switching to our membership. And here’s the reasons why. And they sort of catch them at that open enrollment off, off ramp on insurance and on onboard to their membership. we have some offices that are very successful with that. ⁓ so using that that way as well.

Brett Allen (13:27)

your insurance, yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Ryan Corby (13:47)

So, and they just sort of social media content. So helping them mostly get their internal patient base, because they have a large patient base, so it’s to either identify all the uninsured patients that they already have access to, or try to cross promote ⁓ on the internal side. ⁓ But I’d love to hear from you, and with the practices that you work with that are successful. We work with marketing companies, they say, we love promoting memberships, because it’s a great asset to promote. So I’ll.

Brett Allen (13:57)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

We’re kind of new in promoting the membership ⁓ in our internal marketing efforts. have a great team. call it pipeline team that does internal marketing, not only to new leads that are coming in. So if you’re running any kind of marketing and you’re leveraging a membership or whatever marketing you’re doing and these leads are coming in.

We have an awesome team that will text those leads and handle all of that communication for the front desk, which often can be a lot to actually follow up and stay on top of those leads. But we also use that team to market to existing patients. And so we’re in the middle of piloting and testing a campaign to existing patients to promote membership plans. So I was going to ask you, I know you do emails.

I think there’s a lot that we can do with email, but the open rate and success rate from what we’ve seen with emails a lot lower than text. I mean, if you go on your phone right now, you probably like me, you have thousands of unread emails, but only a couple, maybe a couple unread texts, right? So I’m curious if you, we don’t have all the data pulled together yet to really recommend texting your patients for membership and how that performs best, but have you guys tried texting patients and doing that?

Ryan Corby (15:09)

Sure. Sure.

Brett Allen (15:26)

using that channel to market a membership.

Ryan Corby (15:30)

Currently, our platform does text and email, but it’s more about renewals and that sort of stuff. we don’t necessarily through our platform, we’re not doing outbound or marketing messaging like that necessarily. We do encourage them sort of in our onboarding and training say, yeah, if you do have something like the IR we’ve or revenue, well, here’s some ideas and we have some basic templates, but that’s really kind of on them. So we haven’t got into that lane of actually managing that themselves. But to answer your question.

Brett Allen (15:35)

Okay, like a reminder.

to the list. Got it.

Sure.

Right.

Yeah.

Ryan Corby (15:58)

Yes, and amen, like 100%. You know, if they use something like Revenwell and or we they can send out a text message, they get a great response. But also to your point, you get a big blast out there. How does somebody managing their responses and they get a response to that message weaved in between multiple appointment reminders? And so how is that sort of funnel? And you know, again, most dental offices, they’re not managing sort of a secondary CRM sort of system when having a team like your team sort of supporting that and having that is beneficial. So

Brett Allen (15:59)

Yes.

Put it in there.

Yeah.

Right.

Ryan Corby (16:28)

Honestly, I’m excited to hear how as you’re prototyping that your success with us. Yeah. Cause I’d love to promote that.

Brett Allen (16:28)

Yeah. Yeah, I’m excited to share it. ⁓ we’ve had, we’ve

had amazing success with texting patients, getting them back in, doing marketing to the list beyond just appointment reminders and recall it’s time for that annual hygiene. So I’m excited once we have all the data kind of pulled together to share, ⁓ I’m excited to share that because I think we’re seeing some really cool things happening, but let’s talk more about you guys and,

Ryan Corby (16:52)

Yeah, absolutely.

Brett Allen (16:57)

you know, how you guys are changing the industry, so to speak. Beyond just the flat fee, and we’ve touched on some of these things already, but what are some things that make you unique?

Ryan Corby (17:11)

Yeah. I mean, I wish we could say we invented the model of membership dentistry. Obviously we did not. ⁓ But you know, when we kind of say that we do next gen memberships, really what the future looks like, what does that look like and where are we sort of merging the original concept? Which in reality is, you know, if you think about a membership, it’s just basically a bundled amount of services put into sort of a little financial vehicle and put a little bow on top and making it easy for the patients to sign up and say yes. And that’s not rocket science in itself.

Brett Allen (17:16)

Yeah.

Ryan Corby (17:41)

But now where a lot of practices are needing those to be efficient and the technology to support and scale that, that’s where we’re sort of pushing ⁓ into sort of that next generation of that. So again, making it easier and more seamless with the practice management software, easier to onboard, easier to know utilization of how many cleanings have they had or how much, what’s the actual value? Okay, your patient paid $400 for their membership for this year, but they also spent $37,000 in cosmetics and everything else.

Brett Allen (17:55)

Right. Yeah, we talked about that.

Right,

Ryan Corby (18:09)

So what’s the value

Brett Allen (18:09)

right.

Ryan Corby (18:10)

of that membership patient? And most of the other platforms just sort of track what that basic value is. You’ve got hundred patients at $300 a month and that’s your membership value. In reality, it’s three quarters of a million dollars because of all this other sort of stuff. So we wanna try to continue to feed that back in so that they know how powerful and supportive their membership as a whole is. So we’re kind of weaving a lot of those data points back into the platform to show them what those values are. then you can actually say, yeah, absolutely.

Brett Allen (18:18)

Right, recurring revenue. Yeah.

Yes, yes.

You can actually see that in there. That’s way cool.

Ryan Corby (18:38)

When you click on a patient profile in our

platform, it real-time pulls before and after their membership. So if they were a patient for 10 years and then they just signed up for your membership, we have this sort of visual timeline that shows all the treatment and every single crown and buildup and cleaning and the fees, it pulls straight out of the PMS, what they’ve spent. And then we sort of put a little flag in the timeline there and it says they signed up with the adult plan on October 1st.

Brett Allen (18:44)

⁓ cool.

⁓ cool.

Thank

Ryan Corby (19:03)

And then they had two cleanings and cosmetics after that. So you can really see that timeline and it’ll do the math and kind of tell you at the bottom. So giving a better picture of really how healthy or profitable their membership really is. that part of it is really sort of a guinea that next generation. And then sort of to land the plane here, really, it’s all of the other payment tools that we’re trying to bring like the modern merchant services payments world and the dental membership world together with that.

Brett Allen (19:06)

Yeah.

That’s neat.

Yes,

Ryan Corby (19:32)

So

again, some of the other companies just, you they, sign up with them and they set you up on a Stripe account and Stripe sort of just runs the automated reoccurring memberships. And that’s about it. Um, you know, we are baking in, uh, I mean, all kinds of stuff. If you have a card that expires instead of, you know, your patients on a recurring membership and their membership is due to renew October 1st, but the card that they have on file expired in August. Well, then the system would go to run the card. It fails. Now we’re having to play catch up and renew it. Um,

Brett Allen (19:55)

Right. are in the main, so they’re in the internal area.

Ryan Corby (20:01)

But what we’ll do is actually see, we know that Ryan needs to renew October 1st. His card expired August. So let’s start trying

Brett Allen (20:02)

But what they present is the kind the sort the sort of the sort of the sort of the of the sort sort of sort

Ryan Corby (20:08)

to collect and have him re-vault or restore. We have full PCI-compliant vaulted cards. Let’s try to restore that card before we need to charge it again. And then that has dropped the failure rates significantly just by kind of proactively making sure that the card has failed. So super little, like simple thing, but it’s been had massive implications because it’s keeping the payments sort of flowing. ⁓

Brett Allen (20:13)

Right.

That’s neat.

Yeah, that, yeah.

Yeah.

Ryan Corby (20:31)

And then some of the other ones just are, you know, text to pay and online payments. And when a balances do, you know, some of those other more streamlined payment technologies that there are some cool platforms out there that do that, but they’re sort of disjointed from the membership portion of it. So that’s some of the newer stuff that we’re trying to bring together of real modern day payment tools, platform fees and surcharging where the patient pays the card fee is obviously a whole nother new sort of one that’s taken, you know, catching fire. And we are, yeah.

Brett Allen (20:53)

Yeah. Yeah. Are you guys helping with that? I see a lot of that

where you can, yeah. Cash pay versus credit card pay. Yeah.

Ryan Corby (21:01)

We have a beta program right now. Yep, we have

a beta program right now that will allow the practice to offset up to 100 % of the card fee. And there’s other avenues if the patients don’t wanna do that. We’ve even developed a little widget where if the practice wants to sort of like cover the fee for the patient, ⁓ we kind of got some cool customer service tools where they can say, hey, Sally, you’ve been a long time patient of ours.

this is a standard process now, but we’re gonna go ahead and like waive the fee for you. So we kind of give them some flexibility still to have that white glove sort of service. So that’s another huge one that’s coming out that, you know, that practices is so weird. It’s still such a controversial thing. You know, you’re in the Facebook groups and somebody asks about that. And it’s like, everybody’s on opposite sides of the aisle, like, you know, bickering about it. It’s like crazy. So.

Brett Allen (21:32)

Okay, cool.

Yeah.

I think it’s great.

think if you can add that revenue back in by saving on the credit card fees, I’ve seen a lot of people say that it’s not like their patients actually don’t mind paying a little bit more ⁓ with the credit card or paying by cash. appreciate the option. ⁓

Ryan Corby (21:53)

That’s right. Yeah.

Right. Yep. Yeah.

A lot of those other things that really help, you know, our pricing model on the platform and those things, again, at the end of the day, we’re trying to help support the small business owner. And that’s, you know, we work with a couple of small to medium sized groups, but our real heart and passion is the private practice owner, which is, it’s just getting harder and harder and harder for them to compete. And so because we are a small business, those are the things that we want to do and help them to be successful to sort of compete against, you know.

Brett Allen (22:23)

private practice.

Right.

Ryan Corby (22:34)

large DSOs that are extremely efficient with all that stuff and have a lot of those tools and things in place. So what are the things that we can do to help them still be attractive to their patients to keep their fees down? ⁓ It’s little things like that. So you’re right. If a practice can offset $5,000 a month in credit card bills and keep their treatment fees low, then that’s a win-win for everybody. So would you rather pay, you know, 20 bucks extra on your $400 bill to then have the overall bill down? so

Brett Allen (22:35)

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

Right?

Right.

Ryan Corby (23:02)

that there’s a whole rat’s nest there too about the membership model and how a lot of practices kind of think, well, why would I give my patients a discount? Well, if you’re not sending it to insurance and you’re not writing it off, using insurance, you’re giving a 40 % discount if you’re using insurance. Yeah. So you could lower your price and collect more and still be a win-win. it’s, you know, it’s kind of, it’s an easy concept, you know.

Brett Allen (23:04)

Yeah.

Insurance is way more of a discount. Right? We had…

Yeah, I had,

I think it was Gary Takas on the show when we were talking about this, how insurance was originally a form of marketing, That create this group of people that need dental work and then refer them to in-network doctors, right? But the cost of that 30, 40 % is way more than if you were to switch to a membership plan and hire somebody like our team.

Ryan Corby (23:33)

Right? Right.

Brett Allen (23:50)

where you’re only spending maybe five to 10 % of total revenue towards marketing. yeah, that’s a huge epiphany.

Ryan Corby (23:54)

Right? Right. And the quality of patience

is better. The loyalty is better. The staff hours is better. You you’re not spending hours on the phone verifying insurance. It’s just a better experience for everybody. Yeah.

Brett Allen (24:03)

Right.

Yeah. And

I think Megan was talking about this, but I’ve seen the data in the industry that patients that actually sign onto a membership actually get the dental work done that they need done versus the insurance patient who just wants to know if it’s covered by insurance. Right? Yeah.

Ryan Corby (24:18)

Yes.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

My partner has called that treating to the nearest deductible, you know, it’s like, what is my insurance going to cover today? And I’ll just do that. Whereas if it’s super straightforward, Hey, you need a crown. Here’s our membership fee. get a discount on that done deal. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s a much, I myself personally, my wife’s a college professor and we have okay dental insurance for the through the college and we don’t pay for that. We drop it. We have a private membership with our own, you know, one of our own clients because it’s a better deal for us. It’s just less hassle. There’s no

Brett Allen (24:28)

Right. Right.

Yeah, totally.

It’s a better deal. Yeah.

Ryan Corby (24:52)

No middleman and all that stuff. yeah. Yep.

Brett Allen (24:54)

Yeah.

Well, we’re about out of time. I want to be respectful of your time and our listeners. ⁓ Let’s wrap it up in typical marketing 32 show fashion. What’s one epiphany or if we could help that doc have that push that one domino over that would ripple effect across everything or have a big impact for them in their practice, what would be that piece of advice?

Ryan Corby (25:00)

you

You know, it’s easy to sort of sell our tool and our technology as a tech guy is. And that’s definitely a critical, powerful piece into the equation here. But really the ones that we see are very successful are when the whole team really buys in on it. this is a, we signed up for, you know, signed with us or I’ll give it to you anyways. We put together a little cheat sheet of sort of scripts and stuff. And so many offices, unfortunately say, oh, our treatment coordinator takes care of the membership stuff. And, know, that’s sort of the part of the whole flow there.

Brett Allen (25:30)

Hmm.

Ryan Corby (25:46)

But the offices that are just killing it with memberships, the assistant’s talking about it, the front desk is talking about it, the person on the phone talked about it, heck, the doctor’s even talking about it. So every single spot in the office, if the patient, is great, that’s an opportunity for membership, is being mentioned about, the membership is being mentioned to them in all corners of the office, ⁓ those are just bulletproof successful. And then the whole team’s motivated to talk about it do it. And when you’ve got that sort of real team, or at least the majority of the team buying it,

Brett Allen (25:54)

Yeah.

Ryan Corby (26:15)

buy in on it, they’re very successful. And then our tool does its job and that’s cool and it helps with those parts of it. But really the ones that say, this is something we’re doing, this is the future of our practice, this is why it’s great. And you get buy in from the team thinking like, this is great for everybody. This is great for me as a staff member, this is great for the profitability of this office so that we can have a job. This is great for the patients and you really sell that hard ⁓ and get the team belief in it.

Brett Allen (26:22)

You have to sell it. Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan Corby (26:40)

man, they just go crazy and they are extremely successful with their memberships. So we always like to try to do that. We can only coach and consult that so much, but as if there’s one tip sort of for a practice owner that’s looking about that, of course, sign up with us and use our tool and we’ll help you get there. But really consider like, what is that buy-in that you can sell to your team if you’re working with a coach or a consultant, like bring that up. And we love working with lot of coaches and consultants because they believe that and they sort of downline that to their clients. But

Brett Allen (26:44)

Team Byan.

Ryan Corby (27:07)

Yeah, if there’s one thing that you could really buy into, see your membership being from an afterthought to a leading successful thing in your practice to do all the stuff that membership promises, really just getting the team to latch onto it and buy into it is a really, really successful thing. So that’d probably be my ending note encouragement.

Brett Allen (27:17)

by him.

Yeah.

Yeah, I can echo that with marketing. If you are working with a marketing team or someday you work with us, the clients of ours that actually have integration with like, we feel like an extension of their team, their team is aware of what we’re doing. ⁓ Team buy-in is huge. And I think that ripples across lots of different facets of practice management. Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan Corby (27:35)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, absolutely. They do such a good

job and getting the team to buy in and all this sort of stuff and like membership and marketing should be no different. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah.

Brett Allen (27:50)

Yes, yeah. Well, Ryan, this was an awesome conversation. Where

should we send people? Smile Advantage, your website, or if they want to talk with you specifically, or, yeah.

Ryan Corby (27:58)

Yep, yes, smileadvantage.com

is our website there. Quick and easy. A little alert would go to our entire team. You can find me on LinkedIn as well, Ryan Corby. ⁓ And I’m sure we’ll have some links in the description and stuff like that. But yeah, my team’s here. I’m always available for a call and ⁓ get you connected.

Brett Allen (28:12)

Yeah.

Great.

Great. Yeah, we’ll put that in the show notes so you guys can connect with Ryan on LinkedIn and as well as the website, smileadvantage.com. Thanks again, Ryan. This was fun.

Ryan Corby (28:26)

Thanks, Brian, really appreciate the invite.

Brett Allen (28:28)

Yeah, until next time everybody on the Marketing 32 show have a great day and we’ll see you next time.