Dentology Podcast with Steve Davey

Transcript – Dentology Podcast with Steve Davey

Episode Release Date – Monday 31 March 2025

Andy & Chris (00:01.132)
It’s seven o’clock on a Monday morning and it can only mean, What do think? Time for a coffee. Well, some people will start for coffee, but we know that there’s a lot of people out there that they use us for their commute. They use us in the gym. They use us when they’re walking the dog. They use us in any which way they want. Is that because we’re like mindless noise? No, no, no. It’s because of the time that we go out. So here we go.

Steve Davey (00:07.253)
Ha

Steve Davey (00:22.934)
Thank

Andy & Chris (00:26.9)
This week, we’re very fortunate, we have a guest from the world of marketing in dentistry. And we have Steve Davie joining us. And Steve is the founder of Smile Dental Marketing, a practice growth and marketing consultant. I’m interested to see how things have changed over his period was a dirty word. It probably still is a bit in some places. We’ll find out. We’ll find out. Welcome, Steve. How are you doing?

Steve Davey (00:49.385)
Yeah, I’m good. Thank you guys. Yeah. Pleased to be here.

Andy & Chris (00:51.222)
Hello, hello. Absolutely, and it’s good to have a conversation with you. we were kind of just talking before we started recording and we were saying like kind of the reason why we sort of started Dentology. And it really was about hearing life stories, sharing business tips and having fun. But that business tips bit, whilst the majority of our guests have been dentists, not all practice owners, but dentists, having the 360 view coming in from

Steve Davey (01:05.387)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (01:20.126)
IT people, lab people, marketing people, bank people, solicitors. It’s really important and valuable because whilst it’s a dentist that holds a handpiece that treats the patient, there’s this massive support structure that sits behind them to ensure they can do that efficiently. It’s like building cars, isn’t it? You build a car but a number of other bits that go in, local suppliers, it all fits together.

Steve Davey (01:21.867)
Yes.

Steve Davey (01:41.152)
Yes.

Andy & Chris (01:44.536)
Well, our studio is based in Brookmans Park in Hertfordshire. And I know that you’ve got strong connections to that area yourself. So just to kick things off, could you kind of give us a sense of who the young Steve Davie was, where you were brought up, what your childhood looked like? That’d be a really nice start point.

Steve Davey (01:51.371)
Yes.

Steve Davey (02:00.255)
Yeah, of course. I was born in North London and my parents moved out to, as lots of people did in those days, they moved out to a new town. And I was about five when that happened. And that was to Stevenage in North Hertfordshire and had a really good childhood. St Evernash, yeah.

Andy & Chris (02:22.542)
St. Evernage I think it’s known now isn’t it?

Steve Davey (02:28.821)
which is a huge, quite a big town now, it’s quite small when we move there. yeah, I went to school in Stevenage. I’ve got a brother who’s two years older than me and went to school there and was head boy for my senior school.

Andy & Chris (02:31.586)
Yeah.

Steve Davey (02:50.337)
and then went on to uni which is now called the University of Hertfordshire but it was the old Hatfield Polytechnic. Yeah, remember those? But I actually went to the School of Business and Social Sciences which was based in Hertford at the time. And just winding back slightly, I wanted to be a graphic designer actually.

Andy & Chris (03:02.627)
I feel Polly.

Steve Davey (03:18.761)
and I was taking art A levels and it was only two of us in the sixth form doing art and the other person, she was fantastic at art and I looked at what I was doing and thinking I’m okay but maybe this isn’t the career for me. It strange pivot really. So in my second year in the sixth form,

decided to do A-level economics, so passed that in a year which got me into a business course at the University of Hertfordshire and from there I went on to do a social sciences degree as well, so I spent four years there and during this study of business and everything I got interested in marketing and that was really the

Andy & Chris (04:02.254)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (04:11.913)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Steve Davey (04:14.079)
the seeds of where it all started for me really.

Andy & Chris (04:15.246)
But actually there’s a big cross-over with social science as well, isn’t there, with marketing? kind of understanding people, how people work. I think if you can answer those questions, I think your marketing message becomes much more succinct and powerful, doesn’t it?

Steve Davey (04:19.403)
Hmm.

Steve Davey (04:32.905)
Yeah, absolutely, because we covered psychology, for example, as well as sort of other practical business subjects, you like, like business law, which was quite useful over the years as well, commercial law as well as company law. So yeah, it was a fit and, you know…

Andy & Chris (04:37.218)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (04:44.428)
Hmm.

Steve Davey (04:54.645)
There was a lot of analytical subjects as well that we were doing like business statistics and so on. And there was a seed there as to where my career was going as well because when I really sort of into marketing, it was very much around what was called direct marketing in those days, which was pretty.

Andy & Chris (05:06.179)
No.

Andy & Chris (05:14.958)
Right, yeah. Did you work for someone Steve? Did you go and work for a company to sort of cut your teeth? Bit of a dental point pun.

Steve Davey (05:24.129)
Yeah, I I started out as a market researcher for a packaging company. And then I went, got a really good move to working for one of the big supermarket chains as a brand manager. And I had responsibility across most of the food areas at some stage, launching new own brands, within…

Andy & Chris (05:39.566)
Okay.

Andy & Chris (05:49.302)
Well, that’s a big old job, I’d imagine with that.

Steve Davey (05:52.065)
It was a big old job. It was a big old commute into the Heathrow area as well at that time, around the M25 and there’s only so much of that you can take. But that was really my first proper marketing role, if you like. So and then after a spot of traveling, I went backpacking for 15 months.

Andy & Chris (05:57.418)
nice. Yeah, no, definitely.

Andy & Chris (06:10.104)
Hmm. Hmm.

Steve Davey (06:20.671)
came back from that and then I got a role as a marketing manager for, do remember the big sort of book club companies like World Books and Literary Guild? Yeah, I was working as a marketing manager within that business and had a big sort of income responsibility of over two million pounds, big marketing budget.

Andy & Chris (06:32.796)
Yeah, yeah.

Steve Davey (06:49.473)
um sort of worked my way up there. I was there for about three and a half years, commuting into London from Hertfordshire into Oxford Street basically. And then the big turn in my life I suppose was I was headhunted by Do You Remember Reader’s Digest?

Andy & Chris (06:57.688)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (07:10.606)
yeah. We’re all showing our age aren’t we? Well those little books you used to get every month. Are they still going or have they sort of shut off? They’re still going.

Steve Davey (07:13.634)
Yeah.

They are still going and one of the most successful direct marketing businesses probably in history really.

Andy & Chris (07:24.706)
Yeah, I have a feel we could be moving on to Encyclopedia Britannica at some point as well. my do you remember them as well?

Steve Davey (07:29.089)
I’m not going quite that far. Basically they had a book club division down in Devon and that’s what took me down here. And I said to my girlfriend at the time, now wife, that do you fancy a move to the West Country? So we headed down and so that was 30 odd years ago.

Andy & Chris (07:39.308)
Andy & Chris (07:49.198)
And that was 30 odd years ago.

So clearly you like the West Country lifestyle because you’re still down there.

Steve Davey (07:58.397)
Still down here and you know it’s changed over the years. It’s much better, the connections are better. You know it’s only three hours on the train into Paddington so it’s a lot simpler than it probably was then. But yeah, I like the West Country lifestyle but you from a business point of view, particularly these days you can be anywhere can’t you?

Andy & Chris (08:05.655)
Yup.

Andy & Chris (08:10.158)
Mm. Mm.

Andy & Chris (08:23.566)
Yeah, it’s got way easier. easier. You really picked up an accent though, Steve. I must admit, you don’t sound very Wish Country. Those North London genes are in you, my boy.

Steve Davey (08:30.177)
No, there’s a few… a few phrases here and there maybe but not the accent.

Andy & Chris (08:38.796)
Yeah. Yeah. So for somebody who spent 30 odd years in marketing, what’s the thing that you’ve worked out that most people haven’t? What’s your standout thing over those 30 years that still rings true today that was one of the things you saw quite early on in your career?

Steve Davey (08:57.513)
I think the process of just understanding who the target audience are first and foremost. I I used to have a phrase, know, audience, offer, creative. So, you know, if you haven’t got the audience right when you’re targeting, forget the proposition and the creative treatment for it, whether that’s, you know, video, whether it’s…

Andy & Chris (09:14.412)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (09:19.438)
Hmm.

Steve Davey (09:25.333)
great copywriting, whether it’s design, whatever it is. It still rings true today. It flows through everything you do. You’ve got to look, and with dental practice, look at who their ideal patients are, who do they really want in the practice, because you don’t want everybody. You have a focus. So getting that right, and then thinking, what makes us stand out as a business? So there’s always that.

Andy & Chris (09:40.654)
Mm.

Hmm.

Steve Davey (09:54.241)
proposition if you like. And then it’s how you execute that creatively and with great copywriting with video etc.

Andy & Chris (09:55.214)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (09:59.918)
Hmm.

And in your experience, do practices take the time to work out what their perfect patient looks like so they can craft messaging to filter not just in, but out people as well? So they get the right people coming to them? Or is there still a general view out there of we just need patients and then we’ll just treat them?

Steve Davey (10:22.635)
There’s often still that view. We just want to fill our surgeries. We’re looking for patients. I have lots of conversations, as you can imagine, over the years with practice owners and asking them the question, who do you see as your ideal patients? And often the answer coming back is we want everybody. Well, it really depends on what treatments you’re offering. It depends on the local demographic. There’s a whole host of reasons why you may actually say,

Andy & Chris (10:24.462)
Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Andy & Chris (10:42.03)
Mm.

Steve Davey (10:52.383)
These are our ideal patients. That’s not to say you won’t take other patients. It’s just to say from a marketing point of view and from a patient journey point of view, this is who we’re focusing on. This is what our brand is all about. Because you’ll see there’s some very different dental brands out there. From those that are focused very heavily on cosmetic and aesthetic dentistry.

Andy & Chris (10:57.571)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (11:04.27)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (11:12.385)
For sure, yeah.

Andy & Chris (11:16.6)
Yeah.

Steve Davey (11:18.625)
So those may be that are a bit more on preventative dental health and a slightly more traditional approach and less wanting that kind of elective treatments, if you like.

Andy & Chris (11:20.462)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (11:26.286)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (11:31.97)
When did you see that niche marketing change where people were kind of targeting a particular patient type or promoting particular services? Because Chris and I have been doing what we’re doing for quite a while and it feels like a fairly recent change and I don’t know if it’s competition that’s driving that or whether we just have access to better marketing resources like yourself who again be able to think more about it. When do you think that that sort of sea change happened?

Steve Davey (11:59.329)
I would say the sea change has happened in the last five or so years where it has changed and think has marketing has got more sophisticated. It’s obviously much easier to measure most of the marketing channels that being used because a lot of it’s digital and it’s measurement in real time. So that that’s helped that change. Of course, digital has been around for a long time, but it’s got even more sophisticated and

Andy & Chris (12:04.066)
Hmm

Andy & Chris (12:08.941)
Mm-hmm.

Andy & Chris (12:16.578)
like digital channels. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (12:21.742)
Mmm.

Andy & Chris (12:25.326)
Hmm.

Steve Davey (12:28.673)
with the advent of social media or the explosion of that, because that’s been around for quite some time, but the explosion of that over the last few years has meant that that kind of dynamic has changed as well.

Andy & Chris (12:33.742)
Mmm.

Andy & Chris (12:37.678)
Mm-hmm.

Andy & Chris (12:41.966)
I wonder if the pandemic as well was part of it.

Steve Davey (12:46.465)
I think so and I think it’s also part of the fact that I mean there’s a lot of dental practices trying to move out of NHS. So you know if you’re a private practice you know you’ve got to win you’ve got to win new patients and you you could be in a very competitive area. You know we get taken on by practices that have got you know there could be five or six competitors very locally offering very similar things.

Andy & Chris (12:53.955)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (13:00.556)
Hmm. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (13:06.058)
Hmm

Andy & Chris (13:12.994)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Steve Davey (13:16.065)
So it’s back to trying to find points of difference really and focus on who would be your ideal patients.

Andy & Chris (13:24.46)
It’s so funny, isn’t it? I remember years ago, we used to sort of try and talk to people about marketing and stuff like that. And they, I can remember talking to someone once and he was saying, you he wanted to do this. And I said, yeah, but everyone else is saying exactly the same thing. Perhaps you just need to tell them people can park. And he said, yeah, never thought about that. And I said, you’re in a town center, no one else can park. And it’s funny, isn’t it? But they don’t think about that or they think almost the…

Steve Davey (13:40.001)
Yes, yes.

Andy & Chris (13:50.784)
it’s a little bit beneath them sometimes. think some dentists look at it and go, actually, I’m just a dentist. I think it’s definitely changing, as you say, but I think, you you would have been a dirty word, wouldn’t you really? Marketing, sales, how dare you. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Steve Davey (14:03.977)
Sales and marketing, yeah, but we’re all selling ourselves all the time. If you just look at the stats behind a dental website, one of the key pages that patients visit is the team page because they’re buying people. It’s a top three page, for example.

Andy & Chris (14:18.668)
Mmm. Mmm.

It always makes me laugh really Steve, you must see it all the time. Obviously we look at people’s websites, you’ve got the team, then you’ve got more dentists, then you’ve got the hygienist, and then basically everyone else is like, and there might not be a picture of them, and we’ve got practice managers and nurses, and I always think, hang on a minute boys, if you’re doing yourselves, why aren’t you doing the rest of team? You must get that all the time I’d imagine.

Steve Davey (14:42.144)
Yeah.

Steve Davey (14:49.269)
Definitely, you know, those frontline staff are really, you know, so important, critical for the business. And, you know, it always surprises me when you see such a churn of those positions quite often as well.

Andy & Chris (14:53.356)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (15:01.262)
But they’re often the people who provide the consistency and the glue for patients because when you visit a practice, I know that some now moving towards digital reception where you can check yourself in, but still the overwhelming majority have a person sitting on the front desk and having the familiarity of that face appointment after appointment is quite comforting.

because many patients when they wake up, it’s not a great day, they’re going to the dentist. They might be suffering a bit of anxiety or yeah, they might be thinking, is it gonna hurt or it’s gonna cost me money, whatever the issue is gonna be, there’s gonna be something in there. So when they walk in, the fact they see John or Deborah or whoever it happens to be as a friendly face on reception is a big, you can de-stress the situation.

Steve Davey (15:48.329)
Yeah, it definitely makes a difference. I I’ve walked into hundreds of practices as you guys have and you know, the variation in warmth you get from the team is quite marked really. And as you say, if you are a nervous patient, and actually I’m quite a nervous patient, you know, they make a difference to the good old patient journey, don’t they? Well, the patient is good.

Andy & Chris (15:53.614)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (15:57.154)
Mmm. Mmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (16:07.683)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (16:13.76)
Absolutely. It’s quite interesting actually when we we sell a practice and if it’s if it’s not going so well, it’s quite often that the the dentist who’s come in has changed the team. You know, not just the different dentists, but the old guy might be but they’ve changed front desk or whatever. And it’s amazingly impact and you say well, we did say to you just hold on for a bit. Yeah.

Steve Davey (16:30.187)
No.

Steve Davey (16:36.059)
Yes, that’s true.

Andy & Chris (16:37.632)
Yeah, that’s nice. How did you find yourself in the dental niche? I know you worked within healthcare for a bit. that your segue in?

Steve Davey (16:46.529)
Well what happened is in 1999 I joined a really a national marketing agency called Bray Leno which have got, they’ve now got divisions all over the country but basically they were located in North Devon. So I joined that company as the direct marketing manager, head of direct marketing.

and started working on healthcare brands. I was working on GSK, Bauschalon, which is eye care, Smith and Nephew, which is wound care. And in the early noughties, worked on a couple of dental clients as well. And then in 2005, I left that business and set up my own professional services marketing consultancy. So I was working with lawyers, accountants, surveyors, training companies.

Andy & Chris (17:15.074)
Hi.

Andy & Chris (17:35.534)
Mm.

Steve Davey (17:38.705)
and brought two or three dental clients in. And then what happened is a couple of years later, I don’t know why I did it actually, I just decided to go to one of the national dental shows, which was, I think was BDIA. And I went there and I thought, well, this is an interesting niche. There aren’t any other dental marketing companies, there aren’t any dental marketing companies here. Is this a niche I could?

Andy & Chris (17:55.415)
Right, yeah.

Steve Davey (18:07.969)
focus on. And that’s really where it came about, setting it up in 2009. But yeah, was the enjoyment of working in healthcare. I enjoyed that. And I was working on a few brands and thought, yeah, this is an area that’s going to be around for a long time. It’s not going anywhere.

Andy & Chris (18:09.357)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (18:22.978)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (18:33.656)
Hmm.

Steve Davey (18:34.235)
And obviously private dentistry was sort of, you know, growing and so on. you could see where NHS dentistry was going, perhaps, you know, on the periphery of the NHS, probably still is, as we know.

Andy & Chris (18:38.424)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (18:44.963)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (18:49.701)
I suppose back then, 2009, what still gets referred to as the new NHS contract came in in 2006. So it wasn’t long since that contract came in. And for many of those practices that perhaps didn’t get the contract they wanted or wanted to grow their business, the only way to do that was development of private fees.

Steve Davey (19:07.659)
smooth.

Andy & Chris (19:08.556)
possibly through kind of coincidence or supreme planning on your part, you actually arrived in dentistry at a really good time to help people start marketing their practices. There’s a nice phrase which is a rising tide lifts all boats. Who was kind to you in the early days of dentistry? When you came into the market, can you remember which companies or which people helped you in those early days?

Steve Davey (19:22.879)
Hmm.

Steve Davey (19:32.097)
Yeah, I can really. I just talk to different people in different parts of the industry really. I’m not sure I can point to specific people. I mentioned the show and I just started networking and talking to other professional services that supplying the industry. know, dental lawyers and other people that were serving the sector.

Andy & Chris (19:48.905)
Mm. Mm.

Andy & Chris (19:54.7)
Right, yeah,

Steve Davey (19:59.073)
just to understand what it was like to work with dental practices and the different types of owners really, whether they were entrepreneurial looking to build a group or whether they were husband and wife team or whether they were working for one of the big corporates. I did some work for one of the corporates on a regional basis in the early…

Andy & Chris (19:59.278)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (20:05.294)
Right, yeah.

Andy & Chris (20:13.91)
Yeah

Andy & Chris (20:20.718)
Hmm.

Steve Davey (20:27.195)
about 2011 I think it was. That was interesting, know, one of the big groups shall we say and just understanding that dynamic as well of how the team operated, how the dentists were employed and you know the different challenges there and what kind of businesses they were because clearly that was a growing area as well, sort of corporate dentistry so it was just really…

Andy & Chris (20:34.413)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (20:40.174)
Mmm.

Steve Davey (20:55.057)
moving into the sector, just absorbing as much as you can and learning as much as you can. So much so that I’ve had practice owners saying to me, were you once a dentist? Because you kind of immerse yourself in the area and they think, actually, yeah. And that’s, you can say key words. Yeah, exactly,

Andy & Chris (21:08.691)
Mmm. Yep.

you say key words, don’t you? Then you sort of understand it because you understand what they are and they’re going, wow, someone actually knows what I’m talking about. I do wonder at times as non clinicians on the business side of dentistry, I do wonder if we went to a party, how long we could get away with pretending to be a dentist just for fun, just for fun, not actually doing anything, but how long you could blag it before people realize. And I bet it’s probably only a clinician that would actually spot it. I bet a lot of people would just assume that perhaps we are, we are dentists because you’re right. When

Steve Davey (21:26.529)
Yes.

Steve Davey (21:39.616)
Yes.

Andy & Chris (21:41.356)
It’s like us, our market is dentistry. That’s the only market we serve. So you spend a lot of time talking to dentists about so much that you just, did that jargon becomes second nature. I’m intrigued to get your view as well, Steve, on online V offline marketing. So within our business, we do quite a lot of online marketing. We’ve got a very active socials. Our website’s constantly updated. We do webinars, we do lots and lots of digital stuff. We produce lots of video content for ourselves. We do this podcast.

Steve Davey (21:45.621)
Yes.

Steve Davey (21:53.248)
Yes.

Andy & Chris (22:11.586)
But equally, I think sometimes people overlook offline marketing. And I always use the example of opening a letter. If you get a letter delivered to your home today, it’s incredibly likely, almost to the point of being 99 % plus that you will open that letter before you put it in the bin, but it still got opened. What’s your view on offline marketing as in physical marketing, as opposed to digital marketing? And how can dentists kind of make use of both of those?

Steve Davey (22:41.153)
I think it’s overlooked a lot offline marketing because particularly local community marketing is still a really cost-effective way of bringing new patients in or big cases in. And you’re right, there’s been so much focus on email marketing and other digital marketing that it’s been ignored. And you’re right, the days of junk mail are over. We hardly ever get any post. Hardly ever. So when it comes through,

Andy & Chris (22:43.283)
Mm. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (22:52.728)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (23:04.992)
Yep.

Steve Davey (23:09.983)
you do actually look at it and you read it. we normally recommend definitely some local community marketing. We’ve helped many a practice with some local leafletting and the cut-through is really good. Once again, it has to be targeted.

Andy & Chris (23:29.71)
I was going to say the message once they open the letter. It’s got to have an impact, hasn’t it?

Steve Davey (23:36.577)
It’s got to an impact whichever way it lands through the letterbox. It’s got to have the right message. It’s got to be targeted at the right household and that comes back to understanding your local market and the demographics. So there is a place for it. We’ve got some clients that still do a little bit of direct mail recall and reactivation marketing.

Andy & Chris (23:42.15)
Yep.

Andy & Chris (24:02.264)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Steve Davey (24:02.955)
You know for patients that maybe have not been in the practice for a couple of years Actually, they’re no longer your patients. They’re kind of lapsed. So to win them back Sometimes a letter can be a really good way of doing it It can also be an e-newsletter, but it’s just it’s just testing different things all the time because as you know Marketing is testing all the time whether that’s comparing different Google ads or Facebook ads or whether it’s

Andy & Chris (24:09.944)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (24:15.987)
Mm. Mm.

Andy & Chris (24:24.732)
Yeah.

Yeah

Steve Davey (24:31.487)
a local leaflet or a poster. know, whatever it is, it’s a constant test, what we call test validation rollout process the whole time. So yeah, there’s absolutely a role for local community marketing. Some of the biggest responses you can possibly get is from some local strategic poster sites.

Andy & Chris (24:34.062)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (24:38.284)
Hmm. To see what works.

Mm. Mm.

Steve Davey (24:56.353)
A very quick story, we put her like a one metre board on a ferry, passenger ferry for dental implants and it cost per annum cup of £100 and it literally brought in six figure sum of implant cases.

Andy & Chris (25:10.668)
Wow.

Andy & Chris (25:14.869)
Wow. The thing is you’ve got a captive audience. They’re sitting there for an hour or two. And as we all know, is bugger all to do on a ferry. So you might as well read the adverts. But it’s a great way. And because they go about and forward so often, you’re changing your audience, you know, two or three times a day. It’s true. Isn’t it people? I can remember that was a practicing Cheltenham. I think it was. And they wanted to improve, know, improve their business. And they employed a marketing guy and he said, uh, put a sign up. And they were like, Oh,

Steve Davey (25:18.207)
Exactly. Yeah.

Steve Davey (25:23.071)
Yeah.

Steve Davey (25:28.757)
Yes. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (25:43.47)
Really? And they said, yeah, yeah, just put a sign on the front of your property, you know, like in the garden. And it was the most basic thing ever. But it like almost doubled their turnover because suddenly they were like, oh, yeah, oh, yeah. People didn’t know we were here. It was just a, it was like simple. It was really simple, but so overlooked. Steve, Steve, you were saying about sending letters to recall patients to a practice because, you know, sometimes I hadn’t been there for a couple of years.

Steve Davey (25:55.189)
Yes.

Steve Davey (25:59.327)
Yes, yeah.

Steve Davey (26:03.541)
Yes.

Andy & Chris (26:12.052)
In your experience, the practices spend a disproportionate amount of effort and energy in recruiting new patients compared to the work in reactivating existing patients.

Steve Davey (26:24.575)
Absolutely, and we talked to many a practice owner and they come to us and say we want some help recruiting new patients. So we start talking about those challenge. But then we discover that they’ve got quite a large patient list. And what we always recommend is to break your patient list down into your actives. So there may be people that have been into the practice in the last, say, 12 or 18 months.

Then you’ve got your dormance and other segments, so maybe not being in between 18 months and two, two and a half years. And then you’ve got your lapsed. And what we find from the analysis is that there’s quite a big percentage in those latter two segments, i.e. they’re not active. In other words, there’s huge unearthed income potential within your own patient list.

Andy & Chris (27:02.326)
Yep.

Andy & Chris (27:11.982)
Mmm. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (27:17.986)
Hmm.

Steve Davey (27:22.337)
So we had this discussion a lot and then it’s about how you implement and how you reach out to those patients because practices don’t speak to their patients enough. There’s some that just go back for recall but there’s nothing in between and people go back to…

Andy & Chris (27:25.162)
Mmm. Mmm. Mmm.

Andy & Chris (27:32.449)
No.

It’s interesting you say that because that doesn’t sound particularly exciting or sexy or dynamic or creative marketing. It’s Instagram Andy. No, everyone wants new patients. That’s where the Holy Grail surely is. But from what you’ve just said, it sounds like many practices could hit their growth targets and ambitions for this year just by dipping back into their existing patient base. I think it’s a really valuable lesson. Definitely.

Steve Davey (27:58.081)
Absolutely. Absolutely. mean, we, you we’ve got a package where you can actually grow your practice by 20 % plus without recruiting a single new patient. And that’s just having, going through a series of steps and looking at where that potential is and then implementing it. Because, you know, you’ve got incomplete treatment plans. You’ve got people that maybe have had extractions but never had anything else. You’ve got people that

have actually gone to other practices because they didn’t realize that your practice offered those specific treatments, whether that’s implant, Invisalign, whatever it is. And that, we find out that that happens quite a lot. And that’s because patients aren’t fully aware of the full range of treatments on offer.

Andy & Chris (28:34.5)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, definitely.

Mm.

Andy & Chris (28:44.515)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (28:50.318)
I think it’s also sometimes is like we used to work in banks and one of the things, of our, one of the banks we worked for, they did this whole training program and then they realized when they’re reviewing it that people weren’t being trained on some of the basics. And when they stripped it down, was basic. What they had worked out was that someone tells you 95 % of the job because they think 5 % is bloody obvious. And then the next person they’ve got another 5%. So about three people down the line, you’ve only know 80 % of the job. And I think it’s the same with dentistry, isn’t it?

Of course you know we do tooth whitening. If no one’s ever told you, then you don’t know we do tooth whitening. It’s as as that.

Steve Davey (29:23.893)
Yes. No, that’s true. That’s very true. So, yeah, absolutely. think there’s lots of ways of building income membership plans. know, there’s a good trend towards membership plans. I think all the stats I’ve seen is that people that are on a plan are more in, you know, they spend more on their dental health.

Andy & Chris (29:34.35)
Cough

Hmm

Andy & Chris (29:43.469)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (29:51.758)
Do you help train the team when you know with those reactivated patients, do you help train the team how to talk to them? Because I think that’s one of the biggest things isn’t it that quite often they don’t actually want to do anything. They don’t want to do it because it’s out of their comfort zone. So I’m assuming you sort of almost do a hand holding training how to deal with those people. Is that right?

Steve Davey (30:11.489)
We help them with what they can say and the processes you go through, but we’re not soft skill trainers because that’s a different, that needs a trainer really to go in and help with, it’s that adage of, it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. It’s so important as well. But what we do look at, for example, is what can be done to collect information on the patient, collect data, recall that data.

Andy & Chris (30:14.382)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (30:18.445)
Mm-hmm.

Right. Yo.

Andy & Chris (30:27.446)
Yeah, definitely.

Andy & Chris (30:37.474)
Bye.

Steve Davey (30:40.509)
improve the database that you’ve got so it’s more meaningful. So yeah there’s some guidance there for sure.

Andy & Chris (30:44.584)
Mm. Mm. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (30:49.827)
Yeah.

Steve Davey (30:51.603)
And there are always opportunities. We’ve worked with over 170 practices now, and I would say certainly 95 % have had opportunities within their patient list to help grow their business. And of course that takes the pressure off new patient recruitment, recruiting big clients.

Andy & Chris (31:06.638)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (31:10.574)
definitely. Well, the thing is you’re you’re working with people who have already been to the practice, know the setup, know the great service, know the location. There’s so many boxes that have already been ticked. You’re just reactivating them. You say you’ve been you’ve got 170 different practice. There’s there’s few people that have access to such a range. So you have a good kind of overview of dentistry. What what are you?

What are you worried about at the moment? What do you see coming down the line for dentists that perhaps people aren’t aware of at the moment?

Andy & Chris (31:46.412)
Not an easy question, I know.

Steve Davey (31:48.821)
No, mean the issue I come across a lot is just access to dentistry on the NHS side. I mean think we’re all aware of that. But you’re talking there, Andy about…

Andy & Chris (31:55.277)
Hmm.

Yep.

Just in terms of, yeah, just more your overview of what are the common things that you see in practices that if they don’t address it, correct it, deal with it, down the line is gonna be a problem for those practices.

Steve Davey (32:15.957)
Well, definitely recruitment is a big issue for growth at the moment. It’s just finding the clinicians that they need or support staff as well. I think that’s an issue that doesn’t seem to be going away.

Andy & Chris (32:18.318)
about it.

Andy & Chris (32:27.127)
But…

Steve Davey (32:37.441)
I think it’s just being flexible as a dental practice as well in how they offer treatments as well. think, you know, the public are more more informed as to what they’re buying. And, you know, whether you’re having whatever kind of medical treatment it is or, you know, dental treatment, people are more informed. it’s…

Andy & Chris (32:42.221)
Yep.

Hmm.

Steve Davey (33:01.927)
It’s making sure that the patient experience really can be as good as it possibly can be, I would say is really key.

Andy & Chris (33:09.326)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (33:15.438)
Yeah. Cool. At the very beginning, Steve, we sort of glossed over quite quickly that you had a backpack on your back for 15 months. We get lots of dental students and young dentists listening to this. So they’re in the window where there might still be the opportunity to chuck on a rucksack and get going. Where did you go?

Steve Davey (33:36.353)
I went to Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Singapore and then on the way back I had a few weeks in Nepal and doing lots of trekking and then I spent four weeks in India which was quite life-changing because that was a real culture shock at the time so I remember landing in Calcutta.

Andy & Chris (33:51.551)
amazing.

Steve Davey (34:05.553)
and and not you know it was just unbelievable the the busyness of it and yeah and i one of my highlights there was i i just sat watching a bicycle jam for about four hours a bicycle jam you couldn’t make it up no yeah yeah that’s yeah

Andy & Chris (34:09.576)
Mmm. So many people.

Andy & Chris (34:19.886)
Wow, bicycle jam. Well, yeah, you say you don’t believe that that can happen, do you? I suppose so many bicycles and people not moving. Well, Brilliant. We’ve got to the time in the interview, Steve, where we need to have a conversation with you about two very important questions. The first question we’re going to ask you is you can be a fly on the wall in a situation. Where are you and who’s there?

Steve Davey (34:37.153)
Okay.

Steve Davey (34:47.905)
Where am I? I’m in the Himalayas in 1924 and I’m walking up with George Mallory and Andrew Irvine. And as you might know, Mallory’s body was found in 1999 and nobody really knows whether he got to the top or not.

Andy & Chris (34:53.87)
Okay.

Andy & Chris (35:04.878)
Yes.

Hmm. Well, yeah.

Steve Davey (35:12.353)
and I’d love to have been there to know whether they did summit and obviously died on the way down or whether I just yeah I love those programs about man you know expeditions and stuff like that fascinated by that so that would be that always stands out to me as a I’d just love to have been there really. No that’s right.

Andy & Chris (35:18.914)
Hmm. It was on the way up.

Andy & Chris (35:26.282)
Yeah. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (35:33.038)
Yeah, I’m not sure we’re ever going to get the answer to that question either are we? No, I think 101 years on, if the answer was going to present itself, it would have done it by now. Unless there’s somewhere up there that says, was here. Imagine. We made it. Imagine. And the follow up question is, you can meet somebody and sit down with them. or dead? Yeah, living or dead. you can have a cup of coffee, glass of wine, pint of beer, whatever you fancy. Who would you like to meet and have a conversation with?

Steve Davey (35:43.476)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Davey (36:03.837)
It has to be David Attenborough for me. The stories, the filmmaking, his perspective on the world. When he talks, everybody listens. know, he’s just a, you know, the national treasure is an overused word probably, but you know, if ever there was somebody who is and when he sadly does finally go, you know, he’d be a massive loss to the world. But I’d love to have that chat and coffee.

Andy & Chris (36:06.094)
great choice.

Andy & Chris (36:14.734)
That is true.

Andy & Chris (36:19.328)
Yeah.

He wants it.

Andy & Chris (36:28.27)
Mm.

Hmm Is he a hundred this year? I don’t know he’s wedding to his 90s. Yeah, he’s gonna be a hundred or something I can’t remember when the timings were Yeah Yeah

Steve Davey (36:32.831)
with him this year for Kansas Tech.

Steve Davey (36:40.001)
I think he’s certainly mid-90s, Chris, yeah. But yeah, definitely.

Andy & Chris (36:44.502)
And I think, I think, I think for us as well, we’ve all lived our entire lives watching him, you know, crawling through the Amazon or, you know, on a desert or whatever he might be. And I know he kind of, you know, narrates from the comfort of his own home now, as opposed to crawled up the Amazon and he’s, he’s earned that right. But it will be, it will be odd because like I say, and for him as an individual, he’s seen the planet change so extraordinarily during his lifetime as well, just in terms of things like the rainforest.

Steve Davey (36:51.009)
Hmm.

Steve Davey (36:54.784)
Yeah.

Steve Davey (37:02.592)
Yeah.

Steve Davey (37:10.901)
Yes. Yeah, I agree.

Andy & Chris (37:14.446)
Yeah, airplanes, you know that whole thing is how quick the speed of stuff has changed. Well done Steve because we’ve got this far into the process of recording and I don’t think we’ve ever had anybody say David Ashmore. And it’s nice that he’s now added to the list because he’s a remarkable guy. We’ve had some duplications but it hadn’t occurred to me that he hadn’t come up until you said his name and I’m so pleased that he’s now in there. That is true.

Steve Davey (37:18.431)
Yes, yeah. Yeah.

Steve Davey (37:27.894)
Okay. yes.

Steve Davey (37:38.377)
Yeah, brilliant.

Andy & Chris (37:42.734)
Steve’s been absolutely joy. It’s really good. Really interesting. Yeah, thank you very much. Really, really enjoyable conversation. And yeah, I mean, there’s some dental shows coming up. we’ll see you at a dental show somewhere. next time you’re up in our neck of the woods, it would be lovely to catch up.

Steve Davey (37:52.671)
That’s nothing. Yes. Yeah, let’s do that. Thanks, guys.

Andy & Chris (37:57.07)
Cheers, Steve. Keep well.