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Why asking for feedback is important!
We all know the rush of a fresh opportunity: the new prospect, the new idea, the new connection. It feels clean. Full of possibility. No awkwardness, no rejection risk. And yet, statistically, that’s not where success actually happens. A remarkable insight from HubSpot says 80% of deals close in the follow-up, which means not the first conversation, not the pitch, not the “Hey, great to meet you.” In the follow-up. Yet very few people follow up enough. Why? Because rejection stings. Because silence feels like a “no.” Because it’s emotionally easier to chase the new than to continue nurturing what’s already started. But if you want to live a Superbold life and build a business or career that actually grows, you need to master the art of follow-up. Not as a chore or a sales tactic. But as a form of generosity, professionalism and, of course, boldness. Why People Don’t Respond (And Why It’s Not About You) People are overwhelmed—messages, tasks, notifications, family needs, appointments, deadlines, distractions. You are not being ignored because you’re unworthy. You’re lost in the noise. Think about the number of meaningful emails you unintentionally miss in a week. For most people, it’s several. Follow-up is not pestering. It’s service. It’s helping someone remember what matters to them. Remember, most of the time it’s not a rejection. Silence is the new normal. But we stop ourselves because we’ve been ghosted, (in our mind, at least!) We create stories in our head: “They must not be interested.” “They would have responded by now.” “They already said no.” But here’s the truth: Many “No’s” are simply “Not now’s”. You know this, I’m sure, but you hesitate to follow up. Yet I know people who closed deals a full year after their initial outreach because the timing finally aligned. Persistence isn’t annoying. It’s professional. The Greatest Mistake: Not Systematizing the Follow-Up Every successful business, from dental practices to consulting firms to coaching programs, runs on consistent touchpoints. The earliest lesson I learned in advertising was that repetition alone is what keeps you top of mind. We are bombarded with messages all day. When you don’t systematize follow-up, you rely on memory, which is the least reliable system ever invented. Create a systematic way to continue reaching out to prospects at specific intervals with a different message. And do it. Once you see the results, you’ll be hooked. If you’re looking for what message to send, try gratitude or appreciation. Or just a simple tidbit of useful information not directly related to your product. And finally, accept that ghosting is going to happen. It is the new norm and it’s not going to improve. Don’t ascribe any meaning to it. That’s a waste of calories. Be bold enough to do the hard stuff and make following up part of your daily activity. This Week's Boldness Challenge: This one should be pretty obvious. Follow up with someone you've been avoiding. Do one for business and one personally. Because sometimes we neglect our personal relationships, too, don't we? Boldly yours, Fred
I had the occasion to attend a live taping of a national talk show while I was in New York last week. As we waited for the show to start, they showed video clips from past episodes, and then they ended with a screen showing all sorts of negative critique of the host. Most were insulting and some profane, and I was struck by the host’s embrace of those criticisms and the humility that it took to show them to us. It was also quite funny. It also exemplified something I talk about in my lectures and book, which is not worrying about everyone's opinion of you. One of the greatest liberations you can have in life is when you stop worrying about what everyone is thinking about you. Instead, you think about what you're trying to accomplish and the people that matters to and simply disregard the rest. Face it, you are never going to make everyone happy. You are never going to make everyone love you. And you're never going to make everyone understand what you want them to. If you try to please everyone you would need everything you say to be bland and innocuous. If no one ever disagrees with you, you are either hiding in an echo chamber or never really taking a position on anything. When strong enough to take a stance on what you believe, there will always be people who think you're an idiot. I’m sure there are many people who think I’m an idiot. Some of them probably were in my audiences. All I care about is the people that I can impact, and I don't worry about the rest. I don't worry about their judgments. The reality is people aren't thinking about you that long and hard when they are judging you. They are seeing your through their filters and biases and looking at just a snapshot of who you are. I want people who are interested in where I'm going and where I can take them. I don't need it to be everybody. In fact, I hope I have a certain number of detractors. It means I'm pushing my envelope, and it also means I could be wrong. I'm totally accepting of that fact, and I'm willing to learn where I could be mistaken. I believe I can learn something from my critics. I invite it. To me it's just feedback. They may overcharge their opinion with emotion and harshness, but I'll dismiss that part of it and extract what value I may find. If you want to live a bold and adventurous life, you can't let other people define how you should behave all the time. If you want to chase your dreams and live your own life rather than what someone else expects of you, then you are going to be criticized, possibly with a certain level of cruelty. There is nothing more liberating than ignoring that and considering it as irrelevant. If there's value in it, then maybe listen to it. But don't allow yourself to be hurt by somebody else's opinion. Many people like to feel smart by criticizing someone. It makes them feel important, superior. If that's what they need, let them have it. Make a gift of that to them and let it bounce off you. Because you've got work to do. You've got people that matter and people whose opinions are important. Ignore the rest. Bold people only have a handful of people whose opinions they value more than their own. When you let somebody else's opinion of you matter than your own opinion of yourself, you've surrendered the power and control over your own life, your own destiny. Why would you want to do that? Don't ever let somebody else's criticism or insults knock you off your path, your goals and your love of yourself. Be bold enough to accept you’re not perfect, and focus on getting better, not pleasing the haters. Embrace the joy of being your unique self and bring that to the world! THIS WEEK’S BOLDNESS EXERCISE: Here's your boldness challenge for the week: Sit down with someone whose opinion you value and say, "Please tell me some criticism you have of me that you haven't told me because you didn't want to hurt my feelings." Then listen to what they tell you. Don't try to explain it away. Just absorb it. You might find it to be the most valuable conversation you have all month. And of course, don't just be bold, be SUPERBOLD! Fred
There’s a business expression I love: “Don’t try to boil the ocean.” It’s a vivid way to say don’t take on more than you can possibly do well. Yet so many entrepreneurs, myself included at times, fall into that trap. We keep adding another product line, another side venture, another “can’t-miss” opportunity until our energy is scattered and our results get diluted. When you try to focus on everything, you end up being effective at nothing. I’ve been there, launching side businesses, making investments without enough investigation, and chasing too many good ideas at once. The result? A lot of effort gets spread too thin. Now, I’ve learned to narrow my focus. I pick one top priority. Okay, maybe a couple of secondary ones, too, but the main one always wins. It gets my time, my energy, and my full attention. If there’s time left for the rest, great. If not, I don’t sweat it. This same concept applies to your marketing strategy. Too many entrepreneurs think they need to appeal to everyone to succeed. Not true. When we built 1-800-DENTIST, people assumed we had a majority of the dentists in the country as clients because we were the biggest referral service. In reality, we generated nearly $50 million a year with less than 3% of U.S. dental practices participating. We didn’t need everyone. We just needed the right few. That’s true across almost every industry. Think about bottled water brands. How many found huge success by serving just a small slice of the market until a giant like Pepsi or Coke bought them? The beauty of not needing everyone is that you can market more precisely, focus more deeply, and serve your ideal customers exceptionally well. Companies also do this by adding more and more features to their product. The challenge with that is your salespeople can’t pitch effectively because the potential client is getting demo fatigue halfway through the presentation. Which is why the best salespeople ask questions to figure out what the customer cares about, and narrows their focus to those features. The novice salesperson believes the more features they present the more excited the customer becomes. This happens almost never. In another venture I’m involved with—a premium cannabis company—we aim for the top end of the market. We offer the most expensive product in the state, and yet we generate as much revenue as the cheapest one. Why? Because we’re clear on who we serve and unapologetic about it. And that brings us back to boldness—my favorite topic. It takes boldness not just to start a business, but also to resist distraction and say no to the shiny next thing. It’s not bold to believe you can do five things at once brilliantly. That’s hubris, not courage. And the difference between boldness and hubris is very often the difference between success and failure. There is abundance in the niches, and simplicity conquers complexity every time. THIS WEEK’S BOLDNESS EXERCISE: Turn down one opportunity without explaining why. Maybe it’s a meeting, a pitch, a dinner invite, or a webinar. Simply decline. Resist that urge to give a reason (especially a fictional one!) You’ll find yourself with more time and more energy to move forward on what really matters. Fight the FOMO. Protect your focus. Finally, don’t just be bold. Be superbold! —Fred
This week I want to give you one of the most impactful lessons I learned that requires my boldness whenever I apply it. It’s this: to never undervalue myself. I think it's very easy for any one of us in certain situations to feel we are not deserving enough. We also underestimate the value other people ascribe to us. We ask for less money, salary or equity or opportunity, maybe even love. And we don’t receive our full value. And that even affects what we believe our value is. Let me give you one example that was quite significant for me. I was offered a consulting opportunity by this university to prepare a very detailed business plan for a new project. I knew it would have been fairly easy for me to do, because it was exactly in my field of expertise and experience. That week I was talking to my coach, and I told him about the project, and that I was thinking about only charging $5,000 because it wasn't going to take me a lot of time. And his first question was, “Who else could do this for them?” And my answer was, “No one that I know of.” “So,” he said, “Why not ask for $10,000?” I thought about it seriously, in part because my coach was the one who had first told me I should never be undervaluing myself. (I love coaches. As painful as their feedback can be!)I tumbled around my pricing strategy in my head and decided and thI should probably ask for $20,000 for this project. This university wasn't broke, and I'm good at what I do. I have 30 years of experience in what they required. In the end, what I finally asked for was $25,000. And they didn't even blink. They accepted it without negotiation. In fact, three months after I completed the project, they came back with another project for another $25,000. Imagine if I had said $10,000. They certainly would have accepted it and definitely wouldn’t have offered more. And I probably would have been okay with it. And I would have been okay with it a second time, too. But I would have made $20,000 instead of $50,000. Big difference! That taught me how easy it was to undervalue myself, and how I had to never do it. I could have easily been overbidding that university job, and I might have had to reduce my offer. But then I would know that I reached the top value. Maybe I should have asked for $35,000 just to make sure! Let me ask you, where are you undervaluing yourself? Is it in deals? Opportunities? Investments? Relationships? Everywhere? The only way to know is to stretch yourself, push yourself, take the risk. In short, believe in yourself and project confidence in what you are worth. And many times people will just say, “Yes.”
It’s not a simple answer. There are several problems with how most dental implant marketing works. I’m sure many of you have experienced this and have spent tens and maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to find a sustainable solution, particularly in attracting full-arch cases. There are many factors along the way that shrink what’s called the Marketing Funnel. Simply put, that’s all the constraints that reduce the number of patient leads your advertising generates until you finally have a paying patient. I’m going to go through the key challenges, and then explain what could work and why. 1. The Practice Takes All the Risk With virtually all implant marketing programs, you pay, and they promise a certain result. Or worse, they don’t promise anything except to do their best to attract cases. But most of the time they are not getting you patients. They are getting you leads, which is to say, potential patients that you have to then sell your dentistry to. Leads can vary widely in quality. There are few terms more vague than “a qualified lead.” And by no means does that translate to accepted, financed cases. Some programs will even “guarantee” results or your money back. Read the fine print on these. This is where they narrowly define what is a successful result, and often it could be as worthless as an email address or a form that’s been filled out online. You have to do all the selling yourself. But they met their guarantee. Try and find any dentist who got his money back on one of these deals. I’ve never met one. The reason for that is it’s not a viable business model for a marketing agency. Too much is out of their control for them to guarantee anything close to a real patient who accepts treatment. There are many factors along the way that shrink what’s called the Marketing Funnel. Simply put, that’s all the constraints that reduce the number of patient leads your advertising generates until you finally have a paying patient. 2. Your Front Desk is the First point of Contact First of all, practices are only answering the phone, at the most, forty hours a week. Usually less. Second, that person is multitasking, and is often not trained to convert potential patients into appointments. Often the call goes to voicemail. Finally, if the contact is an email form, it could be hours before you get back to the patient. Days, even. Meanwhile, people are doing their research at all hours of the day, and if they don’t get a fairly immediate response, they keep looking. This means by the time you get back to them, they may have found another practice. The funnel shrinks. 3. Your Success Depends on Your Case Presentation Skills Advertising only begins the process. Your website might continue that process if it is extremely well done, but once you get the patient in the office, it’s up to you to convince the patient to accept treatment. If you’re great at case presentation you might convince 30% of patients to accept. And the bigger the case, the lower your percentage will be. For full mouth restorations, it’s not uncommon to have to present to as many as ten patients to get one or two to accept. And then they have to pay, which is the next problem. 4. Financing Approval Rates Have Plummeted FICO score requirements have gone up at the same time as many people’s scores have gone down. And the interest rates that are charged now send that monthly payment sky-high, beyond the reach of 90% of patients. And that’s not likely to change significantly in the coming years. This adds a complication, because you can’t start the presentation with, “So, how much extra money do you have?” or “How’s your credit?” Very often prejudging what people can afford is a mistake, and so you need to present to several patients to get an accepted case. And so the funnel tightens. 5. Marketing Agencies Can’t Track True Success The real success of advertising is if it attracts a sufficient patient number of patients who accept the treatment and can afford it. Agencies don’t have access to this information unless you give it to them, and very often they can’t trace it back to the exact media source. The ideal for agencies would be to know with a high degree of accuracy which messages, media channels and placement schedules are creating the most qualified patients. They cannot do this without having some access to your production or your PMS. So, they measure website traffic, clicks, and forms. And you look at your production and see if it went up. This is called hoping for the best. In the worst-case scenario, they attract no viable patients. In the second worst, they attract a lot of bodies but very few accept. This sucks up a significant amount of time for you and your team, starting at the front desk, for a low net result. But either way, you’re paying for the advertising. 6. Agencies Need Lots of Clients Virtually no agency can afford to give you exclusivity in your area. Most of them won’t even discuss the possibility. They’ll put five clients in the same zip code if they can, because that’s their business model. In most cities, if they did offer exclusivity, your media budget would have to be huge. Also, they make money by keeping a percentage of your media budget for themselves. This means typically only 80% of your budget is going to running ads. If they’re really good at what they do, they can justify the difference. But if they have multiple clients in your area, then results have to diminish. There are only so many potential patients in any given month. The fact is they’re put in a position where they are bidding on the same keywords for you as their other five clients. Or using the same message. Which leads to the next problem. 7. Nothing Makes You Unique You may have noticed that everyone is advertising essentially the same message to attract implant cases. It’s a free initial consultation and some kind of discount. What does make you unique is what your patients say about you online (as well as the patient experience in your office) but that assumes the advertising can get them to read those reviews. 8. You Can’t Do This Yourself Advertising is the fastest-moving target out there. Sometimes Instagram will change the algorithm in the middle of the month and your ad disappears. Also, Google keyword bidding requires almost daily attention, and effective SEO on your website is a constant challenge as well. People who do this for a living are challenged by it. How could you possibly do it yourself, or have a team member do it part-time? 9. You’re Not Doing the Math I often hear dentists say things like, “I make at least $10,000 in profit on a full mouth reconstruction.” I then ask them how much time they spend doing case presentations on patients that don’t accept, and how much they get paid for those. (They reluctantly say “Nothing.”) The fact is, every minute you don’t have an instrument in your hand you’re not making money. If you need to present ten full mouth cases to get one, you’ve got 10 to 12 hours that you worked for free for that $10,000 in profit. Suddenly that ROI is not so high, once you add in the monthly marketing spend. So, What Can You Do? Don’t get me wrong. It’s not the marketing agencies’ fault. Most of them are hardworking and reputable. But some of them don’t know what they’re doing, and there are a few that are totally disreputable. And others that are good at selling themselves but not so good at selling you. And no matter how good they are, they can only be so successful without end-to-end tracking of the results of their campaigns. However, you will need an agency of some kind. Choosing an agency is hard. Here’s one red flag: a two-year contract. It only takes 90 days to know if they’re successful, and if they are then they should be month-to-month thereafter. Find one that wants the production data from you, ideally digitally so they can perfect their strategy on an ongoing basis. And one that's completely transparent about what they're measuring. What exactly are they promising? How are they defining success? You don’t want a flood of patients contacting you that are the wrong fit for your practice. Your ROI depends not just on how many patients accept, but how many didn’t that you had to have an appointment with and present to. Once you choose an agency, here is what I recommend you do on your side: 1. Have realistic expectations. It’s competitive out there. 2. Have a robust, content-rich website. This is where a lot of decisions are made by the patient before they even come in. 3. Accumulate patient testimonial videos. This is the most versatile marketing tool there is, for both you and for your marketing agency. You don’t need a lot of them. You need good ones. Five or ten will make a huge difference. 4. Create a remarkable patient experience. Read my book Becoming Remarkable if you don’t know how to do that. 5. Give as much tracking information on production as possible to your agency. 6. Sharpen your presentation skills. 7. Do the math. 8. Have a coach like one from Fortune Management that can help you with all of this. Finally, there is only one company I know, Renew Corp. , that solves every step of the marketing funnel, but they have limited availability. But they’re the best marketing solution I’ve ever seen. If you’re lucky, they’re available in your area.
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