DMD Staff

If dentists want to succeed, they need to target millennial mothers with their marketing efforts. This demographic also has specific expectations pertaining to the services they are provided. Maria T. Bailey is a speaker, author and authority on the subject of marketing to mothers. In this clip, she explains what millennial mothers are expecting in terms of customer service.

Interview Transcript (Modified for Readability)

“There are several important elements and factors that go into a millennial mom’s decision, particularly when they are thinking about services to provide their family and for themselves. Number one, they’re time-crunched. It’s really important that any kind of service provider remembers that when they are booking appointments or making changes or cancellations that moms really want you to speak in their own language. That language for a millennial is digital. You want to have those digital conversations via text, email, and a strong online presence.

They’re also looking for relationships. They want relationships with those service-providers that they feel are authentic and empowering, and are mutually beneficial. If you treat a millennial mom well with that relationship, showing her loyalty and recognizing the fact that she is time-starved, and she is looking for solutions that are not particularly inexpensive or cheap, but that show good value and also give them the value of a relationship, they will demonstrate a lot of loyalty. They are motivated by a deep relationship with you and by the feeling that they’ve made a good decision in purchasing that service from you.”

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The Customer Service Millennial Moms Expect

Mark Kleive, DDS, discusses how he's seen photography lead to increased case acceptance.

How to Incorporate Digital Photography into Your Dental Practice

Mark Kleive, D.D.S., is a dentist in private practice, based in Black Mountain, North Carolina. He is also a proponent of incorporating digital photography in the dental practice as a means of increasing case acceptance. It’s one thing to tell a patient about the treatment they need, Kleive says, and quite another to show them. In this clip, Kleive discusses how he’s seen photography lead to increased case acceptance.

“What makes cameras so effective at increasing case acceptance is that patients, oftentimes, for the first time, have a new and heightened level of awareness of ‘This is what my current conditions actually look like,’ and they are way more likely, once they have awareness, to say, ‘Okay, so what do we do about this?’

The best way for dentists to incorporate a digital camera into their office system is to pick out the appropriate camera for their team and create a system in their office (like a new patient system) where they’re going to take, say, these same six photographs on new patients that come into the office. As soon as [the dental team] develops some skill at taking those six pictures and incorporating them, then they can bring them to other patients and other procedures in the office. But my [suggestion] is for [dentists] to consider taking six photographs on new patients, or half of the new patients to begin with, so that they can begin to incorporate that technology into their practice.”

Mark Kleive, D.D.S., is a dentist in private practice, based in Black Mountain, North Carolina. He is also a proponent of incorporating digital photography in the dental practice as a means of increasing case acceptance. It's one thing to tell a patient about the treatment they need, Kleive says, and quite another to show them. In this clip, Kleive discusses how he's seen photography lead to increased case acceptance.


Scott Parazynski, MD, describes what it's like to be on a spacewalk.

Here's What It's Like to Walk in Space

Many children dream of one day walking in space. Scott Parazynski, M.D., is one of the few who has had the privilege. As an accomplished adventurer, he’s also the only astronaut to have successfully summited Mount Everest. In this clip, Parazynski describes what it’s like to be on a spacewalk.

“Walking in space is really a misnomer. We’re actually crawling in space. We’re using a hand rail and pulling ourselves along or in basically a cherry picker — we’re on the end of a robotic arm, being moved around by someone inside. It’s really an extraordinary experience because you’re inside your own personal spaceship. You’re actually floating inside your spacesuit. It’s not like we’re wearing this thing and you feel the weight of it. You’re actually floating inside, bouncing around a little bit inside of the space suit. Everything that you need to sustain life is built around you. You have oxygen tanks in your backpack, CO2 removal, thermal control from the temperature extremes outside. You have lights on your helmet, TV cameras, tools that you need to conduct your tasks outside, are mounted in a tool kit right in front of yourself. Really, just an extraordinary amount of technology built around the astronaut to do this.

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Then, you realize that every moment out there is precious. You have a very tight timeline of activities that need to get done. But every once in a while, you look up from your tunnel vision of the job that you have, and you realize, there are the Himalayas, or the Great Barrier Reef. It’s an extraordinary office to be in.”

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Many children dream of one day walking in space. Scott Parazynski, M.D., is one of the few who has had the privilege. As an accomplished adventurer, he's also the only astronaut to have also successfully summited Mount Everest. In this clip, Parazynski describes what it's like to be on a spacewalk.

The OrthoForm 3D printer from Structo. The manufacturer has inked a U.S. distribution deal with 4Qube Solutions.

, the CAD/CAM distributor, has announced a new partnership with the 3D printer manufacturer 

The deal was announced at the end of April in a news release from the distributor, saying that working with Structo will better position the Singapore-based printer manufacturer to reach the U.S. market. Structo offers an 

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MSLA, or Mask Stereolithography, allows for faster printing speeds that don’t come at the cost of quality, Structo’s website says.

4Qube Solutions touts the new partnership as a way to improve response times and boost the customer service experience.

In 4Qube’s news release, Dhruv Sahgal, Structo’s head of business development and sales, had this to say:

“The U.S. market is extremely important for us and we need to invest in the right partners and the right people in order to provide the highest quality of support. Alongside 4Qube, we are investing in a facility in Los Angeles where we can continue our R&D efforts and stay close to our partners and customers.”

4Qube sees the partnership as an opportunity to expand Structo’s reach.

Travis Harrison, 4Qube’s president of business development, had this to say about the distribution deal:

“The addition of Structo’s products to our portfolio shows our strong commitment to the market by offering quality partnered solutions embedded with the latest technology all dedicated to the advancement of digital dentistry.”

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Structo, the Singapore-based 3D printer manufacture, has a new U.S. distribution partner. 4Qube Solutions recently announced that it will be carrying Structo's MSLA-equipped OrthoForm printer. Structo says this new technology allows for faster prints that don't come at the expense of accuracy.

4Qube Solutions Partners with Structo to Boost 3D Printer Distribution

According to Gary Zelesky, a speaker who often discusses the power of passion, dentists need to be more open to change in their personal and professional lives. On the professional front, this means allowing their team members to express their passions. In this clip, Zelesky describes the steps one orthodontist took to show appreciation for his hard-working team.

“When I talk about dentists being open to change, there’s two basic changes that I think a dentist needs to think about: his professional life, obviously, and his personal life. I think that when it comes to the dental practice, I think a dentist needs to be open to allow his team to express the passions within their own lives, no matter where it is or how it happens.

I’ll give you one quick example. I was speaking with a team. I do passion makeovers with teams. Afterward, this dentist decided he was going to find everybody’s favorite album. He was an orthodontist with over 30 team members. He went and he looked for everybody’s favorite album. He went online and found out that he could get everybody’s favorite album in a nice frame with their name on it. So he found out everybody’s favorite album, and remember, there’s only one way he could figure out everybody’s favorite album. He had to go to every team member and — guess what – ask them. Even that was revolutionary. So, he got everybody’s favorite album, and over the weekend, he brought an army of people in, and an entire wall was changed in his practice, called the Wall of Fame. They had to take down the pictures – all the before and afters – (

 pictures and they put up this wall of fame. When the team came in the next day, they saw this, and some of them actually began to weep because nobody had ever recognized them at that level.

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What we do many times when it comes to recognizing people in the office, we say, ‘Here’s your little plaque of the month. Here’s your plaque for being employee of the month,’ and it’s like everybody else’s plaque. I was in one office, the way they rewarded the employees, they gave them a parking spot closer to the office. Oh, that’s what everybody wants.

The changes need to be enormous. They need to get more personal. And let me say this in balance. It’s not a matter of being like, ‘I’m a friend. We are family. The dental practice, we are all a family.’ Here’s the issue, you’re not a family because you’re a boss. And some dentists get so friendly that sometimes the team doesn’t know when the friendship is over.”

Look for Meaningful Ways to Reward Your Dental Team

It can be hard for a dentist to hear, but they need to receive criticism from their teams. This is how they grow to become better practice leaders. In this clip, Robert M. Pick, D.D.S., M.S. and principal of Progressive Periodontics & Implants, explains how he takes the weaknesses his team identifies and turns them into strengths.

“I call it the PBR, for Pick Business Retreat. It comes from a lot of things put together. In big business — Fortune 100, Fortune 500 Companies – at their biannual retreats, they do something called Business SWOT, which stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. After about a year or so, you get comfortable, and the team should do a personal SWOT on you – your Strengths, your Weaknesses, your Opportunities, your Threats. It can be very difficult to hear because you don’t want to hear negatives. I personally carry my weaknesses with me from every retreat. I look at them every morning so that I can make my weaknesses strengths.”

Why Your Dental Practice Needs a Unique Selling Proposition

“Unique Selling Proposition is a great word. And my suspicion is, USP is something that most physicians, dentists, chiropractors don’t know what the word is. It comes as part of branding, and again, something you come up with at a business retreat. Especially early on, you develop your brand. What do you do better than any other practice? So the USP stands for either Unique Selling Proposition or Unique Selling Point. The USP, oftentimes when there’s a dental entrepreneur, is the dentist. What does that dentist do? He’s the USP. But there’s micro USPs. Your team can be a unique selling proposition. So the USP is key, critical, you’ve got to figure it out when you develop your brand.”

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Dentists need a first line of defense against identity theft in their practices. For many of them, according to Pat Little, D.D.S., that should be a reputable IT provider. Little is the CEO and Founder of Dental Risk Concepts and 

, two organizations dedicated to keeping dental patient data secure and stopping embezzlement in dental practices. In this clip, Little explains why you need to contract with a reputable IT company to manage your dental practice.

“In my opinion, one of the best things a dentist can do right off the bat is be willing to team up with a reputable IT company. Unless the dentist is an expert in computers — and most dentists aren’t. We go to dental school to learn to be dentists. It’s going to be very difficult to maintain proper computer security without an expert.

I would absolutely advise against letting someone on the team be the IT tech, or have a team member’s spouse or a child handle it. If you ever have a disgruntled employee that leaves and they have any kind of contact with that computer system, they could have the ability to breach the data, once they leave.

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Even though it might cost a little bit of money, I would sign a monthly contract with an IT company. Make sure they are willing to sign an associate agreement for HIPAA to help protect the doctor from HIPAA as well as from identity theft. And while there’s no guarantees, I would start with an IT tech because they are worth their weight in gold.”

Dentists need a first line of defense against identity theft in their practices. For many of them, according to Pat Little, D.D.S., that should be a reputable IT provider. Little is the CEO and Founder of Dental Risk Concepts and Prosperident, two organizations dedicated to keeping dental patient data secure and stopping embezzlement in dental practices. In this clip, Little explains why you need to contract with a reputable IT company to manage your dental practice. 


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The field of orthodontics is changing, but what force is behind that change? And what are the prevailing trends that will matter over the years to come? These questions were on the mind of orthodontists who attended the AAO 2017 Annual Session in San Diego. Chris Bentson, a partner at Bentson Copple & Associates, an orthodontic consulting firm, offers his insights in this clip.

“The biggest force changing the shape of orthodontics, in my opinion, would be the consolidation that’s happening not only across the specialty but also dentistry in the main, which really means we’re having groups come in that can manage, hire, establish employee relationships with doctors, market to the community, provide back-end office services and let the doctors do what they know how to do — and that’s diagnose and treat cases.

This started in dentistry at an accelerated pace. It’s ahead of the specialty right now. There’s a lot of noise around consolidation, and I think as we go forward over the next five to ten years we’ll see up to half or more of orthodontists in the country being employee doctors.

I’m agnostic as to whether consolidation is good or bad. It just is. And there’s no stopping it. There’s been some movements in dentistry or the specialty of orthodontics in practice modality ways that have come and gone. I don’t believe this is going to go away. I think it’s a business reality that we need to embrace. It expands opportunity for the consumer, I think. It therefore will grow the orthodontic market. And it gives millennial doctors who really want this employment relationship a great opportunity, as well as older doctors who want to stop fighting for the phone to ring to sell to a DSO, but continue to work for them.

It’s not good or bad. It just is. And it expands the opportunities for consumers and doctors.”

What's Driving Change in Orthodontics

For dentists — especially orthodontists – millennial mothers represent a key demographic. These are your patients of the future, and more important, they are in many instances the financial decision makers in households. 

 is a speaker, author, and authority on the subject of marketing to mothers. In this clip, she explains why focusing on the millennial demographic is so critical.

“It’s very critical for orthodontists today to focus on the millennial mom. They represent $750 million in spending each year in the United States. The good news is, you’re not behind the curve if you’re just now starting to market to those millennial moms because only a third of all millennial women have had children. You’re not too late to start.

It’s really important because these are going to be your patients of the future and your prospective clients of the future. If you think about it, the oldest millennial mom is about 35 to 38 years old. You have many, many years of marketing to that millennial mom. So, it’s very important to tap into that.

The other thing is that those millennial moms are not only buying services for their children, but they’re buying them for their spouse, themselves and their aging parents.”

For dentists, especially orthodontists, millennial mothers represent a key demographic. These are your patients of the future, and more important, they are in many instances the financial decision-makers in households. Maria T. Bailey is a speaker, author, and authority on the subject of marketing to mothers. In this clip, she explains why focusing on the millennial demographic is so critical.

Why You Should Market to Millennial Moms

Scott Parazynski, M.D., is the only astronaut to have also summited Mt. Everest. Because of his experiences in space and on earth, he knows a few things about managing risk. In this clip, Parazynski describes one of the most challenging scenarios he found himself in on a spacewalk: repairing a damaged solar panel.

“The most challenging scenario I found myself in in space was during my last mission: 

 when we were faced with a solar panel that had become snagged. It had become ripped in a couple of places. It was a critical situation because we were not able to fully extend it and rigidize it, or retract it back into its box. We basically had a limp noodle that had to be addressed either by fixing it or throwing away a billion-dollar national asset, which the taxpayer wouldn’t have liked.

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Thankfully, the brilliant NASA team worked around the clock for 72 hours and came up with an amazing plan to send space walkers out. I was the lead space walker with Doug Wheelock, who was my partner. Our crew inside the space shuttle, and space station, and mission control working in concert to repair this live solar panel. It was really one of NASA’s finest hours. Coming up with a plan to get us out to the very tip of the space station, further than we’ve ever gone before and affect surgery, basically, on a live solar panel. We were able to come up with a solution by working collaboratively. No one person took the glory. It was certainly an incredible team accomplishment.”

Scott Parazynski, M.D., is the only astronaut to have also summited Mt. Everest. Because of his experiences in space and on earth, he knows a few things about managing risk. In this clip, Parazynski describes one of the most challenging scenarios he found himself in on a spacewalk: repairing a damaged solar panel. 