Vol. 11 – Number 43 – 2020
MARKETING COLUMN
Page 6
Difficult times
Prof. Dr. Sandro Henrique Batista Santos
[email protected]
– Specialist in Orthodontics – Uningá/PR;
– Master in Dentistry / Orthodontics – Uningá/PR;
– PhD in Dentistry / Dental Materials – UFPel/RS;
– Specialization Coordinator Orthodontics – BIONEP/PR;
– Professor of Orthodontics – UNIPAR/PR and BIONEP/PR;
– Ideal Clinical Dental Manager Pelotas/RS;
– Minister Orthodontics and Business Management in Dentistry;
– 15 years of experience in Dentistry.
Hello friends,
As you all know, we are going through an extremely complicated time due to the pandemic, resulting in a drastic manner in the most diverse sectors and unfortunately bringing as a result a widespread crisis in the economy, politics and, in my opinion, even human.
I believe that at critical moments, what we must do is try to concentrate as much as possible on finding solutions, within our reality and routine, we are forced to adapt to this reality that we are living.
As soon as the situation became worrisome, the government’s measure was to decree a quarantine and social isolation of most of the population, this directly affected the dental offices, unable to attend and produce, and the drop in revenues was drastic. Perhaps this was the first lesson, the importance of financial planning and a reserve, at the very least I advise to allocate money for the working capital and financial maintenance of the office for a period of 90 days.
After the quarantine period, the return to the clinic, besides being gradual, must follow several cares, such as a minimum spacing of time between one patient and another, greater care in the cleaning of the environment, greater care with the use of IPE’s, among others. This change also brought to some professionals a increase in costs and decrease in capacity of care per number of patients. However, we could optimize the time attending the same patient and performing a larger number of procedures per consultation.
Also very quickly, we observed a direct impact on the increase of various inputs that were already routinely used, but at this time of trying to control the advancement of the new coronavirus, there was an exaggerated increase in demand, lack of products and consequent reflection on prices. In this case, we can think of a stock control, mainly evaluating the validity of some products and in some cases unfortunately this increase must be passed on to the consumer, or their profit margin will automatically decrease.
And our patients, what reflexes of such situation? In times of crisis, even people who are in a slightly better financial condition tend to spend less, think more before making a purchase, focus only on what is necessary, leaving aside what they can expect. Therefore, be careful about the kind of disclosure you have been making during this period, while you should remain visible to your patients, avoid passing on an image that the situation is totally under control and that nobody should worry.
Another situation resulting from these measures of partial social isolation of the population is related to our time, not least because many people who convert routinely repeat that there is lack of time to do some activity that they would like, among them, to study more. So, if by any chance this was an excuse, in this period there was time left.
In our area we ended up without universities, postgraduate courses and congresses in a face-to-face way, but also a visible adaptation was the increase of quality information in digital platforms. This, in turn, was already a change that was taking place, now necessarily accelerated in this adaptation process.
Finally, everyone knows the following sentence: “difficult times demand drastic attitudes”. But I also took advantage of this period of quarantine to reflect, and I think we can think that difficult times require calm, reflection, planning, and adaptation.
Stay with God, and let’s hope this situation passes as soon as possible.
A big hug to everyone.
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