I am hearing a ton of buzz about the announcement of the Sirona/Dentsply merger yesterday. People are wondering what does the Sirona and Dentsply Merger mean for Dentistry? How will it impact things, your practice, your team? There is a lot of fear about it.
Ironically, yesterday I was coaching a prominent distributor representative about game changers. What I mean by this is, look back at Blockbuster and Netflix. In 1998 Blockbuster was a $3.9B in revenue and Netflix was brand new. In 1999 Netflix has their first sale. In 2000 Blockbuster declined to purchase Netflix for $50M. In 2007 Netflix had their 1 billionth rental and the then new CEO of Blockbuster was quoted as saying, ““I’ve been frankly confused by the fascination that everybody has with Netflix.... Netflix doesn’t really have or do anything we can’t or don’t already do ourselves.” I think we all know how this story ends!
So what lessons can you learn as a solo practitioner from Blockbuster or Sirona or Corp Dental chains? It is all about game changers. Netflix was a game changer to the movie rental business. How can you be a game changer to your dental business?
I think the answer is, strategic partnerships! Look at Sirona and Dentsply, they are forming a partnership that will allow them to do far more with less effort. If I were the owner of a dental office, I would be seeking the strongest partners to help me achieve my goals. For some reason, some doctors want to spread all their relationships out for diversification. I would suggest that exact opposite. With deeper relationships, you have more leverage and I think the key to success is more influence. This is why some doctors think they can’t compete with Corp dental offices, because they have more clout and pull for better deals. Then this same doctor spreads their business out and wonders why none of their partners will help them out.
Go deep with your partners, share with them, ask them for help! If you more effectively utilize these partnerships, you will see stronger benefit.
Please comment below on how you think this partnership will impact Dentistry.