Improve your telephone skills ASAP! The telephone is your lifeline to the outside world and certainly to new patients. Whenever a new patient calls, you want to treat them in a very systemized rigorous manner to communicate value, branding, and service. Write two or three sentences that will be used as a script with every new patient to create a sense of value for the practice. For example, an effective script could state the following: “Mrs. Jones, I am delighted that you called us. Our 35-year-old practice is committed to providing leading-edge dentistry with the goal of helping all of our patients keep their teeth healthy for a lifetime.” You may think that you’re already doing this, but we find in thousands of practices that as the day gets busy, the conversations become faster and less personalized and build less value.