Having an orthodontic practice is something orthodontists spend the majority of their careers building from the moment they graduate. They typically hit the ground running to acquire patients, vet, hire, and train their personnel, and invest in their medical practice. Of course, after a while, it’s time to place your orthodontic practice for sale.
Selling a medical practice is not the same as selling a house. There are a lot of moving parts to this cogwheel and if you miss out on detail, it could end up being quite expensive.
Plan Ahead—Way Ahead
The smartest thing to do is to begin planning to place your orthodontic office for sale as soon as you begin thinking about retirement. When you begin to feel as if you are mentally checking out, it’s time to start planning to sell your dental practice. It’s best to plan at least five years out.
Orthodontic Office for Sale: The Countdown
Five years before you place your “Orthodontic Office for Sale” Ad:
You want to streamline all of your major practice systems (scheduling, marketing, financial management, financing, customer service, case presentation), invest in your staff, and in basic technologies that will help improve your practice. By maintaining a well-trained staff and employing efficient systems, your practice becomes more attractive to buyers with the possibility of increasing the offers made.
Four years before you place your practice for sale:
Make sure your practice is either maintaining or increasing your patient base while maintaining a high level of fee collection. Too often during practice transitions, the practice owner will lose focus, leading to losing patience and/or not pursuing the collection of fees. Losing focus and, therefore, losing patients and money can lead to a decrease in sale value.
Three years before placing your practice for sale:
It’s time to update your interior décor. Of course, you want potential buyers to see that you’ve taken great care of your practice. But you also don’t want potential buyers to think you upgraded the practice at the last minute just for the sale of the practice.
Two years before placing your practice for sale:
It’s time to research and find practice transition specialists. Invest in a preliminary evaluation and understanding of the dental transition process. Also, make sure that the specialist you hire is an expert in dental transitions and not another industry.
One year before selling your dental practice:
By this time, your valuation should be completed. You will then need to craft a well thought out plan to begin the process of placing your practice for sale about 12 months before the desired date of sale.
Do Not Let Your Practice Value Decline
The worst thing you can do is let your practice’s value decline due to lack of focus. It’s easy to become burned out from the constant work that you’ve been doing to build your career since graduating. When practitioners become burned out, they may avoid training their staff, organizing systems, investing in updating technologies, and updating office décor. This leads to a decline in the value of your practice and could turn into a very costly problem to fix.
Don’t let this happen. As soon as you feel that lack of focus, be smart and begin planning your retirement. If you follow these steps, you’ll maximize the value of your practice, making your dental transition a bit smoother.
