Some Permission Marketing Tactics

[DentinBond]

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This thread is for D3's, D4's, residents and practicing dentists. We all need to perform as much necessary dentistry as we can; whether the goal is to succeed in business or to graduate, it's essentially the same challenge.

This is a long, detailed post, yes- but if you can pay attention to things like Immunology, this will be a day at the beach.

I am also highly concerned, from talking to residents that I teach as well as from posts here, that recent grads get as much assistance as they can to start being successful and handling those loans (mine were bloody awful!), without compromising any of their principles or throwing away their autonomy and self-determination and going corporate.

I want to define the word "marketing" a bit differently than you may be used to. Marketing is not advertising. Advertising is a subset of marketing, and a subset that in fact is becoming less useful all the time. Advertising is based on interruption, hence the term "Interruption Advertising". You're doing something that you really enjoy, like watching the big game, and someone comes along and interrupts you with a commercial. This is constant in our world now. The thing is, as Seth Godin has pointed out, consumers now are so flooded with information, so busy, so distracted, and so self-involved, that we've gotten quite good at ignoring Interruption Advertising. You ignore it, don't you? So, marketers yell at us louder and in more places than they ever have before, and we ignore them more assiduously than ever before, and so they yell even louder and move their video ads onto gas pumps for heaven's sakes, etc. etc.

More here:

www.sethgodin.typepad.com and in his books The Purple Cow and Linchpin, among others.

So. "Permission Marketing" is something different. From Seth's blog, Jan 31, 2008:

Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them.
It recognizes the new power of the best consumers to ignore marketing. It realizes that treating people with respect is the best way to earn their attention.
Pay attention is a key phrase here, because permission marketers understand that when someone chooses to pay attention they are actually paying you with something precious. And there's no way you can get their attention back if they change their mind. Attention becomes an important asset, something to be valued, not wasted.
Real permission is different from presumed or legalistic permission. Just because you somehow get my email address doesn't mean you have permission. Just because I don't complain doesn't mean you have permission. Just because it's in the fine print of your privacy policy doesn't mean it's permission either.
Real permission works like this: if you stop showing up, people complain, they ask where you went.

Me again. Anticipated, Personal, and Relevant. Respectful of one's Attention. This has become my mantra.

Permission Marketing works on two levels. It works on the level of the entire practice as a meme to be talked about through natural human communication channels in your local social system. Permission Marketing also works on the level of individual treatment plans! This is where it remains relevant to dental students and residents. When you present a treatment plan, you are marketing that treatment plan, ideally with as much Permission as possible, gained through establishing rapport and trust with your patient.

Thus, dental students, please modify the strategies below to reflect the differences in your academic environment- no staff, working with faculty, etc. It still will be highly useful. Try to go back in your mind to the time before you knew anything about dentistry, put yourself in the shoes of your patients, and you will see why.

Back to private practice. I'm not saying never advertise again. But I would like to say: put more faith in yourself and your team than in anything external. I'd like to review two specific strategies here that can transform your experience as a student or in your practice, whether you are an employee or an owner. (As an employee, your main issue when you adapt these ideas is going to be not raising the value of the practice too much before you buy in!)

Final note: Permission Marketing actually makes the assumption of the highest level of ethics, which includes perfect clarity on what is medically necessary (yes we can debate what that means) versus what is elective and, in many cases, cosmetic. For example, if you try to plaster costly veneers on everyone who has intact, beautiful, and orthodontically aligned teeth just to make them lighter, Permission Marketing is not for you. You can try to Interruption Advertise your way to that outcome, and even then you're not going to have the success that aggressive dentists had with this in the 80's and 90's. Consumers- thankfully- are getting too smart for that.

So I'm assuming here that we're basing everything on sound biological principles and high ethical standards, for both "necessary" and elective dentistry.

OK then here we go:

As you start to grow your practice, forget what Interruption Advertising and major corporations have brainwashed you in about marketing and business growth and instead make these two things your mission in dentistry:

(1)- Delight people.

(2)- Solve people's (interesting) problems for them.

A deep treatment of these concepts is to be found in Seth Godin's excellent book Linchpin.

(1) Means provide an experience that delights patients, brightens their day, brings them joy in a time and place where they don't expect it- like in a dental visit. It's actually easy for us because so many doctors and The Health Care System, and some dentists, train patients to expect very poor service.

(2) Means, beyond the medically necessary, like treating caries, endo, or perio- to ask patients what they want, esthetically, and then listen carefully to the answers they give. Then, within what is medically proper and biologically sound, provide them with treatment that addresses their concerns.

All theoretical, so far. Here are two specific tactics to start:

One- never hand a patient a clipboard (or allow staff to) esp new patients. Rather, have staff (or you, if necessary) personally interview new patients and, really, patients that you as the new doctor are meeting for the first time, esp if their medical history needs reviewing. This is 'eye-to-eye, knee-to-knee', visceral and personal. It establishes key rapport. It is especially beneficial if there is a significant cost to treatment and the staff and patient enter rapport. When it comes time to talk finances, the conversation is 'let's find the money' not 'you owe us this'.

Also NEVER give fees in expensive costly cases on the first visit. Not for a new patient and not for the first time you meet an existing patient with high needs. I define this as more than two or three composite resin restorations. Rather, study your X-rays and photos later, make an ideal treatment plan, have your staff calculate insurance benefits (use the "B" word!), patient fees, etc., and then have your consult where you present everything calmly and thoroughly. You can of course deal with acute pain before this step.

Two- take two digital camera (not intraoral) photos with cheek retractors on every patient, recall and new. One of the facial view, occluded, and one occlusal of the mandible. You can take occlusal of maxilla too, but at least those two.

You can alternatively take shots of the lower 1/3 of the face. This avoids distractions like hairstyles, glasses, and makeup, but gains the best emotional reaction to the human smile. We use the closer shots because we want details. Patients rarely say 'eeew'! Feel free to experiment between the two systems though.

What do we do with these photos? We show them to our patient. Bigger is better. A large monitor in front of your patient is best. We put them right into Dentrix.

If your practice (or school) doesn't have all this tech right away, here's an alternative: place the photos immediately into your laptop. Show them with your laptop or, better, send them to an iPad. This is easier for patients to handle, still has a high tech 'wow' factor, and will do just fine. And all the communication cues are there- visual from the photo, auditory from what you're saying, tactile if they hold the device.

These photos then have two functions.

1- to show (patients don't understand X-rays; I use them, but sparingly) patients any of the visible medically necessary treatments that you propose. Caries, broken teeth, etc. This visual info helps immeasurably in treatment acceptance.
2- to ask the question: 'Are you dissatisfied with your teeth or their appearance?'
Credit to Dr. Dick Barnes for this phraseology!! 'dissatisfied' is better than 'satisfied' because it gets them used to saying 'yes' not 'no'.

You can actually ask this question in many ways- I vary it a lot to suit different patients- but the point is to provide appropriate and ethical esthetic treatment by asking your patients what they want. Not the absurd statements like 'You need veneers' that we hear so much about these days.

Do these two things, plus set up consult appointments for complex costly treatments, and you won't believe your success- and referrals.

Busy, distracted, self-involved modern consumers don't want to hear about YOU, no matter how cool you are- they want to be delighted, and they want to have their problems solved. They crave two things that the businesses they often encounter rarely provide: they crave Certainty, and they crave simple, basic human Connection. They desire Certainty from you, which is very powerful because we live in a world that is full of Uncertain business experiences, and because medical treatment is the very most personal of business experiences. They want Connection, also so powerful because so many corporate experiences treat human beings as interchangeable, temporary, and disposable. As a means to an end. Well, no one actually wants to be called a number! Get to know your patients, really know them. They can't resist it.

Provide all of that, and you will be successful.

 

[lemoncurry]

excellent post, thanks for sharing! lots of good nuggets of wisdom in there. I especially like the idea of interviewing new patients instead of handing them a clipboard. I'm envisioning a near future when an iPad will replace the clipboard entirely, including the signature part.

 

[New2Philly]

Excellent post. Thank you for sharing. It is true, people want a relationship, and their problems addressed. It people don't feel these needs meet, they will question your intentions, and the genuineness of your professional opinion.

 

[flapaTron]

excellent post, thanks for sharing! lots of good nuggets of wisdom in there. I especially like the idea of interviewing new patients instead of handing them a clipboard. I'm envisioning a near future when an iPad will replace the clipboard entirely, including the signature part.

this would be great, but imagine all of the HIPAA headaches it would take to get to this point.

great post btw.

 

[DentinBond]

this would be great, but imagine all of the HIPAA headaches it would take to get to this point.

great post btw.

Thanks, all 3 of y'all! Actually as I understand HIPAA one of the goals was to make medical records exist more in the electonic realm than the paper one. The intent of the admittedly addled framers of the law was to make the transmission of records among providers and (gack!) insurance companies easier, with less friction. Faster, as if the federal govt actually understood that word. Also encryption technology might be so good as to make e-records more secure than paper ones.

Some of my own medical doctors use iPads to do a lot of things, one of the coolest of which was emailing prescriptions right to my pharmacy. There are also iPad apps as well as dedicated hardware/software devices that handle patient sign-in and such. It seems that the software designer is the one with the obligation to comply with HIPAA, as part of their design. Companies like Dentrix and Softdent definitely make their products compliant; not sure about every app that comes down the pike. Uh, ether.

If anyone knows how to check and protect ourselves, I'm sure we'd all love to hear about it!

 

[noles]

Good stuff. I enjoy reading all your posts. Keep it up, thanks!!

 

[DentinBond]

The redoubtable Joel D Canfield and I are writing a book together called "Hits or Niches: Why Marketing is Boring, Obnoxious, & Annoying, & What You Can Do About It". Here is an excerpt. I wanted to post it after reading some threads here where we see a sense that corporate dentistry is a major threat to the freedom of private practice.

It is not. Here's part of the reason why:

The "race to the bottom" was first defined by Bertrand back in the 1800s. If a company starts lowering its price to gain market share, their competitors tend to start doing the same thing. Each tries to undercut all the others until the price of the product or service in question is just above the cost of production. They've all raced to the bottom. That attracts the buyers looking for something at the lowest price, which we all do from time to time obviously. That's where Walmart excels; they offer things at the lowest possible price. They can beat the competition in that regard because of their size, buying in bulk, etc.

As Seth Godin says, the day of making more and more average products and services for more and more average people has run its course. It's not the center of our economy anymore, apparently. So what I want to say about the Tyranny of the Hit as it relates to all this is that in the hit-based world you're trying to sell the most people on your product or service and by its nature it has to become average after a time. There are very rare exceptions - like an incredible movie or something that's a work of art and popular with many, many people.

But for the most part if you're trying to sell to everybody, you've got to become more average to do so. And you're getting caught up in the race to the bottom to do that. Becoming average is strongly linked to racing to the bottom, because commodities are what tend to marginal cost pricing, or bottom-racing, and becoming average is becoming a commodity. It's essentially the same thing. Further, it's a matter of vulnerability. Commodities are vulnerable to bottom-racing; average is vulnerable to bottom-racing. If you're an indispensible Linchpin to your customers, if you are constantly delighting them and solving problems for them, you are invincible when it comes to a race to the bottom. Your competitors cannot force you down.

So when somebody looks around and sees all the hits in our culture and thinks, "I've got to create a hit, or I'm a failure!", however subconsciously they think that, then they've got caught up in what I call The Tyranny of the Hit. They don't realize consciously that they're caught in a trap of their own making where it's either "hit" or "failure". No room for "successful niche"! And, in the process, they may be forced to race to the bottom because they chose to make something average, so that it stands the chance of appealing to the maximum number of people, rather than something unique, that may not appeal to everyone- but that very well might appeal incredibly strongly to a highly appreciative few.

Racing to the top thus frees us from The Tyranny of the Hit. In the race to the top you've done something interesting and unique. You've solved someone's problem, or brought them joy where they least expected it, or, perhaps, both. You're not trying to sell to everybody and become a hit. So you're freed from that oppressive feeling of having to be a hit. You can, finally, revel in your amazing niche and simply be happy about it.

 

[HupHolland]

Thanks again for a terrific post Dentinbond.

I went to Pankey Essentials 1 course 2 weeks after graduating dental school which preached a lot of the same principles you introduced in your post. I'm an AEGD resident and I've been slowly incorporating this type of patient interaction and it's great!

Each of my patients comments about how "no dentist has ever done that before (after a H&N/oral cancer/TMJ exam)", "I learned more about my mouth today than I have my entire life" and "whatever you say doc, I trust you 100%." Even my assistant has commented about how patients that used to be bitter and frequently no show are always coming in and actually pleasant!

Taking the extra time to get to actually KNOW YOUR PATIENTS is the best way to a less stressful, more fulfilling (emotionally and financially) career as a dentist. Before I even touch a patient, I ask them about their fears and concerns and always always always ask if there is anything they would like to know about me before we get started. The patient's jaw drops. Always.

Further proof that the patient care methodology outlined by you above works!

Keep postin...

Hup

 

[DentinBond]

Here is a surprising assertion: D3's and D4's face the same need to grow their "practice" as dentists out in private practice do. Think about it- this is a big country and its dental schools are located in places with widely varying economic situations, but this economy has definitely had an impact on busyness for students and levels of patients seeking care in the academic environment. On the one hand, patients who have suffered an economic loss may be inclined to leave a private practice and seek care at a dental school in order to pay reduced fees. This is of course beneficial to students.

On the other hand, many people, when faced with extreme financial pressures, will put off dental treatment entirely until they experience pain, either physical or esthetic. (It's hard to knock one out of the ballpark in that job interview when your #9 has snapped off at the gumline three days before.)

http://rickwilsondmd.typepad.com/ri...onomics-101-from-the-patients-standpoint.html

How then to ensure that you have enough patients to complete the requirements for graduation? I know that there are many systems of requirements and each school has its own methods of assigning patients and such. What we want to minimize is "horse trading" patients back and forth. My alma mater seems to be particularly poor at this- their system is Byzantine and complex and leads to commoditizing patients. This is, in 2011, the absolute worst thing that a business of any kind can do, see my initial post above. When I've visited clinical faculty that I know in my alma mater, I've actually never heard a student refer to their patient by name. It's always by procedure- "my crown, my endo, my RPD." This is not the way to train a dentist!

So I'd like to start some suggestions on how dental students can ensure a full caseload by generating referrals from the patients that they've got, rather than depending on their school admin to supply them and rather than trading patients and procedures like baseball cards.

We live in a world where many businesses treat their customers anonymously, like a commodity, like a number. It's to the point where swimming against that trend feels unnatural to many. If you question that assertion, just call up some major corporation- heck, just call up a dental manufacturer- and experience The Glory of the Automated Phone Tree. And of course there are thousands of other examples.

What I see in practice, with some exceptions, is like this:

Cash outlay for Interruption Advertising = Failure.
Emotional Labor spent to create systems that delight people and/or solve their problems = Success.

Emotional Labor is scarce simply because it requires a degree of bravery to stand up and say, "This is who I am, and this is what I believe in, and this is how I plan to help you."

Now let's get down to the essential point of this post: what can D3's and D4's so with emotional labor to gain both new patient referrals and treatment acceptance among their patients?

I don't want to draw the entire map for y'all, I'd like to see some suggestions from students and practicing dentists. Here are some to start though:

-Dental patients often spend a lot of time waiting. Give them something to do! This is perhaps the biggest one of all. (Ever been to Disney World or Disney Land? They've made waiting in line not feel like waiting in line, haven't they?) For instance, though I personally find newspapers to be 19th Century relics, and a waste of perfectly good trees in a world of online electronic delivery, you can get the morning paper and have it for your patients to read that day. If your patient likes Sodoku puzzles or crosswords, have a book of ‘em handy. Sharing something as expensive as your iPad, should you have one, is a more difficult decision but if you're comfortable with certain patients, the apps are endless. In any event, changing your patients' perceptions of time spent waiting is a strong way to gain vital Permission to ask for referrals. You would say, after a hard day's obturating, "I know, Mrs. Hertwig, that dental schools involve a sort of tradeoff between less cost than private practice versus more time spent to complete treatment. But, as you can see, I work hard to make the experience as pleasurable and relaxed for you as possible. I'd love to help some of your friends and family as well!" Say it in your own words, of course- but you have to ask.

-I still make post-op calls to patients after complex procedures. This is excellent, and besides showing concern over post-op pain it gives you a chance to ask a similar question about referring. Not, I'd suggest, during the post-op call, but the next time you see the patient in person.

-I write my blog mostly for the purpose of emailing patients my links to posts about the questions they've asked, the procedures they're having done, and to explain aspects of dentistry that often never get understood adequately. I know that many of you are uncomfortable writing in public, so to speak. People who think nothing of jumping out of an airplane with nothing between them and a sudden and violent death but some string and a piece of silk are often terrified of saying anything in writing that could be criticized, laughed at, or challenged by the legal department.

Oh, just do it.

Explain. Teach. Enlighten. Enthrall. Email your patients and get in the habit of communicating with them about their problems- not yours! (By that I mean don't approach it directly in terms of "I need this to finish my requirements". They will be able to tell.) In private practice, every blog I've ever seen started tries to sell things; dentists think of them as 80's-era advertising vehicles that have the amazing benefit of being free, or nearly so. That, my friends, is a terrible mistake. These things cause me actual physical pain when I try to read them.

Rather: Inform. Solve someone's problem for them, or answer their question. And then simply let them know that you are eager to solve similar problems for their friends and family.

Here's a primer btw on Permission Marketing for those who need it:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/01/permission-mark.html

D3's and D4's can be busy and can graduate on time, you just have to take the initiative.

More thoughts on these tactics will help everyone, so chime in. Go ahead. Write in public!

 

[DentinBond]

Well, I guess all the D3's and D4's out there are gobsmacking busy and are heading towards graduation just fine, with no busyness issues.

So let's turn our attention back to dental practice. If anyone is thinking of taking a corporate job, please read this first:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/09/the-forever-recession.html

Here's an excerpt for the click-lazy, and the most relevant part to dental practice:

*****

Why do we believe that jobs where we are paid really good money to do work that can be systemized, written in a manual and/or exported are going to come back ever? The internet has squeezed inefficiencies out of many systems, and the ability to move work around, coordinate activity and digitize data all combine to eliminate a wide swath of the jobs the industrial age created.

There's a race to the bottom, one where communities fight to suspend labor and environmental rules in order to become the world's cheapest supplier. The problem with the race to the bottom is that you might win...

Factories were at the center of the industrial age. Buildings where workers came together to efficiently craft cars, pottery, insurance policies and organ transplants--these are job-centric activities, places where local inefficiences are trumped by the gains from mass production and interchangeable parts. If local labor costs the industrialist more, he has to pay it, because what choice does he have?

No longer. If it can be systemized, it will be. If the pressured middleman can find a cheaper source, she will. If the unaffiliated consumer can save a nickel by clicking over here or over there, then that's what's going to happen.

It was the inefficiency caused by geography that permitted local workers to earn a better wage, and it was the inefficiency of imperfect communication that allowed companies to charge higher prices.

The industrial age, the one that started with the industrial revolution, is fading away. It is no longer the growth engine of the economy and it seems absurd to imagine that great pay for replaceable work is on the horizon.

-Seth Godin, from his blog on 09/29/11

 

[DentinBond]

When it comes to advertising, we face severe challenges today. Consumers are faced with an astounding amount of data each and every day of their lives. They also have tremendous choice- if they want something, they can find it via any one of hundreds of information channels, from Google to the Food Network. They even (usually) have the ability to selectively filter through the vast sea of information out there and find what they're looking for with a device that they're carrying around in their pocket. Yep, smart phones have changed the lives of many American consumers in profound ways. Those of you who have grown up with a steadily advancing stream of ever-smaller media devices may not fully appreciate what they have done for, and to, your potential patients.

Thus, most people are not very likely to notice your ad for your dental practice amongst all the clutter and information density they deal with and, especially, not in the face of all the marketers with far bigger budgets than you who are yelling at them louder and louder all the time, as they get increasingly desperate at the lack of any kind of "normal" consumer response.

This is not to say we should never consider advertising, but data must be collected and results carefully evaluated so that campaigns that are not successful are ended before a great deal of money is wasted. I myself have ended four moderately priced campaigns in the last few years. (I mostly did them in the first place just to prove the point to myself that Interruption Advertising no longer works very well. And it doesn't.)

What, then, can we do?

I always go back to my mantra:

(1)- Delight people.

(2)- Solve people's (interesting) problems for them.

There is a post from Seth Godin's blog in 2009 that really spoke to me when it came to marketing a dental practice. Our practice is a mature one, so we have focused on other things. If I was starting out, though, I'd use this strategy that he suggests, modified to fit the specifics of dental practice. It takes a lot of emotional labor and very little cash- a sure sign that it has a great chance of working out well! As always, the reason is: it's about them, not about me. Here it is, very slightly edited:

Time to start a newspaper

What should not-so-busy real estate brokers (or dentists) do?

Why not start a local newspaper?

Here's how I would do it. Assume you've got six people in your office. Each person is responsible to do two things each day:

1-Interview a local business, a local student or a local political activist. You can do it by phone, it can be very short and it might take you ten minutes.

2-Get 20 households to 'subscribe' by giving you their email address and asking for a free subscription. You can use direct contact or flyers or speeches to get your list.

Twice a week, send out the 'newspaper' by email. After one week, it will have more than 500 subscribers and contain more than 20 interesting short articles or quotes about people in the neighborhood. Within a month, (if it's any good) every single person in town who matters will be reading it and forwarding it along to others.

It will cost you nothing. It will become your gift to the community. And it will be a long lasting asset that belongs to you, not to the competition. (And yes, you can do this if you're a plumber or a chiropractor or a dentist. And yes, you can do this if 'local' isn't geographic for you, but vertical).

The original is here:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/01/time-to-start-a.html

Remember- this plan is about them, not about you- so it has a great chance.

(Hint: You may want to give your online newspaper a focus. Business strategies, for instance. With all that's happened in the economy these past three years, most local businesses would be very interested to hear how other businesses in their town have survived and, in some cases, prospered. "What have you done, specifically, to retain your clients/customers/patients and thrive in spite of the poor economy?" would be an excellent question to ask everyone you can.)

 

[DentinBond]

Do you have a Bad Table in your dental practice?
Let me 'splain...

I am writing a novel titled The Man Who Wore Mismatched Socks. It's about the epic battle between what we could call the Corporate-Interchangeable model of life, where human beings are treated by businesses and even by each other as interchangeable, temporary and disposable; contrasted with the realm of true human connection. The Corporate versus the Visceral, if you will. It encapsulates much of the nonfiction of Seth Godin, Chris Anderson, my friend Anne McCrossan and Everett Rogers, the giant of Diffusion of Innovations research.

It takes place from 1939 to 1962, starting with the Battle of Britain and ending at the Cuban Missile Crisis. Each chapter is named for a year. My main character is Aloysius St. James Spottisworth-Gack, from a family of brewers in Parsons Green England. Gack&Bacon Ltd. is their ancient brewery and The Pig & Trebuchet is their very Visceral in-house pub. Slore's (Its Beer) is their big corporate nemesis.

Ever since this post: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/03/the-bad-table.html was published in 2008, I've been quite taken with Seth's idea. We've adopted it in our dental practice and I've recommended the concept to many who are in business for themselves. One friend materially changed his business after reading my fictional riff on it, with all kinds of interesting and profitable results.

There are some references which may be a bit obscure to twenty-something modern American dental students, but (a) you have Google and (b) you'll get the idea anyway. So, here is my riff on The Bad Table. Take a look at your dental practice, find your Bad Table, and turn it around. Patients will notice and you will see more increases in referrals than if you ran some ad that gets lost in all the clutter and noise out there...

*****

Another quite popular feature of the Pig & Trebuchet was The Bad Table. This was a table for four that was situated very near to the kitchen, very far from the stage, and very near to the loo. Most, if not all, restaurants had such a table. The one that had built-in annoyances. The one that was sure to be noisy with interruptions. The one at which noboby wanted to sit.

The thing was, you really couldn't have a bad table.

In 1835, at the height of the reign of William IV (that delightful old bounder and man of the people), Hunstan Gack of Gack&Bacon Breweries gave a talk to the Gloucester Poultry Cattle and Hound Society in which he said:
"In any business, a bad table, a lesser product or experience, something presented that you know in your heart is inferior to what someone else can get- this has always been commonplace, but that doesn't mean that it is right."

The response of his audience was one of such astonishing appreciation and Visceral discussion that Hunstan promptly went back to his brewery and stood in the Pig & Trebuchet staring at the worst table in the house. He stared at it for a full fifteen minutes and then he called his entire staff together. He spoke to them in a low but intense voice for another considerable time, and then asked for their input. Lively discussion followed. After a time they had all come up with a plan that they were not only happy with, but so thrilled over that they couldn't wait to try it out on the very first customers who sat down at their worst table.

What they did was to ensure that there was always something special and fun at their Bad Table. This tradition became the longest running Pig & Trebuchet tradition and in fact carries on continuously to the present day.
.
Very many delightful experiences were arranged for The Bad Table over the years. Commonplace were simple conversations with the Head Chef and Master Brewer, with samples (at no charge) of avante-garde appetizers and even more outre brews. Individualized tours of the brewery works were offered frequently. Musicians, including famous ones who were themselves patrons from time to time, would show up and play or sing for the customers at The Bad Table. Authors would drop by for a pint and deliver a signed copy of their latest book to the diners seated there. (There is a family in Billingshurst who has in their posession a signed copy of original sonnets by William Wordsworth; he had dropped by the P & T and joined their ancestors for dinner at The Bad Table one night back in 1841. This one-off book was now worth a quarter of a million pounds.)

Shortly after The Great War, Admiral John Jellicoe dropped in on a few meals at The Bad Table. The draw for him was Dread Nought Draught, which of course was brewed in his honour. On one of these occasions the diners were a couple, the husband of which had served under Jellicoe as a gunner's mate on Iron Duke. The great C-in-C of the Grand Fleet was practically worshipped by his sailors, and his former crewman, a stolid John Bull type not given to displays of strong emotion, especially in public, was reduced to freely flowing tears by the joyful experience of dining with his former Admiral.

What was the overall effect of The Bad Table down through the many years? People talked about it. They sought it out, asking "may I sit at your worst table this afternoon, please?" They told stories about the splendid things that always happened there, and placed Gack&Bacon Ltd. into the awareness of countless folk who had never heard of it before.

"I've been Bad Tabled" was even local slang for being surprised by something excellent and unexpected.

All in all, The Bad Table at The Pig & Trebuchet was actually one of the biggest and most consistent drivers of business for Gack&Bacon Ltd. And yet it didn't cost a king's ransom, it didn't need to be plastered on billboards and into the papers every week, and it was even right next to the loo…