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Some years ago British cycling, under the auspices of David Brailsford, formed their marginal gains team.

This was a group of people designed to investigate things that British cycling could do to obtain the smallest little advantage in a hyper competitive world. The classic examples are cleaning the tyres of the bike with alcohol before it goes onto the track to ensure that there is no dust, which might slow down the riders over several laps - only by fractions of a second.

The other innovation was the famous “warm trousers” where the riders wear heated trousers after they have warmed up to ensure that their muscles stay at a constant temperature. There have been many, many marginal gains improvements instituted in British cycling and if each of them gains a cyclist one thousandth of a second, a hundred could equal a tenth of a second which could be the difference between a Gold and a Bronze or a medal or not.

This is not new, it was instituted by Clive Woodward in the World Cup winning English rugby team but my point is this.

Dentistry is becoming a hyper competitive market. I see evidence of this every single day now and the only way to be better than this is to differentiate you from someone else - a lot of this is to do with marginal gains.

Communicating with patients via email, texting them to remind them of appointments, providing pain relief and antibiotics in surgery, providing exceptional customer service at every single step of the way including courtesy calls, follow up calls after consultations. All sorts of tiny little things that don’t take long and don’t take much effort but in the end add up to the difference between a win or a loss.