CATEGORY 96 AUSTRALASIAN DENTIST COLUMNISTS A wave of dental practice sales is building. Surveys of Australian dentists aged 50 and over have found that around 43% intend to leave the workforce within five years – and with the average intended retirement age sitting around 66, a great many practices will change hands over the next decade. Most owners, when that moment arrives, immediately look outward: brokers, corporates, strangers with cheque books. Few consider the person already standing beside the chair next door. The anthropologist Lewis Hyde, in his book The Gift, drew a distinction that’s easy to forget in a transaction-minded sector: a gift and a commodity move through the world in entirely different ways. A commodity changes hands once, for the highest price the market will bear, and the relationship between buyer and seller ends there. A gift, by contrast, creates an ongoing bond – it says something about the giver, and it keeps circulating value long after the exchange itself. Selling your practice to an associate you’ve trained is closer to the second kind of transaction than the first, even though money changes hands. It treats the practice less as an asset to be maximised and more as something you were a steward of, now passed to someone equipped to carry it forward. It’s a counterintuitive move – I say that as someone whose job is partly to help vendors get the best price. Selling to an associate can mean leaving money on the table. But there’s a quieter return on that generosity: it signals who you are. Vendors who choose continuity over the last dollar tend to be remembered well, by patients, staff, and the profession. The upside is real and practical, not just sentimental. Continuity is something patients genuinely value. A familiar face behind the mask, the same voice on reminder calls, the same hand adjusting the same chair – often patients don’t need to know anything has changed at all. Staff retention tends to follow the same pattern. There’s no integration project, no rebrand, no anxious first weeks wondering whether the new owner will keep the culture intact. But it isn’t without friction. The most common one: associates often believe they’ve built the practice, and there’s some truth in that – their clinical work and chairside relationships genuinely contributed to its value. What that view usually leaves out is that they were paid for that work as it happened, and they carried none of the risk of ownership: no lease commitments, no equipment finance, no years of reduced income while the practice found its feet. Kahlil Gibran wrote about exactly this tension a century ago, in the chapter “On Buying and Selling” from The Prophet: “It is in exchanging the gifts of the earth that you shall find abundance and be satisfied. Yet unless the exchange be in love and kindly justice, it will but lead some to greed and others to hunger.” The real work of these negotiations isn’t proving who’s right about how the practice was built – it’s finding a number that honours both the associate’s The gift of continuity: Why your associate might be your best buyer By Carl Burroughs contribution and the vendor’s risk. Gibran’s marketplace closes with a simple instruction: “see that no one has gone his way with empty hands”. A fair deal leaves both sides able to say the same. The second risk is more delicate: raising the idea of a sale with an associate before you’re ready can unsettle them, and in the worst case, prompt them to leave altogether. This isn’t a conversation to open casually. It deserves real thought about timing, trust, and what you’re prepared to do if the answer is no. If you’re weighing up whether an associate could be your buyer, I’m always happy to have a confidential conversation. That might mean a market appraisal to anchor the discussion in reality, or – where it’s appropriate – representing you directly in negotiating a fair outcome with your associate. I’ve guided dozens of practice owners through the sale process – often beginning the journey years before the transaction itself. Having also built and sold my own dental practices, I bring first-hand insight into the critical factors that influence timing and value. If you’re considering your next move feel free to contact me anytime. u carl@practicesales.com.au www.practicesales.com.au 0416 190 000 1800 375 227 Carl Burroughs
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTc3NDk3Mw==