What’s with the global toilet paper stockpiling and hoarding?
Who was it who said that the population needs to stock up on toilet tissue?
And what does toilet paper have to do with corona virus?
If you’ve lived long enough you’ve seen it all before
It must have been forty years ago when a rumour about the then St George Building Society saw consumers lined up at their local branch counters withdrawing their life’s savings in cash…
Like lemmings….
Sadly, or thankfully, the building society did not fold, and in fact went on to become a bank in its own right…. And later was purchased and has become part of one of the BIG FOUR Australian banks.
Herd mentality.
People, not animals
A video taken last weekend of a physical altercation between two middle aged women at a Sydney Supermarket over toilet paper has resulted in both women being charged by police and having to face court.
Over toilet paper.
Toilet paper manufacturers in Australia are upping their production to meet with the added demand of hoarders and stockpilers.
So there’s no reason to be antisocial and aggressive.
There’s plenty of toilet paper to go around.
What we are seeing is a Social Media and media driven hysteria.
But it’s creating a pack mentality.
Or is it a herd mentality?
Are we simply discarding reason and following the leader?
Are our behaviours logical?
Our behaviours certainly aren’t civil…
What has happened to common decency?
It appears in times of crisis, [is toilet paper supply a crisis?], it’s dog-eat-dog and every man for himself.
The whole point of success, and business, is about helping others to get what they want, and in so doing, you will achieve what you want as well.
Winning while someone else loses, well that’s not a nice game to play.
Think abundance.
Think Win-Win.
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
So many businesses out there, including dental practices, take their telephone for granted.
There’s a common theme of neglect.
There’s a laissez-faire approach to phones and phone answering.
And if your business treats your telephones in this way, let me tell you, you are pouring good money straight down the drain.
Your telephone is your gateway to the world.
The money you spend on marketing drives new consumers and existing customers to pick up the telephone and call your business.
In the old days, before internet, most incoming new business enquiry phone calls were very poorly qualified.
However, the internet and social media and Google Reviews now allow the consumer to gather sufficient information and opinion about your business that makes them a very well educated caller, most of the time.
And it is because of this exceptional prequalification process that consumers can now avail themselves of, that we need to realise that the reason this person is calling your business is because they have already decided that your business, your dental practice, is where they want to have their teeth fixed and their problems solved.
With this amount of prequalification, organising an appointment should be easy.
Sadly, it is not.
Most of the time when I listen to dental practice phone calls, I often hear dental receptionists getting in their own way, instead of HELPING the caller to secure the appointment that they need.
Remember, they haven’t called for a pizza.
They’ve called your dental practice because they have a definite dental concern and they’ve chosen your practice as the one they want to help solve their problem.
And when your team understand this, then it is so simple for them to easily ASSIST the caller into a suitable appointment time.
Never put any phone caller straight on hold
You know what I mean.
You’ve had it done to you.
It’s one of those things that will turn a new patient enquiry caller straight off your practice more than standing under an icy cold shower….
Here’s what happens:
The phone rings, and the receptionist answers the call:
“Thank you for calling ABC Dental. Can you hold the line please? [CLICK]……”
The receptionist doesn’t ask who you are, or how they can help you and or what you are calling about.
They’re obviously busy…. too busy to take another twenty seconds and answer the phone politely.
Placing a caller straight onto hold without even finding out who is calling, and what they are calling about, is rude and arrogant.
It riles the caller.
Corralling them straight onto an on-hold message without even finding out what they are calling about… what is the positive in that?
It upsets the caller.
And if there is a live patient standing in front of the receptionist when she takes this call in this manner, well that live patient can’t be too impressed seeing and witnessing that behaviour.
I’m surprised at how many dental receptionists are unable to calmly manage the WELCOME INTERUPTION of a ringing phone.
A ringing phone is an opportunity to help a person in need.
A dental receptionist who can put the caller at ease, and also respect the person [or other call] that they were attending to, is an asset to any dental practice.
Sadly, multi-tasking on the dental office phones is a dying art.
And of course, what happens to those phone callers to your practice who feel brushed aside when their call gets answered this way?
Well they will simply go elsewhere for their dentistry….
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
It’s said that ninety seven percent of the people in the world don’t have a list of written down goals that they review on a regular basis.
Only three percent of the population actually have clearly defined and written down goals.
The rest just wander along and wonder when things don’t go to plan.
Usually the people without a plan or goals become part of someone else’s plan.
I just had a call from a dentist who is starting up his first dental practice.
He has a plan.
He has a budget clearly defined for his fit out costs.
He knows exactly how many patients he needs to see each day to cover his fixed and variable practice expenses.
But breaking even is not the name of the game.
Why would he go through all these dramas and rigmaroles to simply break even?
Surely he should be planning to draw a competitive profit for his efforts?
Firstly, he needs to pay himself as THE DENTIST delivering the work to patients.
After all, if he wasn’t there, he’d have to pay another dentist to do the same thing.
Secondly, he needs to remunerate himself for the administrative duties he performs in the practice.
Again, if he wasn’t there, someone else would be doing the HR, the marketing, the payroll duties etc.
And thirdly, as the business owner, he needs to be paying himself a dividend for the asset he has invested in the business.
Because he could have bought himself an apartment, or a farm or some shares with that capital. And they would have all paid a dividend.
Having a good game plan gets you a long way towards where you need to go.
Knowing where the money needs to come from, and knowing where it needs to go is very important information that affects whether or not your business will be successful.
Hoping you make sufficient collections, and that you can “cover” your overheads, is not a good business strategy.
Plan for growth.
Setting performance goals that are a STRETCH is a great way to grow your business.
Hoping your collections will increase is not a good plan.
Aiming for a specific number, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, will give you greater FOCUS, and will guarantee better results.
Measure your growth
Make sure you are able to manage your growth.
Uncontrollable growth can also be a disaster, if you are unable to cope with your rate of new growth.
Too much growth can be a bad thing.
Growth is good.
If you’re not growing then you’re dying.
Make sure that you have growth.
Growth is a stimulus.
Organic growth, and growth by acquisition are both good forms of growth.
Learn which type of growth suits you best.
Become a master of that type of growth.
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
As you know, I live on acreage, and run beef cattle.
Due to the recent summer droughts, we have kept our stock to a minimum, mainly because it’s very difficult to fatten these boys up when you haven’t got much grass.
So at present we have only twenty steers.
Which is easy to manage.
And thank goodness that the recent rains in early February, that dampened the catastrophic bushfires our country recently experienced, have also stimulated some good growth of grass in our paddocks.
So on Monday evening last week, I thought I’d be clever and lock these twenty boys into the top “house” paddock, right in front of the house, for a few days, so that they could really demolish the long grass there.
And this task didn’t have to be so difficult, because the “boys” had been living in this house paddock as well as the bigger paddock below. They were “grazing” between the two.
Anyway, after much clapping and cheering, I managed to manually close all of the twenty boys into the top “house” paddock.
Despite the fact that some of them were reluctant to venture into the house paddock to join their mates.
So yesterday morning, as the sun rose, I watched from my kitchen breakfast bench as the twenty steers, one by one, awoke and rose, and stood up, and started eating…. right there in front of me in the top “house” paddock.
And all was at peace in the world.
So off I went to have a shower.
When I returned to the kitchen window, to my amazement, the steers had gone.
The gate down to the lower paddock had been unlatched, and swung wide open, and the cattle were “off for the prize”, grazing way down in the bottom paddock.
And acting as if they had done no wrong….
Who would have thought cattle could be so contriving?
Why did these cattle seek out an “escape” from this smaller, well maintained top, “house” paddock?
It’s not as if they had no feed in this top paddock…
And how did they undo the latch on the gate?
And which one of them did this?
Lifting the latch on the chain on the gate requires some degree of skill. That’s for sure.
And then pushing the gate wide open?
Which one of them thought of this?
So last night I decided to repeat the relocation of the cattle back into the top “house” paddock.
After all, when I arrived home last night, they were up there in the “house” paddock anyway, and so closing the gate up was quite a simple process.
And this morning, when I went off for my dawn walk, the boys were all still sleeping [in the house paddock].
But while out on my walk, some seventy five minutes later, I noticed that these same naughty boys had again been able to unlatch the closed gate and had exited the top “house” paddock for the larger paddock down below.
Without permission.
They had successfully repeated the “escape”.
[Despite the fact that I was going to release them down there today, anyway….]
The Lesson to be Learned
The lesson here is simple.
If you give your cattle the sniff of a better life, or lifestyle, they’ll take it.
In the same way, if you give any of your patients the sniff about something more pleasant, like NOT coming to the dentist AT ALL, they will jump at the opportunity.
When you give your patients the opportunity to “escape” from their dental appointment, don’t be surprised when some of them decide to take up that opportunity.
When scheduling your patients for appointments, you need to make sure that your appointments are secured tightly, so that patients cannot slip out of your appointment book when your back is turned.
There are a lot of patients out there who do not understand the importance of dental treatment and dental appointments.
And after all, most dental procedures are performed to rectify conditions and diseases that are not causing pain or discomfort… so the patient doesn’t really have any urgency to complete their treatment in the recommended time frames.
It is these patients who will try to slip through any unsecured openings in your dental appointment book.
It is our duty to the public, as health care practitioners, to secure their appointments so that they do indeed complete their treatment.
And it is in their best interests for them to do so.
Allowing them to delay or defer treatment is not in the patients’ best interests.
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
