This quote came across my desk again this morning:
“It’s the little things that make the big things possible. Only close attention to the fine details of any operation makes the operation first class.”
It’s a quote from J. Willard Marriott.
According to Wikipedia, John Willard Marriott, Sr. (September 17, 1900 – August 13, 1985) was an American entrepreneur and businessman. He was the founder of the Marriott Corporation, the parent company of the world’s largest hospitality, hotel chains, and food services companies. The Marriott company rose from a small root beer stand in Washington DC in 1927 to a chain of family restaurants by 1932, to its first motel in 1957. By the time he died, the Marriott company operated 1,400 restaurants and 143 hotels and resorts worldwide, including two theme parks, earned US$4.5 billion in revenue annually with 154,600 employees. The company’s interests also extended to a line of cruise ships.
Do you think he knew what he was doing?
Or do you think it all happened by accident.
Marriott’s philosophy, of focusing on the little things, was pinnacle in helping him to create an empire to be proud of.
Are you focusing on the little things in your business that magnify to affect the big things in the way your organisation performs?
As mentioned on Wikipedia, Marriott tempered his rigid demands for perfection with devotion to his employees. According to his son, Bill Jr:
“In establishing the culture of the company, there was a lot of attention and tender loving care paid to the hourly workers. When they were sick, he went to see them. When they were in trouble, he got them out of trouble. He created a family loyalty.”
According to Marriott himself (from a videotaped segment):
“You’ve got to make your employees happy. If the employees are happy, they are going to make the customers happy.”
How are you treating your employees?
Are you engaging with them, and caring for them like family?
Or are you making them fend for themselves?
What do you think they are looking for?
Happy employees create a happy place for your customers to visit.
One of the things that made my dental practice so successful was that a visit to my practice wasn’t about the dentistry.
Sure, patients came for appointments to have their teeth fixed and their teeth cleaned.
But they also came to “visit” and to CONNECT WITH the employees of the dental practice, whom they considered to be their friends.
I used to tell candidates applying for positions at my practice that I would be happy to have ninety-five percent of my patients as guests in my family home, such was the relationship I had with those patients.
Often patients would attend their appointments and arrive thirty minutes prior to their scheduled time, and leave the office some forty-five minutes after their treatment was over, simply because they wanted to connect and visit with the front office team members.
Do you employ a concierge in your dental practice?
Do you employ someone in your dental practice to meet and greet your valued patients and clients, and to schmooze with them?
Dental visits can be traumatic and nerve-racking even for the toughest of human beings, and having someone in your office with the designated role of schmoozing and entertaining and “visiting” with your arriving patients to “take their mind off” their treatment can be a GAME CHANGER for your dental practice.
It certainly worked for my practice….
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Online Workshop: Dr David Moffet and Jayne Bandy:
“How To Easily Run, Maintain And Grow The Ultimate Dental Practice In 2021”
If you’re sick and tired of drilling all day long, and not having anything close to what you deserve, to show for it… or if you’ve ever wondered, “What can successful dentists POSSIBLY know, that I don’t?”… then register for this unique online ZOOM workshop Saturday March 20, 2021
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.
I wrote an article at the start of the year last week about the Five Essential Numbers I’d be tracking and measuring in my dental practice as we start into the new year of 2021.
And the first numbers I’d be starting to monitor closely would be daily productions and collections.
Along with the daily numbers, I’d be looking at the weekly totals and the monthly totals.
And I’d be looking at comparing one week to another as well as one month to another, both in this year as well as comparing back to previous years.
In my practice every day was “ruled off”.
What I mean by that is we knew at the end of each working day exactly how much work was done and how much money was collected that day.
Ruling off was a daily ritual that meant that we could then take action regarding the daily performance.
I know some dental practices that do not “rule off”.
And as such, there is no “finish line” in those offices each day.
Practices that rule off usually have a daily goal to hit, and often pay bonuses to staff and team depending on whether their production and collections meet or exceed that daily goal.
Most importantly, the following idioms are true:
What gets measured gets repeated.
And what gets measured gets improved upon.
When we look at our figures at the end of each day, and each week and each month, and compare those figures back to previous days, and weeks and months and years, we are able to look for patterns and trends that demonstrate the effectiveness of what we are doing and of what we are trying to achieve in our dental practice.
What we are looking for is consistency. And improvement.
Nobody likes to work their tail off and not be rewarded for their efforts.
Are you collecting each day for the dentistry you are producing?
Are your days producing an even cash flow, each and every day, that allows you to predictably forecast your dental practice earnings in advance, on a consistent basis?
When you know what your practice is consistently producing and collecting on a weekly and on a monthly basis, then you have the ability to structure your working weeks and your working days to reflect the results that you are achieving.
And so when you take control of your appointment schedule to create a template that delivers you the production that you seek in a structured manner, then life as a business owner starts to look significantly better.
Do you know what you WILL produce each day, or do you only know at the end of the day what you DID produce?
And if you do not know in advance what each day will bring, why not take the time to organise your schedule better?
Life as a business owner is far better when your days are organised, and you are running your appointment schedule, rather than allowing your schedule to be running you.
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If you measure your collections and productions each and every day, you’ll go a long way towards building the dental practice of your dreams in 2021….
*******
Online Workshop: Dr David Moffet and Jayne Bandy:
“How To Easily Run, Maintain And Grow The Ultimate Dental Practice In 2021”
If you’re sick and tired of drilling all day long, and not having anything close to what you deserve, to show for it… or if you’ve ever wondered, “What can successful dentists POSSIBLY know, that I don’t?”… then register for this unique online ZOOM workshop Saturday March 20, 2021
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.
Is your dental practice too small to have any employees who don’t have a great attitude?
Recently I listened to a recording of a phone call into a dental practice that horrified me.
I was horrified by the ATTITUDE of the person answering the dental office phone.
The call went like this:
Caller: “I’ve not been to your practice before. I’ve been recommended to come there. I need some fillings and five implants.”
Dental receptionist: “I haven’t got any appointments available until February.”
Well…. “Hello??”
The problem here is that the dental receptionist was so focused on what she did not have that she has totally missed the fact that the caller is one who needs to be accommodated ASAP.
The dental receptionist’s only concern here is that she has no vacancies in her book.
She is not concerned that the caller has been referred.
She is not concerned as to which one of the practice’s valuable patients is the referrer.
The receptionist has not asked the caller’s name.
The receptionist has not asked the caller if there is any urgency related to the treatment that they are seeking.
The receptionist has not shown one ounce of empathy towards the caller who wants to spend a big chunk of change at this practice.
If I was the caller….
If I was the caller I’d have told this receptionist to go shove it.
The caller has handed the receptionist a PERFECT introduction that the receptionist has then totally ignored.
All the caller needed was to be made to feel valued and respected.
The receptionist did not do this at all.
All that this receptionist conveyed to this caller was that he would have to wait his turn, no matter who he was, no matter who had referred him, and no matter what dental treatment he needed to get done.
There was no feeling conveyed to the caller that she had been waiting all day for him to phone this dental practice.
To the contrary, this caller was made to feel like an inconvenience by the receptionist who answered the phone.
At your dental practice…
Are callers to your dental office made to feel as if the receptionist had been waiting all day JUST FOR THEM to phone in?
As if the caller was the most important caller to contact this practice ALL DAY?
Because making every caller to your practice each day FEEL IMPORTANT is really what it’s all about.
Are you respecting every incoming phone call to your dental practice?
Or are you seeing each phone call as an interruption to your already very busy schedule?
Every incoming phone call to your dental practice needs to be viewed as an opportunity to serve your community.
It is only when we help other people get what they want that we are truly able to benefit and get what we truly do want for ourselves.
*****
Online Workshop: Dr David Moffet and Jayne Bandy:
“How To Easily Run, Maintain And Grow The Ultimate Dental Practice In 2021”
If you’re sick and tired of drilling all day long, and not having anything close to what you deserve, to show for it… or if you’ve ever wondered, “What can successful dentists POSSIBLY know, that I don’t?”… then register for this unique online ZOOM workshop Saturday March 20, 2021
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.
Here are the Five Essential Numbers I’d be tracking and measuring in my dental practice as we start into the exciting new year of 2021.
And after all, after we say goodbye to 2020, it really is a case of:
“Well, it can’t get any worse, can it?”
So why not get off to a great start in 2021?
1. Daily, weekly, and monthly productions and collections
What we are looking for here is consistency and improvement.
Nobody likes to work their tail off and not be paid for their efforts.
Are you collecting each day for the dentistry you are producing?
Are your days producing an even cash flow, each and every day, that allows you to predictably forecast your dental practice earnings in advance, on a consistent basis?
Do you know what you WILL produce each day, or do you only know at the end of the day what you DID produce?
And if not, why not?
2. Number of phone calls coming in to your dental practice?
How many phone calls are coming in to your dental practice each day?
How many of those calls are new patients calling to make an enquiry or an appointment?
How many of those calls result in a made and kept appointment?
How many existing patients are calling to make an appointment?
How many patients with appointments are calling to reschedule or cancel those existing appointments?
What are these numbers on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis?
And which of your staff members are better at scheduling appointments?
And which of your staff members are allowing patients with treatment booked to cancel or reschedule at will?
3. Are all patients being seen each day leaving with their next appointment being made for them?
And if not, why not?
And who on our team is allowing patients to leave without their next appointment being made?
I want to see a list each day of every patient who leaves without a made and scheduled appointment.
And the shorter the list, the better….
4. Where are my New Patients Coming From?
Each and every new patient has found out about our practice by either our external marketing, or by referral from one of our patients or our friends.
We need to know each and every source.
5. How much treatment are we diagnosing in the practice each and every day?
If we do the dentistry, we need to be doing more dentistry.
Each day our dental practice needs to diagnose and present dental treatment to our patients that is equal or greater in amount than the dentistry we are doing each day, otherwise our dental practice will become insolvent.
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If you measure these five metrics each and every day, you’ll go a long way towards building the dental practice of your dreams in 2021….
*****
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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.
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