It still drives me nuts that there are dentists out there “supposedly” running a business on hope and guesswork…..
Every day I am talking to dentists who DO NOT have a handle on their numbers.
No handle.
WHAT. SO. EVER.
Unbelievable!
But true.
I ask them:
“What’s your monthly collections?”
They answer me:
“Between $150K and $180K per month.”
Does anybody else out there see this as an odd answer?
Although those are impressive numbers, there is a major ALARM BELL going off in my head when I get told an answer like this.
Let me digress.
Meet “Bob* the Builder”….
[*Bob is not the builder’s real name]
Recently I heard about a couple who were doing some home renovations.
This couple had engaged a draughtsman to draw plans for their additions, and they asked a builder to prepare a quote from those plans.
Initially, the builder came back to the couple with a preliminary estimation for the renovations.
The builder said that if he were to build those additions, they would come to a price of between $750K and $900K.
The couple thought:
“That’s a fairly big target that the builder has allowed himself?”
The couple asked the builder if that price was inclusive of GST, and the builder said it was.
The builder then prepared a more detailed estimation for the couple…. And the price came in at …..
WAIT FOR IT……
$930K.
PLUS GST!!!!
Subsequently the couple chose to look for an alternative builder.
Because as we know, with building, the starting price is the price that the finishing price rises above from…..
So what is your point David?
The point is, that if the builder doesn’t know his rate per square metre, and allows a 20% variance, and then misses that range by between 12.5% and 35%, as a STARTING LINE PRICE, who is really going to play that game and swim in that pool with that builder?
And to that point, if this dentist is saying that his monthly collections fall into a 20% variance, or $30K, which one is it?
Because $30,000.00 is not loose change….
$30K is a significant amount of money….
On a monthly basis.
The clients I love talking to….
The clients I love talking to know their numbers.
“David, in January we collected $155,364.00 and saw 37 new patients.”
This is what I want you to tell me.
I want exact numbers.
I want to know what you are recording and what you are measuring.
If your dental receptionist receives ten new patient enquiry phone calls on Monday and turns six of those into booked appointments, is that a better or worse result for your practice than on Tuesday, when she only makes two appointments from three phone enquiries?
What do you thin?
Numbers tell stories….
Numbers tell the stories.
I don’t want to hear stories.
I want to see the numbers.
I want the data.
Because the data will give me the REAL STORY.
When we know the real numbers, we know the real story.
End of story.
*****
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.
Your dental practice needs to have a Vision Statement.
I hear you ask:
“What’s a Vision Statement?”
And I hear you say:
“We’re only a small business. Why do WE need to have a Vision Statement? Aren’t those for bigger businesses?”
The Disney institute defines a Vision Statement as:
“A company’s Service Vision serves as a rallying point across the organisation by being the one thing that all employees have in common no matter what the individual job or title may be.”
And that clarifies it:
It is the one thing that brings every employee of the organisation together as one.
The Vision Statement is THE ONE THING that all employees have in common.
In unison.
When James McManemon, General Manager of The Ritz-Carlton was asked:
“If you were starting a new business, any business, and wanted to make customer service your value proposition, what would you do first?”
He replied:
“The first thing I would do is create the Service Vision for the Company. Be crystal clear with what the company’s vision is, and be able to articulate that extremely well. Then I would hire talent based on that same belief, only adding employees that share those service values, and finally create the processes and training to achieve that Service Vision.”
Let’s look at that reply piece by piece:
Create the Company Service Vision
It is up to the leadership to create the vision for the company.
Often it is the owner of the business who sets the vision he wants for his business.
2- Be crystal clear with what that vision is.
It is only with clarity that we can create true purpose of action.
Our employees and our customers look to the leadership to provide clarity of purpose.
3- Be able to articulate that vision very well.
The ability to explain the purpose and mission of our work is what attracts employees and customers to our business.
4- Hire talent and employees based on that same belief, only adding people who share those same service values
These values are a filter. Do not try to instil these values on those who do not have them and those who do not understand them.
The people who have these values are out there in the market place. We just need to locate them, not invent them.
5- Create the processes and the trainings to achieve that service vision.
Telling your employees about the vision, and SHOWING your employees a step be step process that helps them to BUILD AND CREATE that vision, are two very different things.
~
The Vision Statement is the WHAT that we create in defining our business.
Next week I will discuss the HOW for our business. The three Supporting Pillars for our Vision Statement are the “How”.
*****
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’m often asked why a dental practice, or a business for that matter, should bother to focus on improving customer service and customer retention?
I am asked why I do not encourage dental practices to believe that customer leakage is simply a fact of life, and that dentists need to embrace this fact, and deal with the conclusion that it is simply easier for them [the dentists] to seek out more new patients to compensate for the attrition of existing patients.
But to me, this scenario has always been one fraught with danger.
What if your practice was in a small town with a very close-knit population?
Wouldn’t your business then be subject to rumour and innuendo, much less than to truth and fact, that could adversely impact on the health and reputation of your business?
I was always alarmed when I attended local dental meetings and heard dentists telling each other:
“I saw over 100 new patients last month.”
…. and numbers just like that or larger.
Because when I hear of single dentist practices seeing such large numbers of new patients, I wonder whether those new patients are being fully serviced, and retained, or whether they are simply being CHURNED?
Churning is not good business practice. Here’s why:
My mentor Dan Kennedy says that what it costs a business to replace a customer lost, is dramatic.
Because, he says, the true value of a customer must be measured in three specific ways:
1- The profit on the initial purchase
What is a new patient worth to your practice? What does the “average” new patient spend at your practice, or really, what is the total amount of money spent by all new patients in the first two years of them becoming a patient of your practice, divided by the number of new patients in that period of time.
When we know what that dollar amount is, then we can safely say, moving forwards, that for each new patient scheduled in our books this week, their average first-two-year spend in our dental practice will be $xxx.
Once we know what the “average” first -two-year spend is, we need to calculate our profit from each patient acquired during that two-year period.
2- The profits on repeat purchases over the lifetime of the customer
What is the average lifetime of a patient in your practice?
How long, how many years does a new patient keep on returning to your dental practice to see you?
Is it five years?
Is it eight years?
Is it thirteen years?`
How much do they spend at your dental practice during these many years of loyalty?
And how profitable has their treatment been during their time as a patient with you?
3- The profits on the referrals to your business by those existing customers, providing you with customers you did not have to go out and pay marketing money to acquire
How many referrals does each patient bring in to your dental practice?
And what is the dollar value of each referred new patient, compared to the dollar value of new patients that come from specific sources of marketing.
Usually referred new patients have already been told about how good we are by their referrers. So they are more accepting of treatment that we present to them because of this personalized introduction.
~
Kennedy says that losing an existing customer costs you all that money above plus the additional cost to replace them.
He says that every customer or patient that you lose then costs you twice as much as it does just to get another new customer.
Because of this, Kennedy says that in reality keeping customers is a bigger profit centre to your business than acquiring “cold” new customers.
*****
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.
Have you ever been gifted a gift that’s been overly difficult to redeem?
I’d call that a CLAYTON’S GIFT…. The gift you get when you’re not getting a gift…
[Reference to the infamous non-alcoholic beverage made by Clayton’s back in the 1980s…. under the slogan: “The drink you have when you’re not having a drink….”]
You know the type…. Like a “cash-back” deal when you buy something… Really? Why can’t they simply give me a discount on what I pay at the time that I buy?
You get the gist…
My sister gifted me a Hyatt Gift Card for my significant birthday 17 months ago…
Now the amount on the gift card is also very significant.
But….
The back of the card reads “this card expires 12 months from the date of issue.”
It also reads that it is “valid in Australian Hyatt properties only.”
So, I decided that I wanted to use it in August 2021 at the Park Hyatt in Sydney. With a Sydney Harbour waterfront and Opera House views, the Park Hyatt Hotel in Sydney is regarded by many as Sydney’s Number 1 Hotel. [I have stayed there before]
But, and it is a big but, when my wife and I on several separate occasions phoned the Park Hyatt Hotel in Sydney trying to book accommodation using the gift card, we both felt as though the staff that we dealt with had tried to DISTANCE THEMSELVES [the Park Hyatt Hotel Sydney] from Hyatt [the parent company].
My wife and I on separate occasions were both informed that my gift card may not be accepted at the Park Hyatt Hotel in Sydney, and that the card may only be accepted at OTHER run of the mill ordinary plain Hyatt Hotels.
I said, that with all of the COVID related travel issues, we had not been able to visit Sydney to use the gift card before their supposed 12 month expiry time [mentioned on the back of the gift card], and that we were calling in advance now to confirm that the gift card still had value. [We live two hours drive from Sydney now]
Now, I know that the mention of the words “Park Hyatt” and “Hyatt Hotels” may immediately turn off a lot of people.
[“Who cares about those posh people and their posh hotels?”]
But this is about honouring a gift card.
This is about all businesses and the whole gift card industry.
The gift card and gift voucher industry has been proven to be a REAL SHAM. Many an organisation has been seen to have snatched money from unused gift cards and stuffed it into their own coffers without any exchange for goods or services, simply because the card or voucher has over-run its expiry date.
When really, businesses can easily account for funds received from unredeemed cards and vouchers as an asset in their company ledgers.
And as such, these cards should never have an expiry date. They are, in reality, unused credit for future transactions.
As I said to the Park Hyatt Hotel staff that I spoke to on the phone, it just seems wrong that my sister has gifted me a gift card for my significant birthday, but the Hyatt organisation, by putting this 12 month “Use By” expiry note on the card, has snaffled the gift for themselves without even a care in the world as to the ETHICS of their actions…
The story continues:
So here’s where we are at this morning.
Online, I have been able to access information that the gift card has a three-year expiry and that I still have nineteen months to use the card.
Obviously this is in line with national consumer legislation enacted to prevent the values of gift cards from being snaffled up too quickly.
Secondly, online, I was able to access the Park Hyatt Hotel reservations from the Hyatt parent company website, so there is an umbilical connection there despite the information that I had received on the phone from Park Hyatt staff implying a disconnection between this Hotel and the parent group.
However…
Using the gift card to pay in part towards the accommodation we seek, is also proving a challenge.
With COVID-19 restricting and limiting airline travel, I have often used [accumulated] Frequent Flyer Points to purchase hotel accommodation.
So I tried to use “points plus pay” to book the accommodation at the Park Hyatt Hotel. [This is not a Hyatt problem I’m unpacking here].
I can purchase the accommodation on the dates I’m looking for using points plus pay on the Qantas website. But I need to use a credit card, it seems, for the “Pay” part, not a Hyatt gift card.
Looks like I’m having to get back on the phone to the people at the Park Hyatt Sydney for assistance…
Do you think I’m looking forward to doing this?
The moral of the story….
Again, I know that this story appears to be about posh people and posh hotels, and the average man in the street doesn’t care if posh people are hard darn by, EVER, but the culture here of making things difficult for the customer, rather than making things as pleasant as possible, well that culture purveys itself across the gift card industry quite a lot, and across the hotel industry too from time to time.
This article should be a wakeup call to those organisations that behave in this manner of making life a little bit more difficult than it needs to be.
Ultimately, I’d have been emotionally much better off if my sister had gifted me cash rather than a gift card for my birthday.
And therein lies the irony.
I am being punished for being gifted a gift card that bears the Hyatt name.
And in reality, I don’t think the owners of Hyatt would be too impressed with what’s happened to me on a grass roots level.
The staff that we dealt with at The Park Hyatt need to realise a couple of things:
Firstly, if the gift card bears the Hyatt name, then they, as Hyatt employees, need to own the problems that that gift card has created, and they need to have the Service Recovery processes in hand to make things better.
And make things better quickly.
And secondly, the staff that we dealt with at the Park Hyatt also need to know that the “gift” is actually me, to them. I have been gifted as a customer to them, the Hyatt, by my sister. And so far, these staff, have not offered me any “warm and fuzzy” experiences.
Now that we know that the gift card has another 19 months to run, my wife and I are thinking that we’ll probably stay somewhere else in August, and use the card at another Hyatt Hotel another time.
Stay tuned for the next instalment….
*****
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.
Jim Rohn said that on the list of things that really matter, it’s usually only a half a dozen things that make the most of the difference.
He said:
“There are only about a half dozen things that make 80 percent of the difference in any area of our lives.”
In his book 7 Strategies for Wealth & Happiness, he wrote:
“Whether we are working to improve our health, wealth, personal achievement, or professional enterprise, the difference between triumphant success or bitter failure lies in the degree of our commitment to seek out, study, and apply those half-dozen things.”
I had the pleasure of seeing Jim Rohn speak live in the early 1990s. He changed my life. He was a captivating speaker.
His advice was plain, no-nonsense common sense.
In dental practice, I see so many dentists chasing after shiny objects when the principles of Jim Rohn, if applied, would improve their practice successes dramatically.
When a dental practice is not fully booked, I hear dentists say:
“I just need more new patients.”
Or they say:
“I just need to do some more marketing”
These are not the solutions.
Nor are they clear enunciations of the problem.
The problem is the dental practice is not being served by a CONTINUAL FLOW of new customers contacting the practice and scheduling appointments to be seen.
When our dental office establishes a healthy continuous supply of regular new patients of the quality that we need, the “marketing” that we need or think we need is not needed.
The key words here are the words “Continuous flow.”
When our dental practice supply of new patients calling is regular and predictable, then our office does not need to be out seeking more new patients from sources of questionable quality and consistency.
Once our dental practice has established this consistent continuous flow of quality new patients that we are looking to treat and serve, then it is our dental team’s duty to ensure that as many of those new patient enquiries as possible are scheduling and keeping appointments at our practice.
As an analogy, there’s no point in turning on the high-pressure hose if we are only capturing a few drops of water each time, and gallons of valuable water are flowing freely away and down the drain.
This is where we need to make sure that the people calling our dental practice are being successfully scheduled to see our dentists, and that they are keeping these appointments.
Our success here is based on the premise that the people phoning up are doing so because the marketing and information they have received about our dental practice has inspired them to believe that our dental practice is THE ONLY PLACE where they need to be going to have their dental concerns solved.
And this marketing and information has led them to appreciate that there is nowhere else they would ever EVER WANT to go.
With this thought in mind, when our phone rings at our dental office, we know that if we do not end the call with an appointment made for that caller, then we have failed that caller.
We have let the caller down.
If the caller does not schedule an appointment then it is the way that we have answered their call, that has resulted in their failure to book.
In the games of cricket, or baseball, if your fielders can’t catch a ball, it means they’re going to be chasing a lot of balls, and not getting too many batsmen, or batters, out.
And consequently, the team is going to be losing a lot of games.
In the same way, if your dental front office team are not well equipped in the best ways of helping callers MAKE AND KEEP valuable dental appointments, they’re going to be chasing a lot more callers [or balls] to make sure that the schedule is full, and also productive.
And that’s really an unnecessary burden they should not be having to endure.
Fixing the dental office phone skills is one of the half dozen things that make a huge and positive difference in the outcomes you achieve from owning a dental office.
In fact, it would be up there in the top two or three things.
And yet so many dental practices do not train their front office staff AT ALL with any phone skills or communication skills.
Other dental practice owners expect their team to become phone masters by reading an article and hoping that by osmosis, super powers are absorbed and adopted.
[Well that method doesn’t work for golf swings, and it doesn’t work for phone skills either.]
Putting it simply, four phone calls to your office each day that fail to schedule will mean twenty new patients each week that end up going to another dentist instead of your office.
And if a new patient is worth between five hundred and one thousand dollars, this means that over the course of a year your dental practice has haemorrhaged between half a million and one whole million dollars of potential income.
Simply by neglecting to train phone skills as best you can…
So, half a million to a million dollars each year?
What’s the cost of investing in PROPER TRAINING for your team?
And what’s the cost of NOT INVESTING in proper training?
*****
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.
