One of the things we need to focus on as business owners is the thought of complacency where, in thinking as businesses, we believe that GOOD ENOUGH IS GOOD ENOUGH, and the pursuit of better than good enough is not worth the extra effort.
Because a lot of people and businesses do think in terms of these sorts of self-defeating thoughts.
And I’m reminded of the question of what would we be doing now if Steve Jobs had decided that the iPod was good enough… after all, the iPod was a revolutionary invention for its time..… and if he had, then maybe Apple would not have gone on to develop more, and the world would never have received the iPhone?
And it is really this PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE or this continual pursuit of improvement that has driven the growth and success of the human race as it stands today.
Because what would the world have been like if Christopher Columbus had not sailed westward to discover the Americas?
And is space really the final frontier, especially considering that the USA has sent a number of astronauts to walk on the surface of the moon?
Of course it is not… now we have private citizens doing day trips to space…
What is next for you?
What’s your next goal?
What’s the next thing that you seek to achieve, or improve upon?
Or are you contented with your current lot at present?
Remember, the decision to mark time, to rest, or to stop and smell the coffee, though restful and recharging, is in reality an action of taking NO ACTION, and as such, making the choice of being stationary, is actually a decision to put “the vehicle into reverse” relatively speaking, in relation to the field you are in, who are still continuing onwards.
And that passing of time can be scary.
A true story:
After purchasing my dental practice in 1987, and owning it for five years, in 1992 I asked people in the industry how my practice was performing, relative to the industry.
And I was told:
“You’re doing OK. Your practice is turning over double what the average dental practice is turning over.”
This was very interesting for me to find out, as I had felt at that time that there was room for further improvement in my practice, especially with relation to time management, efficiencies, and scheduling capacity.
But heck, I then thought to myself:
“If the average practice is doing $200K per year, and I’m nudging $400K per year, then I guess I should feel contented?”
Fast forward four years to 1996, and I’m still doing around the $400K per year mark… so I asked people in the industry again for a comparison.
And guess what they told me?
They said:
“The average practice is doing $200K per year, and you’re doing $400K per year…. you’re doing OK. Your practice is turning over double what the average dental practice is turning over.”
And so I went away … “contented”…..
Until I met a dentist whose one man practice was doing $800K turnover annually.
And then I realised, that I needed to know more.
I realised that better was possible.
And I knew that I needed to find out what he was doing differently to me.
Because in reality, he was no better than me.
In reality, he was no different to me.
His practice was also in western Sydney, and was actually located in what I perceived to be a lower socio-economic area than the part of Sydney where my practice was located…
So ask yourself this…
If better is possible, why would you not want to become better?
Why would you settle for good enough, when better is possible, and is achievable?
Fifteen years on from 1996 to 2011, and my practice was turning over $3.4M. The practice had grown it’s turnover 8.5X in fifteen years.
That decision to move through the “good enough barrier” for me, and find out more about what I could be doing differently, or doing better, for me was life changing.
The subsequent growth in my practice allowed me to move my family to live in an area where I could send my children to better schools. It also allowed me to allocate savings towards my retirement, and in so doing, allowed me to determine where I retired to, as well as what I would do in my retirement.
Sadly, as a result of a medical condition, I retired myself from clinical dentistry many years before I thought that I would retire.
But the choices that I made early in my career meant that I COULD MAKE CHOICES later in life when the chips were down…
Nowadays, it does give me great pleasure to give back to the profession, and to mentor dental practice owners who ask me these two simple questions:
“David, how can my practice be better? Can you help me?”
Of course I can. Just ask me…
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LIVE Workshop: Dr David Moffet and Jayne Bandy:
“How To Easily Run, Maintain And Grow The Ultimate Dental Practice In 2022 and Beyond”
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 LIVE workshop Thursday February 24, 2022 in Melbourne, VIC
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.
You’re owning and running an expensive to set up dental practice.
There’s lots of equipment, specialised equipment, specialised medical equipment, and computers and things.
And part of the common sense of owning and running an expensive dental practice is that you wouldn’t let, or shouldn’t let someone who is unskilled or untrained or unregistered to operate any of that expensive equipment, would you?
After all, if you did let them loose on that equipment, something seriously dangerous and harmful could go wrong…
Your computer my malfunction and meltdown?
Or it could get a virus, or malware?
You might accidentally become the victim of a cyber ransom attack?
Your Cerec machine may default a setting and start milling something it may not necessarily be needing to do?
You could irradiate someone unnecessarily….
Or you could cause permanent damage to a patient if you let an untrained person loose on them with a dental drill or a scalpel or a pair of extraction forceps?
It’s just not the right sort of thing to be doing…
It’s just not the right sort of thing to be doing…
One of the most harmful and stupid things I see dental practice owners doing is letting untrained staff use expensive equipment that through its misuse, can cause hundreds of thousands of dollars damage to a dental practice….
On a monthly basis.
Which works out being millions of dollars wasted on an annual basis.
And the sad part about this damage is that dentists kind of know that it goes on, but for some reason they condone the behaviour because they feel that it’s kind of OK to be doing it?
If you wouldn’t let an unskilled employee use a dental drill…
If you wouldn’t let an unskilled and untrained employee use a dental drill, then why would you allow an unskilled and untrained employee to answer your dental practice phones?
There’s more to answering a dental practice phone than just saying:
“Hello?”
There’s more to answering a dental practice phone than just saying:
“I haven’t got anything available with Dr Jones for six weeks.”
There’s more to answering a dental practice phone than just saying:
“We’re very busy because of the backlog from the lockdown.”
There’s more to answering a dental practice phone than just saying:
What did you say your name was again?”
The role of a dental practice receptionist is to listen, empathise, and solve.
Yet so many times when I call dental practices, and when I hear recordings of dental practice phone calls, I hear receptionists who do not listen, rarely empathise, and fail to find solutions.
Either one.
Or two.
And sometimes three strikes.
Over and out.
Every caller to a dental practice is calling to make an appointment. They’ve already decided that they want to come to your practice.
That’s why they’re phoning your practice.
They’ve already done their research.
If they were wanting to go to another practice, they’d be on the phone to that other practice.
And yet I hear so many dental receptionists who have no understanding of this…
A new patient enquiry is a gift of treatment, and money and future referrals…
And all we need to do is listen to the caller, empathise with them about their dental issue, and find a suitable solution…
And then we’ve become their new best friend.
The trouble is….
No dentist ever walks up to a patient untrained, and unskilled and cuts a three unit bridge prep in five minutes.
They need to learn how to hold a drill, and manipulate a drill and use it efficiently and carefully, and effectively, to achieve an optimal result.
They need to review their preps and make notes on what they did well, and what they could do better next time….
And the time after that.
And the time after that.
And the time after that and after that and after that… and so on…
And yet most dental practice owners have no idea what’s being said on their practice phones.
They don’t know what’s being asked by callers.
And they don’t know what’s being said by employees [unless the dentist just happens to be walking past the reception desk while the receptionist is answering the phone… which isn’t often, and isn’t the full picture anyway]
Because the phone calls aren’t being recorded and aren’t being listened to by an expert, there are literally rivers of dollars flowing out of a dental practice every day because unskilled and untrained employees are being let loose on the general public by being allowed to answer the dental practice phones.
Here’s a true story…
I once heard recordings of the same caller phoning a dental practice twice, ten minutes apart, and enquiring about tooth whitening both times. The phone was answered by a different employee on each occasion. On both occasions, the caller received a detailed answer to her question.
But on both occasions the answers were different, despite the enquiry being the same.
And on both occasions, the result of the phone call was the same.
The caller did not schedule an appointment at the end of either phone call….
Here’s another true story…
I heard a phone call recording where a caller said:
“I’ve just been told that I need five implants. I’ve not been to your practice before but I’ve been recommended to go to you guys by one of my friends who goes there.”
And the receptionist said:
“I haven’t got any appointments available for six weeks. We’re fully booked.”
The receptionist could have answered that call in so many other ways that would have been better than saying:
“I haven’t got any appointments available for six weeks. We’re fully booked.”
Did that receptionist listen?
Did she empathise?
Did she solve the caller’s problem?
Strike One. Strike Two. Strike Three.
Did that referred patient wanting to spend $20K-$25K on implants make an appointment with that dentist?
Sadly not….
It’s not just the stupidity and the ignorance….
It’s not just the stupidity and the ignorance being displayed here that gets me…. Sometimes I wonder about the emotional trauma inflicted upon the unsuspecting caller who really only wants to make an appointment and get started on their treatment.
I can’t imagine how bad these callers end up feeling when their enquiry about an appointment is SLAPPED DOWN so arrogantly like this…
And I’m not sure whether this behaviour is a rehearsed display of power and arrogance, or whether it’s a frustration created by an inability to structure an appointment schedule effectively to accommodate these enquiries.
The answer is that this sort of behaviour needs to quickly be UNLEARNED and a replacement behaviour needs to taught and substituted IMMEDIATELY, before the practice haemorrhages itself and bleeds itself to death [financially speaking].
If a hamburger chain can…
If a hamburger chain can train teenagers to ask all patrons routinely whether they’d like to supersize their meals or whether they’d like an apple pie, then surely a dental practice employee can learn and become disciplined in the conversational techniques required to listen, empathise and solve for a phone call enquiry to the dental practice.
The financial benefit to a dental practice that outsources the education of their front of house representatives is far greater in orders of magnitude than the investment made in that outsourced specialised training.
We all know that a dental receptionist doesn’t try to tell a dentist how to do a three unit bridge prep.
After all, she’s never had to cut teeth for a living.
Yet in that same vein, a dentist shouldn’t really be trying to tell a dental receptionist how to better answer all of the different types of telephone enquiries to the practice, should they?
After all, he’s never had to answer the phone all day, every day, day in and day out, for a living….
But the dentist often says:
“How hard can it really be?”
From our data, the answer is:
“It can be, and I,s quite hard…”
The answer is…
The answer is that from our observations we see these truths:
No matter how badly you think your dental practice phones are being answered, it’s always worse.
And
No matter how well you think your dental practice phones are being answered, it’s always worse.
When you hire a professional to fix your phones…
When you hire a professional to fix your phones, there’s always an immediate positive financial benefit purely and simply because the professional knows what to look for. But the professional also knows how to get the best long term sustainable results, too.
And the professional also knows how to gather the low hanging fruit for immediate improvement.
And isn’t that what it’s really all about?
Improvement? And results?
******
LIVE Workshop: Dr David Moffet and Jayne Bandy:
“How To Easily Run, Maintain And Grow The Ultimate Dental Practice In 2022 and Beyond”
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 LIVE workshop Thursday February 24, 2022 in Melbourne, VIC
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.
Isn’t it funny how in life, the cream always rises to the top?
How like attracts like?
Do you ever wonder why that is?
Here’s a couple of interesting stories….
Story Number 1.
My wife Jayne has finally decided that it’s now become too difficult and too inconvenient to trek up to Sydney every five to six weeks to visit her hairdresser. And so, with much reluctance, she’s chosen a new hairdresser to attend to her needs down here in The Highlands. [For those who don’t know, Jayne and I sold our Sydney home three years ago and moved (then) to live permanently at our country home in The Highlands, some two hours drive out of Sydney.]
Jayne asked around some of her friends, and chose a salon locally that was owned by a young twenty-two year old hairdresser who travelled up an hour’s drive each way every day from another regional country town.
Anyway, just after Jayne’s first visit to this new hairdresser, our state of New South Wales was plunged into what ended up being a four-month COVID-19 lockdown, which meant a couple of things:
Firstly, no haircuts or hairdressers. Haircuts were not considered an essential service during COVID lockdowns.
And secondly, no non-essential travel outside of your Local Government Area.
Anyway, fast forward to last week and NSW has just now emerged from lockdown, and the residents of NSW can [legally] attend to their hairstyling needs and requirements…
So Jayne visited her stylist, and asked her what she did during her imposed isolation, to which she answered:
“I bought another salon.”
In her home town.
At the age of twenty-two….
Jayne and her hairdresser discussed all the marketing that the young hairdresser had engaged in, keeping in touch with her clients during the lockdown, while not being allowed to physically attend to their hair.
And Jayne was amazed at all the little things that her stylist had been doing, in a behind the scenes business sense.
When Jayne asked her how she came up with all of these wonderful business ideas, the stylist answered simply:
“I have a coach.”
Story Number 2.
Jayne and I are about to do a few renovations around our home, which means that we’re going to be needing to relocate ourselves, and some furniture, during these times.
So we called a local removals firm, who we had used when we originally purchased our Highlands home, and who we used again when it was time three years ago to vacate our Sydney home and to move down here full time.
As we were showing Adam [from the removals firm] some of the furniture that we needed him to move, he happened to glance at a chart on a wall in my study, and asked:
“What’s this chart here saying ‘Six-Week Cycle’?”
[Actually, Adam spotted the top of the chart poking up on a wall in my study that was behind an open door… Adam was simply walking by along a hallway.… talk about powers of observation and attention to detail!]
I told Adam that the Six-Week Cycle was a program I was doing with my coach, Taki Moore, and Adam shared that his removal firm, had their own coach, in New Zealand, who was also a client of Taki. [Taki is the coach’s coach!]
And when Adam told me this, well it kind of joined the dots for me….
The reason we had hired and re-hired Adam’s firm for removals, and for storing furniture too, was simply because they provided exceptional customer care and customer service whenever we dealt with his company.
And I guess, this great service they provided may not have initially been as a result of using a coach, but for sure and certain, using a coach has kept his firm ON TOP OF THEIR GAME, especially when it comes to providing a consistent five-star experience for their customers.
So you’ve got to ask yourself this question…
If a twenty-two year old small town hairdresser has a business coach, and a regionally based furniture removals business has a business coach, why don’t you have a business coach?
What a business coach does is they act as a sounding board for ideas and thoughts that you as the business owner might have about certain aspects of your business.
Because a coach is a sage. A good coach knows their industry, and they know what’s working out there in the big wide world, and they also know and have seen what’s not working.
A good coach will keep a business owner IN THEIR LANE, and keep them focused on the end result, their destination, and help them reach that destination with minimal distractions, and minimal detours and dare I say it, minimal disasters.
But don’t take my word for it…
Roger Federer has a coach. He has several coaches.
Tiger Woods had several coaches.
Most sporting teams, from Under-6’s right up to professional organisations, have at least one coach.
As I said at the beginning, isn’t it funny how the cream rises to the top in society?
Well it’s no accident, really.
The cream rises to the top because of consistent practices and intelligent choices.
And one of those choices is having a coach.
As my good friend Dr. Ron Arndt used to always tell me:
“None of us are smarter than ALL of us.”
We don’t know what we don’t know.
That’s where a coach is very handy…
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LIVE Workshop: Dr David Moffet and Jayne Bandy:
“How To Easily Run, Maintain And Grow The Ultimate Dental Practice In 2022 and Beyond”
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 LIVE workshop Thursday February 24, 2022 in Melbourne, VIC
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 amazing how many times I hear this simple three step process bastardised when I listen to recordings of dental front office team members answering their practice phones.
When the phone rings, all that the dental receptionist needs to do is listen to the caller and hear exactly what they are saying. Then they need to compassionately empathise with the caller. And lastly they need to find a solution for the caller’s problem.
Three simple words:
Listen. Empathise. Solve.
It does not say:
Hear. Ignore. Vomit.
Yet that is the response that I most commonly have to listen to…. someone “vomiting” unasked for information onto someone who doesn’t have a dental bone in their body….
It also does not say:
Hear. Presume. Shut-out.
It does not say disclude… it says empathise and solve….
We need to listen, and not just hear….
So many times I listen to a recording and the dental receptionist has not been attentive to what the caller is actually really saying.
The receptionist has heard what the caller said, but they have not truly listened and comprehended EXACTLY what the caller is actually phoning about.
The caller may say:
“I’ve been to another dentist and been told I need to have five implants. I’ve not been to your practice before but I’ve been recommended by a friend to see Dr Jones there”
And the receptionist answers
“I don’t have any appointments available until January.”
Sometimes the receptionist will qualify this comment by saying:
“We’ve been really busy because of COVID and we’re trying to clear our backlog…”
What the receptionist didn’t hear the patient say…
Because the receptionist wasn’t truly listening to the caller, what she did not hear the caller say is this:
“I’ve been recommended by one of your valued patients to come to your practice and see Dr. Jones and give him $25K into his bank account…”
Now, I know it’s not about the money with dentistry, but a practice with a good income, making a good profit, is a more secure workplace and a happier place to work in than a dental practice struggling to make ends meet.
What about some compassionate listening?
What about this phone call…
Caller:
“Hello. I need to make an appointment for my wife. She’s just finished chemotherapy, and has four loose teeth that need to be extracted”
Dental receptionist answers:
“I haven’t got anything for six weeks.”
YES! REALLY!!
YES REALLY!!!!!
Not:
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. How is your wife? Is she OK? Will she be all right?”
Or:
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name… when was your wife last in to see us? Is she OK?”
A PERSONAL TOUCH MIGHT JUST HAVE BEEN IN ORDER ABOUT NOW…..
At no time did this receptionist listen or empathise. Or solve.
All this receptionist did was focus on her own issue, that she had a full appointment book and that she considered this phone call and the caller to be an interruption.
And to think…
And to think, that during the next 7-10 days at this practice, there is a fair chance that there might just be ONE SMALL CHANGE to the practice’s schedule?
And so, this receptionist could have thought on her feet, and LISTENED and HEARD exactly what the caller was saying, and formulated a solution in advance for this caller, based on the probability that there most likely would be a change to their schedule?
Instead….
Instead, a caller in genuine need, was shown the side door with an almighty flick pass.
I wonder how many referrals that phone call resulted in?
Probably not any….
Of course the answer is simple…
Nearly every dental practice owner out there IS NOT RECORDING and is DEFINITELY NOT LISTENING to recordings of what is being said by their staff members as PAID REPRESENTATIVES of their dental business.
These are not two isolated examples….it’s not pretty what we hear going on out there…
How can calls like these even be considered as good business practice?
We listen to phone calls of our clients [those who actually DO CARE what is being said] and the truth is this:
NO MATTER HOW BAD YOU THINK THINGS ARE ON YOUR DENTAL PRACTICE PHONES, IT’S ALWAYS WORSE….
Really, the amount of untrained people out there answering dental practice phones is staggering.
And the amount of “careless” conversations we hear on the phones that we improve is also significant.
Your phone is your greatest asset…
Your dental practice phone is your greatest asset.
If you’re not training the people answering your phones, then you’re burning callers, you’re burning enquiries, and your burning new patient appointments.
And that’s really bad customer service, and it’s a really poor advertisement for your dental practice.
************
LIVE Workshop: Dr David Moffet and Jayne Bandy:
“How To Easily Run, Maintain And Grow The Ultimate Dental Practice In 2022 and Beyond”
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 LIVE workshop Thursday February 24, 2022 in Melbourne, VIC
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.
