Creating a BLUEPRINT of logical systems that has your dental practice running like a well-oiled machine is one of the defining action plans that sets your dental practice apart from all of your competitors.
Your existing patients and your new patients will greatly appreciate the thought and care that has gone into the creation of your dental practice sanctuary where everything happens for a reason that is both purposeful and also logical.
Taking a dental office from being a business that simply “makes things up as it goes along” to being a well-structured and well-organised entity following LOGICAL SYSTEMS rather than having very few if any processes at all, is a defining moment that will truly have your practice enjoying smoother flow in the work day, and greater profits on its balance sheets. Ultimately this allows you to unleash the true maximum potential of the business that you have created.
Your Dental Practice Blueprint
Your dental practice blueprint must pay due consideration to:
The customer, and their needs and wants, and maintaining the levels of care and professionalism that means that every interaction that each customer has with your business, and it’s team members exceeds their anticipated expectations each and every time.
Your team members, and their needs, and their wants, and their interactions with each other and with your customers, and with their management, and with the business itself. Each team member needs to have clearly defined pathways to follow to continually be able to ensure maximum results for each of your customers and for your business, and for each of their team members and colleagues.
Your business. Your business needs to maintain its viability to allow it to continue to provide those services that it does to those customers who want and need and expect and appreciate all of those services.
Your dental business is a necessary part of the lives of so many customers.
The continued profitability of your business allows it to sustain and maintain its existence as an essential service to its valued customers, who expect it to always be there for them.
Our business owners.
If your business is not profitable, and does not provide a healthy and happy work environment to a customer base of appreciative and loyal patrons, then what is the purpose of owning that business?
If any of those ingredients are lacking or waning, then owning such a business of deficiency is a sentence, and the owner would most probably be better off simply working for someone else and not having the headaches and the heartaches associated with running a defective organisation.
Having a well-constructed and well-engineered business BLUEPRINT for your dental office can eliminate all of the heartaches and the roadblocks that disrupt and destroy the comfortable expectations of what owning a business [that is a well-oiled machine] should be like.
A well-engineered blueprint for your dental practice can transform it from being a small business with no processes and no order into becoming a roadmap of logical systems that provides smoother flow to each patient’s visit, as well as to the day-to-day operations and events of each working day.
So with that in mind, let me ask you a question…
On a scale from one to ten, how well do you believe and do your team members believe that your dental office has a well thought out and logical blueprint for what is required each and every day, where on the scale, a score of one is that you don’t have any written down systems or processes at all, and a score of ten is that you do indeed have a comprehensive and detailed PLAYBOOK that describes everything that can ever need to be done in a logical thought out sequence for each and every duty, event, and error or defect that can possibly occur on any day, in your practice?
Where do you believe that your dental practice is on that scale from one to ten?
We have a program called “Building the Complete Dental Practice Blueprint” that helps our clients to create a logical and complete playbook that improves their practice processes from being a few random thoughts and transforms them into a well-structured and well-oiled machine.
Owning and running a business that is a WELL-OILED MACHINE is really about moving your dental practice from being a mish-mash of NO PROCESSES or a few processes into becoming an organisation and service provider renowned for its seamless logical systems that make each client’s visit an absolute pleasure.
And if we can do that, if we can create that blueprint of logical thought out well-structured processes that produce that seamless smoother flow for our patients, so that they are in awe at the difference between the experience that they receive and the less than flattering expectations they may have had based on what a visit to the dentist used to be like, then those patients will be transformed into LOYAL ADVOCATES AND REFERRERS for our dental practice.
Creating a dental practice that is a logical well-oiled machine begins with creating a complete blueprint.
And creating that blueprint is the first accelerator we must apply to transform our dental practice into becoming a well-oiled machine with smoother flow of operations, helping the business on its way to unleashing its maximum potential and to creating greater operational profitability.
*****
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 April 28, 2022 in Brisbane QLD
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 do, that means we have to go out shopping for things…. like flooring, vanities, toilets, appliances…
Sometimes when you have to go shopping it seems as though the sales assistants don’t want to be there as much as the customers want to have to be going through all the pains of choosing from all of the various and different choices there are….
But occasionally…
But occasionally you stumble upon a sales assistant who is a real hero. Who makes you, as the customer, feel as though you are the most important person in the world.
Last week we met Jo.
Jo sells toilets. In a store.
I had no idea there were so many different types of toilets and lids and seats and cisterns and buttons and bowl shapes and heights… the list goes on….
I had no idea that for four and a half thousand dollars you can buy a toilet with an automatic up raising lid that gives you a hose down with warm water afterwards that can be programmed at specific temperatures and pressures and angles depending upon the user…happy days!!
Jo cracked up [laughing] when she heard Jayne and I talking hesitantly about touching the showroom displays… and rightly so… there was no logical reason why Jayne and I couldn’t touch and feel the rims and the rimless, or put our hands down inside the S-bend to where the ceramic finish ended and the porous finish began… it all affects the evacuation of solids…
After all, these displays were not plumbed… they were displays, never having been christened.
And yet I couldn’t bring myself to touch them…
Back to Jo…
The thing about Jo was that she went out of her way to help us with a number of suggestions…. Like buying our toilets now and storing them at her warehouse until we needed them.
Jo asked whether we needed any other bathroom ware, taps, handles, baths, heated towel rails… the list went on.
But there was no PUSHY from Jo.
Despite us feeling that we might have been a little demanding, and that we were piling things up for her, nothing seemed to phase Jo. And on this day Jo was working the whole floor on her own!
When it comes to customer service, Jo was like a breath of fresh air.
Not only was she a pleasure to deal with, Jo also knew her stuff. She had product knowledge without any airs and graces.
Jo was also able to refer us to another supplier we were looking for [not related to toilets and bathrooms] who was opening up a new store location nearby.
Isn’t it a pleasure when you come across someone who enjoys what they do for a living so much that happiness exudes out of them?
At your dental office…
Do your dental office employees turn up to work excited and in top gear at the start of each and every day?
Or are your team members DRAGGING themselves in across your front doorway as if they’d rather be at home sick in bed than be at work?
The way they arrive at work is usually reflective of how they’re going to perform on stage for you that day…
The choice is simple.
Employ people who love what they do.
And if you have employees who are going through the motions at your place, advance their employment prospects by referring them to a colleague you believe is a better match for them…
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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.
As a dental practitioner and dental practice owner, one of the things that I did in my community to build my practice credibility was to attend regular monthly “Chamber of Commerce Business After Five” meetings.
These monthly meetings were held each month at a business premises of different Chamber of Commerce members, and for the cost of a few beverages and some food caterings, were an excellent way for local small businesses to introduce themselves to the other members of the chamber and to let those chamber members know who you were, where they were located, and what sort of services they were able to provide to the community.
Although my local Chamber was made up primarily of what I called “men in suits” [lawyers and accountants] these meetings presented a great opportunity for me to present myself each month as an attendee and to meet members.
The exciting part about all this was simple. Most of the Chamber members had teeth. And secondly, no other dentist was attending these meetings to introduce themselves to Chamber members.
The lightbulb moment:
The lightbulb moment for me came one day when I was talking to one of the Chamber executive members who said this to me:
“We often get asked by new members where should we go to the dentist, and our answer is always the same…”
“And that is, there’s only one dentist to go to in Parramatta, and that’s Active Dental.”
And then he said this:
“And we tell them this: ‘You’re going to pay more there. But it’s well worth it’.”
And that’s how I wanted to be known.
I wanted to be known as the best dentist in my community.
I wanted to be known for my quality of dentistry.
And I wanted the dental practice to be renowned for the compassion and the customer care and the experience that we provided to each and every one of our valued customers and patients.
I never wanted to be known as “the cheapest dentist in town.”
And I earned the RESPECT of my community, and in particular, the business community, by being seen out and about at Chamber of Commerce Business Events and functions, and charity fundraisers.
As a small business, my dental practice was a significant supporter of a prominent local based charity in my community, and attending their events raised my practice profile as a local business seen to be GIVING BACK to the local community.
Patients want to know…
Your patients want to know that you’re REAL, and that you are human, and that you CARE.
And being seen regularly, in popular “professional” places, and being approachable, really goes a long way towards breaking down those barriers that inadvertently and accidentally get built between business owners and their customers.
Being seen out and about in your community during the working day is also important.
Supporting local cafés and eateries is good. Being known at the local pharmacies, florists, stationers, and food suppliers [like fruit shops, butchers, and bakeries] is also good.
Remember…
Remember, your customers and future customers want to know that you don’t bite, and that you are approachable.
Support your patients that are plumbers, builders, mechanics, hairdressers.
And be happy to do so.
Don’t be reclusive, and don’t be aloof.
The community has an expectation of their white-collar professionals.
Being professional, as well as also being approachable, goes a long way towards building trust, and creating well-earned respect for what you do in your community.
*****
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.
A dentist I know very well is very old school in some regards.
One of the things he is traditional about is the keeping of a paper diary, or appointment schedule.
Although this dentist is very computer savvy, he likes to review his calendar by flicking the pages and viewing his diary on a week to a two-page view.
Many years ago this dentist became the owner of a leather-bound six-ring agenda holder, fashioned in France and distributed by one of those fancy luggage stores usually reserved for Fifth Avenue New York, if you get my drift…
In fact, for this dentist, the annual pilgrimage to the Sydney store became such an event for him…. entering the store, enquiring about the agenda pages, making the purchase, having them wrapped and leaving the store with the obligatory carry bag for all to see….it was really such an event for him.
And this year 2021 just gone was no exception, except that when he visited one of the Sydney stores in mid-December, the agenda refill pages that he needed were not available in his size, and needed to be ordered in.
Now because this dentist had no way of getting back in to the city centre before January, the store clerk offered to courier the said agenda refill to his home especially, and especially as his buying history had shown that he had indeed been a regular purchaser over the years of a lot more items than just the agenda pages.
And when you come to think about it really, the agenda refills are available from most office suppliers for a fraction of the cost of purchasing them from this upmarket fancy French luggage supplier.
But for this dentist, the price differential of owning something fancy and exclusive and using it every day did indeed make him feel special, despite the fact that most days for him, his agenda was only ever viewed by him and nobody else in the world even knew or knew to care about the special point of difference this agenda had for this particular dentist.
But it mattered to him….
So fast forward to a day in the future…
So fast forwarding to a day in the future, and the DHL package arrives on the dentist’s doorstep.
He knows what it is… he opens the express envelope with scissors, carefully removing a pristine cardboard box.
Inside the cardboard box, which the dentist carefully opens, is a special sliding box, wrapped in a blue ribbon, along with a never used orange, small sized paper carry bag.
The dentist unties the blue ribbon, and slides open the box, revealing the agenda refill, inside its own labelled box.
And then he saw it.
2021.
The fancy French store had sent out an agenda refill for a year almost over.
You really have to wonder…
You really have to wonder if anyone was paying attention during the transactions that went on after this order was placed?
After all, the dentist placed the order on December 17 2021, and the store where he placed the order would have needed to communicate with a warehouse to locate the needed 2022 pages… and seeing that there were only fourteen days left in 2021, wouldn’t someone dealing with this transaction, and transportation, and subsequent wrapping and shipping have come to the realisation that maybe 2021 pages were not what the customer was wanting, and to double check that the product being shipped had not been gathered by mistake?
It can happen in dental…
This used to happen in dental to us regularly.
Inadvertently, laboratory prescription forms may not have been filled out correctly, and been sent off to the dental laboratory with some information not being included. [this usually involved a check box not being ticked].
Rather than a phone call to the dental practice from the laboratory to find out which box should have been ticked, the laboratory often defaulted to its “usual” or “most popularly requested” checkbox setting, which may or may not have been the checkbox that our practice would have chosen for this patient.
As a result of this, at our practice we made our own pathway procedure checklists so that nothing ever was transferred from one person to another in anything but a completed state.
We found it was better to be sure than to be sorry.
The thing is….
The thing is, it’s always better to get things right the first time.
But for those times when things do accidentally go awry, it is imperative to make sure the action of damage control is actually a better experience for the customer than if things had actually gone right in the first place.
Sadly, this was not the case for my dentist friend.
And when he contacted the store, the store was very RIGID in its policies and methodologies regarding a SERVICE RECOVERY solution for my friend.
As he wrote to them, he said that he:
“certainly wasn’t feeling the love”
in this situation.
Customer service is all about providing a memorable experience for the customer that exemplifies the fact that doing business with your organisation is a ZERO RISK situation for the customer, and that your company will get things right , no matter what it takes.
*****
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.
Last week I wrote discussing the serious question about how a dental practice owner goes about building a practice that is highly respected within its own community, and is totally trusted by each and every one of its valued patients.
The transition that a dental practice needs to move through from being the “new kid on the block” to being highly regarded is one that every dental practice does go through, whether that practice is a “start-up” practice, or whether the practice is an existing practice that has just recently been sold to a new owner.
Respect has to be earned.
It cannot be assumed, and it cannot be taken.
The scepticism and hesitancy of every community towards any new dentist is always present. The only thing that we do know for certain is that the length of time between the arrival of the new dentist in town, and the establishment of respect from the community towards that new dentist can be affected in both positive and negative ways.
The goal is to do everything that you can to shorten that passage of time from being never believed to becoming a totally trusted sage.
A totally trusted dental practice that has created well-earned respect will definitely operate with lower stress and greater profitability, ultimately unleashing and living up to its maximum potential.
Frameworks.
All businesses and organisations need structure to operate effectively and efficiently.
The integrity of the structure, or its FRAMEWORK, and the complexities and relevancies of that framework is what separates the great businesses from the good, and the good businesses from the average, and the average businesses from those that struggle.
Those businesses that struggle…
Businesses that struggle usually do so because they have no organisational framework under which they operate.
And as ludicrous as this sounds, there are businesses out there that open their doors to the world each and every morning, with no clue about what their day will involve, and they simply make everything up as they move throughout their day, hoping that at the end of the day that every customer will “hopefully” have been dealt with in some manner that is cosmetically acceptable, will have paid their bill, and will not make a complaint.
These poorly organised businesses usually operate with high stress levels, and are barely profitable because of their lack of framework.
Average businesses… [the hopeful]…
Average businesses, on the other hand, have a minimal degree of organisation that allows them to get by because they create an illusion of organisation, whereas the amount of organisation they actually do have is only slightly more than their unorganised struggling counterparts.
The framework that average businesses operate under are skeletal at best, and even then there are pieces missing.
These businesses get by when they have to and occasionally have small wins to celebrate.
They know that their operations are disorganised and haphazard, and they know that they need to improve their structures, and it is on their to-do-list, but it’s not dated.
So the things that are needed never get done.
Average businesses are still working with HOPE as their primary driver.
Good, competent businesses…
Good, competent businesses do operate under a framework.
These businesses operate under a series of systems and processes that are in operation for more than half the time each day that their business is operational, but their framework still has its weaknesses.
They feel that what they have in place is good enough for most of the things that they need do, and they are fine with that.
They understand that their frameworks are incomplete, and at times will be found to be lacking, but they are unconvinced on the reward for the business of “going the extra mile” to be regarded as a well-respected business of true greatness.
Great businesses… [that are sought after]…
Lastly, the sought after well-respected and totally trusted dental practice in the community is where it is because it operates on a COMPLETE framework that covers all situations that can occur in the day-to-day operations of a dental office and at any point in time can seamlessly swing into a systematic response that always has the customer in awe of the business’s stress free solutions.
Having the framework in place to be able to cover all bases is no accident or fluke.
A business’s ability to be able to solve any problem or concern of every customer is what really separates the TRULY GREAT BUSINESSES from the competent, the hopeful and the struggling.
The well-respected dental practices in your community have established their position of standing in your community due to a number of reasons, and operating under a SOLID AND STABLE FRAMEWORK is a very important one of those reasons.
In order for your dental practice to unleash maximum potential, it needs to be known in your community as THE dental office that CONSISTENTLY OPERATES under the strongest and most thorough framework producing only the one hundred percent best outcomes for your patients..
So with that in mind, may I ask you a question…
On a scale from one to ten, how well do you believe that your dental office is THE dental practice in your community operating under the most solid and supportive framework that consistently produces only the best experiences and outcomes for each and every one of your patients, each and every time that each patient visits your practice?
On the scale, a score of one is that you don’t believe your practice is the best, and a score of ten is a state of mind where you and your team believe unconditionally that there is no other dental practice in your community that operates as well as your practice does on a consistent and regular basis?
Where do you believe that your dental practice is on that scale from one to ten?
Our signature program, The Ultimate Patient Experience, helps our clients create and deliver the necessary processes to establish a well-structured, well-organised framework for their practice that will help each client to improve how well their practice is respected within their community.
Well-earned respect in the community is maintained and grown by your dental business’s consistent actions.
And those actions need to be determined by the strength of the framework that supports your day-to-day operations.
Improving your business framework is the second accelerator we apply to the lever that creates well-earned respect for your dental practice, allowing your practice to become totally trusted in the community, and helping your dental business on its way to unleashing its maximum potential.
*****
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 can order your copy here: 
