It’s amazing how many people jump into their car and drive to their destination, and in so doing, each and every time, they put their GPS Navigation [let’s call her Siri] on, to give them guidance.
This is despite the fact that they are driving to a destination that they know where it is.
It may be their home?
It may be their place of work?
It may be their hairdresser or their golf club?
And yet they still choose to have Siri on their phone or their device or their car navigation….why is this?
One of the reasons is because Siri will let you know very accurately, the exact time you are expected to arrive at your destination.
And as you travel, depending upon your speed of travel and depending upon circumstances, Siri will be able to recalculate your estimated time of arrival [ETA] and update you on your progress.
In fact, really good navigation programmes will even suggest alternate routes to your destination should a faster route become available?
And of course, should you miss a turn off during your journey, Siri will also recalculate a new route to your current destination, and adjust the ETA as well.
How did we ever manage to travel in a car before GPS Navigation and before Siri?
In fact, GPS Navigation and Google Maps can allow anybody to organise and plan any journey, be that by car, by bus, by train, or on foot…
Or any combination of the above, with multiple options of routes to be taken.
Isn’t progress wonderful?
I’m amazed at how many people actually DEPEND UPON Siri and GPS Navigation, despite the fact that they have grown up and travelled in the days of street directories and roadmap books?
It’s hard to fathom the thought, isn’t it?
Yet this is despite the fact that there was a time when there were very limited options of external guidance?
Do you remember trying to read a street directory at nighttime in the car, and also trying to find side streets and signposts in the dark?
How pre-historic does that memory seem now?
The silly thing is….
The silly thing is, that some people out there still choose to run their businesses blindly without planning or navigational assistance, despite the fact that expert advice is available.
And that expert advice will help these people and their businesses get to their destination more quickly, and more efficiently, without taking unnecessary deviations and without being delayed by roadblocks and road closures.
Allan Pease used to say that men refused to read maps when it came to driving and reaching a destination.
Yet driving a car and following a route planned by a GPS navigation system is now routine for most people.
And that’s just driving a car…
Yet for a decision so important about planning out a life journey or having a goal for your business, there appears to be so many people out there who for whatever reason choose to drive their business without reading a map.
How dumb is that?
The usual thought these business owners have is that they believe that because they are smart enough to own a business [as opposed to being stuck in a job], then they should also be smart enough to work out how to run a business?
And that’s probably why 95% of small businesses fail in the first five to ten years of operation.
Because they fail to plan, and they fail to seek navigational advice.
A smart business owner chooses to engage a business coach to help their business stay in its lane and navigate the most direct and productive route to achieve the goals that the owners wish to achieve.
The world is full of distractions lining up to tempt business owners away from their path to business success.
And most business failures are due to the fact that the business owners have strayed from their lane because of illogical temptation.
Success in business is worth the effort.
But there is always effort required.
If business success was easy then everybody out there would be in business and would own a successful business.
That obviously isn’t happening.
And that means that business owners need to make choices.
The way I see it is that business owners have three choices when deciding whether to improve their business:
They could do nothing and hope that things change…. and we know that this method NEVER WORKS… the definition of insanity is continuing to do what you’ve always done and expecting a different result each time.
You could try and figure things out on your own…and from experience I know that that is the SLOW, PAINFUL WAY, and quite frankly, is MORE EXPENSIVE…. Or…
You can work with someone who’s already successful and done what you’re trying to do, and HAS BEEN GETTING RESULTS for other business owners just like you for a significant number of years….
My guess is that all business owners want to avoid the PAIN of trial and error, and the PAIN of doing NOTHING… they want to QUICKLY get results that they can see immediately…
Doesn’t every business owner want to achieve success?
*****
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.
Last weekend my family and I travelled to a nearby country town.
We had some important family business to attend to prior to going to a well renowned café for lunch.
That family business delayed our arrival at the café by some fifteen minutes.
When I knew that we were delayed, I phoned the café to advise them that we were still on our way, and that we would be there shortly. I knew that our reserved table for five people would be a sort after table during a busy Saturday lunchtime service.
When I phoned, the person who answered my call was very friendly and cheerful, thanking me for phoning, and assuring me that our delay was quite OK, and also letting me know that the table had been prepared and was ready and available for us when we arrived.
She set my mind at ease.
She also offered me a great assurance that they were ready for us, and our table would be available for us as soon as we arrived.
I found this interesting, mainly because in these sorts of situations in other industries, often the concerns of the delayed arriving customer are brushed aside by staff with very little concern for the customer’s feelings and anxiety.
It is embarrassing to run late.
And it is very relieving to have our concerns about our lateness be accepted and understood with empathy.
When we arrived at the café, it was wonderful to see so many familiar staff working there. This town is about an hour from our home, so it’s not a place we visit often, but it is a place we like to stop off at when on country trips and drives.
After being shown to our table, and getting ourselves settled, we all headed up to the counter to place our lunch order.
The team member who took our order at the counter was very helpful and patient, and assembled the order from our five diners in one seamless motion, even though some of our family took a while to make their dining choices.
Later on, back at our table, when Sam came to bring water to our table, he remembered us, and said fondly:
“It’s great to see you again. Welcome back.”
There’s nothing more reassuring than recognition.
Babies cry for it and grown men die for it.
And customers love it too.
Towards the end of our lunch, I decided to purchase some pre-cut caramel slices to take home with us for afternoon tea. This was because three of our family were going to be visiting our newly renovated home for the first time before travelling on to back to Sydney.
When I made the purchase of the slices at the café counter, the lady asked me whether I would like them in a small bag [they were presented in a clear plastic cube-shaped box].
I thought the bag would be a good idea, to protect the slices from sunlight damage during our drive home.
What surprised me was that the lady took the slices and put them in the bag, and then walked around from behind the counter to come out on my side of the counter and present the bag to me, and to thank me and wish me a good rest of my day.
This was such an easy action for her to perform, but the best part about it was how important her action made me feel.
When giving that EXTRA bit of customer service, sometimes we don’t realise that our efforts have an effect on our customer that lasts for hours or day afterwards.
That little action of walking around to my side of the counter made me feel important.
And I know that The Four Seasons Hotel check-in staff do this routinely when giving arriving guests their room keys.
And they walk their arriving guests to the elevators… every time.
But it is the little things that end up having the big impacts.
That lady at the café did not know that my family had been visiting my mother’s grave at the local cemetery that morning, remembering her life and celebrating twenty years since she lost her five-year battle with ovarian cancer.
And the lady at the café did not know that we’d all travelled a distance to do this.
And how much we miss her…
And I guess the lady didn’t really know what sort of impact her kindness shown to us was going to have?
Or did she?
I’m thinking she did know….
Because I’m guessing that this sort of caring behaviour is what this lady always does…
*****
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.
In 2018, Jayne and I enjoyed our first European River Cruise.
We chose a short cruise to begin with, to see whether river cruising was a style of holiday or vacation that would appeal to us.
The trip we chose was a return cruise from Paris to Normandy and back along the Seine River.
It was a trip that we were excited to do, visiting important historical sites from WWI and WWII, as well as visiting towns and places made famous by impressionist painters and artists.
Overall, we had a wonderful time. The destinations and side tours were great, and the accommodation and food and beverages were also exceptional.
Despite all this, there were a couple of instances where Jayne and I felt that our “experience” was not up to the expectations we had had for a couple of destinations…. Let me explain…
One of the really anticipated destinations that Jayne and I were looking forward to visit was the newly opened Sir John Monash Centre and the battlefields memorials of Villers-Bretonneux and the Somme.
Sadly our reality did not reach our expectations.
The day tour from the boat did take us to the Sir John Monash Centre and to Villers-Bretonneux, but I felt that we had only just arrived at these venues when we were rushed away to our bus and moved on to another venue.
We seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time that day having a very average lunch served at a very average restaurant [and I use that term very lightly]. We would have been far more appreciative of having a smaller lunch, and spending more time at these places of great significance in Australian History.
That evening, on the boat, we met a couple who advised us that in future, when we had key places of interest to see, we would be wise to book our own guides to meet us at the dock, and take us to the places that we were wanting to see, rather than just amble along on a “tour” designed by the cruise company, that had less specificity.
Wise words indeed.
We certainly enjoyed our first river cruise, but for future cruises, we made the note to organise our own personal guide for venues that have been on our bucket list long term.
Interestingly….
Interestingly, in life, there are people who spend their whole lives being led and guided around by others, rather than making their own plans.
And as a result of their submissions into other people’s plans, these people usually end up never achieving some of the significant things that they could have potentially achieved, if they had simply decided to take the time and design their own plan.
Sometimes the “tour guide” you end up with for your life, will not be as good as the “tour guide” you should have used, if only you had planned ahead.
My first experience with a business coach in my dental practice was horrific. That coach, who I terminated after six long months, had plans for me that were more about his plans than about my expectations.
Fortunately for me, I did not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I knew that I still needed a business coach. I just needed a better coach.
And so my second business coach worked with me for six and a half years, and during that time, my dental practice tripled in production and collections.
Fortunately for me, I was able to realise that my first choice was poor, and I was able to make the necessary changes to achieve the results I was looking to achieve for my business.
I didn’t give up on being coached. I simply changed coaches…
In business, there is a solution for every problem.
You just need to make sure that you choose the best solution.
That gives you the best result.
Ultimately, like touring, you need to be in control of your own plan.
*****
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.
All of the failures in customer service in dental practices stem from dental team members [including dentists and RDHs] failing to spend adequate time doing the thing that they need most to be doing for their patients.
Rushing and shortcutting are the fatal errors that are consistently made in dental practices.
The result of this rushing and failing to spend adequate time with patients is that eventually the patient comes to the realisation that they are being ignored, or their custom or patronage to the dental practice is being taken for granted by the practice, and its staff.
When the penny drops for these patients, its usually the last straw for them.
These patients don’t just experience one poor piece of customer service.
Moreover, these patients have been tolerating repeated instances of decline in service, hoping that what they are experiencing is only temporary.
Sadly, these occasional service defects continue to occur more and more frequently, until their occurrence becomes the expected new norm for these patients.
And that’s when these patients begin to look around for a new dental practice to call their home.
Here’s where things go pear-shaped:
1- Handovers
An Ultimate Handover takes time.
And the time taken to ensure the success of the handover is inconsequential when compared to the amount of time the practice loses because the disgruntled patient cancels or delays their next visit.
A thorough handover leaves the patient with absolute certainty and clarity as to what they need to do next, and what will happen to them and their tooth if they choose not to comply with the dentist’s recommendations and expectations.
An abbreviated handover, or a non-existent handover, only result in patient confusion, or patient apathy.
Taking time with the handover reduces the confusion and apathy significantly.
The clarity that the patient receives as a result of an adequately timed handover reinforces to the patient that they are truly valued as a member of this practice’s family and community.
2- When the phone rings
When the phone rings at a dental practice, whether that incoming call is a new patient looking to schedule their first visit, or it is an existing patient of the practice looking for an appointment, the feeling that the caller must experience when their phone call is over is this:
The caller must end the call with the feeling that the receptionist who has taken the call has been waiting for and been looking forward to that actual phone call all day.
More often than not I’m hearing dental receptionists in a hurry on phone calls. [We listen to actual recordings of incoming calls to dental practices, so we know exactly what’s being asked by callers].
I’m regularly hearing dental receptionists unable to answer an inbound ringing phone if they are already on the phone, or if they are with a live patient in front of them in the front office area.
And when this happens, the inbound call goes through to a service….and at that service, the inbound caller rarely leaves a message, because the caller believes that the dental office team members should be trained to deliver a service when their inbound phone line rings…
Callers know when they are being rushed, or ignored, or dare I say it, belittled [yes, we do hear that too from time to time].
And whenever these emotions are felt be callers to a dental practice, be they new patients looking for a dental home, or existing loyal patients, some of these patients will draw the line and say:
“Enough is enough.”
How do children spell “love”?
Children spell love: T. I. M. E..
And patients at your practice will spell “love” exactly the same way.
Give your patients the time they deserve, and more.
Patients crave time.
When you deny them and disappoint them by short-shifting them, they remember, and remember, until finally, the last straw breaks the camel’s back.
And then they’re gone….
It’s easier to make first chances count than be hoping on getting a second chance.
Take the necessary time to cement your relationships.
It’s worth it….
*****
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.
Nor should it ever be considered to be a dirty word.
Selling is the passionate demonstration of the compelling benefits of owning something, to someone who is yet to be the owner of that something.
On that note, I received this email this week from my good friend and mentor Dave Dee:
“There is a word that almost anyone selling professional services does not want to be associated with.
Can you guess what it is?
If you answered “salesperson,” give yourself a gold star.
Last week I did a virtual presentation on selling for a group of alternative healthcare practitioners. I asked how many of them disliked selling. Everyone but one person said they didn’t like it, and no one wanted to think of themselves as a salesperson.
That’s understandable because of the negative connotations that the word has. It immediately conjures up the high-pressure, fast-talking guy delivering his “pitch”.
(As an inside, legendary sales trainer Tom Hopkins had a list of words that salespeople should never use, and “pitch” was one of them. He said professionals don’t “pitch”; they do “presentations.”)
You don’t have to think of yourself as a salesperson, but you must know how to sell.
Please answer these questions:
Do you offer a quality service that helps people?
Do you care about your clients?
If you’re talking to a qualified prospect, who needs your help, do you believe that you are the one who should help them?
If you answered “yes” to these questions, you have an obligation to close the sale. If you don’t, you’re not only doing yourself, your business, and your family a disservice but your prospective client a disservice.
Professional selling isn’t about manipulating people into buying something they don’t need or won’t help them. It’s about finding out what people want and helping them get it.
So go out there and help as many people as you can.
Dave Dee”
The truth is, that SELLING IS SHARING.
When you share with someone how good or how great your product is, and what great benefits they will receive when they use your product, or own your product, you’re not selling your product to them…
You’re sharing the fact with them that they are doing themselves and their family an injustice and a disservice by failing to procure ownership of whatever it is that you’ve been demonstrating to them.
If you are passionate about the benefits that will come to them when they own your product, you owe it to them to ensure that that ownership does take place for them.
When they fail to buy whatever it is you are passionately recommending, and they walk away empty handed, you have let them down.
And you know that they will be worse off for not buying.
Sometimes lousy sales people will justify their inadequate selling skills by saying something stupid, like:
“Well, I gave them all the options, and they chose not to buy….so it’s not my fault they didn’t buy….”
But if the person who fails to buy is uneducated, chances are you have really done a disservice to them by confusing them with options.
It is your duty to help people in need to acquire what they need.
Giving them options and letting them “think about it” is dereliction of your duty.
*****
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.
