This week I’d like to talk about mindset and how a negative mindset can be holding you back.
And holding your business back.
Have you ever met someone who always sees the small chance of failure in every opportunity?
Someone who hopes that it’s not going to rain, although rain is not in the forecast?
To be successful in business we really need to think like a racehorse thinks.
As Jerry Seinfeld said, the only thought in the mind of a racehorse is to get to the end of the race so that it can receive its oat bag.
Throughout that race, all that racehorse is thinking about is the oat bag.
As Seinfeld said, if racehorses even thought that they could trip and fall, and break a leg while racing, they would certainly tread more gingerly.
A fall, and a broken leg would result in the racehorse having its brains blown out.
But during the race the racehorse is focused completely on that oat bag.
Failure is not an option for the racehorse.
Apollo XIII
When things went south during the Apollo XIII mission to the moon, the key focus of Mission Control in Houston was to bring the spaceship and crew home.
“Failure is not an option.”
This edict was paramount in the Mission Control team effort that saw the lives of the astronauts saved.
Burn the Boats!
When Cortes and his fleet landed their eleven ships in Central America in 1519, Cortes’s first edict to his six hundred men in this newly discovered land was to
“Burn the boats!”
Once the boats were burned, there was no going back.
There was no path of retreat, no change of plans.
The aim of the mission was to succeed or perish.
Sure, they understood that their mission could fail.
But without their boats, the men were now more focused on succeeding than ever before.
How’s your thinking?
Are you an action taker?
Is your brain wired to always focus on the win, and not to focus on the possibilities of losing or failing?
It does make sense to be a realist, but not at the expense of limiting your own successes.
After all, the chances of being killed in an automobile accident are much higher than the chances of being killed in a plane crash.
Yet all of those who fear flying will happily jump into a car.
Where’s the logic in that?
Disruption or discomfort?
Sometimes the fear of change, and the potential disruption caused by change, prevent people from venturing outside of their comfort zone to achieve what can be achieved.
Sometimes the habit of mediocrity overrides the prospect of achievement.
This is true in weight loss and diet.
For some, the discomfort of exercise and the discipline of sensible eating seem too much compared to the “normality” of inactivity and grazing on comfort food.
Yet the long-term benefits to your body of a lower BMI and regular exercise gives you a healthier body and mind not needing so much medical attention and intervention into your older years.
It’s the same for business
Those targets and stretches that you set your team and your business maintain a focus that reflects in the results that your business achieves for you and for your customers.
And in business, if you’re not growing, you’re dying.
As the great man said:
“If you’re going to think, you might as well think big”
Which is logical.
How’s your thinking?
Is your negative thinking hampering and strangling your 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.
We all know how difficult it is at a restaurant to find a waiter to bring over the check when you want it.
When the time comes that you and your party want to leave the restaurant it seems that nearly all wait staff have disappeared and those who are still on the floor are simply looking away from you frantically waiving your hand.
[Which is really amusing when you think about how wait staff in general are so keen to take your order from the moment that you arrive at the restaurant.]
And when you need some more sauce, or more salt, or just another beverage, attracting the attention of wait staff can really be quite difficult.
Just this morning I had to visit a local medical practice for a blood test that my doctor had ordered. When I entered the practice the one receptionist was on the phone talking to a patient [based on the conversation I heard].
All I needed from her during that two minute wait was a visual acknowledgement of my presence so that I could sign her, or show her my pathology referral so that she could wave me through to the pathology rooms at the back of the practice.
Sadly, there was no acknowledgement.
It was as though I was invisible.
Is it just me, or does it seem that in this day and age, service staff are unable to multi-task at all?
Is mono-tasking now the norm?
Years ago, I was consulting in a dental practice where I witnessed a new patient arrive at the front desk and be ignored for over three minutes while the dental receptionist mono-tasked with a patient on the phone.
There was no act of recognition, no act of motioning towards a comfortable seat, no act of smiling “hello”.
As a spectator sitting in the practice reception lounge this was very painful for me to witness.
And I wasn’t the only person present in that lounge…. Other patients witnessed this act of ignoring first hand.
Has this ever happened to you in a service situation?
More importantly, is this happening in your dental practice behind your own back?
In business today, more and more, as a business owner you need to have staff with exceptional peripheral vision, who are able to offer assistance, and offer attention, and solve issues and resolve issues without the need of being constantly asked to do so.
Proactivity is what is needed.
Sometimes I feel that I’m living in a world where service staff are wearing invisible dog cones that I cannot see.
And that they cannot see around out of.
They are permanently blinkered?
Is this your experience?
As a customer?
As an employer?
If it is your experience, then it’s timefor things to stop.
Blinkered employees should no longer be accepted, and companies and businesses lacking in service because of poor peripheral vision do not deserve your patronage.
*****
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.
As is usual and customary, the celebration of a new year, or calendar, for many people seems to be as good a time as any to start afresh with goals and resolutions and aspirations.
The sad thing about New Year’s Resolutions is that most resolutions made at this time of year are abandoned.
And often abandoned well before the end of the first month of the year.
Why is that?
Lack of accountability is probably the main factor.
Considering that the VAST majority of resolvers discard their resolutions, conformity [to failure] is considered acceptable.
It is said that only three percent of the population have substantial written down goals and review those goals.
And when you corollate those numbers beside the fact that at age sixty-five, only five percent of the population can afford to retire [considered well off or wealthy], then there might just be something in this goal-setting exercise?
A Matrix of Goals
Dan Kennedy said:
“A matrix of long term, medium term, and short term goals linked to a chief purpose and/or a clear vision is essential if you are to tap both your own full potential and the full potential of others to assist you.”
These are powerful words.
Goals and aspirations cannot successfully be achieved if they are in fact only a list of random dreams and desires.
Your goals need to be a progressive course of achievable events that will lead you to your ultimate finale.
When I talk with clients about achieving financial personal and practice goals, we relate our lofty aspirational goals to the incremental monthly, weekly and daily and hourly requirements that need to happen consistently so that the lofty annual goal can be achieved.
Chunking our big goals down into smaller achievable bite-sized components is the best way of accomplishing what we set out to achieve.
Ensuring a commonality of purpose and a congruence amongst our goals, as Kennedy stated, is indeed the best way of staying on track towards achieving what we set out to do, because the actions required towards achieving one goal may be of assistance in achieving other subsequent goals.
The setting of goals that I’ve worked on with clients has allowed them to smash through their self-limiting beliefs and self-imposed glass ceilings and achieve dramatic improvements that they had never thought possible.
*****
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.
Recently I wrote about the importance of managing the ARRIVAL processes for the patients visiting our dental practice, and how the management of these processes, or the failure to optimally manage these processes, can have an effect on whether or not a patient continues as a patient of our practice.
As I have said, if your practice is falling down on any of the intermediary steps between what’s getting people to call your office and when they learn about what treatment they actually need to be getting done, it really doesn’t matter how great your case presentation skills are, nor how schmick your marketing is.
Looking after the needs of the arriving patient, and exceeding their expectations can be a real game breaker for your dental practice.
Here’s what you should be doing when the patient arrives at your practice:
When a patient arrives inside our practice there are certain parameters that need to be met.
The practice needs to:
Identify the arriving patient
Greet the arriving patient
Let them know the time frame for their visit [is the dental provider running on time?]
Direct them to a seat in the client lounge area
But what if we could do better?
What if our team members were:
Trained to Beat the GreetTM?What if our staff actively tried and succeeded in greeting each arriving patient by name before the patient had time to announce who they were?
Ready in anticipation?How many times do patients walk in to your dental practice and are made to feel as if they are an interruption to someone there’s “busy” schedule?
To have the arriving patient’s favourite beverage READY for them on arrival?
Letting every arriving patient know how great it was to see them, and how we had been looking forward ALL DAY to their visit?
Thanking every arriving patient sincerely for being on time, or better still, early, for their appointment?
How’s Your Hang TimeTM?
Hang TimeTM is the time spent by the patient between their arrival to the dental practice and their transfer from the client lounge down to the treatment room.
I’d rather not call it WAITING TIME as I’d like to think of it as being peaceful and serene, like hanging up in the air on a hang glider, soaring majestically without a care.
The way that we attend to our patients during this time [or that we FAIL TO attend to them] can seriously affect their state of mind and have bearing on whether or not they accept or decline any treatment we propose.
What we want to avoid during this time is “PARKING” or neglecting or ignoring the patient to such an extent that they decide [before meeting the dentist] that our dental practice IS NOT where they will be getting their dental treatment done.
Sometimes it is the LACK OF attention to our patients or our indifference or their perception of our indifference towards them that creates these feelings and opinions.
That being said, the cost of avoiding these negligent or neglectful scenarios is far less than the ongoing effects of allowing the feelings of neglect to take root.
So what can we do during Hang TimeTM?
Our practice could:
Have pleasant music being played at an appropriate volume
Maybe have their favourite music playing?
Offer a range of beverages and refreshments
Maybe even have their beverage of choice ready for them to enjoy?
Have suitable and appropriate [current] reading materials available
Have clean and well-presented furnishings and fixtures.
Have people employed in a concierge style role, visiting with patients, sitting and discussing their concerns, or even themselves.
Discuss any recent events or occurrences particularly mentioned previously by the patient?
Offer secure wi-fi access
Offer them warm or cold towels, if needed, prior to their treatment
Be mindful of the time and offer apologies and also explanations for any time delays.
Congratulate them on being a patient of the practice for however many years?
Managing the arrival processes at your dental practice in a way that makes your practice stand out from your competitors is a sure fire way to build a bevvy of loyal customers who wouldn’t think of ever going anywhere else for their dental treatment, ever.
*****
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 2016 I was approached by an accountant to look at a dental practice that was owned by one of his clients.
The accountant could not figure out a couple of things about the dental practice…
Firstly, considering the size of the dental practice, the accountant couldn’t figure out why it was not making a profit?
[The dental practice had five dental chairs and employed three dental hygienists and three dentists, as well as having a principal dentist]
The second question the accountant had for me was:
“Why do people who answer the telephone need to be taught how to answer the telephone? How hard can that be?”
Let’s look at the first question:
With such a great facility, and with great manpower, there certainly was a profitability question.
And in the case of this practice, the answer to the first question can be explained really quite simply.
Different practitioners work in different ways.
Some dentists and some hygienists prefer to work in different ways to other dentists and hygienists.
The sad thing is that in private dental practice, under ownership, some owners end up running charities for unproductive practitioners.
These owners allow the employed practitioners to use the practice’s facilities with no processes of review, including review about productions, hourly rates, diagnosed treatment, case acceptance, and case completion.
Just to name a few….
For each practitioner.
And when there are no processes of review, then there are no opportunities to stimulate results and improvements.
And so what happens is that the dental practice has no consistency.
And that is what I witnessed here first hand.
During the six months I worked with this practice their collections were below target for four of those months and then above target [slightly] on one month. And another month the figures were well exceeding target.
But not in that order.
Because the practice had no structure.
And the lack of structure created the erratic results.
And without structure there was no review.
People took vacation when it suited them, rather than when it suited the practice.
The dental exams in the hygiene rooms were not done at any specific time and were only done when it suited the dentists, not the patient and not the hygienist.
There were no daily goals and targets set for dentists and hygienists to achieve.
And when you don’t have something to aim at, you end up missing it one hundred percent of the time.
When the practice achieved its one stellar month of production, the big differentiating factor for that month compared to the months before [and afterwards] was that the principal dentist had done some significant treatment. And some extra hours.
Ask yourself this question:
If we separated the income generated by the principal dentist, and subtracted that from the total practice income, would the income from the remaining practitioners be sufficient to pay them their salaries and commissions, as well as pay all the staff salaries and all of the practice’s expenses?
And return a profit for the owner?
What I don’t like seeing….
What I don’t like seeing in these sorts of larger private dental practices is the situation where a significant chunk of the principal dentist’s production income is being used to prop up the underproduction of the employed practitioners.
With zero profit being made by the practice….
And that’s CHARITY.
Speaking pragmatically.
All too often I see dentists surrounding themselves with extra practitioners, creating an illusion of success, when there is no profit coming from having these people there.
And often the having of the extra people there creates significant headaches for the practice, in terms of human resources and management.
And the solution is?
All too often there is an obvious solution in creating the best way forward.
But sometimes that solution is not apparent to the owner of the dental practice.
On a different note, this year I was asked to help a dental practice where the owner wanted to bring on an associate dentist, with the view of a transitional sale down the track.
Interestingly, upon analysis, the operations of the practice presented an alternative path for the principal dentist which was a far more satisfying solution than the owners had initially believed was possible.
The difference is?
In the first practice, despite my analysis and recommendations, no actions were implemented.
In the second practice, the reaction of the owners to my advice was:
“Yeah, that’ll work. Let’s do it.”
Sometimes, some people can’t see the wood for the trees.
We all know the story of the two woodchoppers in a contest?
One chops wood all day long, and whenever he looks over at the other woodchopper, he sees him sitting and not chopping.
At the end of the contest, the woodchopper who had chopped wood all day long had chopped less wood than the woodchopper who was seen sitting.
And the reason this woodchopper had been sitting?
At regular intervals the second woodchopper decided that he needed to sharpen his axe.
What are you doing to sharpen your own axe?
As a business owner, are you simply chopping away?
Because that’s what you think you are meant to be doing?
Or are you taking time to get advice, and act on that advice?
Sometimes it’s not just the doing. It’s the preparation, and the analysis of the problem that is the best solution.
At the end of the day:
At the end of the day, being in business is not about who collects the most money.
Being in business is about net profit.
It’s about what you get to keep after paying the bills.
And what you get to put away for your future.
Anything that you do in business that reduces net profit is considered charity.
Unsolicited charity that continually drains away at profit is not clever, and needs to be terminated.
*****
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.
