More than one purpose

For year’s we’ve talked about the purpose of the practice: To create happy paying patients that pay more than it costs to serve them and who repeat and refer.

That, however, is different than the purpose of getting into practice: The purpose of getting into practice is...to get out! In other words, the purpose OF the practice is to serve people. But the purpose of getting IN is to get OUT or to have a business that serves your needs successfully and then when it has fulfilled that purpose, gracefully and profitably exit and move onto the next part of life that holds meaning and purpose.

More frequently today, I am running into dentists who never considered the purpose of getting into practice when they went through the planning process. They never asked themselves how they would build the practice in such a way that it would be the easy to get out when it had served its purpose. If planning is done at all, it seems like we spend the most time planning around the purpose OF without considering the purpose of getting in practice in the first place.

Could I suggest that the first place to start if it has been awhile since you have worked on the purpose of getting IN? Answering questions like these might be useful:

1. What is the financial goal I am trying to reach and by when? (How much is enough?)
2. What kind of practice should I be building that will help me reach that goal?
3. What kind of practice should I be building that will be the most marketable when I reach my financial goal?
4. How can I build the most "exit" options into my plan so that I will have an easier way out when I am ready?

So as you work on the day-to-day function and fulfillment of the purpose OF the practice, make sure to look up from time-to-time to see that you are fulfilling why you went into practice in the first place…to get out!

Your Perception - Your Reality

In an effort to always be looking for and implementing things that work, we often reach outside the dental industry for ideas that can be translated and applied successfully to dentistry.

To that end, we spent the day today with about 100 leading optometrists from around the country listening to what they were doing that was working as well as what their challenges are. What fascinated me was their response when they all found out we worked with dentists. Here are some of their comments:

• Dentists have it made.
• Patients don’t question the dentist on what he or she charges.
• Dentists don’t have to deal with insurance companies.
• Dentists have the best lifestyle.
• All the dentists I know never work Friday.
• Their professional meetings are always during the week.
• They always have weekends to themselves.

And the list goes on.

I could not help but contrast their comments to the comments I frequently hear from dentists and dental team members that generally focus on the challenges and problems in dentistry.

All of this talk leads to one conclusion: every profession, every business, every industry has its challenges. Too often we spend more of our time dwelling on the problems that we lose sight of the advantages we have. The negative focus then translates into negative outcomes.

If most of the dentists had the same attitude about their profession as the optometrists I talked to today have about the dental profession, there would be a lot more happier dentists out there!

What if you made a list of all the positives of your practice and the dental profession like my new optometrist friends did for you today? If you adopted the attitude that they have about you, you would most likely be a lot more positive, proactive and successful!

While their perception was not totally accurate, their overall attitude about dentistry was right on track. It is a great profession. And comparatively speaking, it has a lot of advantages over many of its peers in other professions.

So take a moment to make your own list of advantages. That list will help you focus on the positives which will make you more positive. And if you have any challenges with the list OR your attitude, just go visit your local optometrist. He or she will have plenty of positives things to tell you about you and your chosen profession!

The Education / Income Perio Excuse

It is a strange dichotomy in dentistry. Just about any time I ask dentist or hygienist alike, “What percentage of the population has periodontal disease?” the answers always seem to center around a 70 to 80% range. Then I ask, “If 80% or so of the population has periodontal disease, and you are doing a good job of treating the disease, what should the ratio of total healthy mouth cleanings to perio maintenance appointments be?” It would stand to reason that if 80% of the population has periodontal disease, then 80% of what happens in hygiene should be perio treatment related. Right?

But when closer inspection of the numbers reveals something less than 80% or a lot less than 80%, the explanations start flying. “Our patients are different. We just don’t have a lot of patients with periodontal disease. Our town is more educated than most. We practice in a wealthier part of town.”

For quite some time now, I have been looking for the clinical study that proves that there is an inverse relationship between household income or education and periodontal disease. If there is one out there somewhere and you know about it, please let me know because I have not been able to find it.

On the other hand, I have yet to meet a dentist who could tell me of a trial attorney for example who is a patient who did not have periodontal disease. Maybe there is one out there somewhere, but more often than not, they have it. Why? They are educated. They get paid far more than the average person. But they have periodontal disease. They have it because periodontal disease knows no educational or income boundaries. It has more to do with a compromised immune system that it does education or income. A compromised immune system can be fueled by stress. People with a lot of education and income many times have a lot of that because of their occupations and complicated priorities.

So every time I hear the education / income perio excuse, it causes me to start looking deeper for the real cause of the lack of perio treatment in the practice. Is it a lack of diagnosis? How about failure to treatment plan? Or is it really “Approval Addiction?”

Whatever the cause of this type of supervised neglect, it is rampant. Maybe as rampant in some dental offices as periodontal disease itself.

So start taking a closer look at what is really going on in your practice. Are you really treating the disease? Or are your patients victims of supervised neglect because of the “Education / Income Perio Excuse?” The numbers rarely lie. So look at the numbers before you listen to the excuse.

The Law of Positive Distraction

In a world with so many messages coming at us every minute, keeping focused on the purpose of the practice becomes a major project.

James Allen, author of As a Man Thinketh, reminds us that we ultimately get what we think about and we become the person we focus on the most. The challenge is staying focused.

Everyone is familiar with the work of Professor Walter Mischel at Columbia University and his famous marshmallow experiment. He found that four year olds who were able to resist the temptation of eating the marshmallow in front of them for the reward of getting a second marshmallow if they could hold off for 20 minutes, did so by singing songs, playing with their shoelaces, or some other act to temporarily distract their mind away from the temptation. By distracting their attention and their mind from the marshmallow, they were able to get the bigger reward. Mischel also discovered that these same four years olds ultimately did better on SAT tests and had lower body mass indexes later on as adults than those who could not distract themselves.

One of the most important validations of Mischel’s work is that you can’t focus on the opposite of an idea. You can’t think about marshmallows and not expect to eat one. You can’t think about failure and expect to succeed. It’s exactly what James Allen was trying to teach us. Mischel just validated it in a different way.

With so many messages bombarding us every day from the media, patients, e-mail, text messages, etc. staying “positively distracted” is one of our biggest challenges. Just like the four year old with a big, fluffy, white marshmallow staring back from the table right in front of him or her, we have things staring back at us every day that demand our attention, but that will not lead us any closer to where we want to go. We have to stay “positively distracted” in other ways in order to stay focused.

Here are some suggestions to stay “positively distracted” as you go throughout your day:

1. Start your day with a quick review of your vision, your goals, and your positive focus.
2. Be consistent with your team’s morning huddle every day and make sure you stay on purpose with a set, written agenda that stays focused on the opportunities in the day ahead.
3. Ask your patients what the best thing is that has happened to them since you saw them last. Don’t ask them how they are doing. They just might tell you! Keep them focused on the positive and you’ll stay positive.
4. Compliment at least one other person on the team each day for some contribution they made to the team that day.
5. Thank every patient for coming in and for being a patient.
6. Conclude every day with a short celebration of some victory or accomplishment during the day.

“Positive distractions” make the allure and temptation of a possible negative focus from creeping into the workday. Nature abhors a vacuum, so when there is space to fill, you can bet that it is going to be filled with something less than what you want unless you fill you day with positive distractions that keep those negative “marshmallow” thoughts and conversations away.

Pick Just One - The Spill Over Effect

If an observation of the parking lot at the local gym on Saturday morning, January 2 is any indication that New Year’s Resolutions are alive and well – they are! It is that time of year again when most load up on resolutions after they have loaded up on holiday goodies. Getting in shape will be just one of a long list of things they intend to do.

Instead of a long list of resolutions this year, consider picking just one thing, or just a few. The power of picking just one thing has amazing benefits. Among them is what I call the “Spill Over Effect.”

Roy Baumeister, a psychologist at Florida State University did an experiment over ten years ago wherein he asked a group of students to work on improving their posture for two weeks. As they did, these same students reported improvement in other areas of self-control when compared to others who were not working on improving their posture. In other words, strengthening the skills that are required to improve in one area will “spill over” into improved things in other areas.

Think of the many applications of the “Spill Over Effect” in the office. Pick just one thing to work on as a team and then think of the many other things that will benefit as a result.

For example:

• Improving telephone skills will also result in better overall communication skills in the office with patients and between team members.
• Improving the cleanliness of the lab will also result in overall cleanliness of the office.
• Improving accounts receivable balance will also result in improved financial arrangements as you discover that most of the A/R problems started there in the first place.
• Improving on-time arrival for the morning huddle will also result in a better job of staying on time during the day.

And so forth.

So pick “just one” area of improvement and all of the related skills that will be needed to get the result you want. Then, before you get started, just make a list of all of the other areas of the practice that will positively benefit as those same skills “spill over” into those other areas. If you pick the right “just one” area for improvement, the “spill over” effect can be even more beneficial than the specific result you were aiming for in the beginning.

The “Spill Over Effect.” It is the power of picking the right “Just One” area to improve this year.

Dentist, Consultant, or What?

Note: In response this week to several posts on a dental message board about "consultants" in dentistry and some specific comments about my not being a dentist, I posted the following. I thought you might be interested in some or all of what it says. Enjoy!

Three years ago I was fortunate to have some one-on-one time with Coach Chuck Daly who coached the Detroit Pistons and the 1992 Olympic "Dream Team." Coach Daly has since passed away, but his lessons live on in my own life. One of the many truths he shared with me was this: "It is the player's job to play, but it is the coach's job to make sure the team wins." Some of the best coaches in history never played much ball including Coach Lou Holtz, one of the greatest of all time. It is because playing and coaching are two different skill sets. Just because you can do something does not mean you can coach someone else effectively to do it. The converse is also true. Just because you can teach it, does not mean you can do it.

I am not a dentist. I have never been a dentist and I will never be a dentist. And from what I am told by many IN dentistry, that is a great asset. I have always tried to look at dentistry from the patients' viewpoint (because I am one) as well as from an organizational and business standpoint. It is a unique and different approach that, for many, has yielded some impressive results.

Having worked with dentists for over twenty years, I too have heard the cliché time and time again, "Those who can, do and those who can't, teach." I am sure one can find many examples to which that cliché applies. After all, if you have drawn a conclusion before you know the all facts, you tend to look only for facts that support your conclusion. You can miss a lot of valuable wisdom that way!

But just for the heck of it about six years ago, I thought it would be fun to put that cliché to bed for good in this case. So I put my own personal money on the line, signed the lease, bought the equipment and started a dental practice from scratch (yes, it is all legal - the attorney for the Texas Dental Association is my legal council and it has all been signed off by the Texas Board of Dental Examiners) to prove to myself (and others) that it is possible to "teach" and "do." Fast forward to today, we have multiple offices that we operate on a daily basis. It is where we test everything we "teach" first, on our own dollar, before we ever roll it out to the rest of the industry. I have always told our entire team that we do not have the right to ever recommend anything that we are not doing successfully ourselves. That is our standard. That is our commitment. While I do not personally drill or give injections, (and that is not a problem since that is not what we teach) we do put our own money where our mouth is in the specific areas of practice success like strategic planning, marketing, case acceptance, profitability, leadership, etc. to make sure that what we "teach" is proven every day.

One of the many things that "doing" AND "teaching" has taught me about dentistry is that most dentists want to talk about production, but most don't want to talk about profit. Profit is one of the best-kept secrets in the industry. For every one hundred dentists that will brag about what they produce, you might find one who will be honest enough to talk about what they are really making. Production numbers without disclosing profit is fiction, not reality. You don't know the REAL story until you see the bottom line. That is why I have always been a big believer in open book management. I will put any one of our hygienists, dental assistants, or business assistants, or dentists for that matter up against any dentist in the country in terms of being able to read, interpret, and action plan from a practice Profit and Loss statement. It is part of knowing and understanding the reality of dentistry. Yet, it is one of the most hidden secrets in most practices. Most dentists don't get it. But that is because they are the "player" first and are "playing" the game most of the time and have not taken the time to stop and seek a good "coach" who will make sure they "win" the game over the long haul.

So who is really a good source for learning and growing? I sat through a business course recently presented by a less than inspiring speaker. He was a real sleeper for most of the crowd. I left inspired, however, because his ideas and wisdom were invaluable. His presentation skills were lacking, but his mind was brilliant. It reminded me that we are all too quick to judge in life and because of that, we miss valuable insights, lessons, and wisdom that might otherwise have been ours, many times from the most surprising sources. It is possible to learn from just about everyone IF you are open to learning and IF you are always seeking the truth. If you limit your sources, you limit your learning.

Finally, some of the biggest breakthroughs in history have been made by those from the "outside" who dared to think differently because they did not know any different and were not constrained by conventional thinking of the "insiders." You could start your list with Christopher Columbus. Thank goodness he did not "subscribe" to and believe everything on the "sailor's message board" of the day. If he had, he would have never done the unconventional. Similarly, dentistry, if you are not careful, can be an incestuous experience if you only listen to "conventional wisdom."

Sixteen years ago, I spent the last week of Dr. W. Edwards Deming's life with him. Named one of the top one hundred most influential men in business of the last century, he revolutionized quality in hundreds of industries around the world. The funny thing about him was, he never ran a business, he never manufactured a single product, in fact, I am not aware of any company where he even sat on the board of directors. Yet his RESULTS are indisputable.

Deming did have a few choice words for dentistry buy-the-way. He said: “How many dentists do magnificent work? The question is impossible to answer, for the simple reason that there has never been a definitive study of quality in the dental profession; nor is there likely to be one. Partly because they tend to work alone, dentists resist the idea of being evaluated, or even observed, by others. And because inferior dental work may not be discovered until years after it is performed, patients are seldom in a position to make informed decisions.”

Serious food for thought from a man who changed the world. But then again, what did he know? He was just a "consultant!" He never picked up a drill or gave and injection, so how could he know anything about dentistry?

Respectfully yours,

Steven J. Anderson (Not a dentist! Maybe a consultant! But always a seeker of truth!) Founder

Total Patient Service Institute - www.TotalPatientService.com

Crown Council - www.CrownCouncil.com

Smiles for Life Foundation - www.SmilesforLife.org

LEAP Youth Foundation - www.LEAPfoundation.com

1-877-399-8677

Want more new patients?

If you are looking for more new quality patients, here are two “update” ideas that depend on daily execution to be successful. I call them “update” ideas because they are ideas we have discussed before, but we have some new data that might give you some additional motivation to act or make a greater effort to put them into action. Done correctly on a daily basis, they have the potential to increase new patient flow by 20 to 30%.

Update Idea #1: Ask for another new patient.

As you probably know, we always track the number of potential new patient calls that come into a practice every day. We also track how many of those patients schedule. Our standard goal used to be an 80% success rate until late last year when one of our appointment coordinators changed the game with a 130% success rate. She developed the habit of always asking every new patient who scheduled an appointment who else in the family needed a new dentist that she could schedule today. Roughly 1 out of every 3 new patients responded with another new patient!

Since raising the bar last year, we have had an on-going contest to see who can schedule the most number of new patients out of one phone call. The record to date is held by our own ToPS Practice Advisor, Pam Peterson with a total of 6 new patients from one in-bound call! Another new record was set this week in a slightly different area when Aimee, the business assistant at The Grapevine Dentist scheduled a total of 12 new patients out of 4 new patient, in-bound calls in one day. Congrats Aimee!

So if you are not in the habit of tracking calls and scheduled appointments, start doing it today. Then make sure to ASK each patient who schedules, who else needs to schedule an appointment as well.

Update Idea #2: After hours calls
Again, this is nothing new, but not many offices do it. Done right, it can keep your schedule in tact and increase your new patient flow.

Each day we print out the schedule for the next 5 or so work days. Someone on the team takes home the office after hours cell phone to which all office calls are forwarded. With schedule in hand, the team member is equipped to handle any call that comes in including new patient calls which can be scheduled on the spot. The team member can also personally handle potential cancellations if they call after hours.

The team member responsible also gets $10 for every new patient who schedules after hours and who shows up for their first appointment. Even if it is only 3 or 4 new patients a month that may have otherwise hung up or not left a message, those numbers start adding up over a year’s period of time. Think about it. It could mean 35 to 50 new patients in a year. If your average new patient value is $2,000 for example, that is a potential of $70,000 in production that may or may not have come into the office.

Now those are two very simple, easy to implement ideas that could have a combined result of over $100,000 or more result in a year!

Now that’s something to seriously consider!