Have You Become A Commodity?

It has become a classic scenario: You pull into Costco or Sam’s. You walk in flashing your membership card and grab the over-sized shopping cart or flat bed cart. You grab mass quantities of toilet paper, paper towels, canned goods and other commodities. You even remembered to bring your discount coupon book that gives you even deeper discounts than normal. You wait to check out and then commandeer your over-packed cart through the parking lot and stuff your car full of boxes and containers that were never meant to fit into a car in the first place. As you settle into the driver’s seat, a rush of satisfaction comes over you as you think, “I saved so much money!” As you bask in your victory on the drive out of the parking lot, the thought suddenly flashes through your mind, “I deserve a reward!” You drive a few short blocks, pull into Starbucks, and pay $5 for a cup of coffee!

What is a commodity? It is the kind of stuff you buy at Costco and Sam’s. By definition it is a raw material or product that is widely available, and the quality is perceived as being basically the same from brand to brand. Since there is no differentiating factor that sets one brand apart from another, you are left to shop based on one thing and one thing alone: PRICE!

Think of the commodities exchange in Chicago. Every day, millions of tons of “commodities” are traded based on PRICE. Go to Costco. They stack it deep and sell it cheep because most of what they sell are commodities. It is a price driven game.

Unfortunately, some products, services, and people for that matter have unknowingly become commodities. They become so widely available and indistinguishable one from another that there is nothing left by which to distinguish them but PRICE. Toilet paper, paper towels, computer chips, dentists and some PEOPLE.

Dentists. Our work at the Total Patient Service Institute (www.TotalPatientService.com) has shown us that most consumers think a dentist is just a dentist and there is really not much difference. And they are right if that has been their experience. If all they have known is the run of the mill dentist who does nothing more than walk in, diagnose, treatment plan and treat, then the patient thinks all dentists are about the same so it only makes sense to price shop them to find the cheapest one.

Our society has a way of trying to make people into commodities. That’s what a job application and a resume do. They standardize all applicants so that they all present the same. It is easier for the employer to make a decision that way. And job applicants fall for it. That’s why we work hard each year at our LEAP seminars for high school and college students (www.LEAPfoundation.com) to show them proven ways to separate themselves from the commoditized masses so they rise to the top and get positions, scholarships, and opportunities that they may have thought were only available to people older and more experienced. As we repeatedly say, “If you do what everyone else does, you’ll get what everyone else gets.” Most people become a commodity. But remember, being a commodity is a choice, not a circumstance.

Take coffee for example. Coffee is a commodity. It is traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and other commodity exchanges around the world. You can get a cheep cup of coffee at the local donut shop for fifty cents. But when you go to Starbucks, you pay 10X that amount. Why are you willing to do that? Because Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, simply turned a commodity, coffee, into something a whole lot more. There is a great lesson here for anyone who wants to keep their product, service or themselves from becoming a "commodity casualty."

Here are 4 proven ways to keep your product, service or person from becoming a commodity:

Create different kind of EXPERIENCE. Most of us have become lulled into a world of the mediocre. It all just becomes a blur of average, every day, transactions that never make a mark in our memory. But every once-in-a-while something comes along that wakes us up. It WOWs us with a memorable experience that draws us back over and over again. Take Disney, Starbucks, and Southwest Airlines as well-known examples to name a few. They create an experience that moves people emotionally and makes them want to come back.

Personal Service. Most commodities are so cheep that the provider cannot afford to give any type of service. Just try to find someone at Costco who can help you beyond the people at check out. Contrast that to the team at Enterprise Rent-a-Car, in an otherwise commoditized industry, Enterprise goes out of its way with professional dress, frequent use of your name, escort to your car, and plenty of choices. It is a different kind of car rental experience because of the personal service.

Customization. Many products and services have left the commodity ranks by becoming customized products to fit specific consumers. Take Levi’s for example when it started making custom fit jeans, or my local men’s clothing store. Everyone there knows my name, my style, the brands I like the most, and everything that I have bought in the past. The store fits me instead of expecting me to fit whatever they decide that I should buy!

Specialization. There are so many niches today around the world that it is relatively easy to provide products and services to specialized niches that need what they need in a different way than the masses. Take my friend Troy VanBiezen, a chiropractor, who has specialized in helping professional athletes cut their injury recovery time in half. (www.chirosportspecialists.com) He’s not a chiropractor in people’s minds. He is a celebrity sports performance specialist. As a result, he has an amazing following among professional athletes and executives that wish they were athletes! Or Crown Council (www.CrownCouncil.com) dentist, Dr. Brian McKay who has made a specialty of being the dentist for people with eating disorders. (www.acid.com) As a result, people come to him from all over the world and around the country. (For a special Crown Council recorded interview with Dr. McKay entitled “Bulemia is a Dental Disorder” call us at 1-877-399-8677.)

There are as many ways to keep your product, service, or yourself from becoming a commodity as there are people. It all comes down to differentiation. What can you do to make yourself unique and different from the masses so you don’t end up being exchanged strictly on price because no one has any other way to tell you apart from the competition.

Who is the fool?

This week, Pam Peterson, our lead ToPS Practice Advisor, quoted the first dentist she ever worked for years ago, Dr. Nate Hudgins: “A dentist who has him or herself as a dentist has a fool for a dentist.” Just as a brain surgeon would never perform surgery on himself, it does not make sense to think that you could do a quality job on yourself either, even if it is not brain surgery.

But let’s take that thought a step further, “A dentist who is his or her own advisor/coach, has a fool for an advisor.” Let’s face it, you can’t be objective about your own work, practice, or life for that matter. You are too close to it. You can’t see what others might see objectively.

Case in point: We spent a few days this week out of town, behind closed doors at the hands of a strategic planner who helped us look at our own business with a new set of eyes. Granted, I was familiar with the process he used and I knew exactly where he was going. But there was something different about having someone else guide the process than my guiding the process. I was in a different frame of mind. The biggest benefit was the things that we would tend to skim over and take for granted, we were invited to drill down, analyze and think about from a different perspective. In many cases, it was work that I would not have taken the time to do unless someone objective had been at my side holding my feet to the fire, asking all of the difficult questions, waiting for me to answer, and not being satisfied until the answer was complete and comprehensive.

So, who is your advisor or coach? Or are you trying to do it yourself? I am always amazed at the results that come back from ToPS practices where a ToPS Practice Advisor is involved, guiding the process, asking the difficult questions, and challenging the entire team to new levels of success. Often times, we will allow someone else like a ToPS Practice Advisor to do things that we would not have the courage to do ourselves. We all need a push, a challenge, encouragement, and a new perspective. The right advisor can provide a HUGE return by guiding the process that will help us get further and faster than we would ever get on our own.

So, don’t be your own dentist! And don’t be your own advisor. The person who has him or herself as his only advisor, has a fool for an advisor!

My Thanks to Coach Chuck Daley

If you have been in any of our “Total Immersion” or “Leading a ToPS Team” courses lately, you have heard me talk about NBA coach Chuck Daley who passed away a week ago on May 10. Coach Daley won back-to-back NBA titles as coach of the Detroit Pistons and then was tapped to coach the 1992 USA Olympic Basketball “Dream Team.”

I found myself with Coach Daley about two years ago at Pebble Beach when he happened to sit down next to me for dinner during a “Coaching Clinic” for business leaders which featured some of the greats in professional sports including Coach Daley, Joe Montana among others.

During our two hour dinner, I got an entire clinic in coaching from one of the best. What he shared could take up volumes, but here is one that is memorable and unusual:

“It’s a player’s job to play, but it is a coaches’ job to make sure that they win.” Coach Daley reminded me that great players love to play. They love the game and love to play the game for the sake of playing the game. But even the best players lose sight of the goal sometimes, and that is where a great coach comes in. The coach makes sure the team stays focused on the goal. He illustrated his point in 1992 when just weeks before the Olympics he staged a “controlled” game with the Olympic Dream Team vs. an unknown team that consisted of a group of college basketball players. The college team won over some of the best in the NBA. It was a humbling lesson to some of the best including Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Magic Johnson, etc. that just because you have a collection of good players, it does not make you a winning team. Good coaches make a winning team out of good players.

So who is your coach? If you as the dentist think you are the coach, think again. You are a player….the lead player. Call yourself the team captain if you like, but the coach you are not. A coach maintains an objective viewpoint, strategizes and directs the team on the right path to success.

Each week, I meet with our ToPS team of Practice Advisors who are some of the best “coaches” in dentistry. Each week they spread across the country to coach some of the best teams in dentistry onto even higher levels of performance. Their results are impressive and I consider myself fortunately to work with them. Which brings up another Coach Daley..ism: "It's a players' league. They allow you to coach them or they don't. Once they stop allowing you to coach, you're on your way out."

Daley understood that leadership is earned not granted. That someone can be hired to be the coach of an NBA team is a given. But whether or not the players will be willing to be coached by that coach is another proposition. Respect is earned by the coach, not granted by the team owner.

That same rule applies in any leadership situation. The willingness of those who are being lead is what creates the leader.

So, who is your coach? And what are you doing to earn the respect of your “players.” The answers to both of these questions can be found when you give us a call at the Total Patient Service Institute at 1-877-399-8677 and ask for your free coaching call with one of our Practice Advisors and ask for more information on our Leading a ToPS Team course…two musts for any team who wants to be ToPS in dentistry.

My thanks again to Coach Chuck Daley for his wisdom and example. He is yet another great mentor who has had a positive impact on my life.

The Power of Focus

If you are like me, there was a time as a kid when you discovered the power of magnification. For me it happened when Dad took a magnifying glass out of his drawer and we went outside with a small piece of paper. Positioning the magnifying glass in the perfect position in relation to the rays of the sun, he lit the paper on fire. Three seeming unrelated things: a piece of paper, a magnifying glass, and the rays of the sun. But when the three are focused just the right way, they are very powerful. That is the magnifying power of focus.

The same principle applies in the office. That which we focus on with the right ingredients, has the power to ignite a powerful force. What are the ingredients?
1. Focus
2. Skill
3. Measurement

First: Focus. While talking to a long-time dentist acquaintance of mine this week, he commented on how they had doubled their average new patient flow last month. How did it happen? Focus! A new internet tool they are using on their website records the in-bound calls that are generated from their website. In listening to those calls, it was clear that things had gotten off track in this area and it was time for some focused effort for improvement. Their first step of improvement was simply to make a decision to focus on a specific area for improvement and stay after it until things got better.

Second: Skill. Once you have determined your area of focus, there needs to be skills and systems implemented or re-implemented to get better results. In our first example, the team immediately went back to their ToPS New Patient Relationship Form and started using it on every potential new patient call. Next, they reviewed their ToPS verbal skills that they learned at the ToPS “Total Immersion” Course and started using them on each and every call. The best intentions and most positive attitude will only go so far. With the right skills…and the right attitude, results will start happening.

Third: Measurement. We all need feedback. Without measurement we never know if our focused efforts are paying off. In addition to the total number of new patients, this team started measuring the ratio of potential new patient calls to new patients scheduled from those calls as we have discussed before. With daily measurement, the team could see if their efforts were focused properly and if they were getting better results. In the magnifying glass example, there is a difference between creating a bright light and creating a burning flame. Sometimes the difference is a slight twist of the wrist. But without visible feedback, you would never know if you were on fire or not! So how do you know if your practice is “on fire?” You’ll never know unless you measure the areas on which you are focusing.

So where do you need to put your magnification focus in your practice? You can’t focus on everything all the time. But you can focus on some things some of the time. With the proper focus in the right areas, you can move through the practice one area at a time and light them all on fire!”

1. Focus
2. Skill
3. Measurement

Three ingredients of continual, never-ending improvement. Decide right now where you need to put some magnified focus in your practice…and watch things catch fire!

A Great Recovery

While in Las Vegas this week at our Crown Council Annual Event, I was reminded of a simple principle of Total Patient Service worth reinforcing with your team. It’s the principle of “Recovery.”

After dealing with a long series of mishaps with a hotel that were handled poorly before and after the incidents that occurred, I said to myself, “this is really not that difficult.” You see, no body’s perfect. To execute 100% with every patient to their satisfaction is an impossibility. But how you recover from a mistake may very well be the difference between average and great.

A patient in a practice we work with sent the doctor a very strong letter with complaints of things that had gone wrong during her last visit followed by a demand that her records be transferred to another dentist. How would you handle that situation? Instead of sending a strong letter in return or just rolling over and sending the records, this wise dentist picked up the phone and called the patient. The patient was surprised that the dentist would take the time or even bother with the issue. The dentist apologized followed with the secret of a great recovery: The dentist asked: “What can we do to make it up to you?” The patient did not know what to say. By the time the call was over, the mishap had been taken care of and everything was back on track.

Many times, the secret to a great recovery is a simple question:
“What can we do to make it up to you?”
“What would you like us to do?”
“If you were us, what would be suggest we do in this situation?”

Many times the patient’s solution is much better than anything you might come up with on your own. So, just ASK! It may be the fast track to recovery that will leave the patient smiling and coming back.

The MasterMind

We just finished a productive day with our “Top of the Table” group: one of several select groups of high performing dentists that meet on a regular basis to compare results and share ideas. Their openness with each other is uncharacteristic of the typical dental group. Their desire to learn was sincere. What they shared was mutually beneficial.

“You take on the nature and the habits and the power of though of those which whom you associate in a spirit of sympathy and harmony.” - Napoleon Hill

There is a significant competitive advantage to those who have a group of high achievers with whom to meet on a regular basis. Organized and facilitated correctly, it can be one of the most powerful assets you can create for your practice.

To learn more about how you add this type of an asset to your practice, call us at 1-877-399-8677 and ask about our Total Practice Support program. You maybe surprised to discover the results other dentists are getting and what it could very well do for you.

Practice vs. Playing the Game

The sounds of mourning could be heard recently all over the Dallas-Ft. Worth MetroPlex as the Dallas Cowboys lost in their bid to go the Super Bowl.  Nevertheless, the Cowboys have had a great first season under the leadership of head coach Wade Phillips.  Coach Phillips was initially mentored into coaching by another football coaching great, his father, Bum Phillips.

About 15 years ago I had the opportunity to meet and get to know Bum.  He taught me many football coaching principles that apply to business and to life.  One of those lessons was that in professional football, a player will spend 60 minutes of practice each week for every 60 seconds of actual game day play.  That is a lot of practice!

So how much “practice” have you and your team had in the areas that really count in your office? Areas like building your clinical protocols, improving your verbal skills, analyzing your numbers to see where quality care can be improved.  How much are you really “practicing” or are you just playing the game each day. 

Winning teams find practical ways to “practice” in the areas that make the biggest difference. 

Have a great week of “practice” as well as some great game days!