Tag: dental team training

Busy or Profitable? Your Choice.

Today, veteran dental management consultant Mayer Levitt of Jodena Consulting shares insight on increasing profitability in the dental practice. Subscribe to the Jodena Consulting blog by clicking this link.

My most recent blog post listed four ways to increase revenue in a dental practice. In retrospect, I would like to add a fifth. It is an important strategy that relates specifically to the topic of efficiency in the doctor’s appointment schedule for a busy dental practice.

The most important management system in a dental practice is scheduling, because the only thing we have to sell is our time. Yet over the years, I have observed that many practices are terribly inefficient in the way the doctor is scheduled to deliver treatment, wasting upwards of two hours every day. I didn’t say they weren’t busy–I said they weren’t efficient. There is a huge difference between being busy and being profitable.

I believe that when an effective scheduling system is introduced into a practice:

  • the stress level of every one can be significantly reduced.
  • the appointment backlog can be cut in half.
  • the need for an associate is often eliminated.
  • production is increased dramatically without raising fees or altering the mix of the practice.
  • every hour in the practice becomes a productive hour no matter what procedures are being performed. Read More

10 Easy Ways to Make Your Dental Team Smile

Today’s guest blogger is Cathy Warschaw of www.WarschawLearningInstitute.com. Thanks, Cathy!

There is a direct link between job satisfaction rates and whether or not employees feel they are recognized or rewarded for their performance. When employees feel their hard work goes unnoticed, they can become disgruntled, frustrated and dissatisfied. This can spill over into how they treat patients and one another. Yet recognizing performance does not have to be a cumbersome or difficult task. In fact, small gestures can go a long way towards making employees feel valued and increasing the morale of an entire team.

And when the happiness quotient in your practice rises, it can have a positive impact on customer service, which enables your patients to feel more relaxed and at ease during their visits. Plus, it can elevate the entire mood of the office, making it a far more pleasant environment for patients and practitioners alike.

Here are 10 quick and easy ways you can make your dental team members smile. Best of all, none of them involves any great expense!

  1. Say a simple Thanks! A clear and genuine word of gratitude to praise a specific act can be one of the easiest ways to make an employee feel their hard work is well worth the effort. Read More

Educating the Dental Team for Patient Retention

I’m a mom, and moms talk. The very best marketing you could ever hope to have is word of mouth. So I want to share with you a dental visit I had and two reasons that I did not give the practice a good word-of-mouth referral. My review, when asked (and I was asked), was that it wasn’t the right place for my family.

A few years ago, I made an appointment at a very well publicized dental center that had opened a new location in my neighborhood. When the assistant was taking me back for X-rays, I asked if the center used digital X-rays. She asked me what that meant. Hmmmm. All that fancy decor in the lobby, and the assistant doesn’t know what a digital X-ray is. As I explained it to her, she seemed completely disinterested. It really made me see where the priority was in that office. All appearances pointed to just that — appearances.

Please do not let your team wander around your beautiful office with no idea what a digital X-ray is.

Another instance that was quite a put off happened during the same visit. I was told that I needed my wisdom teeth removed. Now I don’t mind getting a filling, but oral surgery is another story. I asked the associate doctor if he did extractions in the office. He said maybe… Read More

Keeping Patients Happy, Asking for Referrals: The BEST ROI for dentists!

This week’s guest blog is by dental consultant Dr. Mayer Levitt of Jodena Consulting. A former dentist himself, Mayer has helped tons of dental practices to achieve better profits, retention, and publicity since 1989. In this blog, he discusses some ideas for phone etiquette in the dental office. You can learn more ways to improve your practice by subscribing to Mayer’s blog.

As a dental management consultant, I advise my clients on strategies that will attract new patients to their practice. However, I balance the importance of attracting new patients with the essential task of keeping faithful, current patients happy. We should not overlook the importance of maintaining our current patient base.

It’s much wiser, financially, to retain your patients than to lose them and seek new patients.

In a report I read recently, an interesting truth was revealed. You see, patients don’t often leave their dentist in the first few years of the relationship. Instead, they fall off the map after about six years. Six years! Why? The main reason is that the patients who leave began to feel unappreciated, forgotten. At first, they were treated like royalty, but as years passed, they became a number.

How to keep your patients happy:

Praise them; thank them; handle them with care. Let them know, from the moment they walk through your doors, that you and your team are happy to see them again. Give them reasons not only to respect and trust you, but to like you!

Don’t give your patients the six-year itch.

Your current patients return to your office every six months for cleanings and checkups, and more often for restorative or cosmetic treatment. The dollar value associated with each existing patient is huge. In addition, when your current patients are pleased with your practice, they’ll spread the word to friends, neighbors, co-workers, and family. You cannot buy that kind of awesome advertising.

You can leverage the power of word-of-mouth advertising by educating your team to ask patients for referrals.

If you do not ask your established patients for referrals, you are missing a golden opportunity. Here’s the key to making the request professional, consistent, and effective: ask for a referral when a patient thanks you. Read More

What Does “Customer No Service” Mean to You?

In our society today, we often hear the words “customer service” used to signify that an organization’s primary focus is on its customers.  We also have heard another term used, “customer no service.”  This term was derived to designate those organizations where customer satisfaction is not the primary focal point.  Unfortunately, success either never comes, or is very fleeting for those who find themselves in the latter group.

Why is this?  The answer is quite simple.  Without customers, no business can survive, let alone prosper.  Dentistry is no different!  Patients have many choices for dental care today.  In most metropolitan areas in the U.S., there is a dental office on every corner, so competition is fierce, and patient retention is more challenging than ever before.

So, what can we do in our practice to insure we not only attract new patients, but hang on to the ones we have?  You guessed it!  Excellent customer service!  What exactly does this mean, you might ask?  It means putting the needs of the customer (patient) first.  When that patient calls on the phone, or walks through the door of our office, they have to feel that they are number one!  No matter what else might be going on around us, our number one responsibility, regardless of what our role in the office, is to make each and every patient feel important, listened to, cared for, and appreciated.

It is not okay to get this right some of the time.  We have to get it right 100% of the time.  This starts from the way we answer our phone, and carries all the way through our clinical care and the way we handle our patients’ financial concerns.  Every patient is an individual, with unique circumstances and needs.  It is absolutely critical that we recognize this and behave accordingly at all times. Read More

Today’s Guest Blog: Hire the Best Person and Train for Dental Success

This blog was provided by Warschaw Learning Institute and written by Elaine Dickson. Let me know what you think!

Dr. Bill Sasser, a periodontist in Charleston, South Carolina puts it very simply.  “I don’t base my employee’s salary on the position, but on the person.  A good employee is worth everything, and a bad one is worth nothing.”  In dentistry as in many other businesses, all employees are not “created equal”.  Just because someone has more “experience” does not necessarily make them a better candidate than another person who has not worked in the field.

Limiting your hiring process by recruiting only those who have worked in dentistry can be very hazardous to practice growth, because you may not get what you are paying for.  Just because someone interviews well and has worked in a position for awhile, does not always mean they have been successful.  This depends on the person, and it’s the right combination of attitude, character traits, experience and personality that makes a truly valuable employee.  Experience is only one piece of the puzzle, and the question you must ask yourself is “what type of experience?”  Sometimes experience translates into bad habits that can encumber your progress and actually cause your practice to digress.

People make all the difference.  What good does it do to spend thousands of dollars on continuing education and implement practice management systems designed to insure effectiveness, when you do not have the right people to carry these systems out?   As a dentist/practice owner it is not humanly possible for you to perform chairside and oversee all of the administrative or even clinical systems of your practice at the same time. Read More