196 3 Systems You NEED To Put in Place to Grow Your Dental Practice

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Delivering Well podcast. Super excited to have everyone here today. So today we are actually talking about something that's going to be pretty exciting for you, and hopefully we'll share some pearls that you can implement in your practice right away. But today we're talking about systems you need to put in place to grow your dental practice. Now, one of the areas that I see a lot of people struggling with is actually having accountability in their practice, having all of their team rowing in the same direction, and really having a proven plan and process to be able to grow their production and to be able to serve more patients at the same time.

And so the first system that I actually want to talk about is making sure that you have a system to create your morning huddle with a purpose. A lot of times I hear people saying that within their huddles they're focusing on making sure that they're prepared for the day, looking at what patients are coming in that are having medical issues, things that they need to look at. They are looking at financials, who owes money to the practice. They're also looking at what patient can we talk to, to ask them to refer another patient? And while all of those things are well and done, I think there are actually better systems for making sure that you are being held accountable to those things. One thing that I would love to make sure that everyone is focusing on is being very intentional in terms of adding in accountability, in terms of empowering your team when they're successful, and making sure that you are on track to hit your practice goals by what you're doing daily.

And so one system that I love to help practices with is actually implementing in a whiteboard. This whiteboard will allow you to, number one, look at all of the services that you're providing in your practice, make sure that you're having the conversations, make sure that you are actually empowering your team to help you to hit your goals or to help each individual team member to be able to hit their goals. And also have an opportunity to be able to look at when you're hitting your goals, what can you do to change the dynamic? And so you might be saying, "Okay, Anissa, what do you mean by that?" So what's really interesting is over the last few weeks I've been working one-on-one with our coaching clients, mapping out their plan for 2021. What's going to be your roadmap so that you can double your revenue this year or double your profits issue or grow 40% or whatever the goal is of the doctor.

And so it's really interesting is looking at doctors who say, "Well, I want to start implementing a new service this year. I want to start doing more dental implants." And so now that you've declared that goal, if you have a whiteboard, it is now your circle of focus to focus on dental implants. And so you can now say, "You know what, we want to start doing four cases a month, or we want to start doing 20 cases." Maybe you've been doing implant cases and you want to really focus on it this month, or you want to do 40 cases, whatever your number is. Now you have a way to hold yourselves accountable to the behaviors that will happen. And so what that means is what sort of marketing are we doing? Are we implementing Facebook or are we implementing Google ads? What are we doing to be able to have conversations with our patients?

Do we need to focus on our verbal skills and our case presentation? Do we need to make sure that we have our schedule set up so that we can accommodate new patient consultations and making sure that we're time-blocking for actually completing and scheduling these high value services? What is our financial policy like? And so the first thing that we want to look at, and what's the one domino that can actually knock down the other dominoes, is actually having this metric, having this goal, represented on a tool or a whiteboard that you can look at daily. And so, as you are setting your goal, if you're hitting the goal, then now you can look at what are the elements that allowed you to hit that goal. Maybe you changed your marketing, maybe your verbal skills improved. Maybe you have a better system for follow-up that you put in place. And now, because of it, you can identify what made that happen. And you can continue to focus on that circle of focus so that you can continue to grow.

And so this is one service, implants. A lot of times we look at things that we may not see that are that critical in our business. And it could be something like even x-rays. Are we being comprehensive? Are we really doing the full mouth series when our new patients come in? If our patients are coming in, are we doing the bitewings? Or are we saying, "You know what? We're really, really busy. We'll do them next time." You would not believe the impact on our practices when we start focusing on consistency with the little things.

And so if you know that you're not doing x-rays or you know that you are ... Even sealants, so you're not having conversations about sealants with patients, if you believe in them as an option, focusing on that is going to make a huge difference. For example, even if you were to have four patients that did four sealants a week, now you can bring in, in many cases, depending on your fees, an extra, $2,500, $3,000, $3,500 a month, that can now be reallocated back into education, taking another course or investing in more marketing for your practice to be able to bring in more patients.

So that's one thing that I definitely want to make sure that you're doing, is you're creating your huddle with a purpose. And if you're interested in learning more about these whiteboard strategies, I encourage you to participate in one of our marketing and practice growth challenges, where we actually help you to be able to implement this particular system in your practice.

So the other thing that we want to look at is making sure that you actually have systems where everyone in your practice has actually has their number. They have their KPI, they have their metric. And what's been really exciting as well is looking at practices that have intentional focus within each individual team member. And it could be for the scheduling coordinator how many 10K cases are they going to actually have patients accept? Or it could be for your scheduling coordinator, how many patients are being rescheduled? Or looking at last week's schedule and saying, "What's the minimum number of patients that we're comfortable with actually leaving without an appointment?" Or it could be your marketing coordinator saying, "Well, let's go ahead and have a number of how many patients that we're getting from this particular traffic source," whether it's going to be Facebook or it's going to be your Instagram or your Google ads. Being very, very intentional.

And so as again, you start to be intentional and you start to track the now as a team, you can actually come together and you can say, "How can we support you so that you can hit your goal?" And so say, for example, it's a treatment coordinator and she's not been closing 10K cases, then you can say, "Well, how can we support you? What can the doctor do to support? What can the hygienists do to support?" And so when the patient's in the chair, what is their role in case acceptance, maybe identifying that the real issue is that the team needs to have in-depth training on verbal skills. Maybe it's mindset, understanding that, you know what, there are verbal skills and ways that we can communicate with our patients that will allow us to provide solutions.

So a solution is number one, many of our patients are able to start big cases because they have a credit card, maybe even a zero interest credit card, or number two, patients are able to get their work done in one or two visits because they're able to pay it off a little bit over time, and so you're giving them that solution. Or solution three is that we can create your treatment plan. We can split it up over multiple visits. We can plan ahead of time what your budget is, so that we can go ahead and pre-book your appointments. So now you're providing solutions for patients versus having a patient say, "Well, let me think about it." Because quite frankly, they're saying that most times, because they just are confused of how they're going to fit in into their budget. And we start shifting our focus into training on verbal skills and understanding how we can move patients into understanding their options of how they can actually fit dentistry into their budget. And next thing you know, they're actually scheduling.

So that's something that we want to focus on, making sure that every team member has their number. If it's your hygienist, looking at what is their hygiene reappointment percentage, making sure that they're focusing on that. So now their behaviors will move in a direction of not having a patient leave without a next appointment, because now they're looking at it, they're tracking it weekly. One thing that we love to help our clients do within our delivering while coaching programs, is to actually have these scorecards where you're setting goals, you're looking at it weekly. And now that you're looking at it weekly, again, we are able to ensure that our behaviors do not change. Because a lot of times that's what it is. We get excited. We start focusing on something. And next thing you know, we totally forget that our intention was for example, our hygiene reappointment rate or making sure that every patient has the next appointment. And next thing you know, our behaviors change and our results change and patient care slips through the cracks. And so that's extremely important.

The other thing that I want you to focus on in terms of a third system and the third system that I'm going to share today, and believe me, there are hundreds of little pearls that we could talk about, but the other thing you want to make sure is that you have a system for having a weekly meeting where you can look at what are the things that you're focusing on. So if you have a new service, are you really getting the traction and results that you want? If not, identifying as a team, how can we best support each other so that we can hit our goals?

If you have for example, case acceptance and your case acceptance percentage is not where you want it to be, or your doctor production per visit is something that you're focusing on this year, then you can say, "Okay, well that is our circle of focus. And what we're going to do is we are going to have as our circle of focus with everyone has a number, looking at our doctor production per visit, then we can say, well, how can we increase that? Well, maybe we need to take a new course. And so once we are increasing our clinical competency or we are learning how to do a new service or procedure, then now what happens is that we are going to drive that number. It's going to move forward."

And so having that weekly meeting to say, "Okay, well have we actually scheduled that course? Have we scheduled that training? Or maybe what we need to focus on is again, verbal skills. Then now we can create that circle of focus. So we can look at looking at all of our patients who've been unscheduled, filtering them by highest treatment plan. And we can go ahead and get those patients in." Or we can say, "You know what, we're circling our focus this particular quarter, on making sure that when patients are there, we're providing those solutions so that they can go ahead and get scheduled."

And having that effective meeting allows us to be able to not only look at production and collection, but what is our AR? How did that change last week? Why did it change? Why did it go up? And so when we start looking at that, we can ask better questions, "Is it that we didn't send out statements? Is it that we have checks that have not been entered? What's going on with our AR?" And now when you're having this weekly meeting, you can dive in, you can have that hour of focus to really look at what's working, what can you improve on? And collectively as a team, you can actually create those solutions of getting to faster results and success.

So these are three systems that I highly recommend that you put into your practice so that you can start making that change. You can create your circle of focus, and you can be very intentional about growth this year. Creating a healthy team, creating traction in your practice, and ultimately being able to serve more people and change more lives as well as create a better business. So hopefully this serves you and that you got lots of value. If you haven't yet already done so, make sure that you are a member of our Delivering Well Facebook group, Dental Boss Movement. If you're on Clubhouse, make sure that you are part of Dentist Club. We have thousands of dental professionals now who are connecting, collaborating, and we have a great community. They are on Clubhouse.

And if you're looking for solutions to grow your practice and take your practice forward, make sure that you're reaching out to us @deliveringwell.com. I'd love to be able to talk to you and discuss how we can help your practice grow. But again, thank you so much for taking time to be a part of our Delivering Well community, listening to our podcasts, getting pearls, taking action, and living your best life through building an amazing dental practice. All right, guys, thank you so much for listening. Take care. And we'll talk with you very soon.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Delivering Well podcast with Dr. Anissa Holmes. We'll catch you next time.