197 How to Add An Additional Million in Revenue To Your Practice

What's up, everyone? It's Anissa Holmes here with a new episode of the Delivering WOW Dental Podcast. And today we're talking about how you can add an additional million dollars of revenue to your practice this year. I'm so excited about this. We have been over the last few months working with doctors as we are in the beginning of a new year, looking at how we can create this Circle of Focus. And as we're going into these meetings, I am sharing, okay, let me go ahead and say this. You have probably heard me say in my practice that I've been able to double profits in my practice. I've been able to double revenue in my practice and it may sound like a marketing thing, but actually, I'm going to show you exactly how you can do the same thing too. And so that's what we're going to actually be doing within this call.

And so, as we're creating our Circle of Focus calls, what we're doing is we are creating opportunities to look at what was done last year and to decide what was most profitable? What were our bottlenecks? What is it that we need to focus on in terms of additional services training for our team? And now as a result of it, guess what happens? The doctors are able to say, "Oh my gosh, I see that I don't have to be overwhelmed. I don't have to be stressed out if we just focus on this one thing and this other thing, this particular quarter, then all of a sudden, Oh my gosh, the compound effect of that for Q2 Q3, Q4 and the compound, that effect for the year is going to be exponential."

And so I wanted to take you a little bit behind the scenes of what we're actually doing in these calls and share how this can again make a huge difference. Now I've been in practice for over 20 years and over the last few years, we've actually doubled our profits multiple times. And it's actually as many of you guys know not very uncommon to increase profits if you have a startup practice. But if you have a seasoned practice, that's not quite as easy.

So what we're going to be talking about is a sneak preview of the process, okay? So the first thing again is that we're going to be looking back at the previous year and we want to make sure that we're working out the opportunity gaps that could have a massive impact on your practice. For example, if you look at even X-rays a lot of times we're thinking, "Well, we're too busy to take X-rays." But the thing about it is that as we start focusing on providing the best patient care, the question is when we are having our patients coming in if we're not doing X-rays, are we missing out on seeing if there's pathology or are we seeing if there are infections that are going on or are we missing that? Are we seeing if there are issues with cavities on second molars because of impacted third molars?

A lot of times we don't understand that these things are really, really important. And so we say, "Well, you know what?" Or we say that we're too busy, we don't have enough time. Again, not really focusing on the best patient care, but from a profitability standpoint, if we're able to focus on even things like X-rays then now what happens is that we can easily add an additional 50,000 revenue into our practice for the year. Or they've been many examples when I've asked the question of, "Do you truly believe that a sealant can prevent a cavity?" And the doctor will say yes and I'll say, "Well, I certainly believe it. I have sealants on my teeth now. I'm an adult. Why is it that we're not talking about sealants to our patients?"

And it always boils down to, "Well, the insurance is not going to cover it." And the real issue is that our team doesn't want to be an objection block because they've presented sealants before and because insurance doesn't cover it and patients say it's okay, they stopped presenting it. And so if we started looking at how can we focus on training our teams for verbal skills so perhaps putting out there, there is something that we can do to prevent cavities. Would you like to learn more? They say yes. We say, "It's a sealant. How it works is that we painted on your tooth and once we do, sugar, food and bacteria cannot get through. As a result of it, we're able to reduce your chances of getting cavities by up to 80%."

Now here's the thing. Insurance doesn't always cover it, but why our patients choose to do it anyway is that they know that number one, it doesn't take a lot of time. In fact, it actually takes about five or 10 minutes. We can get this done for you while you're already here today. Number two, it doesn't cost a lot of money. In fact, it's actually a fraction of the cost of a filling. And number three, it will give you that peace of mind. We do have time today to go ahead and get started. Would you like to while you're already here? Go ahead and take care of all of your sealants today. So as we start looking at focusing on having the conversations, the behavior of being consistent and having the right verbal skills. Now, what happens is that it asked doctors, "Do you think that if you were using this verbiage or your hygienists or your team was using this verbiage, do you think that you could do five more sealants this week?" The answer is yes. What about 10? Absolutely.

And if you were doing even 10 more sealants like two patients alone at $30 a sealant, then now what happens is that you have the opportunity to be able to, again, bring in over 50, $60,000 of revenue into your practice. Now you may think, "Well, that's not a lot of money." Think about it. What if you had an additional $50,000 that now you could pay cash for that next operatory? I just got a message, a boxer just before I came on this podcast with a member of our mastermind saying that she has made a decision to go ahead and pay cash and get a new operatory at $18,000. This is how we're able to do that. What if you had that $50,000 now that you're in that earning stage, you're able to put into your retirement account an extra $50,000 into your retirement account? How would that affect you as you are now getting older? What if you took that $50,000 and you put it as a down payment on a property that now you can get rental income?

You look at $50,000. Again, people are saying, "Well, I'd love to be able to get better team members, higher pay team members or be able to get higher, more skilled team members, or I'd love to be able to pay my team members more." This is how we're able to do that just by doing two patients a week with sealants. So as we start looking at Circle of Focus is extremely valuable.

Another thing we want to look at is looking at the past year, looking at month to month to month, what was the service that allowed us to have the best month? Was it crown and bridge? Was it ortho? Was it that we introduced sleep appliances? What made that happen? Because again, as we start looking at month to month to month, a lot of times we see if we're not looking at this information on a monthly basis, what happens is that behaviors are changing and we have no way of knowing it. And so say, for example, you say, "Okay, we're going to go ahead and implement Invisalign or the best month we ever had, we did Invisalign." And maybe you did 10 cases or you did 20 cases, or you did 40 cases, whatever the number is. And the next month, all of a sudden that drops in half, then all of a sudden, now you have a lower month in revenue and you're not sure exactly why.

And so as we start looking at change of behavior, then now if we saw that dip, then now we can say, "Okay, guys, something has happened this month. We either did not have conversations. We did not have a good follow-up with our patients. We slipped on our marketing this month." And again, now behaviors can change from month to month. So I always love to look at what was that procedure that allowed us to have the best month. And a lot of times it may not even be what we think it is. I have been able to work with doctors and realize that the biggest revenue opportunity for them in their highest revenue month in the past year might've even been dentures. And then I'll ask the question, "Okay, well, do you want to do more dentures?" And they may say, "Actually I would like to do more dentures" and I'd say, "Okay, great, well, let's talk about dentures. Are you currently doing All-on-4? Do you have that skillset?" And they'll say, "No, not yet."

And I'll say, "Okay, well, what if this year we focus more on dentures because you want to do more. And what if we focused on getting you training so that now you can implement All-on-4 in your practice this year?" And we say, "Great, let's do that. When are we going to do that? What month of the year are we going to go ahead and implement getting that training?" And based on that, when we start actually doing All-on-4, what's going to be the revenue for that first case? What's going to be the verbal skills for that first case? What's going to be the marketing for that first case?

And now that we have that first case, then now we can carry that revenue if we did just one case every month for the rest of the year, what sort of impact would that have on our business? Not even doing two or three or let alone five cases. What if we did just one case? What if you're All-on-4 was an extra 20, $25,000 and you're able to do eight cases this year? That would add an additional 200, $300,000 a revenue into your practice right there. Okay? And what if you were now after that first month able to take some of that money and dump it into marketing so that instead of having one case come in, you actually have two, or you have three because you have more people that are coming in?

What if you started focusing on your Facebook marketing, your Tooth Talk Thursdays, which we help practices to be able to really get great results with that now people are seeing that you're actually known for that new service. What if you started focusing on a new service for their hygiene team or your hygiene team, whether you are looking at implementing laser, whether you're implementing a Perio Protect, what would that look like?

Another thing that I love to analyze is looking at current case acceptance. And what we see a lot of times is no matter how good you think that you're doing in case acceptance, you can always improve. And so when we start looking at coaching you and helping you with neurolinguistic programming, which understanding how to be able to get patients to get to that emotional state, being able to actually present cases that are not logic-based that are emotion-based. Asking the questions of what are your goals with your smile, your teeth and your health? Why is this important to you?

Asking specific questions and again, working monthly with your team every single month to be able to keep expounding upon your case acceptance, even having an opportunity to come into your practice and do two-day workshops where we're working directly with your team, training your team on verbal skills in case acceptance. What if we were to be able to improve case acceptance, even without increasing new patients? What if we were able to do more of those Perio Protect cases or perhaps you're doing Invisalign now, what if we were able to actually have more of those cases actually closed? What would be the result of increasing case acceptance?

And so a lot of times we're looking at let's create a Circle of Focus. Let's look at Q1, we're going to be focusing on verbal skills. We're going to be focusing on making sure if you have other issues, maybe you have an accounts receivable issue. We're going to focus on AR this quarter. And we're going to focus this quarter on getting you trained in All-on-4 or getting you trained in laser or sleep apnea. Getting your team trained in XYZ.

And so now we have a solid plan. Once we execute and implement that plan, what happens is that, again, we have already increased case acceptance because we've previously been focusing on that. We're able to go ahead and start executing the new services. We have a scorecard, we have on our whiteboard how many services that we are actually setting as our goal. And now we have an opportunity to see the results that happen every single month. What's really cool with the Circle of Focus calls is that we're actually mapping out what the actual revenue is going to look like once we implement these changes what the profits are going to look like as well for the business.

And what's really exciting is that at the end, the doctor says, "Oh my gosh, I don't have to focus on everything." And I show them, even if you did not change revenue in fillings, you did not change your revenue that you're doing even in crown and bridge. Although it would, if your case acceptance increases, you just focus on one or two or three things and be consistent with one or two things. Then now you're going to have a major compounded effect in terms of the results in your business, in terms of, again, profitability, being able to make sure that patient care is not slipping through the cracks, and making sure that you have, again, that healthy business.

All right, guys. So hopefully this is super helpful for you. We absolutely love working and coaching our clients to be able to be successful to be able to get to the next level in their businesses. If this is something that you feel would be helpful for you, we'd love for you to reach out. Feel free to reach out to me, DM me on Facebook, send us a message, or go to deliveringwow.com to schedule your free strategy growth call. All right, guys, that's it. Thank you so much for listening and we look forward to seeing you in the next episode of the Delivering WOW Dental Podcast.

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