How does your team measure up?

Survival of the fittest

By: David Milligan Salt DPM Consultant

Part 3 of 3

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Help drive discipline into the group.

                  In high performance teams, the players police themselves.  The people don’t rely on somebody else – for instance, the boss or whoever is in charge –to the crack the whip.  Team members show superb self-discipline.  Individuals hold themselves, and each other, accountable for topnotch results.

Make sure you make a difference.

                  Just having your name on the roster doesn’t mean you’re earning your keep.  Making a difference takes more than just showing up, doing only enough to get by or going through the motions.  Staying busy is no big deal either.  You need to do what counts.  Often the top performer isn’t the most talented person on the team, but the person who puts out the most effort.

Give attention to group process.

                  Things are always going wrong when people work together in groups.  And even when things are going right, a sharp eye can often find ways for them to go a lot better.  Pay attention to what’s going on inside your group, and you’ll see problems that need fixing.

Help create a climate of trust.

                  The “growing season” for trust is when people are being tested – in matters big or small.  Only then do you get a chance to really prove anything.  Will you keep your word?  Do you honor your commitments?  Are you consistent?  Do you play fair?  Can others count on you to “be there”-hanging tough under fire, helping out when they need you, putting yourself at risk for the sake of the team?

Be a good sport.

                  Have a sense of fair play.  Show respect for others, rather than putting them down, finding fault, or promoting yourself at their expense.  Humility fits into the picture too.  Don’t brag or get a big head when you do well.  Be big enough to ask for help when you need it, admit your mistakes, and say “I’m sorry” when appropriate.  Learn to take criticism without taking it personally.

Great teams take effort.  Take time to work on your practice regularly to build teamwork and strengthen your results.   It does not matter if you are running the ball for a touchdown or building a strong dental practice, if the people around you feel that they are a part of team, you will all achieve your goals. 

For more information please visit us at www.saltdpm.com where you can download a list of questions to help you build your team.

 Article originally published by: Tri-County Dental Society

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Six Seconds To Connect: Part 2 of 2

 Austine Etcheverry

Media Specialist

Part 2 of 2

 A few key factors:

Pitch:  Is the sound of the voice.  Is it too high or too low?  Pitch can also give away our emotions. If we speak in a high tone, it might tell patients we are stressed.

Tone:  At some point we have all probably been told, “Not to take that tone of voice.” It is usually said when are getting snippy with someone.  Tone can set the mood for the rest of the phone conversation.

Volume: How loud is the speaker? Can you hear the words clearly or are they speaking too low.  Keep your volume appropriate for the situation. 

Cadence: Is the rate and rhythm of the voice.  Does your receptionist speak loud and fast, or soft and slow? Or do they speak at an even rate that delivers the message effectively and efficiently?

Breathe control:  Breath control is a yoga technique that is used to control breathing in difficult poses.  It is related your physical condition and posture.  Sitting up straight will help with overall breath control.  Breathing correctly can also help decrease your stress level.   

Pronunciation: A clear, complete message allows the patient to get the information and facts they need.  How certain words are pronounced can change the meaning of the message. 

Before any sporting event, practice occurs.   Warming up the voice before you answer calls for the day can improve your pronunciation, voice quality and clarity in speaking.  Although, most of us have been communicating for years that does not be mean we don’t need practice. 

Let’s face it stress is a part of our everyday world and that strain is relayed in our voices more then we know.  Part of giving the right image to customers is keeping that pressure from impacting our telephone voice.  If individuals in your office are feeling stressed, your patients may be also feeling it every time they call.  Not the message you wish to send.  Managing the tension in our own voice will help build a relationship between your patients and the entire office. 

Encourage your receptionist, to stand frequently to stretch their legs.  Or have them take a break to imagine their favorite vacation spot, especially after they've taken an angry call from a patient. At the end of a heated call, have them take a step back, breathe deep and then answer the next call.   Remember it is not that patient’s fault the last one was upset. 

                            Helpful tips:

1. Always answer the telephone with a smile.  A smile is warm, welcoming and inviting.  People, who smile, pass on a smile to those around them.  When someone calls your office if they are upset, the situation can be diffused before the conversation begins just by answering the phone with a smile in your voice. 

2. Use a comforting tone.  People may have past fear or feel anxious about setting up an appointment or calling the office.  Those fears can be extinguished when they call for the appointment and feel the voice behind the phone is soothing.  If the tone is rushed or harsh, patients may come away with the opinion that your office is full of people who will not take the time to be supportive or won’t listen to their concerns.  A phone call can become quickly heated if the person on the other end feels they are not being listened to or understood.

3. Use an appropriate volume.  If you talk too loud on the phone, patients may not be able to wait to get off the phone with you and may not want to call back.  Likewise, if you talk too soft, they may wonder if you are confident and able to take care of their needs.  Your volume can make people uncomfortable. 

4. Be clear and enunciate the words.  People are busy, so chances are when they called your office they aren’t sitting down in a quiet setting with nothing else going on.  You can’t afford for your message and voice to get lost among the background noises of their life.  Studies suggest people tend to rush middle sounds and drop ending sounds when they are communicating with others.  Being aware of this can help anyone who answers the phone in your office to communicate more effectively and efficiently.

We have all heard the age-old saying, “practice makes perfect.”  This is a case where practice can and always should be done to improve the verbal messages your office is sending to others.  Today, people can go to a hundred different dentists, but can you afford to lose one patient because of bad phone etiquette?   What will your office accomplish in the first six seconds of the next incoming phone call?

Austine Etcheverry is a coach with Salt Dental Practice Management. Savor success and learn more at www.saltdpm.com or contact her at info@saltdpm.com. 

 

This article was originally published by Tri-County Dental Society Bulletin 

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Maximizing your Marketing Dollar

Lenora Milligan
Salt DPM Consultant
Part 2 of 2

External marketing can also be effective.  Traditional ways: direct mail, news papers, magazines, billboards, radio and television ads, can all be very effective, although they tend to be more costly.   If you choose this route, spend the money required to hire a professional to assist you.  Some tips: Your advertisement should showcase one item, have a call to action and a time limit.  Decide how you want the prospective patients to contact you and provide one way only.  Simplifying choices lessens the opportunity for confusion and provides better results.  Come from an emotional place with your wording. Most financial decisions are based on emotion, not logic.  If you doubt that, think about the car you drive.  You need transportation; does that mean it has to be a Hummer or a Porsche?  Of course not! But those cars make you feel….special?  It’s emotion. 

What about Yellow Page advertising?  Do you use it?  Or do you Google everything? The newer, exciting and sometimes confounding area of marketing today is the World Wide Web.  The land of web crawlers, cookies and tweets, oh my!  Where do you begin?  Hopefully you have a website. If not, there are companies that can provide you with a very professional site quickly.   If you are not asking patients for their email addresses, then get started today.   It used to be the more elaborate and flashy the website the better you were perceived.  Now, you may want to consider something more simplistic that loads quickly on the computer screen.  People are unwilling to wait for pages that load slowly. 

Your website won’t help your practice if it doesn’t show up in search engines on page one during routine, non specific searches, for example: “Riverside general dentist”.  If the only way you can find your website one page one is by typing in your exact name or practice name then you have a little work to do.  To create an online presence is becoming a little more challenging than it used to be.  Years ago clicking repeatedly on your web site helped get you to the top of the list.

Now you need more than a well-clicked site to get on page one. Search engines now want to know how relevant you are.  They are beginning to consider where else you are mentioned, i.e.: Face Book fan pages, tweets on Twitter, or online surveys and blog entries.  There are companies that provide reasonably priced packages that collect surveys from your patients and post them online.  Make use of free tools like Google analytics and Google places.  Google it, you will be guided through the simple process which can help you show up during online searches.  Create a fan page, if you have a Face Book page scroll down to the bottom and on the right it will give an option to “create a page.”  It’s easy, just follow the instructions.  Once your page is complete you can send a mass email to patients and referral sources to ask them to become a fan.  You want fans, not friends.  Once that is accomplished, periodically post comments that will go out to all the fans.  Keep your posts short and interesting.  You may post about special services you have added to your practice, offers you have in place, or links to health information that may be relevant. So go ahead and tweet, blog, post, and use banner ads on your website.  It’s the future of marketing.

If you would like more information, please contact us at info.saltdpm.com

Join us on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SaltDentalPracticeManagement.

                               This article was originally published by Tri-County Dental Society Bulletin

Maximizing your Marketing Dollar

Lenora Milligan
Salt DPM Consultant
Part 1 of 2

Where to focus to achieve the biggest return on your investment.

Smart marketing is an article designed to get your practice working efficiently and effectively in 2012.

Historically, marketing in the health care field was looked upon with distain, some even believed it unethical.    Considering how long it has been a part of society, marketing in dentistry is relatively new.   The health care industry changed its thinking on the subject in the late 1970’s.  Still, many dentists worry marketing somehow cheapens their services.  Over my 20-year career as a Practice Management Consultant, I have listened to many dentists' concerns regarding the issue.  Some have a fear they will seem desperate to their existing patients, other worry they will attract the wrong type of patients.

My opinion is that marketing your practice is essential for growth and profitability.  The success of your practice depends on your marketing plan.  This article is designed to assist you to find a marketing method that fits your comfort level and represents your practice philosophy. 

In order to create exceptional results in whichever methods you choose, you and your team must be willing to commit to a process that includes:  1. setting goals; 2. tracking results; 3. creating scripts; 4. practicing or "role playing" situations; and 5. being prepared, office-wide, to answer questions that may arise from patients. 

Image is critical.  Make sure you, your team and your office is neat, clean and welcoming.  Attracting patients is part of marketing, and keeping them is essential.   How the phone is answered can make or break an advertising campaign.  Smile, listen to your tone of voice, take your time, and don’t put them on hold too quickly even if you’re busy.

The most well-known and well-perceived marketing method is internal marketing.  Marketing from within your practice can be extremely effective and very low cost.   You may want to start by asking for referrals.   Many dental professionals don’t really know how to approach their patients without feeling uncomfortable.  Some dentists may think their patients already know they accept new patients and that asking is unnecessary. There are ways for this process to become a very natural, and well- accepted, practice in your office.  Once you start asking, you may be surprised to hear patients say, “Oh, I didn’t know you accepted new patients.” 

 When you receive compliments from patients, this is your opportunity.   Respond to compliments with, “Thank you, we are always accepting new patients and would love to see your family and friends.” Or, “Thank you, we love having you in our practice, and always appreciate it when patients send in their family and friends to see us.” What each of you say will be different. The reason is that everyone needs to come up with words that are genuine and true for them.  At IPS, we abide by the concept that birds of a feather flock together, so make sure to ask your best patients for referrals.  You can put referral cards in the hygiene take-home pack, frame and post the request on your wall, but nothing says it better than your voice.  You may decide to create a goal for each team member to ask one patient per day.  Make it a game.  Every time a team member asks for a referral, put their name in a monthly drawing for a gift card.  

A referral program in the office is essential.  If you ask a patient to refer and they send someone to you, please acknowledge the honor they've bestowed. Send a hand written thank you note. Flag referring patient’s charts so you can personally thank them the next time they are in the office.   If you are a specialist you can still ask your patients to refer.  Many patients have a misconception about needing their general dentist to refer them into a specialty office.    

If you would like more information, please contact us at info.saltdpm.com

Join us on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SaltDentalPracticeManagement.

This article was originally published by Tri-County Dental Society Bulletin

Keeping the Horizon in Sight

By: Debra Quarles
Salt Dental Consultant
Part 1 of 2

When you fly a helicopter and lose sight of the horizon you crash – that’s why they train pilots to use instruments. Losing sight of the horizon is a serious matter. When you can’t see the horizon your inner ear takes over - that part of the body designed to tell you up from down. When your inner ear has control it isn’t able to distinguish up from down and so you crash.

Your brain is an incredible tool. (Of course, my brain told me to tell you that, so consider the source.) In critical or stressful situations your brain instructs fight or flight. When this happens we are unable to process information, instead our body takes over. This is so instinctual that if you are approached by a bear – your brain does not say, “That’s a bear. Run!” But instead says, “Run!” And as you are running it tells you, “That was a bear.”

The same thing can occur with divers. If they rely solely on their inner instincts, they can become confused and actually dive to the bottom. Instincts that are in place to help us survive can cause us to die because they are so overwhelming they do not let us rationalize. We become frustrated, we may be argumentative – and we are arguing with our own reasoning. This does not allow us to function at our best.

In other words, a part of your brain may actually prevent you from getting what you want. The good news is now that you are aware of this you can use other parts of your brain to override that behavior and get where you want to go.

The forebrain is the part of your brain that allows you to think ahead. You’ve heard the term use it or lose it – this is especially true here. If you are not thinking ahead to what your future holds, to the horizon – you may lose the ability all together. And much like helicopter pilots, losing sight of where you are going or not having a vision in business is courting disaster.

If you would like more information, please contact us at info.saltdpm.com

Join us on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SaltDentalPracticeManagement.

This article was originally published by Tri-County Dental Society Bulletin

"Taking Control" By: Debra Quarles Salt DPM Consultant

Part 2 of 2

In California, many times the fixed overhead issue is the rent. Rent should reflect 5-8% of your overhead, but this number can be higher if your location also serves as part of your marketing plan, in other words, if your building is located in an area that has significant walk-by or drive-by traffic, you may add a percentage or two.

Lab fees are an area where a lower percentage does not necessarily reflect positively. Lab costs generally reflect how much crown and bridge is being done by the practice. An excellent range would be 10-12% of your collections. A number in this range usually means that case acceptance for crown and bridge is okay. If you find your percentage is higher, it may mean one of two things. 1. You have a lab fee that is outside of the range affordable for the fees you are charging or 2. Outside the range affordable for the fees you are receiving from your insurance contracts. A lower percentage means you may not be getting the case acceptance needed for a healthy practice.

Inventory your supplies at the beginning of each year. This is a great time to start a new system. Why not create one that keeps track of supplies and that causes you to utilize supplies before their expiration dates. Then turn over ownership of purchasing supplies to a trusted team member. When dental supplies are monitored, it can result in huge savings and when team members are given the responsibility and a goal, dental supplies can be easily kept in check. Your dental assistant can be a great asset in dealing with this issue. Give a 5% budget based upon the previous month’s collections. (Remember if you didn’t earn it, you can’t spend it.) Allow a 1-2% override each month. This 1-2% override is for emergency situations and can only be authorized by the doctor.

Of course, all expenses should be evaluated. Is this expense necessary? Or could this expense be reduced without affecting patient care? But be discriminate when considering where to cut costs. Remember, cost cutting will not benefit you if it results in negatives for the patient, either in customer service or in actual quality of care.

What else should be done to increase profitability?

Examine insurance participation and marketing expenses. Fee increases should happen yearly. As a general practitioner fees should reflect at least the 80^th percentile according to the National Dental Data Advisory Service while specialists should consider a 95^th percentile. Why? Your fees reflect your competence. A low fee equates, in a patient’s mind, as meaning low competency. A mediocre fee equates to mediocrity. If you do not feel comfortable with increasing your fees, it’s time to evaluate why. And then take action. If you feel your dental skills need to improve before you can feel comfortable with a higher fee, then by all means use this year to gain that knowledge and competency.

Collection numbers should be evaluated monthly and reflect 98%-102 of your net (after adjustments) production, with a third of your collections coming in at the time of service by having your team collect patient portions.

Closely monitor adjustments as they can sometimes be an area where many feel they have no control. Insurance continues to dictate what fees will be paid and the percentages paid continues to decrease. However, you do have some control and it must be exercised. Reduce your patient courtesy or discount to 5% and make this for paying at the time of service with cash or a check. Create an employee day, where all employees come on a typically non-work day to receive their dentistry. All ‘work’ for the betterment of each other at no cost to the doctor. Plan the days well in advance and be sure each team member is available to work. Work to keep adjustments to production, not including insurance, at no more than 3%.

Empower your front desk team to review and control the schedule to achieve that goal.

Accounts receivable is considered normal if it is 1-1/2 times an average production month. Anymore is uncommon. Having current accounts means we are able to collect more of those dollars in general – less is being written off for bad debt.

Who is average? Studies have shown that most of us consider ourselves above average. So why not strive to own an optimal practice with optimal overhead?

If you would like more information, please contact us at info.saltdpm.com

Join us on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SaltDentalPracticeManagement

This article was originally published by Tri-County Dental Society Bulletin