In a dental office, most new patient appointments are made by phone, but incoming calls are only half the story.  The smart use of outgoing calls can be a very effective practice building technique.

As I travel to present seminars and consult with dental practices, I talk to many dentists.  I always ask what they are doing to grow their practices.  One answer that I hear frequently from dentists who know how to connect with their patients is that they call their patients at the end of the day.  Doctors have traditionally made calls to patients after certain procedures as a courtesy, but the call list is expanding to include all patients who have seen the doctor on a given day for just about any procedure, usually only excluding consultation appointments, hygiene checks, and post-op visits.

There are many reasons to call patients at the end of the day to check on their progress, even patients who sailed through relatively straightforward procedures.

• First, the patient is always surprised.  They cannot believe that the doctor is taking the time to make a personal call.  When customer service exceeds expectations, patients take notice, and they have a story to tell their friends.

• Next, because of the tremendous cost pressures in medicine, physicians are seeing more patients in less time.  A common complaint from patients about physicians is, “I waited an hour and he or she only saw me for five minutes.”  In dentistry, the patient often says, “I waited five minutes, and the dentist spent a lot of time with me.”  To drive that point home, call the patient at the end of the day.  It helps create a personal bond that leads to loyalty and patient referrals.

• Finally, many patients have questions about procedures and post-treatment care.  Even if they were given specific instructions in the office, they want to verify their home care regimen.  Speaking to the doctor gives them the opportunity to ask questions and achieve piece of mind.

Remember also that voicemail can be almost as effective as a personal conversation.  If you call a patient and get their voicemail, leave a message expressing your good wishes and remind the patient that they can reach you if the need arises.  When they hear your voice, they appreciate your sincerity and concern, and their decision to seek care in your office is reinforced.

The bottom line: those doctors who consistently call patients at the end of the day have busy practices.

1) Have your elevator pitch ready. If you aren’t familiar with the concept of an “elevator pitch,” it’s simple.  An elevator pitch refers to a brief statement, no longer than 20-30 seconds, that communicates the purpose of your business—and explains what sets you apart from everyone else.  It’s not enough to simply say “I’m a dentist.”  You need to discuss your focus and mention the points of differentiation that make you different from every other dentist in your town.  Having this brief speech memorized means that, whenever the opportunity arises, you can deliver it crisply and effectively.

2) Learn to network effectively. Many dentists think that their goal, while attending a networking event, should be to pass out as many business cards as possible.  However, the truth is that this approach to networking rarely pays dividends.  Rather than engaging in brief, superficial conversations with as many people as possible, take your time and truly engage a small number of individuals.  By taking the time to establish a connection and get to know each other, you dramatically raise the chances of building a mutually beneficial relationship.

3) Patronize the businesses of other members. Too often, organization members have a “me first” attitude when it comes to patronizing one another’s businesses.  Look for opportunities to visit the businesses owned by other members—you will be surprised how easy it is to get the ball rolling when you are willing to make the first move.

4) Don’t just talk… listen! Remember, everybody in your organization is there to promote his or her business.  They don’t just want to listen to you talk–they want you to listen to them as well.  Many business owners don’t recognize this reality—so by establishing yourself as a good listener, you will find that it is easy to create relationships.  And as these relationships develop, you will have plenty of great opportunities to talk about your business, as well.   

It’s great to be a member of professional organizations and associations… but simply joining the group offers very little benefit.  It’s important that you learn to leverage these memberships to benefit your practice.  Practice your elevator speech, refine your networking strategy, be willing to patronize the businesses of other members, and learn to be a great listener.  Keep these tips in mind, and before you know it, your memberships will be more valuable than you ever imagined.

1) Treat your profile like a marketing piece. Your LinkedIn profile should be carefully thought out and fine-tuned for maximum appeal.  This includes a well-written personal summary which highlights your areas of expertise and clearly expresses your points of differentiation.  You should include your resume along with any awards and professional recognition you have earned.  It is also important that you include a picture of yourself—it needs to be a “head shot” since the display area is too small for anything more.  Choose a picture that makes you look friendly and approachable, yet professional.  Finally, recommendations are a great way to bolster your credibility.  Request them from patients or colleagues with whom you are connected.

2) Use LinkedIn to connect with your patients—and to build your brand. Most dentists understand that they should seek to connect with as many patients and colleagues as they can.  But then, in many cases, they fail to take advantage of these connections.  Connecting with others is how you build your audience—once you have an audience established, you have to reach them with your message!  Use status updates to share thoughts and updates on a regular basis.  Post pictures.  Let your audience know what you are up to.  If you have a blog, post links to your latest entries.  Share links to news stories that may have an impact on your patients.  It’s not enough to simply stockpile LinkedIn connections—you need to take advantage of them by building relationships and brand awareness.

3) Join groups and share your expertise. LinkedIn groups can be a goldmine for your marketing efforts.  Seek out groups that center around dental-related topics and contribute to the discussion!  You don’t have to do any overt selling—simply share your expertise when the opportunity arises.  You may not attract business instantly with this approach, but you will be establishing yourself as an expert in the minds of your audience… and when they do need dental services, you can bet you’ll be the first person they call.

LinkedIn can be a valuable marketing resource for dental professionals—but only if it is properly utilized.  Simply creating a profile and then forgetting about it isn’t going to help you one bit.  Take great care in putting together a strong profile, use it to engage your audience, and join relevant groups to share your expertise.  Following these steps will help you leverage LinkedIn into a powerful tool for your practice.  Feel free to contact me if you would like further information.  

1.  Empower your employees. Teach the team  the reasoning behind the way that you do things, so that they have the ability to view challenges the same way you would—improving the chances that they will make the “right” decision on their own.  Yes, people will make mistakes, but good team members learn from mistakes and become more productive.

2.  Give your team a sense of purpose. Do you find it odd that many people can’t wait to rush home from the job they are being paid to do, but then spend time volunteering for a cause?  That observation should tell you something—namely, that most people are happy to work as long as it is for a good cause.  So help your team to feel a sense of purpose, and they’ll be eager to come to work each day.  Your practice isn’t just about making money.  It’s about improving the lives of individuals by helping them maintain optimum oral heath and bright smiles.  Help your team recognize the vital goal they play in achieving this goal.

3.  Create a true ‘team.’ Have you ever watched a sporting event in which one team, despite superior talent, is upset by a team with inferior talent—but a true team spirit?  These “less talented” teams always seem to do all of the little things right… they hustle, they spur each other on, and they do whatever it takes to win.  After a game, you’ll see this team hug each other and walk off the court or field together—while the more talented team splits up and goes their separate ways.  If you can create a true team environment in your office, your efficiency and your level of service will dramatically increase.  Not only that, but your employees will truly enjoy working together. You create a true team spirit by clarifying goals, holding people accountable, and creating a culture that does not tolerate employees with chronically bad attitudes.  In a positive environment, coming to work will be about more than simply making money—it will be about working with teammates to achieve common goals.

Many dentists think that the only way to keep their team happy is to continually increase compensation.  While money helps, there are a variety of other effective means of keeping your team happy.  The suggestions above will get you started in the right direction.

1) Build a support network. When your practice is struggling, it is important that you have resources outside of your business to turn to.  Whether it is friends, family, colleagues, or others, make creating a support network a priority.  This doesn’t have to take much time—simply make it a point to touch base with these individuals every couple of weeks.  Talk about your business as well as theirs, share frustrations, provide feedback—and if you are feeling down, give them a call and seek encouragement.

2) Understand that bumps in the road are normal. Talk to any successful business person and ask them if their rise to the top was smooth and steady.  I guarantee that everyone you ask will have plenty of stories to tell about failure and negativity.  What separates successful businesses from failures is that strong leaders fight on despite adversity.  The economy is making things difficult right now—how will you respond?

3) Keep the end in sight. What are your long term goals for your practice?  Where do you want to be ten, twenty, thirty years down the road?  Keeping an eye on the big picture will help you keep current challenges in perspective.  Yes, the current economic climate is making things difficult for most businesses.  But at some point in the future, this period of time will look like a tiny speed bump on your journey to success.

4) Take advantage of the downtime. Obviously no dentist wants much downtime.  The busier we are, the more fun we are having and the more money we are making.  But the fact is that many dentists have more time on their hands than they are used to—and if that’s the case for you, it is important to take advantage.  Take a hard look at your marketing plan.  Is there room for improvement?  Should you consider rebranding the practice?  What about your team— are they performing well, or do they need more training?  One dentist told me she is using the extra time she has now to provide all the little customer services touches she had stopped doing when she was very busy.  Put this extra time to good use and work hard to find areas of your practice to improve.      

It can be tough to stay positive when your practice is not performing as well as it could.  But as the leader of your business, you cannot afford to succumb to negativity.  Remember that bumps in the road are part of every journey, keep challenges in perspective, and rely on friends or family for encouragement.  Things may be less than stellar right now, but the business cycle has not been repealed.  At some point, the economy will be noticeably better.  When that happens, I hope you can say that you are a trend setter, because you will be one of the first to rebound.

1)    Exceptional organizational skills. There may be no single skill more essential for an office manager than organizational ability.  Whether the issue is scheduling, handling financial issues, purchasing supplies, or helping to manage other team members, your office manager needs the organizational skills necessary to get the details right.

2)    Communication skills. Your office manager will communicate with your patients, your staff, your vendors, and just about everyone else who interacts with your practice.  It’s important that he or she not only be clear communicator, but that he or she will also be proactive about it.  A passive communication style simply won’t work in this position.  Equally important is that your manager be a good listener.  From unhappy patients to requests from your team, it’s critical that your manager is able to listen and truly understand the needs of others.

3)    Maturity. It is also important that your office manager has the ability to rise above “office politics” and other distractions.  Since he or she will be responsible for the day-to-day operations of your practice, it’s vital that your manager will not play favorites or waste time engaging in petty conflicts.

4)    Leadership ability. While you will always be the “boss” of your practice, in many situations your team will be directed by your office manager.  It’s important that your manager has the ability to keep your team motivated and on task.  Similarly, it’s important that an office manager has a positive attitude—because whether they realize it or not, the rest of your team will tend to emulate his or her behavior.  A crabby, unhappy office manager will often result in an unhappy team.

5)    Passion for patient service. Just as your team will take their cues from the manager with regard to their attitude, he or she will also set the tone for patient service.  A manager who consistently is willing to go the extra mile for a patient will inspire the rest of the team to do the same.  Conversely, if your manager doesn’t put much effort into pleasing your patients, the rest of your staff is not going to either.

Choosing an office manager is a big decision and shouldn’t be rushed.  If you are looking to make a hire, take your time and make sure to bring in as many applicants as you can.  It’s essential that the manager you hire has the skills we’ve discussed above—but it’s equally important that you feel a natural chemistry with him or her.  After all, the success of your partnership will largely determine the success of your practice.  Take your time, conduct a thorough interview process, use your best judgment—and you’ll be on the way to finding the right leader for your team.

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The summer before my daughter enrolled in a college preparatory school, she took a time management course.  It was a real eye-opener, because she had to list all her daily activities and the amount of time she would devote to each one.   She was amazed to find out that after subtracting all the time she would spend in class, mealtime, sleeping, eating, relaxing, etc., she would have only a very limited amount of time to study and do the rest of her homework.  She learned that by making lists and using a planner, she could keep up, and that made all the difference.

Your first step should be to figure out how much (or little) time you have for the business end of the practice.  If critical activities such as seeing patients, having a quick morning huddle with the staff, returning phone calls from other doctors, and grabbing a quick bite to eat collectively take up all but fifteen minutes of your day, then you will only have those fifteen minutes for everything else on a daily basis.  Don’t try to schedule thirty minutes of activities when the minutes just aren’t available.  Will you be able to get everything done in the time available?  If not, it’s time to set aside some additional administrative time during the week, or consider coming in to the office for a few hours on your clinical day off, perhaps on an every other week basis.  By creating a realistic schedule and sticking to it, you can control exactly how your time is spent.

The next important step in taking control of your precious time is to prioritize.  At the end of each day, make a list of administrative work that must be done by you, and only by you.  One of the absolute best ways to manage time is to work from a list, and to cross things off as they are accomplished.  For example, you might need to speak to your accountant by phone about a tax issue or reply to an e-mail from a lab owner, so make sure those things get done.  This is your personal, daily, to-do list.

Next, look for items that can be delegated to members of your team.  If you want to check prices for a new janitorial service or follow up on an equipment maintenance agreement, delegate those tasks.  Make sure that you put on your personal to-do list the task of following up each day with previously delegated work.  Ask for progress reports and move toward closure.  Your team will be much more responsible if they know that you will always check back with them in a timely manner to ensure that work has been complelted.

As your administrative work load grows, delegate more high level tasks to a key team member.  You may have to hire an additional person or give a current employee more responsibility, but at the end of the day nothing is more valuable than your chair side time.  Activities that do not require a dental degree can and should be assigned.

What about  those unexpected tasks that come up and must be handled?  Henry Kissinger once said, “Don’t let the urgent drive out the important.”  In other words, allow some flex time for the urgent, because putting off important tasks only makes them that much more urgent.

Time management is all about discipline.  Determine the time available.  Prioritize.  Delegate.  Follow up on work delegated.  Assume that you will need to block some time for the unexpected.

The key is to begin managing time, instead of letting time manage you.

1) Don’t hire haphazardly. As a practice manager, you’re busy.  I understand that.  Unfortunately, many managers use their hectic schedule as an excuse to quickly hire the first qualified candidate they can find whenever a job opens up.  It’s an easy mistake to make—after all, the longer it takes you to make a hire, the harder your life is in the meantime.  But in the long run, taking your time to thoroughly interview and research many candidates will save you time and money.  Finding a good match for your open position will mean that you don’t have to continually hire and train replacements—a process that is time consuming and costly.  Take your time and do your due diligence—you won’t regret it.

2) Go deeper than the resume. Let’s say you’re hiring someone to work at the front desk and you’ve got a pile of resumes on your desk.  The typical approach is to select the most impressive resume, bring the applicant in for an interview, and more often than not give him or her the job.  Unfortunately, a resume can be misleading.  So go deeper.  Ask the applicant to recount a situation in which he or she dealt with an unhappy customer.  Ask the applicant to describe their approach to organization.  By asking specific questions, you’ll get a feel for how the prospective employee will deal with real-life situations that will occur once you’ve made the hire.

3) Emphasize and develop teamwork. Every employer talks about the importance of teamwork.  If you want to truly build a winning team, you need to do more than talk about it.  Schedule quarterly events outside of work and get to know each other on a personal level.  Take an interest in the lives of your employees, and encourage them to do the same with each other.  And keep everyone engaged by regularly asking for their input and advice when challenges arise.  Even if you ultimately make a different decision, simply seeking advice from an employee makes them feel like a valued part of the team.

Building a tight-knit team of dedicated employees takes time and effort.  But once you’ve built a strong team, you’ll be able to reap the benefits for years to come.  Keep these tips in mind as you start to put together your winning team.

When presenting fees to patients, case acceptance often hinges on how many options are presented, and the manner in which those options are presented.

Consider the following scenarios:

1. The patient is offered one fee — $5,000, for example. The patient has two choices: accept or decline the treatment. Even if this is a very reasonable fee for the proposed treatment, the presentation comes down to a “take it or leave it” offer.
2. The patient is offered two options: $5,000 for the recommended treatment plan and $3,500 as another option, which, while not ideal, will still provide the patient with benefits. When presented with two options, most (but not all) patients will opt for the lower of the two fees. Hence, offering two options actually creates three choices: accept the ideal treatment plan, accept lesser but still salutary treatment or decline all treatment. The number of patients who choose to do nothing will decrease because some people who do not elect the $5,000 treatment plan will accept the $3,500 option. When it is clinically impractical to offer two options, consider phasing treatment. The patient is given the option of doing everything now for a fee of $5,000, or doing just Phase One now for a fee of $3,500. Phase Two can be completed later for about $1,500.
3. The patient is offered three options: good, better, best. The fees might look something like this: good ($3,000), better ($5,000) and best ($7,000). When offered three treatment options, many patients will talk themselves into the middle option. This strategy is what I call “Goldilocks” pricing. The patient might decide that the best option is too expensive, the least costly option might not totally solve the problem, but the middle option is “just right.” Keep in mind that because doing nothing is always an option for the patient, three options are actually four, and the more choices presented, the less likely it is that the null option will be chosen. To further improve the odds that the patient will choose one of the treatment options presented (instead of the unspoken fourth option of declining treatment), take a page from author Dan Ariely, whose influential book “Predictably Irrational” offers many good insights. Ariely discusses hard and soft anchor prices. He states that consumers view prices ending in zero as soft anchors; people want to move off them. Prices that end in other numbers, however, are hard anchors, because, while everyone wants a deal, people are more accepting of odd-looking prices. For example, retailers know that an item priced at $19.95 is more likely to sell than the same item priced at $20. Consumers do not care about the nickel, but that very round number of $20 becomes an unacceptable price point to some. Ariely makes the point that because consumers are more likely to purchase an item priced at $19.95 than an identical one priced at $20, their behavior is at once predictable and irrational because consumers report in surveys that a five-cent price difference is insignificant. The lesson for dentistry is that fees need to be quoted using hard anchor prices. Using this model, the three options might be presented this way: good ($3,185), better ($5,273) and best ($7,183).This example contains a double dose of psychology: three options, which inherently increase the chances that the patient will accept some form of treatment (often the midpriced choice); and odd-ball, hard anchor pricing to make all the fees seem more palatable than large, round numbers ending in zero.A real-life example illustrates the point. There was a doctor who presented a number of patients with the option of implant-retained overdentures. Many patients simply declined treatment, which is not surprising because they were given an all-or-nothing choice. This doctor then started offering his patients three options: good (conventional dentures), better (overdentures) and best (full fixed implant case). He used odd-ball pricing for each of the three options and explained to patients the limitations of conventional dentures, the benefits of overdentures, and the benefits but admittedly high cost of a full fixed implant case. He asked patients to make their own decision and said he would not be disappointed if the patient did not take the best option, as the overdenture option would provide a very satisfactory result. Patients were naturally drawn to the middle option, and when the doctor in effect gave the patient permission to choose overdentures, barriers dropped away and case acceptance soared.
4. Another strategy also takes a page from Ariely’s book. Instead of offering three distinct options, present three choices where the third possibility is a value-added version of the second. For example, the patient is offered the following restorative choices: upper teeth only ($3,715); upper and lower teeth ($7,727); upper and lower teeth and free in-office whitening ($7,727). Note that the fee for the second and third options are exactly the same; the important difference is that the “free in-office whitening” is now a value add. Ariely argues persuasively that when consumers are presented with three options and the third is a value-added version of the second, a significant number of people choose the third option. In this example, I have used whitening as the value add because many restorative doctors have told me that when they do a fairly large restorative case, they “throw in” the whitening. It is fine to throw in the whitening; however, this extra service should not be treated as though it were an afterthought, but instead made an integral part of the overall pricing strategy. By offering whitening (or some other service) as a third option in the form of a value add, the practice will end up closing larger cases.Doctors should analyze their case acceptance patterns and endeavor to use these templates. It is not always the amount of the fee that makes the critical difference, but how the fee is presented in relation to other options. By being aware of price psychology, doctors can create value in the patient’s mind for proposed treatment.