Clear Idea #4

34 www.acasociety.com | info@acasociety.com H ere’s an exercise. You are a practice owner and you need to increase profits. If you had to choose one area to focus on, what would you choose? 1. Reduce practice expenses. 2. Increase online advertising, marketing and social media 3. Improve phone skills to convert inquiries 4. Improve scheduling efficiency 5. Improve treatment choices during the exam 6. Improve the clinician’s efficiency by expanding the roles of the team Don’t read further until you’ve considered your answer! Overwhelmingly, most dentists will select from 1-3. Reducing expenses is the least effective strategy yet it is the most predictable response. If a practice is not very profitable, it’s likely that the main issue is low production, not excessive expenses. Since the biggest expense is salaries, it may be tempting to try and cut them, but cutting salaries will probably have unintended consequences: lower morale and increased stress will result in lower production. Cutting supplies, will deliver marginal benefits but since you are focused on expenses, you are actually working on the wrong part of the problem. If you increase your advertising budget, your profits will be further reduced during the months it takes to see an increase in profit. BTW, if you are already spending heavily on advertising (say over 10% of revenue) and you are still not making headway, then just stop and re-assess. Items 1-3 have one thing in common: They are all focused externally and trying to get more patients. The biggest gains come from 4, 5 & 6, which are internally focused. The reason most owners overlook these areas is that they assume they are already doing all that can reasonably be done. Let’s take look at just 4. Improve scheduling efficiency. Most practices have around 60% re- appointment rate. The re-appointment rate is the single most correlative metric to practice success. Here’s a simplified theoretical scenario. Two doctors, Dr A and Dr B, each start with 100 patients Dr A’s practice has a 95% re-appointment rate. Jan: 95, July: 90, Jan: 85, July: 81, Jan: 77 patients. Dr B’s practice has a 65% re-appointment rate. Jan: 65, July: 42, Jan: 27, July: 17, Jan: 11 patients. After five appointment periods, Dr A’s practice is 7X Dr B’s. This means Dr B will need to do much more marketing to maintain a full schedule. Here is a two-part communications tactic that will achieve a high re- appointment rate. Part 1: Always give a compelling reason to return. If you said: “Everything is looking really great. You’re doing a wonderful job. Now let’s book your next appointment!” Some people will be thinking: ‘I’ve been fine every time I come. I’ll just wait a bit longer.’ We all love being able to give our patients positive encouragement and we should do that, but unless we also give the patient a compelling reason to return, we’ll have poorer re-appointment rates. The concerns of having a problem getting worse are more motivating than the desire for more positive feedback. To assist in this tactic, take a photo of an area that isn’t perfect or is a potential trouble spot. Give the patient a copy. Tell them to work on it and you really want to see how it progresses. If there are any weak teeth or teeth that are wearing, make sure the patient knows where they are. Tell the patient you are going to keep monitoring this area next time. There always needs to be some area that you really want to look at next time. Part 2: Book a no-commitment appointment Never ask: “Do you want to book your next 6-month appointment now?” Instead be pre-emptive: “I presume you can’t commit to an appointment in 6 months right now.” If they say, “Actually, I can commit,” then you book them in. Most will say “That’s right. I can’t commit.” You answer: “That’s what I figured. My problem is, we’re really busy, but I have a suggestion. I’ll put you in the book for now. You are not at all committed because I’ll contact you two weeks before and if you need to change the time, I can shuffle things around. If you weren’t in the book, it would be harder to get you in. Does that make sense?” You’ll have an overwhelming success. How to measure your clinician re- appointment rate Ideally, run a daily report: what percentage of a clinician’s patients have another appointment booked. If your software can’t do it easily, do it manually. When any patient leaves, note in the schedule if have they made another appointment. A great way to view this is to colour the patient’s name, say red for Dr A’s reappointed patients and yellow for Dr B’s re-appointed patients. At the end of the month, average the daily percentages for each clinician’s patients and show a monthly report on a chart in the staff room. Applying this skill costs nothing. After a couple of years, you won’t need to do any marketing. Practice Management How to get massive growth without marketing By Dr Michael Sernik Michael Sernik