Not many dental practice owners read up on digital marketing trends on a daily basis. It is not surprising then when they consider email to be dead. It was pronounced dead a long time ago! In the age of online forums, social media and video blogging, sending personalized emails made no sense!   But come to think of it, it is the most intimate way to connect with your potential patients. It is like sitting with them in their living room, having a warm cup of tea and explaining to them that why visiting a dentist is important, how you understand their apprehensions and how you will go the extra mile to make them comfortable and provide them the dental care they need. 

The power of email is being realised and applied in businesses of all shapes and sizes. So if you haven’t been following digital marketing trends lately, then we have all the required information right here to help you create a stellar and unique email marketing campaign. Let’s get to it!

What Does an Effective Email Marketing Strategy Looks Like

Email is important, but how do you get through to a viewer who receives over a hundred emails a day? Needless to say, you need a lot more than just an automated and generic template to make an impact. You need to stand out amongst the dozens of other emails fighting for attention. And how do you do that? The answer is as simple as it is complicated – you need to be real, you need to be you! 

There is just no other way! You need to let your audience see the real you, you need to be warm and vulnerable, you need to be approachable. 

Many a time, businesses are so busy being perfect, they forget how uninspiring perfection really is! They want human interaction. They want to know that you understand their fears about going to the dentist, their desires to have a beautiful smile and their need for someone to hold their hand and walk them through the process. 

It is no secret that going to the dentist doesn’t top most people’s favorite activity in the world, and by being caring and warm, you can make the whole process a lot easier and relaxing. And emails provide the ultimate vehicle to achieve just that. 

By sending informative, personalized and interesting emails to their inbox, you get the opportunity to build a relationship with your existing and potential patients. 

The Dreaded Unsubscribe Button!

There will be people who will unsubscribe. Don’t take it personally. For the most part it has nothing to do with you. Don’t lose heart and definitely don’t give up on the rest of your mail list. Just be prepared to deal with the fact that there will be people who don’t want to receive those emails and that is totally alright! It is the nature of business. If anything, ask yourself what you can do to make the content more engaging, without losing sleep over it. 

Nurture Your Leads

Email campaigns are similar to going to the gym – we all know workout is healthy, but without motivation, purpose and planning, you really wouldn’t know what you are working towards. Similarly, before you can start hitting your list with blogs, articles and funny videos, you need to have a plan. You need to know your why’s and how’s. And if your why is to promote your services and make sales, then you may want to stop for a second!

Many marketers make the mistake of making their emails sales-y. They want those leads to convert to sales the moment they open their emails. Well, hate to break it to you but that’s not going to happen. There is a higher chance of them unsubscribing than there is of them making a sale just by receiving an email. 

Your objective should be to build trust rather than make a sale. Your objective should be to nurture your leads in order to build a relationship of warmth and trust. You need to be very strategic about what you are sending to the inbox. You need to lay the ground work, connect the dots to your primary goal or objective of a specific email campaign. You need to plan months ahead and send relative content in order to build trust and nudge them slowly towards stepping into your practice. 

Types of Email Campaigns

There are many different types of email campaigns. You need to consider your annual calendar to prepare and plan out your email campaigns in advance. There are no hard and fast rules about following specific types of campaigns. But campaigns are an ongoing way of remaining ever present and relevant in the back of the mind of your patient.  You shouldn’t just be sending emails promoting seasonal deals and then vanish into thin air until the start of the following season.

There are so many types of email campaigns that can be offer oriented and seasonal. These could include Christmas, New Year – New You, Halloween, Summer, Spring, Back to School, Get Ready for Your Formal, Lift Your Spirits, etc. You could also have email campaigns targeting birthdays and follow ups after any procedures conducted with existing patients. Another popular campaign is one which includes surveys and quizzes. These are a great way to encourage engagement and get valuable feedback from patients. Quizzes are a great way to get potential patients to think about their oral health. You can ask them to self-assess their current oral health and identify what their secret dental wish may be. However, be sure to keep them short and simple to follow. 

You could combine some of these ideas together or skip a few, depending on your personal preference, your email audience and your campaign objectives.  You may even like to split your email list into segments and offer a different campaign which may be only relevant to different parts of your email list at a particular time of the year.

The fact is email marketing is anything but dead. It remains one of the most powerful marketing tools available! Just think about it. Email is powerful enough for huge brands to offer major discounts just to get potential customers to subscribe to their email list. 

But getting someone to subscribe isn’t the tough part, keeping them engaged is where you need to do the hard work. So invest your thoughts and efforts into what possibilities email marketing may hold for you.  Statistics show that 50% to 80% of revenue comes from email. Those are big numbers with huge potential. And you definitely don’t want to miss out on any of it!

P.S. Whenever you’re ready …. here are 4 ways I can help you grow your dental practice:

1. Grab a free chapter from my book “Retention – How to Plug the #1 Profit Leak in Your Dental Practice”

The book is the definitive guide to patient retention and how to use internal marketing to grow your practice – Click Here

2. Join the Savvy Dentist community and connect with dentists who are scaling their practice too

It’s our Facebook group where clever dentists learn to become commercially smart so that they have more patients, more profit and less stress. – Click Here

3. Attend a Practice Max Intensive live event

Our 2 day immersive events provide access to the latest entrepreneurial thinking and actionable strategies to drive your practice forward. You’ll leave with a game plan to take your results to the next level. If you’d like to join us, just send me a message with the word “Event and I’ll get you all the details!  – Click here

4. Work with me and my team privately

If you’d like to work directly with me and my team to take your profit from 6 figures to 7 figures …. just send me a message with the word “Private”… tell me a little about your practice and what you would like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details! – Click here

Many people talk about work-life balance. And I think that’s a bit of a misnomer. It should be work-life integration. Because ultimately it is just life; and this includes your family, your social obligations and your work. And by making sure that your practice supports your vision of the ultimate life, you can create success. 

But what is success? What is Your version of success? If I asked you to think of 5 successful people, the chances are that of those 5 individuals whom you would consider successful I may only consider 2 of them a success. That is because our ideologies and understanding of success are very different from each other. 

One might consider getting an early retirement a form of success, while someone might want to be working 6 days a week, scaling and expanding their business well into their eighties! Which of these is the ideal definition of success? You decide!

It is your life, your practice and, thus, your decision. Ultimate success is personal, and we have got to make sure that we are setting your business up to support your version of success and no one else’s. There are three main components to creating a successful, profitable, valuable and scalable practice:

• Having a long-term plan for your practice.
• Having structures to maximise value and create a healthy a cash flow
• Leveraging time by designating the right tasks to the right team members

Let’s see how we can successfully integrate each of these into the practice

Design Your Future

Before we get into discussing the future, let’s take a look back at 2019. What were some of the hits and misses in this previous year? What are some of the things you could have done differently? How many of the milestones you had set out to accomplish did you truly achieve? What were some of the setbacks, pitfalls, mistakes that prevented you from achieving your targets? What can you truly learn from the previous year that will help you shape 2020 and make it truly better?

In order to look forward, we need to look over our shoulders and truly assess those impulsive, and even calculated, decisions that we made that ended up backfiring. Once you have your lessons from 2019 covered, you could look over to the future and plan ahead better.

So how do you plan ahead? How far ahead do you really look? 6 months? A year? 3 years? How about a decade?

Frankly, you could look as far ahead as you’d like; but anything between 5 to 10 years sounds like a good deal. Where do you want to be in 2030? Where do you see your practice by that time? Do you plan on expanding your current practice or perhaps branching out? What would your daily routine look like? How many hours a week would you want to be working? How much revenue do you plan on generating? What should your cash flow or earnings before the owner’s compensation or the net profit should look like?

Don’t just ask these questions on the professional front, but delve into the personal things in your life which may impact on your answers to these questions as well. How much time do you plan on spending with your family? Do you plan on pursuing any hobbies, further education? How much money do you want to reserve/invest? What do you want your net worth to look like? What will your daily routine look like?

The more specific you are about all these factors, the better your plan will be. Now simply reverse engineer the big picture. What will your 5 year, 3 year, 1 year goals need to be in order to see the big picture, that vision of 2030 we talked about earlier.  You need to invest time into planning. No road can automatically take you to your destination without you navigating the way, or at least knowing where you want to go. And having a solid plan – a clear road map – keeps you on track. And if you are like most people who don’t have solid answers to all the above questions, so you need to sit down and ask yourself these questions and have definite answers before you can sit in the driving seat to success. 

Have Structures in Place

A successful dental practice requires more than just technical skills, it requires savvy business structures too. Without a strong structure, you have no foundations to scale or even successfully run your practice. Many practice owners, though doing great, have no healthy cash flow or a smooth running system. They always seem to be on the precipice and living in financial troubles. And the core reason, for most of them, is lack of structure. 

Fix Up Your Books, Track and Reflect

You need to have structure in the appointment book; you need to have some sort of measuring and tracking in place so you know you are on the right path. You also need a dashboard. A dashboard is a simple tool that summarises all of the essential data you need to know to be sure your business is performing well. Pre-booking, cancellations, incomplete treatment, team member production figures, etc. The data you collect on your dashboard also lets you know if there are any trouble spots that need attention. 

Maximizing Cash Flow

Every practice also needs a well-functioning money machine, or a financial forecast to help you get a clearer view of your finances in the future. You need to have some structures to maximise revenue and maximise cash flow. 

There are three main methods of maximising revenue:

• See more patients
• See those patients more frequently
• And increase the average dollar spent per transaction.

Everything else is a sub-category of these three main categories. Even the smallest changes in these categories can have a powerful impact on the bottom line. For example, if you were to have a 10% increase in the number of patients, along with a 10% increase in the frequency of those patients, as well as a 10% increase in the average transaction per patient, you see a 30% uplift in your revenue. It is a significant number generated from minor changes.

Managing Revenue and Expenses 

You also need structure with all the other big and small factors that influence your practice’s bottom line. These include managing your accounts payables and accounts receivables, managing the consumables, reducing operating costs, managing the costs of goods sold etc. You need to make maximising revenue a priority and make continuous conscious efforts to minimise expenditure. 

Leverage Your Time

Time is your greatest asset and you need to value it just the same. You cannot be doing everything around the practice, even if you are the best person for every job around the clinic. You need to recruit competent team members and then have systems to hold them accountable for their responsibilities. You also need to hire candidates who are not only skilled but are a great culture fit. A person who is not a good culture fit could negatively influence the culture around the practice. 

You also need to learn to let go of some of the responsibilities that ‘you’d rather do yourself.’ 

Take a look at what you are spending your time on at the moment. What tasks do you undertake that could be taken on by some other team members? 

If you are spending a lot of time on admin tasks, and that in turn is influencing your competence as a skilled dentist, then you need to reevaluate your time. You could either delegate, eliminate or automate the process, whichever seems suitable. You really need to make the best use of your most valuable asset – which is your time.

Don’t let this New Year be just another page on the calendar. Make it worthwhile; make it a stepping stone towards your ultimate goals. They may seem mountainous right now, but once you have your road map ready, the destination would become much closer than you had initially anticipated. 

P.S. Whenever you’re ready …. here are 4 ways I can help you grow your dental practice:

1. Grab a free chapter from my book “Retention – How to Plug the #1 Profit Leak in Your Dental Practice”

The book is the definitive guide to patient retention and how to use internal marketing to grow your practice – Click Here

2. Join the Savvy Dentist community and connect with dentists who are scaling their practice too

It’s our Facebook group where clever dentists learn to become commercially smart so that they have more patients, more profit and less stress. – Click Here

3. Attend a Practice Max Intensive live event

Our 2 day immersive events provide access to the latest entrepreneurial thinking and actionable strategies to drive your practice forward. You’ll leave with a game plan to take your results to the next level. If you’d like to join us, just send me a message with the word “Event and I’ll get you all the details!  – Click here

4. Work with me and my team privately

If you’d like to work directly with me and my team to take your profit from 6 figures to 7 figures …. just send me a message with the word “Private”… tell me a little about your practice and what you would like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details! – Click here

It is imperative for any running business to have systems and operations in place for smooth functioning. We all use some level of technology to help make things easier. However, at times it is highly difficult to blur the lines between automation and human interaction. How much is too much when it comes to applying automation and systems in business? 

Automation is all digital; it is all technology. But you are dealing with patients on the other end. You cannot expect them to connect with you through automated messages. Does that mean you shouldn’t be incorporating technology into your business? Of course not! The idea is to create a balance and understand the limitations AND the potential of having systems in place. And that is all that we will be covering in today’s blog post. 

Truth about Systems and Automation

Have you ever tried contacting a customer service of a business through their website only to be holding a conversation with a chat bot? Will you mind it? The chances are you wouldn’t, as long as your concerns are timely and correctly heeded to. However, if you would like to speak to a representative directly, then you would want that option to be available, right? 

This is where automation becomes interesting- it does solve problems for your business by making processes easier and more accessible. However, they, by no means can replace the human element of it all. 

Hence, the key is to make automation a part of your business process, rather than having it replace it. Also, you need to personalize it based on your own targets and needs. 

Primarily, there are three elements to automation- simplification, structure and system. 

Simplification

The process needs to be easy to follow. It should organically fit into your systems without making it more complex. By simplifying processes, you also get clarity. There are many options for automation available, and if you go after all or most of them without having set targets, you will lose clarity. 

Structure

Your automation process needs to have a purpose. You cannot just keep on mixing strategies in the hopes of ‘hitting it off’ somewhere. You need to have defined targets that need to be achieved with your automation processes. It could be getting more referrals, make the phone ring more often, tackle employee turnover etc. But this isn’t it. You need to get further down the grind! How many referrals are you trying to achieve? Three per month or two each week? How many times would you like the phone to ring? What percentage of turnover are you trying to reduce? 

Being specific enables you to create processes and systems that are directly targeted towards achieving those goals. 

Systems

Why are you building something? This should be at the core of your system. And in order to create an effective system, you need to focus both on getting the strategy right BEFORE the tactics. You need to know your strategy in order to apply the right tactics for it. And this is where most business owners go wrong when applying systems. They have no structure and no strategy. The install systems for the sake of it, without giving it the direction per say. 

Another common mistake practice owners make is automation. They tend to detach themselves from the system. Yes, the system should be able to run itself, but it is not an end all solution. Your targets, goals, requirements continue to evolve, as should your system. 

And in order for it to keep up, you need to continuously keep yourself in the loop. You need to think about the customer experience! That is the heart of any successful business. It is super important. 

We often get too directed by the strategy, systems and processes that we tend to forget about the customer. 

Personalization

The World Wide Web is brimming with information, personal information that enables practice owners to personalize their marketing strategies. There is a lot of data out there, data is big business and everyone seems to be cashing on it. However, when it comes to automation, we need to maintain a balance between personalization and automation. Not all our patients are carbon copies of one another. They all have different needs, hopes and aspirations.

And the best way to do this is to understand the patient and develop a system around it, rather than the other way round. 

Your systems and processes need to be able to evolve with more data fed into it. Automate the process, but personalize the experience. 

Having Your Team Onboard

Systems and processes are not just about you and how you run your business. Your team members are an essential component of this mix, and they need to be consistently involved. Your systems should cater to the needs and comforts of your team members. 

In order to scale your business, you need to leverage your team. It is easy to do things yourself, but it is difficult to teach someone else to do it- but it is an important process. So before you think of installing new systems, you  need to get your team members on board with it. And then give them the time and training to adapt to those systems.

Choose the Right System

If there was a key takeaway to all that we have discussed today, it would be this- selecting the right system! There are hundreds of systems out there, and more being introduced with every passing minute. They all seem tempting, they all seem interesting. But they aren’t all built for achieving your specific goals. Select a system that manages to help you reach your targets. The fact is, a system can only follow instructions, it will not scale your business for you. 

It will not make the sale or build a patient base for you, it will only assist you in doing the same. At the heart of every successful system and automation is simplification and structure that will give you the scale!

P.S. Whenever you’re ready …. here are 4 ways I can help you grow your dental practice:

1. Grab a free chapter from my book “Retention – How to Plug the #1 Profit Leak in Your Dental Practice”

The book is the definitive guide to patient retention and how to use internal marketing to grow your practice – Click Here

2. Join the Savvy Dentist community and connect with dentists who are scaling their practice too

It’s our Facebook group where clever dentists learn to become commercially smart so that they have more patients, more profit and less stress. – Click Here

3. Attend a Practice Max Intensive live event

Our 2 day immersive events provide access to the latest entrepreneurial thinking and actionable strategies to drive your practice forward. You’ll leave with a game plan to take your results to the next level. If you’d like to join us, just send me a message with the word “Event and I’ll get you all the details!  – Click here

4. Work with me and my team privately

If you’d like to work directly with me and my team to take your profit from 6 figures to 7 figures …. just send me a message with the word “Private”… tell me a little about your practice and what you would like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details! – Click here

All great performers have a wingman. This is the one trusted key person that a performer relies on to support them in their professional life. In dentistry the wingman or wingwoman is the one person an owner can rely on day in day out to keep the practice humming along. Having a great connection with your wingman, that is probably your Practice Manager can really drive the success of your practice. It can help you achieve more in less time, with less stress.  Before we explore how to nurture and maintain a powerful, results driven Practice Manager Relationship let’s look at a few basic rules you should follow!

Rule 1: Drop the Mask

Firstly it is important to drop the mask. This is the first key step for any Owner and Practice Manager. Clarity and commitment come from honesty and transparency.  Both parties need to be willing to say I am not perfect, I struggle with this and this. But I am great at that and that. A Practice Manager can support the Owner with the things they are not good at, and the Practice Manager can delegate or outsource the things they are not so good at. This helps build deep connections based on knowing where and when someone may be at their most vulnerable and accepting, they can be supported and still succeed. It also means both parties understand their own and each other’s strengths and weaknesses. 

Rule 2: Own your Mistakes 

In any life situation we must own our mistakes. When we are building a leadership arrangement, which let’s face it, that is what we are doing here, this becomes particularly important. A Practice  Owner is building the Practice Manager to be the leader, when they themselves can’t be. We all must own our mistakes, communicate them and work to fix them. 

Rule 3: Buy In: Commit

At the core of all our important life relationships is buy in – or commitment. 

In love, marriage, parenthood we give a commitment to look after each other. It is no different in this key relationship. And this is the mind shift that will make the difference in building trust between Owner and Practice Manager.  Each person is required to be committed to the relationship and making it work for the benefit of the business. In short – you have to have each other’s back!

Now let’s delve into steps you can take to make this relationship flourish.

Step 1: Deliver Clarity

By delivering clarity I mean communicating clearly about a few key things. Firstly, the Owner needs to share their practice and personal values, vision, hopes and dreams. This will help the Practice Manager filter their own leadership communication and decision making through a lens which includes the ideals of the Owner.   Secondly be clear about the fundamentals of the role. An Owner must identify what success for a Practice Manager looks like to them? What is the purpose of the role? The Owner and Practice Manager can compare their thoughts on this and build a solid picture of what expectations the Owner has of the Manager, and vice versa. This is a two-way relationship. Clarity on expectations is important on both sides. Thirdly clarity is needed from the Owner about what permissions and limitations exist for the Practice Manager. What can be approved by the Practice Manager and what things may need the Owner’s personal tick of approval before implementation. The Owner doesn’t want to bog the Manager down with too many limitations – the idea is that the Practice Manager can free up the Owners time to work on higher value tasks or have more down time!

Step 2: Carve out time to really talk 

Communication is critical to the success of this relationship. The first important issue here is location. Try to have a meeting away from the practice environment. A meeting just between Owner and PM should be held at least weekly. It should be structured, with an agenda and quarantined in the calendar. The Practice Manager is the driver of this meeting – they formulate the agenda, present reports with the required analysis, talk to the agenda items and make recommendations to the Owner. The meeting is really aimed at providing updates to the Owner, tracking success metrics, identifying issues, discussing solutions and mapping what is to be achieved in the coming weeks. A Quarterly planning meeting should be held to identify bigger goals, objectives and re-define strategy.

Step 3: Speed of Execution and Implementation

The Practice Manager needs to be allocated enough time to get the job done well. If they are also the Receptionist then time away from Reception needs to be found. If the Practice Manager has clarity around the role, Owner expectations and the priorities for the week then they will be able to execute plans and implement actions to meet deadlines.  It is important also for the Practice Manager to be given enough scope without those limitations we discussed earlier. A PM does not want to wait for the Owner to look over everything. Speed of execution is a high priority for Manager’s. Owner’s can interrupt this flow and really slow things down. As an Owner sometimes you have to step aside and let your key person do the job you hired them for!

Essential Skills  – Listening, Asking, Executing

Lastly, let’s look at the key skills we want to nurture in a key person.  Listening is really important in a great Practice Manager. An Owner may only have time to say things once. A Practice Manager needs to be able to listen well and know what questions to ask to achieve clarity.  So being able to ask the right questions is also valuable. When things aren’t clear the PM needs to ask questions and dig deeper until clarity is accomplished. This asking – this seeking of clarity may be for themselves, or for others such as team members, suppliers, providers, etc.   Executing is really the third essential skill. If a Practice Manager can listen, ask, and then execute to get the work done on time then they will prove truly priceless. 

If a Practice Owner can get this wingman – Practice Manager relationship really rocking along the benefits for all involved are terrific. The Owner will be able to reverse themselves out of some operational functions, the Practice Manager will find themselves with more clarity and capacity, and potentially be more involved, satisfied and valued.  But I know what you are all thinking. 

So, my final word is about key person risk.  Practice Owner’s can mitigate key person risk by training others to do a good slice of the physical tasks of the PM. But you can’t replicate the thinking, peripheral vision and depth of understanding of your key person. You can’t have reward without some risk! The relationship an Owner builds with a key person can’t be duplicated easily. Its based on understanding, faith and trust.  Sometimes we have to accept we carry key person risk, because let’s face it, all of our most important relationships carry elements of key person risk. But the rewards will greatly outweigh the risk we feel!

P.S. Whenever you’re ready …. here are 4 ways I can help you grow your dental practice:

1. Grab a free chapter from my book “Retention – How to Plug the #1 Profit Leak in Your Dental Practice”

The book is the definitive guide to patient retention and how to use internal marketing to grow your practice – Click Here

2. Join the Savvy Dentist community and connect with dentists who are scaling their practice too

It’s our Facebook group where clever dentists learn to become commercially smart so that they have more patients, more profit and less stress. – Click Here

3. Attend a Practice Max Intensive live event

Our 2 day immersive events provide access to the latest entrepreneurial thinking and actionable strategies to drive your practice forward. You’ll leave with a game plan to take your results to the next level. If you’d like to join us, just send me a message with the word “Event and I’ll get you all the details!  – Click here

4. Work with me and my team privately

If you’d like to work directly with me and my team to take your profit from 6 figures to 7 figures …. just send me a message with the word “Private”… tell me a little about your practice and what you would like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details! – Click here

Running a dental practice is like throwing a dozen balls in the air and then try to catch them all at the same time! You not only have to build and maintain a reputation as a competent dentist, you also need to be a good mediator, communicator, marketer, entrepreneur, accountant and above all a great leader! You are aware of your roles and expectations when you plan to get into the business side of things. But it can become pretty hectic, pretty fast. And the best thing you can do for yourself and for your business’s growth, is get things in order before they take over your life and limit your growth potential.

And that is exactly what we will be covering today. How to delegate work to your team members, and seek assistance in certain aspects of your work so that you can truly make your business grow to its true potential without overburdening yourself!

Get a Business Manager

This is one of the biggest decisions that you will need to make when scaling your practice. There are no benchmarks for when is the right time to hire a business manager. You will need to figure that one out all on your own. But ideally, when you plan to scale and grow your business, then it is about time to give away some of the important responsibilities to someone more suited for the job so you can focus on the bigger picture. 

Undoubtedly, hiring a business manager is a major step; it just makes your business entity all the more real. 

But a major concern is if you can even afford one. And the best way to determine that is to sit down and do your calculations. Primarily, you need to have defined goals for the future that make the business manager worth the investment. 

• What milestones and objectives will they need to meet in order to be of value?
• What does a realistic return on your investment in this role look like to you?
• How can they meet those results? What are the list of responsibilities they will need to undertake in order to successfully reach those milestones?
• How can you be assistive?
• What training will they require to efficiently do the job?

These are just some of the many concerns you need to address before deciding to hire someone.

Your business manager is like your Dental Assistant, they should be an extension of your values and beliefs, and be able to simply share your workload with you. A good way to understand each other is to work like hand and glove for the initial two or three months. Once you hire someone, don’t  expect them to give you a return on your investment the next day! 

Instead, spend some time to help the business manager understand how you like things done; be clear about the responsibilities they need to undertake and the goals they need to help you achieve. Also spend time to understand their goals and long term plans. Where do they see themselves in the future of this practice? What can you do to help them achieve these? You will continuously need to lift each other up for a mutually beneficial and healthy work relationship. 

Put A Great Team Together!

Your team is your internal customer. They are the ones that you need to look out for and they in turn will look out for your patients! Let’s face it, it is your team that is dealing with your patients; so if the team isn’t happy, the patient isn’t happy. By taking care of their needs and demands, you can be rest assured that your patients will receive above par service every time! There is a reason why the movers and shakers of the business world focus on team building and creating enviable work environments for them. 

But how do I create that great team?

Following are a few tips and tactics to help you build and maintain a goal-oriented and efficient team:

• Screen the Team Members That You Hire: Whether you are looking for someone to work as  your receptionist or your business manager, you need to make sure you do thorough interviews to find the right fit. A suitable candidate isn’t one with the right credentials or experience, but rather someone who will be a good fit for your clinic’s culture. You want someone who resonates with your values and will be assistive in reaching your goals.
• Hold Them Accountable: Each team member should have clearly defined roles which they should be accountable for. Objective Key Results (OKR) or Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are a great way of achieving that. 
• Hold On to The Good Ones: Don’t let lack of communication or misunderstanding cost you a competent professional. If there are concerns, it is wiser, and profitable in the long run to heed to those grievances and resolve these problems than to find a new fit. Make reducing employee turnover a key objective for your business’s long term plans.
• Make Decisions Logically, Not Emotionally: Just because you don’t see eye to eye with someone else’s ideas and methods doesn’t mean that they are wrong. One of the biggest mistake practice owners, or business owners in general, make is that they sometimes make hasty, emotional decisions. Take time to deliberate and think objectively before making decisions. Perhaps there has been some miscommunication or misunderstanding that could easily be resolved. Try to understand the grievances and expectations of your team members before jumping the gun and ending up making costly decisions for yourself and your business!

Work To Your Potential

Success is subjective for everyone. It is important to know what YOUR true goals are rather than trying to follow a path followed by others in the same field. Just because someone else has five practice locations doesn’t mean your goals should be to own seven! Perhaps it would be more profitable or suitable for you to invest the same amount of money in expanding your current two practices! Use yourself as a success scale rather than others. Build a work and life balance that suits your objectives, personal and family goals. 

The truth is, your growth potential directly correlates with your personal potential, your team member’s potential and your ability to designate work effectively across your team. And if it means hiring another pair of hands and a brain to help you achieve that, then by all means take the leap! 

P.S. Whenever you’re ready …. here are 4 ways I can help you grow your dental practice:

1. Grab a free chapter from my book “Retention – How to Plug the #1 Profit Leak in Your Dental Practice”

The book is the definitive guide to patient retention and how to use internal marketing to grow your practice – Click Here

2. Join the Savvy Dentist community and connect with dentists who are scaling their practice too

It’s our Facebook group where clever dentists learn to become commercially smart so that they have more patients, more profit and less stress. – Click Here

3. Attend a Practice Max Intensive live event

Our 2 day immersive events provide access to the latest entrepreneurial thinking and actionable strategies to drive your practice forward. You’ll leave with a game plan to take your results to the next level. If you’d like to join us, just send me a message with the word “Event and I’ll get you all the details!  – Click here

4. Work with me and my team privately

If you’d like to work directly with me and my team to take your profit from 6 figures to 7 figures …. just send me a message with the word “Private”… tell me a little about your practice and what you would like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details! – Click here