Webletter #56 - Isolating Your Target Audience - by Jeffrey Blumberg
Webletter #55 - Business Basics - by Dr. Gregory A. Winteregg
Webletter #54 - Try This When Presenting Treatment - by Dr. Gregory A. Winteregg
Webletter #53 - Turning New Year’s Resolutions into Real Success - by Luis Colón
Webletter #52 - Social Media and Dental Marketing – by William Tucker
Webletter #51 - Teambuilding: How to Make Every Employee Your Best Employee - by Michael Menkhaus
Webletter #50 - The Future of Private Practice – Bright or Bleak? - by Dr. Gregory A. Winteregg
Webletter #49 – How Much Should I Spend on Marketing & Promotion? - by Sabri Blumberg
Webletter #48 - This is What Patients REALLY Want - by Jacqueline Verweij
Webletter #47 - Making Real, Tangible Improvements in Your Practice - by Jeffrey Blumberg
Webletter #46 - What Does a PR Director Do in a Dental Office? - Part II – by Dania Williams
Webletter #45 - 12 Fast Facts About MGE - by Dr. Gregory A. Winteregg
Webletter #44 - TV Advertising – Is It Worth It? - by Jacqueline Verweij
Webletter #43 - Getting New Patients in the Door - by Laura Hatch, M.S.
Webletter #42 - 3 Easy Steps to Boost the Productivity of your Schedule - by Dr. Gregory A. Winteregg
Webletter #41 - Front Office vs. Back Office - by Michael Menkhaus
Webletter #40 – What Does a Treatment Coordinator Do? - by Sabri Blumberg
Webletter #39 – Should the Doctor Discuss Fees? - by Dr. Gregory A. Winteregg
Webletter #38 – What Does a PR Director Do in a Dental Office? - by Dania Williams
MGE’s weekly webletter, Issue 38.
Here is the next edition of MGE’s new weekly webletter. The purpose of this webletter is to provide ideas, tips and suggestions to make your practice more successful.
Feel free to send us your comments and suggestions, or requests for future webletter topics you would like to see covered.
What Does a PR Director Do in a Dental Office?
By Dania Williams
MGE Consultant
The majority of dentists I speak with are of the opinion that Public Relations (PR) Directors are only for extremely large dental offices. They simply don’t see how a PR Director would be useful or worth the expense in an average-sized office.
A good PR Director, however, can be very worthwhile for any size of practice. This becomes evident when you begin to lay out what a PR Director actually does. And yes, it really is a full-time job.
So what does a PR Director actually do?
A PR director is in charge of “expansion.” In a dental office, this has a lot to do with new patients.
The statistic of new patients in the door is assigned to the PR Director. The first step to making a statistic increase is to assign that statistic to someone and make them responsible for it. Just the fact of having someone concentrate on the statistic and dedicate time and effort toward it will often be enough to make it rise.
The doctor and the office manager are involved in production and handling day-to-day affairs, which doesn’t leave a lot of time for outgoing activity to attract a flood of new patients. But when the statistic of new patients in the door is assigned to the PR Director, it becomes “their baby.” They live and breathe new patients.
The actual activities done by the PR Director will vary depending on your locale. The PR Director should discover what is effective for your area. They should find out what people listen to and read in your area, who they listen to, where they go, where they gather, etc. Which radio stations do the demographic(s) you are trying to reach listen to; what newspapers do they read? What social groups are they a part of? Which businesses do they work in?
Once the PR Director has answered those questions and more, they begin forming relationships. They begin communicating out in the environment and reaching potential new patients. They build alliances with the people and businesses in the area surrounding the office.
I said earlier that this is a full-time job, but it is only part-time in the office. Much of the job is done outside the office. The Public Relations Director should be out creating good relations in the environment.
I can give some examples of activities that PR Directors I’ve known have had success with:
Some go to health fairs and set up booths where they can educate passers-by about their oral health and get them scheduled for appointments.
Several offices have put offers up on www.groupon.com with massive response. This has big potential but only if it’s done right. To learn which pitfalls to avoid with Groupon-type websites, see this article by MGE: Management Experts, Inc.’s Marketing Director.
Speaking at school assemblies to educate children about oral health is another good one.
One office located in a big bustling city hired someone to dress up – believe it or not – as a big tooth and point pedestrians toward the office. This one seems especially silly but it actually worked!
Charity work is a great way to hit three birds with one stone: give back to the community, become well thought of, and get your name out there. I suggest holding several public charity events throughout the year. These can be charities like “Toys for Tots“ where you invite other businesses in the area to come bring toys and present them to children in need.
And when you do hold these charity events, the PR Director should take plenty of photos and then write a press release (a news story about it) and send it to the local newspapers. This works best if the PR Director has already formed a relationship with the editor of the newspaper. In fact, inviting the editor to attend the event is the very best way to do it.
I know of one client who made his own newspaper clipping about charity work he had been involved in and mailed it out with a special new patient exam offer whereby half of the proceeds would be donated to the charity. He got a big rush of new patients coming in from it.
As you can see, there is a wide array of potential avenues to get communication out and bring in new patients. It’s a job that requires creativity. It requires someone that cares about the expansion of the practice and can come up with ideas on their own. If this job is held by a person who will only wait for orders before acting, it might not work out. When you interview a candidate for PR Director there are a few things you should look for:
Make sure that they are someone who could properly represent you and your office.
Make sure that they are the type of person who likes to go out and communicate and meet new people.
Above all, make sure that they are a person who can take initiative and can come up with ideas on their own and create new ways to attract patients. You can establish this in the hiring interview by asking questions like, “If I ask you to get 50 new patients this month, what would you do?” and listen to their answer. It doesn’t even matter in the interview if they have good or bad ideas, they can learn to improve them; the point is that they have ideas. If they can’t come up with anything or only have a couple ideas, they might not fit the position.
The PR Director should also coordinate with the marketing company you use or the employee you have dedicated to this (if you have one), and plan campaigns using your website, newsletters, mailers, emails, ads, etc.
The PR Director should always be in tight coordination with the office manager as well, who would be their direct supervisor. Much of their job is out of the office, but they should not be off on their own, out of contact with the doctor and OM. Typically, they would come into the office in the morning to coordinate with the office manager, receive daily/weekly/monthly goals just like every other staff member, and write out a plan of action to accomplish them.
When the job of PR Director is done right, the office becomes very well-known and gets a very good reputation in their area. This is a full-time job and when done right the return on investment is huge. The important thing is that the person can really create the job and go out and come up with ways to reach more people.
If you marry up a good candidate with the MGE PR Director Training Program, you can really win BIG. But training someone who isn’t right for the job can dilute the results.
From my personal experience when a client hires a good PR Director, the office receives an average of 30 additional new patients the very first month (at the beginning of their training). This won’t be true for everyone for various reasons, but that’s the average that I’ve seen. Doctors and office managers simply don’t have either the time or the training to do this job to its fullest potential without hiring someone to specialize in it.
Dania Williams provides this general dental practice management advice to furnish you with suggestions of actions that have been shown to have potential to help you improve your practice. Neither MGE nor Dania Williams may be held liable for adverse actions resulting from your implementation of these suggestions, which are provided only as examples of topics covered by the MGE program.
MGE’s weekly webletter, Issue 39.
Here is the next edition of MGE’s new weekly webletter. The purpose of this webletter is to provide ideas, tips and suggestions to make your practice more successful.
Feel free to send us your comments and suggestions, or requests for future webletter topics you would like to see covered.
Should the Doctor Discuss Fees?
By: Gregory A. Winteregg
President, MGE
I’m often asked this question when training doctors on how to improve case acceptance. If you have ever asked a consultant or colleague this question before, the answer would depend on who you talk to. As a rule, most consultant types suggest that the doctor does not talk about money.
Prior to becoming an MGE client, I had a consultant who specialized in collections come into my practice a couple of times per year.
I vividly remember one visit where they had spent a couple of days working with my front desk staff. At the end of the visit, the consultant and I met and discussed what was going on and how to handle things from there. When discussing how to present treatment to my patients, I asked what to do if the patient asked me how much something cost. The consultant looked at me and said “Tell them you don’t know.”
I had a hard time with this idea. I could not fathom how a patient would believe that I wouldn’t know the cost for a procedure in my practice. I asked a few more questions to clarify this and the consultant’s reply was that if I told people how much things cost I would ruin all of the work they had just spent the past few days doing. Needless to say I think I followed this advice once. I could not bring myself to answer the question, “Doctor, how much will this cost me?” with, “I don’t know.” It just did not seem right. Now this is not to say that I felt comfortable discussing fees with patients - a doctor should be able to do that and I learned how to overcome this obstacle on my MGE: Management Experts, Inc. training – but acting like I had no idea just did not work for me.
The end result of all of this consulting was an accounts receivable that was approximately two months of production, which the consultant thought was fine. Unfortunately – I didn’t.
Most doctors feel uncomfortable or afraid of discussing fees with patients. All sorts of reasons are made up to make this “normal” such as, “it degrades a doctor to talk about money,” or, “patients don’t want to hear about fees from their doctor.” These “reasons” make an inability or lack of communication skill “OK.” It is similar to the Aesop’s Fable about the fox that lost her tail and then tried to make all of the other foxes think that having no tail was the “way to be.”
Now, why is it that the doctor should be able to talk about fees? Well first off – it’s your business. Second, patients take what you are saying with a lot more weight – as you are the doctor. And last, if you get uncomfortable talking about fees with your patients (nervous, etc.) then there is an aspect of your practice that is not under your control.
Some doctors I have discussed this with avoid the subject altogether as they don’t want to face the potential upsets patients might have with fees. Well – that’s being backed off and lacking the ability to face up to a situation. So instead of being willing to face up to it, they send the patient up front to get ticked off at the front desk person. Imagine going to a department store to look for a washer and dryer, the salesperson comes over to answer your questions and then when it comes time to get the price, they say, “You know – I don’t discuss that with customers. You see that person up there at the register – they’ll tell you.” It sounds ridiculous – but this is what is happening in most dental offices!
Trouble dealing with issues like this will seriously hamper your success with case presentations. It will also make you a zero as an executive (so if you have this problem, you may have noticed difficulties as a manager). This leads to a situation where you are not in control of your business.
You may have it chalked up that you are “not the communicating type,” or that you could never learn to really communicate effectively. This idea of personality “types” is to a large degree false. Yes, people are different – you are an individual just as anyone else is. However, the idea that someone has a certain personality and that’s just the way it is and you can’t change it is just not true. People can and do change. Communication is an ability that can be learned - it is not a genetic trait. At MGE we can teach 97.5% of the people who come through our doors how to effectively communicate with their patients at the MGE Communication and Sales Seminars. After I did these seminars, my accounts receivable went from two months of production to down to less than a month – and this was after doubling my productivity!
Instead of dreading treatment presentations, you can look forward to them as an opportunity to really improve your patients’ health.
Look at it this way – any area of your practice that you have trouble controlling is a potential liability. Trouble with treatment presentation can translate into multiple problems – from lack of income, an empty schedule and worst of all: patients not receiving the treatment they need.
Dr. Greg Winteregg provides this general dental practice management advice to furnish you with suggestions of actions that have been shown to have potential to help you improve your practice. Neither MGE nor Dr. Winteregg may be held liable for adverse actions resulting from your implementation of these suggestions, which are provided only as examples of topics covered by the MGE program.
MGE’s weekly webletter, Issue 40.
Here is the next edition of MGE’s new weekly webletter. The purpose of this webletter is to provide ideas, tips and suggestions to make your practice more successful.
Feel free to send us your comments and suggestions, or requests for future webletter topics you would like to see covered.
What Does a Treatment Coordinator Do?
By Sabri Blumberg
Deputy Chief Operating Officer
In the process of working with MGE Managament Experts, Inc. clients, I’ll find at times that there’s a confusion between the duties of a treatment coordinator and a financial coordinator. A number of practices tend not to differentiate between the two when they are actually entirely different positions.
A financial coordinator is responsible for the administrative actions required to collect money. This would include things such as filing insurance, following up on insurance, entering and verifying insurance information in the computer, following up on patient balances, sending out statements, keeping accounts receivable under control, collecting over-the-counter payments and co-pays for routine treatment. A financial coordinator is an administrative position, not a sales position. They don’t generate income per se; they collect money on production that has already been done and ensure that the accounts are in order.
A treatment coordinator is a sales (case acceptance) position. A treatment coordinator closes or assists in closing the treatment plans generated by the doctor. They take responsibility for the entire patient base and work toward having no patients with incomplete treatment plans. This is a very important position if you consider that the first action in the cycle of production in a dental practice (once the patient has been brought in) is treatment acceptance. Treatment cannot be produced unless it’s been sold.
Ordinarily, the doctor will diagnose and “sell” the treatment (meaning educate the patient about treatment and get it accepted), and then it is left up to the financial coordinator or front desk to collect. It often breaks down at the front desk when the price comes up, because the front desk is not trained to handle a patient’s objections and the various stops and barriers that can come up. Another variation of this is the doctor sells treatment, including a review of fees, and gets the patient “closed” on pursuing treatment. This is the preferred scenario and it puts the doctor in better control of his or her schedule. The problem with this second scenario is that as an office gets busier, it can take the doctor away from producing and eats up their time with selling. As more cases are sold and the doctor’s schedule becomes tighter and tighter leaving them with less time to sell, treatment presentations can become rushed. As a result, case acceptance drops, which means production will soon follow, translating into a less productive scene and fewer patients getting the treatment they need. So as you grow, there can come a point where closing all the treatment yourself is no longer efficient. This is when you need a treatment coordinator.
Some doctors have their office manager double as a treatment coordinator. In a smaller practice this can work, but again, as the practice expands, you’ll end up with a treatment coordinator instead of an office manager, which is unworkable as office manager is a critical a position. The office manager coordinates all the production in the organization and runs the whole show, so you would wind up with a leaderless group if the officer manager isn’t doing his/her job full-time.
It will really come down to your individual practice and whether or not you can maximize your productivity with someone working on case acceptance only part-time. A practice that has at least 1500 charts and about 50 new patients per month is certainly ready for a full-time treatment coordinator.
I should also note here that it is almost never a good idea to hire an associate without also having a treatment coordinator. Why? Well, it’s rare to find an associate who can sell effectively. They are trained to diagnose and produce dentistry – and that is exactly what you should utilize them for. The associate can diagnose and then hand the patient over to somebody who is trained to sell: the treatment coordinator. Then the associate can move right on to seeing the next patient. Of course you would train your associate to sell just like you have been trained – but this takes time. And again, as you expand you can end up with the same scenario described earlier – where your associate has no time to sell. So, a treatment coordinator is critical even in this case.
Typically, when a doctor begins to consider taking on an associate they would first hire a treatment coordinator to help close more cases and make the main doctor as productive as possible. This will help the practice reach the next level, and when that plateaus because the main doctor cannot possibly produce any more, they would add an associate.
The office manager is the direct supervisor of the treatment coordinator, and should give the treatment coordinator targets of how many closes to achieve each day. If there aren’t enough patients in the office that day to present treatment to, the treatment coordinator needs to get on the phone and bring patients back in for consultations. Remember, their job is to take responsibility for the entire patient base – they are working to have every one of your patients completed on treatment.
To train up a treatment coordinator you simply need to send them to do the MGE Treatment Coordinator Training Package. It’s affordable and it isn’t a long-haul. Email me at sabrib@mgeonline.com or call me at 727-530-4277 for more information.
This area of case acceptance is usually the most neglected area of the practice. In dentistry, it is considered an afterthought. It gets lumped in with other positions, like office manager or doctor or the front desk. But it’s too important for that.
From a business perspective it is very simple: you can only produce as much as you sell. You can have a much healthier patient base and a lot less grief financially if you assign an employee to be fully responsible for case acceptance. You can only help a patient get better if they actually DO the treatment plan. And after all, this is why most dentists got into the game in the first place – to help people.
Sabri Blumberg provides this general dental practice management advice to furnish you with suggestions of actions that have been shown to have potential to help you improve your practice. Neither MGE nor Sabri Blumberg may be held liable for adverse actions resulting from your implementation of these suggestions, which are provided only as examples of topics covered by the MGE program.
MGE’s weekly webletter, Issue 41.
Here is the next edition of MGE’s new weekly webletter. The purpose of this webletter is to provide ideas, tips and suggestions to make your practice more successful.
Feel free to send us your comments and suggestions, or requests for future webletter topics you would like to see covered.
Front Office vs. Back Office
By: Michael Menkhaus
Vice President for Expansion, MGE
Last week I was in Sacramento, CA with Dr. Winteregg to deliver the MGE Effective Case Acceptance Workshop. In speaking with a few of the doctors in attendance, I noticed something that seems to be a bit of a trend in dental practices all over the country: friction between the front office and the back office.
It is important for the front office to be in harmony with the back office. But in many offices, it can become a “Hatfields and McCoys” type of relationship, where the respective sides of the office are uncoordinated and even begin to butt heads.
Over the last fourteen years in which I’ve been working with dental professionals, I have made some observations regarding this dynamic:
You want your office manager to be someone who really is on the same page and/or wavelength with you, similar to how a good dental assistant would be. In fact, some of the best office managers I’ve worked with were previously dental assistants. They excelled as assistants to the point where the doctors initially could not fathom losing them as assistants. It isn’t necessary for the office manager to have been an assistant, but it helps to have that knowledge of what is needed for production to get done.
A good assistant knows how long procedures should take and also knows the importance of being in control and making the patients feel as comfortable as possible in a potentially uncomfortable procedure.
Similarly, an assistant who has previously held a front office position and/or routinely helps up front has a better understanding of what is being confronted by the front office staff.
Of course, both the front and the back are integral parts of the dental office and each is vital to its success and expansion. When there is no experience or understanding of what the “other side” does and what its purpose is, then you limit your growth. You can end up cutting your own throat this way.
The “front” gets upset because the “slow moving people” in the back are running behind while they are the ones getting an earful from patients left to wait.
The “back” gets upset because the front is “clueless” as to how things work in the back and are scheduling patients on top of each other to the point where they can’t get everything they need to get done.
This normally doesn’t get addressed and results in resentment building up between both sides. This resentment and animosity lessens the “friendly, caring dental office” feel for your patients despite all of us keeping our “game face” on as much as possible.
It also slows down and cuts across the efficiency as there is not a smooth patient flow front to back and back to front.
In some instances, patients pick up on this tension and this lessens the professional image of your office.
Now, I am not recommending you do a big group hug and hold hands. However, what is effective is for the office manager and each staff member in the office to get some reality and understanding of what a patient experiences on each step of the process of being taken care of by your office.
One way this can be done is with a little “demonstration.” Set up a time where there are no patients in the office for some staff training. Have each staff member take a turn pretending to be a patient in your office, beginning with being scheduled over the phone to walking in the front door. Have each staff member at their regular position and handle the “patient” the way they would normally. (You would course skip the actual clinical procedure, as this is only a demonstration).
Something like this can be a great way to help the entire staff gain an understanding of the rest of the office while also troubleshooting potential problems as they arise. Each staff member learns the roles of their teammates and how they interact with their own job. You can create different scenarios of patient needs and concerns at different points along this training session. You as the doctor should take a turn being the patient – this can also be quite revelatory.
There are other exercises you can do as well to improve speed and efficiency. Drilling and role playing various scenarios is similar to practicing for game day in sports. You iron things out and improve them so that you are ready for game time.
In order to run the office as smoothly and efficiently as possible, each player on the team needs to know exactly how they fit into the organization and how they contribute from their position. That is why training your staff members individually in addition to doing these exercises is essential.
At MGE, your staff will also go over a lot of the same material in addition to particulars of their specific job, which is important for aligning the staff and getting them on the same page with each other.
We offer training for Office Managers, PR Directors, Associates, Junior Executives, and Auxiliary Staff.
Take advantage of this training today and call (727)530-4277 and ask for me or Dennis Dezelic. You may also email me at mikem@mgeonline.com or Dennis atdennisd@mgeonline.com.
Michael Menkhaus provides this general dental practice management advice to furnish you with suggestions of actions that have been shown to have potential to help you improve your practice. Neither MGE nor Michael Menkhaus may be held liable for adverse actions resulting from your implementation of these suggestions, which are provided only as examples of topics covered by the MGE program.
MGE’s weekly webletter, Issue 42.
Here is the next edition of MGE’s new weekly webletter. The purpose of this webletter is to provide ideas, tips and suggestions to make your practice more successful.
Feel free to send us your comments and suggestions, or requests for future webletter topics you would like to see covered.
3 Easy Steps to Boost the Productivity of your Schedule
By: Gregory A. Winteregg
President, MGE
In my seminar, The Art of Scheduling Productively, I cover nineteen scheduling “policies” or rules that have been proven to increase productivity and efficiency.
In this webletter, I wanted to expand on three of these rules which are easy to implement and can produce a fairly quick change in your productivity.
Let’s start with #1:
1. There needs to be someone in your office who is ultimately responsible for the daily schedule.
This means one single person whose job is to oversee the schedule and ensure that itis and stays productive, while not becoming overly hectic.
Of course you may have multiple people dealing with patients and their schedule, but they should be coordinated with the staff member assigned to oversee the schedule.
When you have multiple people scheduling patients independently with no one responsible overall, you end up with a big mess. Especially if patients are being scheduled by an assistant or provider in each operatory. Run properly this can be very efficient – but done incorrectly this can be a nightmare. With no one responsible to coordinate all of this activity, lots of holes in the schedule and low production creates finger pointing or an attitude of “oh well, everybody tried.” Ideally, there should be someone who is taking responsibility for the whole schedule, troubleshooting it when needed and working out how to ensure production is always acceptable and patients are properly and efficiently taken care of.
The person running the schedule would set targets for the day and week in accordance with the monthly income target set by the doctor; see to it that patients are scheduled appropriately; handle any issues that come up so it doesn’t become the doctor’s problem; and when another staff member touches the appointment book, they would ensure it was done in compliance with office scheduling policy.
2. The doctor should never do more work than was originally scheduled -unless there is an opening afterward so that the next patient will not have to wait.
This can seem counter-intuitive at first, because you want to fit in as much production as possible, but making patients wait will hurt you more in the end.
People don’t like to wait. It’s human nature. So when your patients are made to wait they will begin to consider that appointments aren’t set-in-stone and they will begin to show up late themselves and cancel and no-show. The little bit of extra production you fit in today means you will be eating it in missed production later, not to mention lost goodwill with your patient base.
If the patient needs further treatment than was scheduled and there is another patient right behind them, simply schedule them to come back in another time. This might not apply to emergencies, but I leave that decision up to you to do what’s best for the patient.
3. There should be no personal calls, texts, emails, or internet browsing by the staff during production time.
If the schedule is running productively, there simply is no time for chatting or web browsing. “Smart phones” in particular are a major distraction. Even when a quick call or text “will only take a second,” it actually eats up much more time in terms of being distracted from the task at hand, forgetting things or doing them incompletely – and worst of all, not focusing on patients and taking care of people.
During a truly productive day, the office is seeing patients one right after the other,bang-bang-bang - scheduling one patient, entering it into the computer, seeing the next patient, calling to confirm a future appointment, and so on. There is no time for distraction in there. If a staff member receives a call about some type of personal emergency, it should of course be dealt with promptly, but beyond these types of things, try to minimize cell phone interaction.
Those are a few simple actions you can implement to start seeing a rise in productivity. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There is much more you can learn so that you can run your schedule as efficiently and productively as possible
Chances are, your office can become significantly more productive than it is now, in the same amount of hours.
If you’d like to know more, I’d suggest implementing the nineteen policies that I lay out in my workshop, The Art of Scheduling Productively. I travel all over the country delivering this seminar to thousands of dental professionals, but as of this week it is also available for the first time on DVD. You can watch it in the comfort of your own home or office and train your entire staff on it, as well.
So click the button below and order your copy. It’s only $199 for a potential increase of many thousands of dollars in production – not to mention the amount of headaches that can be reduced when you have a smoothly running schedule day in and day out.
After being released last week, the copies are selling out much faster than expected, and will only be available for a short time.
To order your DVD today, click the button below:
Dr. Gregory Winteregg provides this general dental practice management advice to furnish you with suggestions of actions that have been shown to have potential to help you improve your practice. Neither MGE nor Dr. Gregory Winteregg may be held liable for adverse actions resulting from your implementation of these suggestions, which are provided only as examples of topics covered by the MGE program.
MGE’s weekly webletter, Issue 43.
Here is the next edition of MGE’s new weekly webletter. The purpose of this webletter is to provide ideas, tips and suggestions to make your practice more successful.
Feel free to send us your comments and suggestions, or requests for future webletter topics you would like to see covered.
Getting New Patients in the Door
By Laura Hatch, M.S.
MGE Power Client
NOTE: This write-up is being provided as suggestions and ideas for patient management use in your office. This is not to be taken as a guarantee that the information provided is appropriate to your practice. Each practice is individually responsible for ensuring that any system implemented complies with the applicable federal, state and local accounting, tax and employment laws, rules and regulations governing the place in which your practice is located. These suggestions do NOT constitute legal or accounting advice. You should seek advice from your own accounting, legal or a clinical advisor as to what is appropriate to implement in your practice, prior to implementation. MGE: Management Experts, Inc. and/or any of its officers, directors, employees, agents, representatives, students or clients are not responsible for any claims, real or otherwise, associated with this document or any part thereof.
For this week’s webletter, we have the privilege of offering the article “Getting New Patients in the Door” by MGE client Laura Hatch, MS, Office Manager of Hatch Dental. Since becoming MGE clients in 2003, Laura and Dr. Tony Hatch have actually built two successful practices, starting out with their Maryland office, which they sold in 2008 to move across the country to San Diego. Now, in Southern California, they have a 100% fee-for-service practice collecting in excess of $125,000 per month with an average of 43 new patients every month. The seven points that Laura covers in this article were vital to building their practice quickly. Enjoy!
1. WE SPEND A LOT OF MONEY ON MARKETING AND WE WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT WE GET RESULTS!
a. Many times a person calling in with a question is not counted as a possible new patient – they should be.
b. Any person calling in that is not a current patient is a POSSIBLE NEW PATIENT.
c. Have a call-in tracking form so that all phone calls coming in can be counted. Especially for new patients – get their name, number and then mark the date they scheduled or if they did not, then why.
2. PRIORITIZE THE PHONE CALLS
a. Make sure that the person answering the phones gives proper attention to any and all phone calls.
b. Have anyone that might possibly answer phones trained on this, dental assistants, hygienists, etc.
3. PRODUCT OF INCOMING PHONE CALLS OF POSSIBLE NEW PATIENTS
a. Many schedulers/receptionists feel that their job is to “answer the phones.” This attitude breeds the idea that “those that answer the phones answer questions.” People operating with this idea tend to:
i. Tell prospective patients their fees
ii. Say “yes” or “no” to questions
iii. Be courteous and polite
iv. Not do well at getting the person scheduled
b. THE EXPECTED PRODUCT OF A SCHEDULER/RECEPTIONIST IS TO GET THE PATIENT IN THE CHAIR.
4. THIS STARTS WITH GOOD COMMUNICATION:
a. Initial questions you get from prospective new patients may revolve around their insurance book and their wallet, i.e., “do you take my insurance?” “Do you have Saturday hours?” etc
b. It is our job to acknowledge their concerns and then build a good relationship.
c. If your response to these questions starts with “NO,” then they stop listening. Once you start with “no,” then you are digging your way out of the hole again, which makes it much harder to get that patient to come in.
d. WE START ALL RESPONSES WITH YES OR SOME VARIATION OF YES. A few examples:
“Do you take my insurance PPO?”
“Yes we work with insurance, let me ask you a few questions and I will explain more.”
Whether you are in network or not for their PPO, the insurance company will typically pay you. Once you get into communication with the patient, you can explain that “We are out of network for your insurance, however we have a lot of patients that have that same insurance (if this is true for your office) and we find that most of the time the in and out of network benefits are similar (again only if this is true) – so just come on in and we will sort through the details.”
How about “Do you have Saturday hours?”
“Yes, depending on the situation, we do have Saturday hours, let me ask you a few questions and I will tell you more.”
You may not have Saturday hours but if a new patient came in and needed a large case completed, and could only come in on a Saturday – would you open? Most likely, yes. When people ask that question I find it is because they don’t think they can get time off during the week – but a good scheduler can get them to come in early, over lunch or at the end of the day.
“Do you take my HMO?”
“We have a lot of patients with HMO insurance, but let me ask you a few questions and I will explain how it works.” (Again, say this only if this is true – we have quite a few patients who are on an HMO or PPO but come to us anyway even though we are out of network)
Once we get into good communication with the patient, we explain that their HMO will not pay for them to come to our office, but a lot of our HMO patients have opted to come to us with our $99 new patient special because they have found that they could not get into their HMO office for months or that they did not really like the HMO office that they have found.
If the patient decides to still try to find an in-network HMO office – keep their name and number and follow back up with them in a day or so, many times you will find that they had a similar problem and still might schedule with you. Worst case scenario they don’t but that follow up will be good for when they tell their family and friends about your great customer service and care.
e. The idea here is to start with a positive response and establish good communication — ask questions like:
i. How did you hear about us?
ii. Why are you calling?
iii. Did you just move into the area?
iv. Where do you live?
v. What school do your kids go to?
f. Finding out something in common with the person will help them build affinity for you and your office and that will set you apart from any other dental office they have called in the past.
6. SECOND OPINIONS OR CONSULT
a. Make it easy for a person who is calling around for a second opinion or consult to get into your office. A suggested thing is to offer free second opinions and free consultations.
b. Patients that are calling around are already sold on the idea of needing the work but they are just not sold on the dentist that presented it to them.
c. The close rate on a second opinion is good – make it easy to get them in.
d. Get them and any other new patients in as soon as possible. They are motivated now so get them in now. Next week they might get a flat tire or a big bill in the mail and their dental motivation might decrease – get them in now.
7. SHOPPERS
a. Some people call around looking for prices. Avoid giving fees over the phone. We don’t want people making their decisions only on cost. The prospective patient may not have a lot of understanding of dentistry or the importance of certain procedures – they do however understand cost! Until the doctor has examined them we have no idea what they actually need, so if you were to quote them a specific fee for a procedure – it may be completely inapplicable after their exam and diagnosis.
b. If they call and ask for fees, let them know that it is hard for you to tell them that over the phone and come in for a free second opinion.
c. If they ask again – explain that each doctor diagnoses and treatment plans differently so they would need to come in at no charge to find out what your doctor will say.
d. If after all of this, they persist then give them some type of price range from best to worst case scenario for the procedure they are asking about and tell them they should come in so we can tell them more and help them figure out how to get the help that they need.
e. TRY TO TURN ALL SHOPPERS INTO A CONSULT — they are shopping because they need a good dentist and you have one!
Laura Hatch provides this general dental practice management advice to furnish you with suggestions of actions that have been shown to have potential to help you improve your practice. Neither MGE nor Laura Hatch may be held liable for adverse actions resulting from your implementation of these suggestions, which are provided only as examples of topics covered by the MGE program.
MGE’s weekly webletter, Issue 44.
Here is the next edition of MGE’s new weekly webletter. The purpose of this webletter is to provide ideas, tips and suggestions to make your practice more successful.
Feel free to send us your comments and suggestions, or requests for future webletter topics you would like to see covered.
TV Advertising – Is It Worth It?
By Jacqueline Verweij
Marketing Director, MGE
Clients regularly ask me about TV advertising as a means of driving more new patients to their practice. Some have told me that “the competition” has been doing it successfully, so, naturally, they want a piece of the action. But is TV really worth the money you will put into it? Let’s examine this for a moment.
For one, I’m not fond of TV advertising simply because I have rarely seen it work for the average dental practice. And I also flip the channel the moment the ads come on TV in the middle of a movie or show – so I’m not really the right public for it.
But given the sheer amount of advertising on TV, there must be profit in it. If there wasn’t, nobody would put their ads on TV. So I analyzed the pros and cons and this is what I found.
Radio or TV?
That’s the first thing I’ve been asked when clients are wondering which medium would be the best for their marketing campaign. Well, both have their advantages and set-backs.
Radio is cheaper and can be very effective at times when most people are stuck in their cars in traffic. If you choose for radio, I’d suggest you take the popular local music and news stations, particularly those with regular traffic updates, and choose time slots when most people are in their cars trying to get to work or go home. The downside is that during the rest of the day, radio listenership drops dramatically so wouldn’t really be worthwhile.
TV is much more expensive and over-saturated in terms of advertisements, but more people watch TV than listen to the radio. So if you do it right, you can catch a much bigger audience.
All in all, if you want to try out TV advertisement, there are some crucial things you need to know to make this venture successful for you:
First off, you need an ad to run on TV. It seems obvious, but many people overlook this! Creating an effective ad is easier said than done. Normally, you can buy 15 or 30 seconds of advertising air time (you can do longer ads but these are quite pricey all around). I have actually seen 15-second ads work well, depending on how you go about it.
The question is: How much can you say/show in 15 seconds?
Obviously, it wouldn’t work to try and rattle off all of the different treatments you can deliver, plus your address and phone number, plus, plus, plus… You will need much more time for this and the result will probably be quite confusing. It will work best to advertise only your special offer for new patients, or one particular treatment that you want to deliver for a special price. Remember that close to 80% of the TV watching population will react better to deals and special offers than any other ad content, so offer a special price or service. This is something that can be done in 15 seconds. Surveying your patients will tell you what service they consider is the most important for them.
Next: How do you film this economically?
Here you have to let your imagination work a bit. You can of course spend tens of thousands having a professional video shot of your practice with fancy zooms and attractive patients. But there are other, much cheaper alternatives.
For example: Some ads simply show text scrolling through with a voice telling your audience about your special or specific treatment features. This can be very effective because it is simple, people can follow what you’re showing and you aren’t “shotgunning” your products to an already overwhelmed audience. It’s much cheaper too, and with some attractive graphics such an ad may work just fine, especially if you use a catch phrase that people will remember. I’ve been told that http://www.Cheap-TV-Spots.com will produce excellent commercials for as little as $500, so you can give them a try.
Going down an economical route like this might not give you a slick commercial that you’re proud to show off to all your friends and colleagues, but I’d rather show off a big increase in new patients and profits than a pretty commercial.
Cable or broadcast TV?
Definitely cable! Although less people watch cable TV, the ability to target your message to your specific market is an advantage. Would you want your marketing message going to 30,000 teens or to 1,000 adults between the ages of 35 and 55 with incomes $60,000 and up? It’s not the size of the audience, it’s the quality that counts and that’s what cable TV can do for your practice.
Depending on the area you’re in and how many spots you purchase, prime time spots on broadcast TV can cost $2,000 to $3,000 (or more) a pop, while prime time cable spots can average as low as $175, with some 30 second spots running on CNN and ESPN for $25, Nickelodeon can go for as low as $20 and TNN, BET, and VH-1 for $15 per commercial.
You can even expect to get better rates when you buy packages of multiple spots. Small town cable prices are even lower. It is not unusual to buy commercials for $2 to $3 in a town of 40,000 people. While most of the commercials on cable TV programs are national spots for major companies, four to six commercials per hour are made available to local advertisers. New digital technology allows many cable systems to easily and accurately schedule your commercials on specific channels to be seen in chosen communities and neighborhoods.
Survey your patients and pick your airing slots with the cable TV company so you get maximum coverage to your target areas. You can check out what media buying services are available in your area – they can negotiate your airtime and prices for you. And yes, it’s a bit of homework but it will pay off.
When to air?
When targeting your market for television you need to select the right “program” that has a viewing audience in your target demographic. Logic tells you that you wouldn’t advertise dentures during Saturday morning cartoons or children’s orthodontic services during a program that seniors might watch. You obviously want to match your service to the target demographic that will watch a certain program. Mouth guards during sports shows would be entirely appropriate, or dentures during a cooking program (no kidding!) and teeth whitening during entertainment news would be equally fitting. Your media buying service or the cable station itself can advise you on the best times to air your spots.
What should the frequency be?
How many times should you air? Well, with commercials, you want to stand out in a person’s mind and get them to remember you. Most people won’t even notice your commercial the first few times they see it. But after it’s repeated several times it begins to stick in the person’s mind (they may even start subconsciously repeating that catchy one-liner you included in it), and then they start to take notice and think “Hey, that sounds like a pretty good deal.” After seeing it a few more times they might decide it’s finally time to see the dentist and pick up the phone.
Don’t worry about annoying people with a cheesy one-liner because the fact is, if it annoys them it means they noticed it! The point is, you want your public to see the commercial as many times as possible. A commercial that’s only run once or a few times likely won’t produce a big result.
Having said that, it’s not necessarily always “the more, the better.” Your media rep will always try to convince you by logic and by offering volume discounts to buy more frequency. They might give you a great buy on a 100 spots that will run at the station’s discretion. That means they could run your commercial from 2:00am to 4:00am during some odd program when your target market is sleeping. You might be better off paying for a few spots during your peak target market viewing program than 20 spots during odd programs and times. It’s a matter of simple logic – you want your target market awake, watching TV and ready to receive your advertisement. So negotiate times and frequencies that work the best for your practice.
If you’re really clever and do your research you may find a segment of your market that watches certain late night programs, and you may get an excellent deal for those times. Check it out, ask your patients, survey your demographics.
That’s really all there is about TV advertising. By following the above points, your campaign will stand a chance to be successful. And if you are careful not to sign up for a long-term contract but only try it out for about 3 months at first, you can hardly lose. Simply give it a trial run and then crunch the numbers of how much you spent on it versus how much you made from it.
Good luck!
Back to top
Jacqueline Verweij provides this general dental practice management advice to furnish you with suggestions of actions that have been shown to have potential to help you improve your practice. Neither MGE nor Jacqueline Verweij may be held liable for adverse actions resulting from your implementation of these suggestions, which are provided only as examples of topics covered by the MGE program.
MGE’s weekly webletter, Issue 45.
Here is the next edition of MGE’s new weekly webletter. The purpose of this webletter is to provide ideas, tips and suggestions to make your practice more successful.
Feel free to send us your comments and suggestions, or requests for future webletter topics you would like to see covered.
12 Fast Facts About MGE
By: Gregory A. Winteregg
President, MGE
Every newspaper we publish includes a number of MGE client success stories.
If you’ve had a chance to read any of these, you may have wondered anything from, “Is this real?” to “How did they do this?” or maybe “How can I do this?”
Describing exactly what MGE does in one sentence can be difficult. And while the statement, “We’re a management training organization for dentists and dental specialists,” would be correct, it would leave much unexplained.
In any event, I wanted to use this opportunity to “fill in the blanks,” with some simple information about our company so you know who we are and how our help might apply to your specific situation.
And with that, I give you 12 fast facts about MGE:
1. There is no such thing as a “typical MGE client.” They might be a general dentist or dental specialist, and could practice in just about any environment or set-up you could imagine – rural, big city, suburb, partnership, solo, group practice and so on.
2. MGE clients are spread across 45 states and our nation’s capital.
3. MGE is a TRAINING ORGANIZATION. We teach doctors and their staff how to manage the office. For example: If you’re having a marketing problem, we would train you on the technology of marketing and provide guidance as you implement. The result: you know how to handle it from that point forward. We do this as opposed to consulting you on “what to do.” The downside is that training can take longer. The upside is you’ll own that knowledge, ability and certainty for the rest of your career and should be able to replicate the results time and again without further assistance. While MGE is not a clinical training organization – our focus is practice management – it is expected that clients maintain a high level of clinical quality and pursue appropriate CE to continue to enhance their skill as a clinician.
4. The majority of the MGE curriculum and materials are based on the management and administrative works of American Philosopher L. Ron Hubbard. We use this system for a very simple reason: it works.
5. MGE has 40+ employees, ranging from consultants, trainers, executives and administrative staff.
6. Most of MGE’s training is done at our 55,000 square foot facility located in Pinellas Park, Florida (in the Tampa Bay Area). Approximately once a quarter we hold training sessions in Southern California.
7. Every client comes to MGE with specific needs applying to their situation and as such, there is no set degree of participation in MGE training services. A client may do as little as a two-day course, such as the MGE New Patient Workshop, nine days of training on case acceptance (The MGE Communication and Sales Seminars), up to the MGE Power Program, which takes an average of 12-18 months to complete and includes extensive training on case-acceptance, marketing, management and organization for both a doctor and office manager.
8. Typically, a new client will begin with MGE by attending one of Dr. Winteregg’s free workshops or the MGE New Patient Workshop and then a few other seminars or courses before taking the bigger step onto the MGE Power Program from there.
9. An analysis of MGE clients participating in or who have completed the MGE Power Program showed an average increase in collections of 31% within the first three months, an 89% increase within one year, a 132% increase after two years and a 232% increase five years after initial enrollment in the Power Program.*
10. When a client completes the MGE Power Program they normally keep their skills sharp through MGE graduate seminars a couple of times per year (such as the MGE Owner’s Conference). The MGE Owner’s Conference provides a venue for graduate clients to share ideas and successful actions, network and learn advanced management techniques.
11. An average of over 130 doctors and staff attend MGE seminars, workshops and courses at our Florida office every week.
12. In late 2008, we began delivering a series of free one-day workshops all over the country. While this began as an effort to help the profession during the economic meltdown of late 2008 along with providing an easier way to learn more about our company, it is now a regular company activity. We call this workshop series “The MGE Effective Management Series.” Subjects include:
• The Art of Scheduling Productively
• How to Open the Door to More New Patients
• The Effective Case Acceptance Workshop
• The Real Solution to Cancellations and No-Shows
These seminars are free and contain quite a bit of valuable information. On the average I’m out of the office three weekends per month (Fridays and Saturdays) delivering one of these somewhere in the US. For more information or to schedule, contact our office or visit our website www.mgefreeworkshops.com.
Well there you have it. If you’re looking for assistance with your practice management concerns, I’d start out with one of these steps:
1. Learn more about MGE by attending one of our Effective Management Series Seminars. They’re free and we might be doing one right in or near your area.
2. If you want to learn how to market your practice efficiently and effectively, do the MGE New Patient Workshop. It comes with a money-back guarantee for up to six months, whether you’ve done the course or not. The MGE New Patient Workshop is delivered almost every week at our Pinellas Park, Florida office or about every quarter in Southern California.
3. Sign-up for the MGE Communication and Sales Seminars, delivered at our Florida office. Here you’ll find three, three-day seminars focused on how to really connect with your patients and help them get the treatment they need.
4. If you have another more pressing issue (i.e. organizational or personnel problems), give us as call and we’ll work out the correct first step for you to take on our program.
As I mentioned above, every situation is unique, but we can help just about everyone if they’re willing to put the time and effort in. Take your first step and contact us today at (800) 640-1140 or (727) 530-4277.
*Results may vary from client to client, especially depending on the client’s degree of dedication to positive change. As such, no particular result can be promised or guaranteed to any client. The averages described on this page above are based on a statistical study of a number of clients who participated in the MGE Power Program. They are not, however, a guarantee of results of any kind. MGE: Management Experts, Inc., hereby expressly disclaims any and all warranties expressed and implied, including without limitation all implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose.
Dr. Gregory Winteregg provides this general dental practice management advice to furnish you with suggestions of actions that have been shown to have potential to help you improve your practice. Neither MGE nor Dr. Gregory Winteregg may be held liable for adverse actions resulting from your implementation of these suggestions, which are provided only as examples of topics covered by the MGE program.
MGE’s weekly webletter, Issue 46.
Here is the next edition of MGE’s new weekly webletter. The purpose of this webletter is to provide ideas, tips and suggestions to make your practice more successful.
Feel free to send us your comments and suggestions, or requests for future webletter topics you would like to see covered.
What Does a PR Director Do in a Dental Office? – Part II
By Dania Williams
MGE Consultant
After writing my previous webletter, What Does a PR Director Do in a Dental Office? I received a flood of requests for further information regarding integrating a PR Director and the MGE PR Director Training Package, so I am writing this follow-up webletter to address some of these questions. If you haven’t read Part I yet, you can click the link above to catch up.
If you don’t have a PR Director, this information is still valuable for increasing your new patient flow.
The PR Director’s duties in a dental office are twofold:
- Public Relations, which includes giving the doctor and the office an excellent reputation out in the community and creating goodwill, and
- Marketing and Promotion, which includes reaching the public to get them to buy your services.
Later in the webletter I will cover how to evaluate your PR Director’s job performance and throw out a few ideas on compensation, but I’ll start with a few more Marketing and PR activities your PR Director (or office manager or other staff member if you don’t have a PR yet) should be doing to bring in more new patients:
- The Care to Share Program. The PR Director should sit in on your morning meetings and any patients who have family members that are not already patients should be identified. These patients should be given Care to Share cards and encouraged to help their family members improve their oral health.
- Newsletters. These can be a great source of new production from your existing patient base. Informative newsletters keep you in communication with and on the minds of your patients, as well as pique their interest regarding oral health issues they wish to handle. The PR Director should survey your patient base to find out what oral health issues concern them and what procedures they are interested in, so that the newsletters address these. Newsletters can be mailed or emailed.
- Emails. The PR Director should manage the email list and ensure that the front desk collects email addresses from every patient who comes through the doors. This list should be emailed regularly (nottoo regularly, though, because you don’t want to be perceived as “spam”) with information they would be interested in, helpful oral health tips, special offers and discounts (for whitenings, Invisalign, exams, etc.), and reminders for appointments and cleanings.
- New Mover Letters. The PR Director can work with a mailing house to obtain addresses of new movers and mail them a special new patient offer.
- Local Businesses. The PR Director can put together baskets with promo, newsletters, special offers and referral cards along with goodies to distribute to local businesses. They can also set up meetings between the HR Directors of local businesses and the doctor to work out how the office can assist in providing dental care to their employees. If it is a small “Mom & Pop” business, the PR Director can usually establish good relations and get them in with the doctor for an exam/consult.
- CONDITIONAL: For Specialists who Receive Doctor Referrals: Many specialists do not realize how large of a network of GPs they could potentially have. In an area with a sizeable population, a specialist could easily have well over 100 unique GP referral sources. Thus, it is extremely important to create and maintain excellent relations with all local GPs. They should be sent info packs, taken out to lunch by the doctor, and understand that their patients will be given superb service at your office. Surveys are helpful here also to ensure you’re delivering exactly what is needed and wanted (i.e. information they need and want in follow-up letters, etc.).
Those are a few ideas to get started with, but PR and Marketing are both enormous subjects and there is much to be learned in order to really get a handle on the job of PR Director. The MGE PR Director Training Package is the ideal solution for maximizing your new patient flow and sparking the expansion you want.
Evaluating Performance
Like any employee, you need to be able to evaluate the PR Director’s job performance and ensure that they are really pulling their weight around the office. Measuring this is quite simple: you assign them a statistic which is measured from week to week. The PR Director would keep at least two:
- Number of new patients in the office.
- Number of new “reaches,” which would be people who “reached” for services at your office in any way – e.g. people who called in, responded to an email or letter, or somehow contacted the office even if they didn’t end up coming into the office.
The PR Director should keep track of these statistics and pay close attention to them to ensure that they are continually going upward. Practice expansion begins with these two statistics. If they are going up, the PR Director is getting his/her job done. If these statistics are trending downward over time, something needs to change.
For compensation, you might want to look at a lower base and higher bonus based on their production (i.e. new patients). I won’t give you a “canned” pay plan, because it should be worked out for your own particular office, but generally speaking, you might want to bonus the PR Director for each new patient above the previous average amount of new patients. So let’s say that before you hired the PR Director your office averaged 20 new patients per month, then you would bonus the PR Director a certain amount of $ for each new patient above 20.
Some do this on a sliding scale. Example:
- 10 patients above average would be $5 per NP. Bonus would be $50
- 20 patients above average would be $10 per NP. Bonus would be $200
- 30+ patients above average would be $15 per NP. Bonus would be $450
They would get their bonus check at the end of the month on their next pay check. Work with your accountant so that taxes are taken out of their bonus.
When you work out a pay system that you think is fair, run it by your employment attorney to ensure it follows the laws of your state.
If you have any more questions about implementing or training a PR Director, or if you are curious if you are in the correct position to hire a PR Director, email me at DaniaF@mgeonline.com or call (727) 530-4277 and ask for me.
Dania Williams provides this general dental practice management advice to furnish you with suggestions of actions that have been shown to have potential to help you improve your practice. Neither MGE nor Dania Williams may be held liable for adverse actions resulting from your implementation of these suggestions, which are provided only as examples of topics covered by the MGE program.
MGE’s weekly webletter, Issue 47.
Here is the next edition of MGE’s new weekly webletter. The purpose of this webletter is to provide ideas, tips and suggestions to make your practice more successful.
Feel free to send us your comments and suggestions, or requests for future webletter topics you would like to see covered.
Making Real, Tangible Improvements in Your Practice
By: Jeffrey Blumberg
COO, MGE
A couple of weeks ago we delivered our “Overhead and Profitability” seminar here at MGE.
Over the course of the weekend, some of the stories I heard from clients got me thinking about another angle on all of this overhead business.
I’ve written quite a bit on this subject (and while articles on finance can read about as interesting as stereo instructions) you can find them here.
Beyond this, there’s an aspect that’s often overlooked: Results.
We cover this subject thoroughly in the Executive Seminar I mentioned earlier, but let’s look at the basic concept.
You’re paying “X” amount for something – let’s say a radio advertising campaign. You don’t make any money on it – or you make less than you spent. In many cases, I’ve seen doctors blame this problem on their own inefficiency or shortcomings. Sure, if your ad has your phone ringing off the hook and your front desk can’t schedule them – that’s one thing. But let’s say this isn’t the case. Well then – why continue? And while I’m not saying you shouldn’t advertise – I am saying that you shouldn’t continue a specific kind of advertising that doesn’t get a response. Replace it with something that does.
Our marketing director (see her blog here) shared a similar story with me the other day. While we’re not a marketing firm (we are a practice management training firm), our marketing director will, from time to time, review a client’s marketing if they’re having particular trouble with it. In any event, she sat down with a client who was spending tens of thousands a year for internet marketing with some firm. Net result – no new patients. Thousands and thousands in – nothing out. In other words – no results.
This goes beyond marketing – you could apply it to employees, vendors, or anything that requires an outlay of time, effort or funds. Imagine spending six months and $50,000 on an implant course only to find all of the implants you place failing (assuming you were doing it “by the book”) or paying an employee to collect money from patients and insurance companies and running a 75% collection rate. I could go on and on, but the point is the same. None of these situations are working out very well.
How do you know if something is working? Simple – ask yourself this question: Is it doing what it is supposed or purported to do? Look at it as simply as that – add nothing else. It can be quite revealing.
An employee collecting 75% isn’t really doing what they are paid for. Why aren’t they? I don’t know – but does it really matter? Whatever the reason – the fact remains – you are paying for a “product” and you aren’t getting it.
Which brings us to the other side of all of this: responsibility.
Let’s say you call the company doing your radio advertising to discuss the poor results. While not always the case, I’ve often seen the tables turned in these conversations. You might hear things like “Well, you’re not answering the phone correctly,” or “You need to double the number of ads to really get the result,” and so on. Sometimes – though not much these days – you’ll find someone who is willing to be accountable for something like this.
This is similar to the conversation you might have with the non-performing financial coordinator. “Collections are down because of: the economy, insurance companies…etc. etc.”
Look around. There seems to be a movement afoot. All of these problems we used to have – that we were responsible and accountable for (and thereby could fix) are not caused by us anymore. The problem is “over there.” It’s the economy, or this political party or that or my in-laws, or the boss (the list can be infinite).
You see this just about everywhere. Amalgamating the statements from politicians in both parties, you’d come to the conclusion that no one in Washington is responsible for anything that went wrong anywhere. No one had anything to do with it – it just happened.
It all reminds me of that poem “Mr. Nobody:”
(Anonymous author)
I know a funny little man,
As quiet as a mouse,
Who does the mischief that is done
In everybody’s house!
There’s no one ever sees his face,
And yet we all agree
That every plate we break was cracked
By Mr. Nobody.
‘Tis he who always tears out books,
Who leaves the door ajar,
He pulls the buttons from our shirts,
And scatters pins afar;
That squeaking door will always squeak,
For prithee, don’t you see,
We leave the oiling to be done
By Mr. Nobody.
The finger marks upon the door
By none of us are made;
We never leave the blinds unclosed,
To let the curtains fade.
The ink we never spill; the boots
That lying round you see
Are not our boots,-they all belong
To Mr. Nobody.
As an executive, you can become a fool when you fail to recognize that people (not just employees, but vendors – and even yourself) – are accountable for their actions. Note that I didn’t use the word “hold” as in “hold people accountable.” Personally, if someone can’t see what they did to contribute to a situation – and thereby fix or handle it – I have no business “holding” them to it. I’ll find someone who is willing to be accountable. Otherwise I’ll spend hours running around trying to fix things that aren’t actually the problem .
While this can seem painful at times – it’s probably the fastest way to remain calm and clear headed about what you’re trying to do. Peel away all of the explanations, justifications, excuses and anything else of that ilk and look at one thing – RESULTS. It will make you a better manager, reduce your stress and increase profitability.
Jeffrey Blumberg provides this general dental practice management advice to furnish you with suggestions of actions that have been shown to have potential to help you improve your practice. Neither MGE nor Jeffrey Blumberg may be held liable for adverse actions resulting from your implementation of these suggestions, which are provided only as examples of topics covered by the MGE program.
MGE’s weekly webletter, Issue 48.
Here is the next edition of MGE’s new weekly webletter. The purpose of this webletter is to provide ideas, tips and suggestions to make your practice more successful.
Feel free to send us your comments and suggestions, or requests for future webletter topics you would like to see covered.
This is What Patients REALLY Want
By Jacqueline Verweij
Marketing Director, MGE
When a Texas dentist surveyed 16,000 dental patients across the country and asked them what they want the most—which affected how they choose their dentist—the answers were surprising, most of all because they had to do with internal marketing. (See Inside Dentistry, Oct 2009, Volume 5, Issue 9).
The survey showed that, whatever you say on your post cards or web sites, these patients look at how you present yourself and your practice in real life—surely a humbling experience for all the dental marketers out there!
We can learn a lesson from these survey answers and put the emphasis of your marketing efforts where they truly belong—with your performance and care for your patients!
For example, one of the high scoring answers was “a prompt new-patient examination.” This meant the patient would be seen either the same day or within 48 hours max. A longer wait gave the patients the feeling that they were not important to the practice and therefore killed the desire to come.
Obviously, “warm and friendly staff” scored equally high, but did you know that “Having the highest standard of sterilization and general cleanliness in the office” means to patients that bugs in light fixtures, ants in the reception area or a stain on the carpet equals that the practice doesn’t sterilize their instruments properly?
“Postoperative phone calls and instructions” are highly valued, but patients do expect the doctor to make the call and not delegate this to a staff member.
Patients objected to things like tattoos and body piercings with the staff which should at least be covered up. Similarly, patients don’t want long hair falling in their face during treatments.
Similarly, as much as the dental marketing industry loves to advertise “beautiful smiles” as the main desire of prospective patients, it’s actually the smiles of the doctors and the staff that patients look to the most. Quality dental work and nice teeth with the doctors and staff serve as an invitation for the patients, not just to improve their own teeth but to show off the results of the practice as a whole.
“Being on time” registered as the #1 concern of most surveyed patients. Patients felt that if dentists are late, they don’t respect their time. Period. If the patient is supposed to be there on time, so should be the doctor.
“Hours of operation” are considered very important and a deciding factor in a patient’s choice of dentist. Peak demand times are from about 7 a.m. until about 10 a.m and from 3 p.m. until about 6 p.m. These hours may vary, but in general patients want dentists to be open and available during the hours that they are able to come in.
“Location” is traditionally an important factor for patients. On the average, city patients will not drive more than 4 to 5 miles to go to the dentist; in rural areas the distance considered convenient was a bit more. But if your practice is further away than that, patients will be looking for a new dentist.
Lastly, patients want and expect dentists to explain what treatment(s) they need, answer their questions and listen to their concerns. Patients will choose a dentist who provides details and options.
At the MGE Communication & Sales Seminars, doctors learn all the various aspects of getting the patients to accept the treatment plans they need with the financial options they have—a very successful combination that has increased the profitability and production levels of thousands of practices across the country as well as the number of satisfied and well-cared-for patients!
If I were a dentist, I would use these survey results as a checklist to routinely make sure my practice complies with these points. I am certain, from my experience as a marketer, that just putting these points in with your practice would raise your new patient flow dramatically—not to mention the existing ones who will appreciate your efforts to make them more comfortable and happy.
I would also ensure that your external marketing (website, newsletters, emails, postcards, etc.) reflects these points, seeing that they are what potential new patients are looking for in their new practice.
Good luck!
Back to top
Jacqueline Verweij provides this general dental practice management advice to furnish you with suggestions of actions that have been shown to have potential to help you improve your practice. Neither MGE nor Jacqueline Verweij may be held liable for adverse actions resulting from your implementation of these suggestions, which are provided only as examples of topics covered by the MGE program.
MGE’s weekly webletter, Issue 49.
Here is the next edition of MGE’s new weekly webletter. The purpose of this webletter is to provide ideas, tips and suggestions to make your practice more successful.
Feel free to send us your comments and suggestions, or requests for future webletter topics you would like to see covered.
How Much Should I Spend on Marketing & Promotion?
By Sabri Blumberg
Deputy COO, MGE
A very good question, because when you ask around, you’ll normally find that when collections are down, marketing and promotional expenses are some of the first items that get dropped altogether. But is this really a wise decision? Let’s have a look.
First off promotion/marketing should fund itself and it normally will, if it’s based on proper market research, surveys, demographics, etc.
Losses in this area usually trace back to one or more violations of these points: no surveys (to find out what will motivate patients to come to your practice), or not using the survey results (believe me, it happens), using the wrong demographics for what you’re promoting (i.e. missing tooth replacement to college students), reaching your target public too irregularly, no “call-to-action” on your promotion or poor internet presence, to name just a few.
Done incorrectly, marketing can become a monetary hemorrhage. However, with proper homework it can be wildly profitable and worthwhile. Too many bad experiences along these lines could lead you to the conclusion that marketing or promotion as a subject just “doesn’t work,” when really it has everything to do with how you do it.
How would you know if it “worked?” Well, measure the Return-on-Investment (ROI) by how many new patients came into your practice and paid for treatment. Obviously if your target public for a particular campaign is your existing patient base, you would measure how many people came in off that particular campaign and how much income the practice made as a result.
Now, I want to qualify this statement with two small points:
- Even the best marketing can be killed by mishandling patients up front. Incorrectly handled new patient calls resulting in few appointments followed by little income can make it look like your marketing isn’t working. So, this tells us you should also track how many “reaches” (calls) came in off of a particular marketing effort. And
- Ineffective case presentations followed by little or no income can, again, make it look like your marketing didn’t work. From this we can reason that your ability to “sell” will have a positive (or negative) impact on your marketing effort.
Generally, I would recommend establishing your marketing budget as a percentage. I’ve seen some doctors dedicate up to 10% of their collections or a certain percentage of profit to it. Again, good marketing should be profitable and when income goes up as a result, the amount that percentage represents will go up with it, allowing you to increase your marketing and promotion. What should this percentage be? I probably wouldn’t do less than 3% of collections and you can go up to 10% (expenses allowing). A lot has to do with what you are trying to accomplish. And again, remember that marketing isn’t just for new patients! Don’t ignore the thousands of patients (a number of which you may not have seen in a while) that comprise your existing patient base.
Now, when income is low, effective marketing becomes even more important.
When things are “rough” most business owners “buckle down” and stop promoting all together, which can turn out to be a very bad idea. With no promotion to feed expansion, you’ll normally come out of a crisis like this with a smaller business.
So, set aside a percentage of what you’re making to market your business. Promote consistently and most importantly, do your homework. After all, the marketing has to work.
At the MGE New Patient Workshop we’ll teach you basic, yet very effective principles that can be applied to most marketing and advertising (print, mail, internet, radio, etc.).
Give us a call today at (727) 530-4277 or toll free at (800) 640-1140 or visit our website at www.mgeonline.com!
Back to top
Sabri Blumberg provides this general dental practice management advice to furnish you with suggestions of actions that have been shown to have potential to help you improve your practice. Neither MGE nor Sabri Blumberg may be held liable for adverse actions resulting from your implementation of these suggestions, which are provided only as examples of topics covered by the MGE program.
MGE’s weekly webletter, Issue 50.
Here is the next edition of MGE’s new weekly webletter. The purpose of this webletter is to provide ideas, tips and suggestions to make your practice more successful.
Feel free to send us your comments and suggestions, or requests for future webletter topics you would like to see covered.
The Future of Private Practice – Bright or Bleak?
By: Greg Winteregg, DDS
President, MGE
Setting goals for the future is an important part of achieving success. But it can be difficult to motivate yourself if you’re unsure of exactly where you’re going. And while these past few years have been tough on dentists in private practice, the next 10 might holdincredible opportunity for those who are properly prepared.
When you take all the statistics into account, the dental profession is a great opportunity, not only to serve the public with an unbelievably valuable service, but for it to be financially rewarding at the same time.
I’ll start out with some cold hard statistics without getting into the opinions of “how many dentists are on my street?” etc.
- Seven dental schools closed between 1986 and 2001
- Dental school graduates peaked in 1981 at 5,256, dropped to a low of 4,171 in 2001 and only recovered back to 4,796 by 2009*
- Female graduates have been about 47% of the graduating classes for the past five years while making up only 22% of “Professionally Active General Dentists.”*
- 37.4% of all professionally active dentists are 55 or older. That’s about 63,000 dentists that will be retiring in the next ten years.*
- The United States population has expanded by 37% since 1981 (from about 226 million to 310 million).
- Seven new dental schools are proposed to be opened, but it will be years before they have any impact on the number of graduates.
To summarize:
- Schools have closed.
- The Baby Boomer Generation generally includes those born between 1946 to 1964.Those Baby Boomer Dentists are reaching retirement age and that wave will continue for at least the next fifteen years. We aren’t graduating enough doctors to replace the retirees and maintain the previous dentist/patient ratio. And that’s not even taking into account the natural growth of the American population.
- The number of female dentists are on the rise but they are, based on these statistics, practicing for less time on average than male practitioners. I’m not pointing this out for any other reason than to illustrate that the net result is less dentists.
So, overall, we have a decreasing supply of dentists with an increasing demand (population growth). And with the current potential to train dentists fixed at sixty-two dental schools there is no way for the supply to meet the demand for at least the next ten years. Just based on these numbers alone, it’s time to flourish and prosper in dentistry.
So, why aren’t you feeling so lucky about possessing a dental degree? It could be because you’re being limited by HMO/PPO fee-setting plans. And you can pound on your chest and be proud if you don’t participate but I’ll bet your fees are being held down by doctors whoare in plans. You can’t charge what you’re worth because you will “price yourself out of the market,” seeing as the competition are receiving so little for their services.
Now, I want to be clear that I don’t believe that insurance companies are the “Evil Empire” and need to be brought under government control, etc. This is still the United States of America and free enterprise reigns. The only problem we have is that the executives who run insurance companies are better executives than dentists. In the business arena we are getting clobbered by playing their game, by their rules, on their turf.
So what is the solution? Learn how to build a fee-for-service private practice and start giving the patients what they need instead of only what some plan allows. But how do you do that?
It’s very simple:
- Learn how to promote and bring in patients for whom dental health is a priority (do theMGE New Patient Course with a money-back guarantee).
- Learn how to get those patients to want what they need (do the MGE Communication & Sales Seminar Series). We all know that money is no problem for most people once they decide they really want something. They just figure out how to get what they want.
The solution is too simple. Look at the success stories in this paper and decide that you will be the next one.
Playing the HMO/PPO game is a deadly trap. It limits the dentistry that patients truly need and it limits the fair compensation that the doctor deserves. Many recently licensed dentists have over $250,000 in student loans plus whatever debt it takes to start a practice. It’s becoming nearly impossible to get out of the huge hole with HMO/PPO fees.
Come to MGE and learn how to create a tremendously rewarding career in a profession that is, from what I believe, the best career opportunity in the country.
*Sources: American Dental Association, Survey Center, 2009 Distribution of Dentists in the United States by Region and State. © American Dental Association. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved. Any form of reproduction is strictly prohibited without prior written permission of American Dental Association.
Dr. Gregory Winteregg provides this general dental practice management advice to furnish you with suggestions of actions that have been shown to have potential to help you improve your practice. Neither MGE nor Dr. Gregory Winteregg may be held liable for adverse actions resulting from your implementation of these suggestions, which are provided only as examples of topics covered by the MGE program.
MGE’s weekly webletter, Issue 51.
Here is the next edition of MGE’s new weekly webletter. The purpose of this webletter is to provide ideas, tips and suggestions to make your practice more successful.
Feel free to send us your comments and suggestions, or requests for future webletter topics you would like to see covered.
Teambuilding: How to Make Every Employee Your Best Employee
By: Michael Menkhaus
Vice President for Expansion, MGE
As a practice grows, personnel must grow with it, and teambuilding can really make or break an office’s expansion. Many practice owners, by putting new employees on the job without proper training and apprenticing, can set themselves up for a loss in this regard.
I’ve seen it happen too many times that a new hire, such as a receptionist, gets put on the job the first day with little to no training and then is left by themselves. A week later the office manager wonders why phone calls are being mishandled and decides that the new receptionist isn’t going to work out or it’s easier to just do it themselves. The new employee was really never set up correctly to succeed.
I’ve also seen it the other way, where the new employee stays on board for months or years but is always making the same mistakes, and the other employees just figure that’s the way he or she is when in reality he or she was just never trained or apprenticed properly.
You probably have at least one or more employees who really know what they are doing and who you can trust. Someone who seems to know what to do before you say it. Whether it is your office manager, assistant, or a front desk staff member, it’s someone who you wish you could clone so that they could fill all the positions in the office. As you expand, you want to replicate that type of employee, but how do you do this?
You should “apprentice” new hires under your best, most experienced employees.
Obviously, any required training for relevant technical positions should be done before that, according to the laws and regulations of your state. Also, additional training is recommended for positions such as office manager, treatment/financial coordinator, and PR director. But beyond that initial training, the employee should apprentice under someone experienced in that job.
If the office manager has been scheduling proficiently for years and you hire a new scheduler, the scheduler should mirror the office manager as he or she schedules for a day or a few days, and outside of production time they can talk over and answer any questions the new scheduler has. Then the office manager should give the new scheduler a few patients to schedule under his or her supervision until they are able to schedule proficiently themselves and the office manager no longer has to have his or her attention on whether or not the job will be done correctly. It may take a while to apprentice them on all aspects of the job and get them confident in handling each of the little problems and issues that can arise. It should not take an endless amount of months.
Now, you are not necessarily looking for someone who does everything exactly the same way as the office manager. You’re looking for someone who can get done what they are supposed to get done on the job. The new scheduler doesn’t have to be every bit as productive as the office manager, but they do have to get patients scheduled properly according to the way you wish your schedule to be run. They should be able do the functions of the job themselves so that you or your office manager don’t have to constantly worry about it or need to intervene.
It is important early on in the training process, before you put them on the job fully, to give them a few small things to do themselves. These should be simple tasks that don’t require vast know-how or experience, for the purpose of ensuring that they can get things done and complete pieces of work assigned to them. This can be an early sign if the new hire will be able to perform on the job the way you need them to, regardless of training or apprenticeship period.
As I mentioned earlier, many positions do much better with additional training. An office manager should absolutely be trained as an executive, because that is what they are. You need someone who is able to handle all aspects of managing a practice. Treatment coordinators and financial coordinators should be trained on the subjects of communication and sales. A PR director should be trained in the subjects of PR and marketing. Training for all of these and other positions is available here at MGE. Give us a call at (727) 530-4277 to learn more.
Michael Menkhaus provides this general dental practice management advice to furnish you with suggestions of actions that have been shown to have potential to help you improve your practice. Neither MGE nor Michael Menkhaus may be held liable for adverse actions resulting from your implementation of these suggestions, which are provided only as examples of topics covered by the MGE program.
MGE’s weekly webletter, Issue 52.
Here is the next edition of MGE’s new weekly webletter. The purpose of this webletter is to provide ideas, tips and suggestions to make your practice more successful.
Feel free to send us your comments and suggestions, or requests for future webletter topics you would like to see covered.
Social Media and Dental Marketing
By: William Tucker
CEO, Flowline, LLC
For this week’s webletter, we have the privilege of offering an article written by William Tucker, Founder and CEO of Flowline, LLC, a web development and internet marketing company. We have worked with Mr. Tucker to improve our own web presence, and he offered to share some of the wisdom he’s picked up over the years in this special addition to our webletter series.
We have all heard about Social Media and how it’s changing the world of marketing. But is this really true?
To say that marketing has completely changed is actually misleading. Marketing principles on the use of surveys, buttons, marketing message, etc., have not changed a single bit. Only the method used to reach one’s public has changed. It is now possible to reach large numbers of public at only a fraction of the cost, providing you use the right tools and the right strategy.
The effectiveness of a promotional piece – whether in print, paper, postcard or digital format – is still going to depend on whether or not you apply basic marketing principles. More information on basic marketing principles can be found on the MGE New Patient Workshop - a truly essential course for any doctor who wishes to expand their patient base. (If you have not already done this course, call (727) 530-4277 or click here to learn more.)
In this webletter I will analyze the usefulness of Social Media and cover some vital information that, if correctly applied, has the potential to vastly increase your reach to your target demographic.
As a business owner, you are probably bombarded with emails from marketing agencies about the latest way to “Leverage Social Media,” “Rank Number 1 in Google,” “Get a Twitter Account,” etc. I know I certainly do; every week I get at least three emails informing me I can be “number one on Google” (and I do internet marketing for a living!).
Getting hit with these promises from every angle, it’s hard to know what to believe or where to start. So I’ll go over some essential concepts you need to know to get started in Social Media marketing:
Facebook is Google’s Biggest Competitor!
Yes, you read it right: Facebook is Google’s biggest competitor – and their biggest threat. How so? First, a little about Google…
Google is currently the search engine giant. They generally rule the world of search results. Being number one on Google for your local keywords (maybe “Dentist New York,” for example) may get lots of traffic to your website. This can, however, be quite costly, and you are going to run into a fair amount of competition at times. Nonetheless, ranking number one for such a keyword is often worth it.
Facebook, however, gets around search results by reaching people through their friends and contacts, and this is what social media is all about–reaching people through friends and contacts. Facebook is the absolute king of Social Media.
In case there was any doubt about that fact, here are some statistics about Facebook that you may find interesting:
- Facebook is the largest and fastest growing social network on the planet.
- The biggest demographic on Facebook is not teenagers, but men and women between the ages of 35 and 50.
- Men and women between the ages of 35 and 50 is also still the fastest growing demographic.
- As of this writing, Facebook has over 800 million active users.
- Out of the 800 million active users, at least 400 million log onto Facebook once a day.
- More than 350 million Facebook users use Facebook on their mobile device.
- The average Facebook user spends 46 minutes per day on Facebook.
- The average Facebook user has 130 friends.
As you can see, Facebook’s user base is huge! And, out of its user base, the average target demographic of GPs (men and women between the ages of 35 and 50) is its largest group of users.
How to Tap into Facebook
Contrary to what many people think, the way to tap into Facebook as a resource is not through the use of your personal profile. You want to keep your personal profile separate from that of your business. Marketing should not be mixed in with your personal life. Your family and close friends can, of course, “Like” your business on Facebook, but let’s face it, not every client is a close enough “friend” that you’ll want to share your personal updates and information with him.
The correct way to promote your business or dental office is through a “Fan Page.”
Why a Facebook Fan Page?
For business purposes, Fan Pages have several advantages over personal Facebook profiles.
One of the major advantages is that it is extremely easy for a person to become a fan. All they have to do is to “Like” your page. Another reason is that a fan page can have an unlimited amount of fans, whereas a personal Facebook profile is limited to 5000 friends.
When a person “Likes” your fan page, his own Facebook connections will be able to see that he or she did so.
Since the average Facebook user has 130 friends, we get the following formula: “Number of Likes” X 130 = Potential Reach.
This means that 10 Likes gives you a potential exposure to 1300 people, 100 Likes gives you a potential reach to 13,000 people, 1000 Likes…well, that’s a lot!
Facebook makes it easy to get a fan page started off with “Likes” by allowing you to import up to 5000 email addresses and send to them invites to “Like your Fan Page.” This is an ideal way to jumpstart your Facebook presence, since many of their friends will be local people, as well, and part of your target market.
Once a person has “Liked” your page, they will be notified whenever you post an update on your Fan Page wall. If they “Like” or comment on your update, all of their friends are notified that they did so. So, let’s say you post a “special offer” on your Fan Page and 10 people like it; you have now potentially reached 1300 people. It costs you nothing.
Of course, you have to build your Fan Page and get people to “Like” it, and there is some work involved in this. But once you have it going, you have a marketing machine. At this point, we are back to standard marketing basics, and we are using Facebook as the medium to get your message out. These messages should consist of helpful and interesting information (the subject of which depends on your surveys) that will attract people to read more, warm and friendly communication, updates and news about your office, and great special offers.
A few more benefits of Facebook:
- Low cost setup
a) You do not need to pay for a website.
b) You do not need software.
- Due to the social set up of Facebook, such shared information as photos, videos, links, websites, or any content added to Facebook can very easily “go viral” (which means to become extremely popular by people sharing it with each other via the internet), if well thought-out and correctly used.
- A good Facebook campaign will get your fans or clients to promote your business for you. It almost seems like it was designed to facilitate referrals.
- You can add audio, video, and all sorts of links into your fan page to get your message across in interesting and convenient ways. It’s the ideal way to start a viral campaign for your business.
- Fan Pages have additional features that your personal Facebook profile do not have. As an example, you or your web designer can have control over the function and look of the page. You can add anything you could publish on a website – right there on your Facebook Page. In other words, it is possible for a coder to create a Facebook Page with a unique design and all the functionality of your existing website. You are not limited to Facebook’s features.
As you are probably starting to realize by now, Facebook is more than just a social network. It is a powerful marketing platform from which you can rapidly increase your client base.
William Tucker provides this general dental practice management advice to furnish you with suggestions of actions that have been shown to have potential to help you improve your practice. Neither MGE nor William Tucker may be held liable for adverse actions resulting from your implementation of these suggestions, which are provided only as examples of topics covered by the MGE program.
MGE’s weekly webletter, Issue 53.
Here is the next edition of MGE’s new weekly webletter. The purpose of this webletter is to provide ideas, tips and suggestions to make your practice more successful.
Feel free to send us your comments and suggestions, or requests for future webletter topics you would like to see covered.
Turning New Year’s Resolutions into Real Success
By: Luis Colón
CEO, MGE: Management Experts, Inc.
The New Year is here and we all know what that means–time to make resolutions. Everyone wants the coming year to be “the” year in which they finally make that change, achieve that specific objective, start making the big bucks, or make good on old promises to themselves.
But despite the sincerity of these dreams, for many, the coming year tends to turn out just as disappointing as the last.
Why is this?
While there are many things that can happen which might result in failure, there is one thing in particular that can doom people’s dreams right from the start: What is this you might ask?It’s the tendency to concentrate heavily on past failures and get hung up on them.
You’ll see this quite a bit. Someone will continue to devote attention to points at which they failed while ignoring where they have been successful. This can get so bad that they begin to believe they are more or less a failure in general with no real hope of achieving much.
I’ll give you an example. You see twenty patients in a day. Things go well with nineteen of them and they offer you varying degrees of appreciation for your help. Things don’t go so well with one. Maybe you started late, weren’t able to get everything done you wanted or it was a new patient and you just didn’t hit it off. While of course you would have to handle what came up with that one, it does not negate the fact that things were perfectly fine with the other nineteen! But I ask you, what sticks with you and who are you talking to your spouse about when you go home at night?
So before you start making your resolutions for this year, I want you to look back at 2011 and acknowledge the successes you have achieved. Think of all the good things you’ve done and goals you’ve accomplished-big or small. Think of all the patients you helped in some way, instances where you presented a treatment plan and it went very well, systems or programs you implemented in your practice that worked, personal achievements for yourself or your family, times you made something happen when others had doubted you, etc.
And as you look back, don’t think about your losses and failures. Completely ignore them. Dwelling on them doesn’t help anyone.
I think when you go through this last year and really look at what you have accomplished, and where you were successful, you might be very surprised; in many cases you will have accomplished far more than you would have thought. You’ll find that it wasn’t all bad, it wasn’t all failure, and that perhaps you are just a little bit more capable than you thought you were.
Well, it’s true. You are capable of more than you’ve been given credit for. You can make this year the best year ever in your practice.
There will be barriers and obstacles along the way, but those don’t have to stop you. Handling these is simple – in many cases you just need the know-how. That comes from training and that is where MGE can help.
Give us a call today and together let’s make 2012 your best year in practice!
Luis Colón provides this general dental practice management advice to furnish you with suggestions of actions that have been shown to have potential to help you improve your practice. Neither MGE nor Luis Colón may be held liable for adverse actions resulting from your implementation of these suggestions, which are provided only as examples of topics covered by the MGE program.
MGE’s weekly webletter, Issue 54.
Here is the next edition of MGE’s new weekly webletter. The purpose of this webletter is to provide ideas, tips and suggestions to make your practice more successful.
Feel free to send us your comments and suggestions, or requests for future webletter topics you would like to see covered.
Try This When Presenting Treatment
By: Gregory A. Winteregg
President, MGE
Most doctors have at least some concept that that they should avoid heavy dental/medical terminology when presenting treatment to patients. But there is actually more to this subject than would appear at first glance. In fact, the way that you use technical terminology can have quite an impact on case acceptance.
There are actually two sides to this–the exam and the actual treatment plan presentation/consult. And each should be handled very differently (what I suggest about exams may surprise you).
When presenting treatment, you want to achieve understanding on the part of the patient. You want the patient to understand exactly what they need, why they need it, and the importance of getting it done now. Real understanding on the part of the patient leads to case acceptance.
When you use terminology the patient doesn’t understand, you throw this understanding out the window.
If you were to watch the patient closely, you could actually see the exact point where they go “blank” and stops listening to what you are telling them–it will normally be when you start using terminology that he or she doesn’t understand! And that’s when the patient writes it off as “technical stuff” that is over their head and isn’t important to them.
This is very simple to change. Just alter your wording to make sense to the average layperson. You likely already do this to some degree, but you may need to take this even further. Working every day in this industry for years, we can forget how uneducated the average person is on the subject of dentistry.
As examples:
“Carious Lesion” becomes “cavity.”
“Periodontal Disease” becomes “bleeding gums and bone loss.”
“Periapical radiolucency” becomes “pus pocket in the bone.”
We don’t have to use big words to try to impress the patient that we know what we are talking about. They usually assume that because we have a “D” after our name.
You can also always explain what these terms really mean and then use the term thereafter since they will now understand what it means.
During exams you would have a very different approach. You don’t want to use anydental terminology that the patient could possibly understand. Yes, I know that this seems to fly in the face of what I was saying earlier–but there’s a very good reason for it:
You don’t want the patient pondering/worrying/wondering about the treatment he or she might need before you’ve done an official diagnosis and consult. If the patient hears the words “root canal” or “crown” or “extraction” during the exam, there’s a good chance that it’s going to set his mind off about the possibilities–and patients usually aren’t too excited about these possibilities. So save it for the consult when you can introduce their treatment plan to them properly.
You don’t know what’s going on in a patient’s mind during the exam, but if they start hearing all types of procedures during the exam, there’s a good they’re thinking things like: “Oh gosh, my mother had a root canal and she said it’s one of the most painful things she’s ever done!” Or “Uh oh, I’m gonna have to get shots. I hate shots!” Or “All this work is going to be expensive…!” Or “Does this guy want to yank my tooth out?!”
Unfortunately, I’ve seen plenty of cases where the doctor did this during an exam, then scheduled the consult for another day only to have the patient cancel the consult.
The handling for this is also very simple. Before I started an exam, I would tell the patient, “Mrs. Jones, I’m going to do a complete exam on your teeth, gums, cheeks, tongue and jaw joint. Jenny and I are going to use a shorthand of terms that only she and I will understand. This makes the exam go quicker. So you won’t understand anything that she and I are discussing. I promise that before I do any treatment, I will discuss your options with you and exactly how much it will cost.”
Then I would use abbreviations and code language that I and my assistant understood but went right over the patient’s head. I used “RC” instead of “root canal,” “CR” for a “crown,” “EXT” for an “extraction,” “OS” for a consult from the oral surgeon, etc. Use anything that will communicate to you and your assistant without giving the patient a clue as to what they need.
Then when the exam was done and I was doing the consult, I would explain the case to them in a way that they could understand.
Dr. Gregory Winteregg provides this general dental practice management advice to furnish you with suggestions of actions that have been shown to have potential to help you improve your practice. Neither MGE nor Dr. Gregory Winteregg may be held liable for adverse actions resulting from your implementation of these suggestions, which are provided only as examples of topics covered by the MGE program.
MGE’s weekly webletter, Issue 55.
Here is the next edition of MGE’s new weekly webletter. The purpose of this webletter is to provide ideas, tips and suggestions to make your practice more successful.
Feel free to send us your comments and suggestions, or requests for future webletter topics you would like to see covered.
Business Basics
By: Gregory A. Winteregg
President, MGE
A common theme when you read articles about the “Business of Dentistry” is that our dental schools do not prepare us for the business side of practicing. I certainly found that to be the truth, and that is why MGE: Management Experts, Inc. exists: to give doctors the education they need to achieve success in private practice.
One of the first steps to achieving this success is understanding your overall business model. At MGE, we teach a basic formula that all businesses follow in order to prosper. All businesses have a service or product that they supply for the public, and they must:
SELL IT—DELIVER IT—GET NEW PEOPLE TO SELL AND DELIVER TO
This “it” in our industry is of course dentistry. It’s very simple. In order for a business to make money, it must sell its product or service and it must attract new people to sell to. If you want your practice to become a successful business, then you must apply this formula.
“Management” holds the machine together to continue to sell and deliver more services or goods to the public. However, if there is ineffective marketing and sales, then there isn’t enough activity in the business to have something to “manage.”
My observations have shown me three interesting phenomena:
1. We spend tens of thousands of dollars on the newest gadgets and hundreds of hours in continuing education so we can deliver better services to the public. We travel all around the country learning new techniques to deliver better and more services.
We spend tens of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours on management consulting so we can have the best staff meetings, best software, best appointment book, etc., etc.
3. We stand back and say that it is “unprofessional” to promote our services with external marketing or sit down and talk money with our patients to sell them what they truly need.
But what if major corporations took this approach? They would have a great product line filling up warehouses with products they are too “proud” to market or sell. Their stellar management team would be watching an empty production line because no product is leaving the warehouse to create a demand for more production.
When I first started my practice in 1981, external marketing was definitely something you “did not do!” While things have changed a lot in this regard, with many doctors more than willing to market, the idea of “selling” still has quite a stigma attached to it. A majority of the thousands of doctors I have spoken with over the years find the idea of selling abhorrent, unprofessional, etc.
Here is the truth of it: The person who handles the finances determines the income of the business. If you want to control your income, you must learn how to discuss money with the patient. It actually is no more complicated than that.
And let me say right here that selling includes discussing money. It is actually very wimpy on our part to do the easy part of the case presentation and only tell the patient what treatment they need then send them to a Financial Secretary to handle the money. All the reasons of it being “unprofessional,” “not wanting to appear money-motivated,” “too busy,” etc., really don’t hold up against the advantages of discussing money with the patient yourself. You are the doctor, and your opinion holds much more weight with the patient than the front desk staff’s.
But let’s stand back from the whole subject of money for a second. If we can’t sell the case, we can’t truly help the patient. For example: The patient needs six crowns. Insurance pays for two. We do two now, two next year, and hopefully two the next year—if they still have insurance and they haven’t left the area.
So when we do two crowns instead of six, we have only provided a third of the help the patient needed. Now I’m sure you offered six crowns and let them “choose” what they wanted. But who decided it would be two instead of six? The patient and the Financial Secretary? The last time I looked, they didn’t have “DDS” or “DMD” after their name.
The person best qualified to answer the patient’s questions and address their objections is the doctor. That is why you must learn how to handle their questions and any objections they have to complying with their treatment plan and get them onto the service they really need.
The days of “Be a good doctor and get involved in your community” to build a practice are over. It is very worthwhile to get involved in your community for its own sake, but it will not create a successful business for you in the competitive world of dental private practice anymore.
You can only deliver as much dentistry as you can sell. Marketing and promotion give you people to sell to. One could then conclude that the amount of services that you deliver will be determined by how much you sell and that determines your income.
For many years as a practitioner, I had the same misconceptions about finances that many dentists do. I had used six different management companies in eleven years and each of them agreed that the staff should handle the money.
Then I became a client at MGE and the gentleman who is now my partner, Luis Colon, asked me a very direct question, “How do you feel not being in control of your financial future, but instead leaving it only in the hands of your employees?” Now this is not an attack on effective employees doing their jobs, but what happens if that employee’s spouse gets transferred to another state or they leave the practice for any other reason? What if the next employee isn’t as productive as the previous one? This could mean that your kids won’t go to college or you may not be able to retire when you want.
The only safe and secure conclusion to make is that if you aren’t doing the selling–then start.
If you can’t do it, then learn. It’s time for us as a profession to start addressing this issue head on.
Your ability to sell dentistry is going to determine your volume of delivery of dentistry going into the future, no matter what happens with the economy or dental industry.
The next time the patient says “I only want to do what the insurance covers,” or “I have no money,” just keep talking to them for another five minutes. You’ll be surprised how effective a little persistence is.
One final word of advice: If you’re working with someone who is helping you manage your practice, then look at your collection numbers before your relationship with them and after. If they are worth what you’re paying, your collections will go up. No excuses. If your collections aren’t going up, then why continue?
Measure your results. It is the only thing that counts. The MGE New Patient Workshop, which teaches you how to market to attract more fee-for-service new patients, comes with a full money-back guarantee, so if you aren’t satisfied with your results you can get your money right back. No risk.
We also deliver the MGE Communication & Sales Seminars every month at our Florida training center. These are a series of three 3-day seminars that teach you how to communicate effectively with your patients to get them to want the treatment they need.
For more information about MGE, contact us at (800) 643-3456 or (727) 530-4277.
Dr. Gregory Winteregg provides this general dental practice management advice to furnish you with suggestions of actions that have been shown to have potential to help you improve your practice. Neither MGE nor Dr. Gregory Winteregg may be held liable for adverse actions resulting from your implementation of these suggestions, which are provided only as examples of topics covered by the MGE program.
MGE’s weekly webletter, Issue 56.
Here is the next edition of MGE’s new weekly webletter. The purpose of this webletter is to provide ideas, tips and suggestions to make your practice more successful.
Feel free to send us your comments and suggestions, or requests for future webletter topics you would like to see covered.
Isolating Your Target Audience
By: Jeffrey Blumberg
COO, MGE
Marketing can be expensive.
This statement is relative, however, because the better your marketing works, the less expensive it becomes in the long run.
The worst thing you could do is “no marketing.”
There are quite a few components to a successful marketing campaign, but let’s start with one that is quite often mishandled: Choosing your public.
In the PR and marketing world, your “public” would be your “target audience.” You could say that a “public” would be a group that has one or more particular traits in common. This might be age, income level, interests (i.e. people who like action movies), location, and so on.
Most successful marketing campaigns are pretty clear cut about which public they are targeting. In other words, you could say it is clear who they are marketing to, and the marketing itself takes this into account.
You see this all the time with TV commercials (at least the good ones). Who do you think the “Mac versus PC” ads were aimed at? Here’s a young allegedly hip kid. He’s a Mac. The 40 something guy with glasses and a sport coat was a PC. Notice all of the “problems” the “PC” had in all of the commercials while the Mac was trouble-free. Well…my teenage kids (at the time these commercials started airing) both got Macs. So did most if not all of their friends that I saw with a computer! It wasn’t just limited to my kids and their circle of friends. I’d see it at Starbucks, and anywhere else a kid had a laptop – more than half were Macs. The ads worked and their target audience (teens and young adults) bought. While I don’t know if it was part of their original strategy, I would bet you that some of these kids who start businesses in the future will use Macs instead of PCs. Technological superiority aside, Apple may have guaranteed a market share for decades to come with just that alone.
Let’s roll this idea into dentistry. The type of dentistry you want to do has a great bearing on whom you select for your target audience. Match up the type of dentistry you like performing with the publics that need it most.
For example, if you wish to perform a lot of crown and bridge, you would obviously not direct your marketing efforts towards children or college students. You would reserve your marketing dollar for the audience who needed these services the most. The basic idea here is don’t “shotgun” one type of marketing out to the undefined masses. Pick a particular type of public to market to and do it. Eventually you can have several different types of marketing to several different publics.
Examples of different publics would be:
1) Homeowners within a certain age group or income bracket.
2) Families with small children.
3) Other professionals (CPAs, Lawyers, M.D.s, etc.)
Demographics play a big part in all of this: For instance, what is the average age in the neighborhoods surrounding your office? Does your zip code contain primarily families or singles? What type of industries do they work in? What is the average income level?
All of this information can be found easily for free. You can use the website zipskinny.com, where you simply enter in any zip code and it immediately displays all relevant demographical data.
Once you have selected your public, you need to find out more about them and their dental needs, wishes, and opinions. This is accomplished through surveys. The first step we do with a client when they sign up for the New Patient Workshop is have them survey patients who they would like to attract more of and then use this data when they come to MGE for the course to develop their marketing plan.
You will find that different people in different locations want different things from their local dentist. You should find out what your public wants by surveying them. The results of the survey will affect the overall look and message of your marketing.
Don’t assume anything when designing a marketing campaign. Survey it first! And the surveys will tell you if you’re going in the right direction.
Depending on which media you choose to use in your marketing, you could also survey a cross section of your patients who conform to your target audience and find out which papers/magazines they read, which radio stations they listen to, which websites they visit, where they gather, as well as other avenues of reaching more people like them.
When proper consideration is given to basic marketing principles like these, it is possible to get real, predictable results from your marketing—and it doesn’t have to cost inordinate sums of money, either. It just has to be done right. And that’s exactly what we teach on the MGE New Patient Workshop. Give us a call now for more information.
Jeffrey Blumberg provides this general dental practice management advice to furnish you with suggestions of actions that have been shown to have potential to help you improve your practice. Neither MGE nor Jeffrey Blumberg may be held liable for adverse actions resulting from your implementation of these suggestions, which are provided only as examples of topics covered by the MGE program.
