When I was a dental practice owner, I used to say this to my team:
“We need to make today’s visit for Mrs Smith better than what we did for her last time she was in.”
I also used to tell my team:
“Whatever we did for Mr Jones today, when he comes in next time, we want that visit to be even more memorable than today’s visit was.”
This was because the only way that we could avoid complacency as business owners was to strive for continual improvement.
So we always asked ourselves:
How could we be better for our customers today than we were for them yesterday?
When we viewed each day in this manner, when we started each day with this goal and outcome in mind, we knew that there was no way we would ever take our position in the marketplace for granted…. there was no way that we could ever develop an attitude of complacency if we were always striving to improve.
Continually striving to improve in business crushes the complacency virus.
Continually striving for improvement in your business smashes complacency straight out of the park.
Period.
So how much improvement is enough?
Q: How tall does a tree grow?
A: As tall as it can.
Second Q: How big can your business grow?
Second A: Why can’t it grow as big as it can?
What’s stopping you from growing your business?
I believe the number one thing that stops businesses from growing is that they don’t have a plan.
I’m continually amazed at how many dental practice owners I meet who don’t make an annual plan for their dental practice.
Instead, they rely on HOPE and time.
By this they just seem to wait out each year, send their figures off to their accountant, and wait for the accountant to retrospectively tell them whether the PREVIOUS FINANCIAL YEAR was a good one, or not?
Compounding this, secondly, is the fact that most dental practice owners have very little idea of their numbers.
They don’t know their numbers on a daily basis, and they don’t know their numbers on a weekly and monthly basis.
And they measure the wrong numbers.
I can always identify a dentist who doesn’t know his numbers, because when I ask them their numbers, they reply with numbers that end in three zeros, or four zeros, or two zeros, or one zero…
[And I’ll bet if we looked at the actual numbers, the numbers they tell me are inflated compared to the actual numbers.]
The numbers tell the story.
At the Olympic Games, at the Superbowl, at Wimbledon, at the Masters, scores and achievements are measured and compared to see who wins, and who does not.
And the sportsmen and women who are competing are always analyse their numbers, looking for ways to improve, to run faster, to hit the ball harder, to return more backhands…
“I think I went OK.”
is not an answer that the fans want to hear, and it’s not what coaches want to hear either.
Because it’s a guess.
And a guess is based on fluff.
Not on data.
And yet….
And yet your business, and your future, and your financial future, and your family’s future, in the majority of cases, is based on a guess, and on hope, and on fluff.
“I hope I can make payroll this week.”
“I hope we can pay our suppliers and creditors this month.”
“I hope I can pay myself something this month…”
These are comments I hear from dentists that I shouldn’t be hearing from dental business owners.
Ever.
Dental school doesn’t do a good job of preparing graduates for business ownership.
At all.
Most dental graduates have no idea on how to run a business.
Most dental graduates have no idea how to write a business plan.
Most dental graduates have no idea where to start….
What if you could…
What if you could improve your dental practice turnover by one percent each day?
After a week, your daily production would be up by 5.1%
After four weeks of improving your daily production by an extra one percent each day, your daily production would be up by 22.02%
All with a one percent improvement every day…
Would you be happy with a 22% increase in production in one month?
What if it took you a little bit longer?
What if it took you twenty weeks instead of twenty working days to reach this level of improvement?
Would you be happy if your practice production was up 22% in a time period of less than five months?
Why don’t businesses do this?
The reason most businesses fail to get results like this is that simply, they don’t make a plan.
And they don’t measure.
And if you’re not measuring, and you’re not sticking to a plan, you’ll fail.
And fail quickly.
Why stop at four weeks, or at twenty weeks?
The reason that most people who try to lose weight fail to lose weight, is that they give up on their goals, and go back to their bad habits.
They don’t watch what they eat, they don’t go the gym that they joined, and they don’t aspire to the results that they should be achieving.
Quitting is easy… it’s too easy.
That’s why people quit…
Diets work and gym memberships work.
We all know people who have lost weight and kept it off.
And we all know people who haven’t done the necessary work.
And the results they haven’t achieved….
Success leaves clues.
In business, success leaves clues.
All you need to do in business is to find success, and duplicate that success.
It’s just a matter of how much you want to change…
Hope is not a good strategy.
Continuing to do nothing, and hoping that your business improves, is not a good strategy.
And trying to work things out on your own is dumb, and risky, because TIME TAKEN to work things out eats into the results that you fail to achieve.
The easiest way to achieve success is to find a coach or a mentor who has achieved the success you aspire to and has helped others to achieve that same success.
And then do what they tell you to do.
That’s all you have to do….
Everyone has the opportunity to be successful.
But success requires change.
Sadly, not everybody wants to change… badly enough….
*****
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*****
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*****
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
Email me at david@theupe.com
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