Everything Matters: The Core Principle of Good Business Practice
A little birdie told me that Santa Claus will be bringing me a book for Christmas.
The book is written by Panthers’ coach Ivan Cleary and is titled:
“NOT EVERYTHING COUNTS BUT EVERYTHING MATTERS”
As a businessman, and as a business owner, I like this title.
Because the principle that EVERYTHING MATTERS, is a core principle of good business practice.
For every customer, for every team member, for every business owner, there will be things that happen, and there will be things that have to be done, that will make a difference to someone because they have occurred.
And whether those things occurred rightly or wrongly, the occurrence of those things will have had an impact on some people.
The fact that these things have happened, will affect an outcome for somebody.
Everything matters.
What I’ve found in business…
What I’ve seen during my life as a business owner, is that for every ying, there’s a yang.
When there’s an action, there’s an outcome.
That affects someone.
For better.
Or for worse.
And when there’s no action, or inaction, then there’s a result of that inactivity, that has had an affect because of the decision not to do anything.
In these cases, someone has thought that doing nothing would be OK.
But the act of doing nothing is a decision to remain stationary, while others continue in forward motion.
“I just need more new patients.”
As a dental practice owner, I remember attending our regular quarterly local dental practice study group meetings, and asking dentists there how things were going at their practices.
And the most common answer I would receive when I asked this question of dentists was:
“Everything’s going good. I just need more new patients.”
I always wondered why these dentists needed more new patients when everything was going so good?
Because to me, the only reason you need more new patients to be coming in through the front door of your dental practice is because you’re losing patients out the back door of your practice.
And when you think about this logically, if a practice is getting SOME new patients every month, and retaining those patients, then that practice should be growing?
And it goes without saying then, that the only reason a practice needs more new patients is because patients are choosing to leave the practice voluntarily.
And the number one reason those patients are leaving the practice is usually because they don’t feel valued, and are not being made to feel important.
These departing patients are leaving because they are feeling as though they are being taken for granted.
At Active Dental…
At Active Dental, everything we did for a patient and everything we said to a patient was done for a reason.
And that reason was to make that patient feel important.
To make that patient feel valued.
Everything mattered.
When we spoke to the patient, it was to find out more about them.
When we spoke to a patient, it was to find out what they liked, and what they liked to do.
Everything we said to the patient was said for a reason.
Recently in my coaching business…
Recently in my coaching business, we deconstructed all of the topics and things that we coach our clients about.
What we found was that as much as we tried to compartmentalise everything that we did, so many things were inter-related.
For example:
- What was said to the patient on the phone when they called to schedule an appointment affected what that patient’s perceptions would be for their appointment.
- What was said, or not said by the treating dentist to the patient in the treatment room affected dramatically whether or not that patient scheduled their next appointment…
- The completeness of your dental practice systems and processes immediately affects your practice patient numbers, your practice capacity, your practice production growth, and ultimately, your financial security.
- Your quality of your practice customer experience systems immediately affects your patient case acceptance rates.
The human body is the same…
The blood that flows through your infected gums also flows through your healthy heart and your healthy brain… you may think it’s all separate and compartmentalised and doesn’t count, but in reality, it’s all together, and everything in there does matter.
Cigarette smoking is the same. It doesn’t just affect the lungs. It affects the heart, it affects the body tissues, it destroys the whole body.
It all matters.
Don’t be fooled by your own ignorance…
Recently during a group coaching call, I had a client remark at what a positive impact the addition of the warm towels had been to her dental practice.
At the same time, a longer term client had commented that at her practice they had dismissed the idea of the warm towel as being something not to pursue.
On discussion, the realisation for the second client was that her decision not to implement the warm towels had impacted her practice in a negative way, restricting some simple organic growth.
Even with small things, everything matters.
Nobody likes to be told they have made a poor decision…
Nobody likes to be told they have made a poor decision, but it is the truly great leaders who can accept that at times we will make weak decisions, and that autocorrecting is a far more admirable trait than carrying on regardless…
It’s so important…
In business, having the ability to pivot when needed, and to accelerate when needed, are admirable qualities when compared to ignoring things that matter, and doing nothing.
And that’s because everything really does matter.
Everything…
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Have you read my book , How To Build The Dental Practice of Your Dreams [Without Killing Yourself!] In Less Than Sixty Days.
You can order your copy here: Click Link To Order
*****
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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