Jim Rohn said that on the list of things that really matter, it’s usually only a half a dozen things that make the most of the difference.
He said:
“There are only about a half dozen things that make 80 percent of the difference in any area of our lives.”
In his book 7 Strategies for Wealth & Happiness, he wrote:
“Whether we are working to improve our health, wealth, personal achievement, or professional enterprise, the difference between triumphant success or bitter failure lies in the degree of our commitment to seek out, study, and apply those half-dozen things.”
I had the pleasure of seeing Jim Rohn speak live in the early 1990s. He changed my life. He was a captivating speaker.
His advice was plain, no-nonsense common sense.
In dental practice, I see so many dentists chasing after shiny objects when the principles of Jim Rohn, if applied, would improve their practice successes dramatically.
When a dental practice is not fully booked, I hear dentists say:
“I just need more new patients.”
Or they say:
“I just need to do some more marketing”
These are not the solutions.
Nor are they clear enunciations of the problem.
The problem is the dental practice is not being served by a CONTINUAL FLOW of new customers contacting the practice and scheduling appointments to be seen.
When our dental office establishes a healthy continuous supply of regular new patients of the quality that we need, the “marketing” that we need or think we need is not needed.
The key words here are the words “Continuous flow.”
When our dental practice supply of new patients calling is regular and predictable, then our office does not need to be out seeking more new patients from sources of questionable quality and consistency.
Once our dental practice has established this consistent continuous flow of quality new patients that we are looking to treat and serve, then it is our dental team’s duty to ensure that as many of those new patient enquiries as possible are scheduling and keeping appointments at our practice.
As an analogy, there’s no point in turning on the high-pressure hose if we are only capturing a few drops of water each time, and gallons of valuable water are flowing freely away and down the drain.
This is where we need to make sure that the people calling our dental practice are being successfully scheduled to see our dentists, and that they are keeping these appointments.
Our success here is based on the premise that the people phoning up are doing so because the marketing and information they have received about our dental practice has inspired them to believe that our dental practice is THE ONLY PLACE where they need to be going to have their dental concerns solved.
And this marketing and information has led them to appreciate that there is nowhere else they would ever EVER WANT to go.
With this thought in mind, when our phone rings at our dental office, we know that if we do not end the call with an appointment made for that caller, then we have failed that caller.
We have let the caller down.
If the caller does not schedule an appointment then it is the way that we have answered their call, that has resulted in their failure to book.
In the games of cricket, or baseball, if your fielders can’t catch a ball, it means they’re going to be chasing a lot of balls, and not getting too many batsmen, or batters, out.
And consequently, the team is going to be losing a lot of games.
In the same way, if your dental front office team are not well equipped in the best ways of helping callers MAKE AND KEEP valuable dental appointments, they’re going to be chasing a lot more callers [or balls] to make sure that the schedule is full, and also productive.
And that’s really an unnecessary burden they should not be having to endure.
Fixing the dental office phone skills is one of the half dozen things that make a huge and positive difference in the outcomes you achieve from owning a dental office.
In fact, it would be up there in the top two or three things.
And yet so many dental practices do not train their front office staff AT ALL with any phone skills or communication skills.
Other dental practice owners expect their team to become phone masters by reading an article and hoping that by osmosis, super powers are absorbed and adopted.
[Well that method doesn’t work for golf swings, and it doesn’t work for phone skills either.]
Putting it simply, four phone calls to your office each day that fail to schedule will mean twenty new patients each week that end up going to another dentist instead of your office.
And if a new patient is worth between five hundred and one thousand dollars, this means that over the course of a year your dental practice has haemorrhaged between half a million and one whole million dollars of potential income.
Simply by neglecting to train phone skills as best you can…
So, half a million to a million dollars each year?
What’s the cost of investing in PROPER TRAINING for your team?
And what’s the cost of NOT INVESTING in proper training?
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Online Workshop: Dr David Moffet and Jayne Bandy:
“How To Easily Run, Maintain And Grow The Ultimate Dental Practice In 2021”
If you’re sick and tired of drilling all day long, and not having anything close to what you deserve, to show for it… or if you’ve ever wondered, “What can successful dentists POSSIBLY know, that I don’t?”… then register for this unique online ZOOM workshop Saturday March 20, 2021
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Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
Convert more calls into appointments…Click the link: http://www.calltrackingexcellence.com
Call Jayne on 1300 378 044 or email Jayne@theDPE.com for more details.
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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
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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