Years ago, I remember talking to a friend who was moving house and he was frantically doing so to avoid the move being delayed, and him having to pay more for the delayed move because a new government tax on consumers was being introduced.
He was frantic.
He wanted to avoid this new tax.
He was being driven by his concern of avoiding the incoming tax…
Sometimes…
Sometimes I meet dental practice owners who are obsessed with gaining value out of something that they paid for and purchased that has actually been shown to have very little value at all.
For example, last year I spoke to a dentist whose practice was growing organically with no structure, and he was expressing a frustration that this dental practice needed to create some appointment book structure to its scheduling to create some form of order within the practice.
And he suggested that he was going to create this scheduling templating on his own.
Fast forward to this week and guess what?
No appointment book templating has been created in this practice and the organic growth that had previously occurred had now descended into organic chaos, with patients exiting from the practice as quickly as new patients were being scheduled…
He’d effectively created a revolving door at his front desk.
But the revolving door was costly… this dentist was now paying for marketing that was causing his phone to ring with new patient enquiries.
But, he was not listening to recordings of incoming phone calls to his practice, so he had zero idea about the efficacy of what his team were saying on incoming calls, and what incoming callers were actually asking.
Finally, he had found some documentation in his practice from a coaching programme that the previous owners had used, before they sold him this practice. So he thought that he might try to apply these lessons to his current staff, despite the fact of the following three truths:
- Truth Number 1:
If the coaching lessons that he found in the cupboard of his practice had been good, then that programme would still be being used in the practice and the team would be implementing those systems.
But they weren’t.
And if they had been good, and had been used, and implemented, and kept in place, these systems would probably have created a practice revenue stream that the previous owners would have enjoyed…and possibly not ever sold the practice?
- Truth Number 2:
The staff that the previous owners had employed who had experienced this previous coaching process had all moved on from the practice.
So everybody at the practice now had to be trained up in the methods found in the programme from the cupboard.
- Truth Number 3:
All coaching is not the same.
All dentists are not the same.
All fish are not the same.
All cars are not the same.
I’d be interested to see…
In six to twelve months’ time I’d be interested to see how this dentist was going.
Often what happens is this…. when you phone them up in the future, the dentist tells you that he’s going well, because he’s embarrassed to tell you that he actually isn’t…. because it was his decision to go with the other coaching programme.
In most cases, the other coaching programme doesn’t get given a chance either. Usually the previous inactivity and lack of personal accountability that prevailed in the first instance, prevails into the second, and the third, and sometimes the fourth and fifth instances.
As coaches we meet clients and potential clients that accumulate courses and course certificates and course notes, but never read them even once, and never take action on anything.
At best their collection of notes look impressive in notebooks stacked on a shelf in their office… that’s called SHELF HELP…
Are you a procrastinator?
Are you a seminar junkie collecting course notes but never implementing an action plan?
How’s that plan working for you?
Or are you someone who implements their own plan, but your wheels get caught up in the weeds and you just end up spinning those wheels in the one spot?
Again, when this happens, the self-praise you pour upon yourself for having done something is used to mask the fact that the activity you engaged in gave you a very poor result with a zero ROI.
Remember this:
It’s never too late to improve a life of mediocrity.
It just takes a lot of internal reflection, and the swallowing of a huge slice of humble pie.
And action.
You need action. You need activity. And you need to be kept accountable.
The humble pie may not be the sweetest, but it sure must be easier to swallow than the bitter taste of regret…
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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