Dentistry is not a business about products or services.
Let me tell you why.
You see, I’ve just this week returned from a two-week trip to the USA, where I attended three conferences on Dentistry in the space of ten days.
Yes.
Three.
Three conferences. Six days of learning. Three different cities.
West Coast. Central. And Florida.
That’s some trip!
And the over riding theme of those conferences was this.
Dentistry is not a business about products or services.
It’s a business about people.
And about Customer Service.
First and foremost.
And sadly, most dentists do not get this.
At all.
Most dentists believe that they will grow their business, their Dental Office, by being a better Dentally-educated Dentist
They believe by learning new skills, by being more competent and clinically proficient, that patients and customers will come flocking to their offices in search of them.
Sadly, in reality, that is not true.
Yes, sure, you need to have some reasonable skills of Dental Dexterity.
You cannot be all thumbs when it comes to the intricacies of performing fine Dental Skills.
And your patients can sense that physical competence while you are actually engaged in the Dental Moment, of performing a procedure in their mouth, right there and then.
However, what your patient buys from you time and time again is your level of professionalism and courtesy towards them.
They buy how you make them feel.
And how your team makes them feel.
And how your Office makes them feel.
They buy these factors way more times than they buy your competencies, proficiencies and dexterities.
Way more.
And sadly, most dentists don’t know this.
And if they do know this, if they get told it, or if they work it out themselves, there’s often a big chance that they still just file this information away in the vault and never take action about it.
Never.
And because of this, because of this focus on clinical skills rather than people skills and relationships, great dentists are not being rewarded appropriately for their competencies.
Because the marketing of ourselves, the marketing and presenting of us and our team to our clients, customers and patients, as well as to the general public and the whole wide world that we know; this marketing as I call it is paramount, it’s the lynch pin, it’s the key to greater business success.
And success in business, in the business of dentistry is a good thing.
It’s not a bad thing.
Being rewarded appropriately by our business so that we can live and lead a comfortable life should not be seen as a bad thing.
Why shouldn’t we be able to live where we want?
Why shouldn’t we be able to send our children where we want for their best education?
Why shouldn’t we have saved sufficiently for our retirement?
And why shouldn’t we have enough comfort in our working life that we can give benevolently of our time, procedures or funds, when we so want?
Sadly by conformity to societal norms, we as a profession are often guilty of depriving ourselves and our families of the appropriate rewards we deserve for the investment of time, money and resources that we ourselves have laid on the line to get to where we are today.
How many years of seriously difficult study did it take for you to become a dentist?
How long in years did it take for you to acquire that D.M.D., that D.D.S., that B.D.S., or that B.D.Sc.?
Once you had your shingle, how much money did you invest into either purchasing a Dental Office or building a Dental Office?
And how long did it take you to repay that loan?
And what sort of return, or R.O.I. could you have gotten on that money if you had invested it wisely in the stock market or in real estate?
The overriding message, or theme from all three meetings was that it’s about having the right team, and having the right customers.
That creates that great business.
The first speaker of my trip, Laurie Guest, summed it up beautifully when she quoted a doctor she knew who said:
“It doesn’t matter how good a doctor I am, if the patients don’t like you.” – Neil Ross M.D.
Laurie’s take on this was:
“It doesn’t matter how good the baker is if the cashier spits on your cake.” – Laurie Guest C.S.P.
Is someone on your team, even you, spitting on your client’s cake?
Fred Joyal said:
“You can’t make miserable people happy, but they can make your happy people miserable.”
He said:
“A dental practice is too small an eco-system to have people messing up the mix.”
That means messing up with each other as well as messing up with your clients and customers.
I ask you:
What are you doing, for your business, for your customers, to make sure that they receive the best experience possible?
What are you learning?
What are you sharing?
To build a better business.
To have a better life.
To make people happy…
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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