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One of the major dilemmas facing all business owners is manpower.

When is the right time to add staff to your operation?

I often hear dental office owners saying:

“I’ll add staff when we get busier”

But really, the opposite is what is needed.

You need to be adding staff so that you can become busier.

A business that is poorly staffed will limit it’s own growth…. severely.

It will choke itself.

Business owners need to be able to recognise “tipping points” as to when is the right time to increase and add extra team members.

In Dentistry I see it all the time

I see staff trying to fulfill multiple duties and rolls, sometimes simultaneously.

And nothing ever goes right then.

You see Front Office staff being called to the back to help out with sterilisation.

And this then leaves an unmanned or under-manned Front Office where arriving patients and guests are not greeted in an optimal manner.

And in so doing, the office subliminally offends arriving patients who may be considering complex and expensive treatment, while the owner tries to save a few measly dollars per hour on manpower.

Because having insufficient greeters does not create a positive buying environment.

What about the Dental Office that does not have sufficient manpower to answer *ALL* incoming telephone calls?

And so calls go through to a machine or to a service?

Or sometimes they plain simply ring out?

What sort of a message does that send to the caller?

Or sometimes the calls are answered by team members that are not skilled or trained to answer them optimally….

Does that create inspiration in the mind of the caller?

We all know the disappointment we feel when we go to the theatre and find out, just before the curtain goes up, that the role of a lead performer is being taken tonight by an understudy!

And the only person in the audience happy about that is the understudy’s mother….

Everyone else feels that they’ve paid top dollar for a lesser product….

And that’s the message that you’re sending to your callers when the dental assistant or the dentist answer the phone, without the necessary skills required to do that job to the best of their ability.

On the one hand the business owner is wanting to grow the Dental Office, but on the other hand he’s got the office on a choker leash, preventing it from growing organically.

We all know that image of a young dog let off its leash at the local park?

It runs and it runs and it runs….

And that’s what our business is wanting to do, if only we would let it off its strangulating lead…

The final thing that insufficient staffing does to your business is it emotionally demoralises those who work there and are overworked.

Sure a day here, an hour there, good staff do not mind.

But when an office consistently is struggling to provide service to its valued customers because there are too many things that need to be done and not enough staff at the right times…well that just wears your good people down.

In the movie “Field Of Dreams” we were told constantly:

“If you build it he will come”

With your business, sometimes you need to trust the force.

If you build it, the patients will come.

If you do not, they will not.

They will be turned off and go elsewhere…

*****

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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