Archive for June, 2009
Effective Dental Collection Calls – Part 2 of 3
Posted by: | CommentsTip #5 Make the debtor right, even when they are wrong. This does not mean agreeing with what they are saying, but rather validating it. When given a ridiculous complaint, learn to say, “I can understand why you feel that way.” Or, “I can certainly see how something like that might happen.” This is a way to avoid a negative dialogue and helps maintain open lines of communication. Understanding their point of view, even as you share yours, will disarm the patient’s defensiveness.
Tip #6 Stay focused. Some patients will try to get you off track by complaining about their service, or somehow shifting the blame to you for their delinquency. Be polite, but always bring them right back to the point of your call getting paid the money rightfully due you.
Tip #7 Do not be manipulated. A screaming patient could be using their “adult temper tantrum” as a ploy to get you upset and end the conversation. At the very least, you’re not going to get anywhere with someone that mad. If a patient starts yelling stay calm and don’t interrupt. If you interrupt more than likely they will rewind like a tape recorder and you will have the pleasure of listening to that twice. Try reminding them that you cannot help resolve the situation if they are yelling. If that doesn’t work, you might say something like; “This obviously isn’t a good time for you. When can I call you back?” If they are abusive and are using obscene language hang up and proceed to the next step in your collection system.
The Coaching Department at The Schuster Center; support@cfpd.com
–For information on products and services for high profit dental practice management, call 1-800-288-9393 or visit www.schustercenter.com for dental continuing education opportunities.
The 3 C’s of Success
Posted by: | CommentsCompetence
Commitment
Confidence
Like it or not, agree with it or not, every dentist sells. A person cannot
NOT communicate.
The 3 C’s come into play for every person in every situation in their lives.
Competence: you are either good at what you do or not. Of course there are various levels of competence, from average, to good, to excellence. Excellence within any person is a way of being, a habit. In fact all levels of performance are habitually driven. Some continue to strive for improvement in their competence, Others are continually satisfied with average. In my personal experience there is no end to how competent any of us can become.
Commitment: one of my favorite quotes has been on the back of my business card for over 20 years…“Commitment is the willingness to be uncomfortable to produce results.”
Without a commitment of heart, mind, hands and soul, no one ever makes the effort to be as good as they can become. There’s no excuse or reason for this. In my experience, some people are committed and many are in doubt. The doubting undermines our effort and our experience of moving up the ladder of performance as much as commitment helps move us up the ladder of success at whatever we are attempting to do.
Confidence: protect your confidence is a password we use over and over at The Center and Performance Coach. Some things and some people simply get in our way of sustaining or building confidence. Some events that keep repeating themselves tear away at our confidence and we have to be aware of these people and events. We must eliminate those activities and people that tear away at our confidence. In the end, whenever a person loses their confidence, they lose their ability to make the choices which determine whether we advance, stay the same or go backwards.
Show me any athlete, sports or corporate athlete, dentist or otherwise that loses their confidence and I’ll show you a person that is underperforming. Show me a person without commitment and I’ll show you another underperformer. And lastly show me a person without competence and I’ll show you a person who can’t perform, no matter the commitment or false confidence.
The world is always watching, and giving back to us what we give to it.
Michael Schuster
–Dr. Schuster is a regular columnist in Dental Economics and has been the leader in dental practice management for over 30 years. Contact him at The Schuster Center, 1-800-288-9393 or go to www.schustercenter.com for info on practice management education and dental continuing education seminars.
proven strategies = success
Posted by: | CommentsWhat would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?
Most of us have either read or heard this statement, yet we don’t examine it deeply enough. Almost everything has already been successfully done in some form in the past.
Excellence in any arena is more accessible than we traditionally believe. All success occurs when we think and behave in a certain way. We each copy or originate a new way of thinking and behaving: we call this a strategy.
Success in anything is originating or copying a strategy someone (who is successful) is already using. In many instances, it is originating or copying a number of strategies and organizing them together to produce excellence in the arena we have chosen.
Experts call this group of strategies a MODEL. We refer to it also as a STRUCTURE. In other words, a MODEL has a certain STRUCTURE that holds it together, keeps it together and enables the MODEL to produce the results or outcomes we want.
Remember behind every ACTION is a THOUGHT.
Mike Schuster
Call us about how to integrate proven models and strategies into your dental practice for higher profitability – 1-800-288-9393
Effective dental collection calls
Posted by: | CommentsIt also helps if you know the patient’s history with your practice. What is their payment record? If they have always paid on time, maybe the statement was never received, or there’s a dispute involved. If payments have been getting slower month-by-month, it’s possible they have a cash flow problem. Remember, if they are having a family hardship, then you are positioning yourself to be their advocate. You will be firm but empathetic and fair.
Tips #3 check your attitude at the door. Your attitude has a strong impact both on how you handle the patient and how they respond to you. If you were irritated on a prior call, and carry anger into the next one, the patient is bound to pick up on this and mirror back to you the same level of irritation. Before picking up the phone for the next call, take a few minutes to calm down. Get things in perspective. Keep in mind that you cannot “make them pay you” so getting aggressive or putting on a punitive tone will not allow for success. We coach clients to “charm the cash out of them” versus “berate it out of them.”
Tip #4 Address the patient by name throughout the conversation. This shows respect on your part and demands attention from them.
The Coaching Department at The Schuster Center; support@cfpd.com For information on products and services call 1-800-288-9393 or visit www.schustercenter.com
Golden Dental Team Meetings
Posted by: | CommentsOne of the goals of the Schuster Management Program is to teach your dental team to better define your practice systems, thereby enabling you to work in unison toward a common goal of success. Team meetings not only allow opportunities for enhancing communication within your dental practice, but they give your employees an environment of predictability and stability. A common comment we hear from our graduates is that after they have completed the Management Program they are not certain what they should be you some suggestions and topics to ensure the success of your staff meetings for years to come.
- Case Studies – Many of our clients have told us how much they have benefited by reviewing a completed case as a team. Questions such as “what could we have done better relative to the patient’s treatment”, and “clinically, what could we have done to imworking on during staff meeting times. The purpose of this article is to give prove the outcome” are great customer service questions.
- Recare review – Once a month the hygienist (or whoever works the recare system) should report on the patients who were due for hygiene this month, who is accounted for and who is now missing in action. What is the strategy for contacting those patients and more importantly why did they not respond to the retention efforts?
- Structured Messages – This should be an on-going project. You created a number of messages during your practice management training, but your practice has an enormous opportunity to refine and create more together as a team. Many offices only use structured messages for phone conversations. But you can use these for virtually any face-to-face interaction. The format can be used to help with your pre-clinical interviews, chair side education, and financial arrangement conversations.
- Communication – Your ability to communicate your thoughts, feelings, ideas, values and beliefs are determined by how well your practice runs. We often limit ourselves by only thinking about how we communicate person to person. However, you might review all of your printed materials to check for the consistency of the appearance and the message you are sending. Your web site, yellow page ad, signage, phone messages, collection calls, etc. should be evaluated on a consistent basis.
- Career Development – The best dental practices hire and retain the best people as employees and are responding quickly to changing market conditions. The doctors are not satisfied with the status quo. They continually upgrade facilities, processes, and the skill of their employees. Many of our doctors lament about not having enough time to get trained on power point or digital photography. Why not send a team member?? Don’t forget to invest in talent and keep them intellectually challenged. Many of our best clients have mismanaged very talented team members by not investing in their development. Take time to plan out your employee’s career path so they continue to be renewed and recommitted to your practice.
The opportunities for creating the dental practice of your dreams are unprecedented. But so are the difficulties, for competition is more intense than ever. The critical success factor for your practice is the quality of your team. Authentic team members who are mature and committed will make your vision become a reality. However without effective staff meetings in place, your opportunities to tap into the goldmine called YOUR TEAM will be limited.
—Article submitted by the Coaching Department at The Schuster Center. Feel free to comment here or contact us at www.schustercenter.com
Practice Leadership
Posted by: | CommentsLeaders, by definition, are ALWAYS THE FIRST ONES OUT OF ANY PREDICAMENT
Perhaps it’s because their vantage point is unobstructed by anyone or anything in front of them. And they aren’t held back by those who can’t keep pace with the constant changes. They find OPPORTUNITY while others can only see DOOM.
Where others are frozen by FEAR, they find STRENGTH. In simple terms, Leaders LEAD. As a result, they will chart the uncharted in today’s challenging economy, slip the stream of negativity and deliver on the promise of their business.
I salute these ‘changers’, these ‘leaders’, these entreprenueurs who realize that change is constant and continuous in nature, but attitudes and reactions to change are optional.
STAND UP–LET’S GET GOING!
—Dr. Schuster is a regular columnist in Dental Economics and has been the leader in dental practice management for over 30 years. Contact him at The Schuster Center, 1-800-288-9393 or go to www.schustercenter.com for information on continuing education for dentists.
Dental Practice Excellence
Posted by: | CommentsIf you don’t fight for Excellence, you end up in Mediocrity.
There is no question that we dentists are under pressure, especially today, to do less than our best.
But the truth is, no matter what dental procedure we do (from the smallest restoration, to a crown, RCT, or any procedure, large or small) we should always do our very best.
If we are going to do dentistry, no matter what level of dentistry, we should give it our best…for our own self-esteem, for the personal knowledge that we did our best and for the highest service to our patients.
“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”—Aristotle
From a simple alginate impression, to pouring a model, to an x-ray. When we always strive for Excellence, we cannot lose.
For help with dental practice management, dental systems, team training and dental continuing education seminars, contact The Schuster Center at www.schustercenter.com or call 1-800-288-9393.
Dental Practice Production…the Ego Number
Posted by: | CommentsAs an analyst here at The Schuster Center, I speak with many dentists every week. The very first thing we discuss is where the dental practice is currently, relative to the goals they want to achieve. During this first conversation, the number one most common goal I hear is that they want to increase their production. Why wouldn’t they… right? If I am a $750,000 dental practice and I take home $225,000 per year (30%), doesn’t it stand to reason that if I increase the practice production to $1,000,000 practice I will be taking home $300,000 per year? Interestingly enough, the usual answer is “NO”.
In 99% of these conversations the standard answer is, “I have grown my practice production from $750,000 to $1,000,000 but I am still taking home $225,000.” If that isn’t frustrating enough, they go on to explain that in order to get production to $1,000,000 they are working much harder. So the bottom line is they are working harder, have less time and energy, for the same money. This certainly is not the business model they set out to achieve.
Don’t misunderstand me, in business we have to produce in order to grow. However, once your time and energy becomes overly focused on production, it becomes easy to lose control of other aspects of the business. How much time and energy is left for developing organization? How much time and energy is left for building trusting relationships with the patients? How much time and energy is left for building relationships with our families? It is easy to become focused on the production number. After all it is the ego number. It feels good to say we produced 1.5 million in 2008. It feels good to say we increased production 20% from the previous year. But what good is that moment of feeling good if we are not sleeping well at night.
The real number to look at is net profit. Practice profitability is what generates growth. Profitability is what generates wealth. If dentist “A” produced $700,000 and had a 52% overhead, he/she would be $116,000 more profitable than dentist “B” who produced $1,000,000 and had a 78% overhead. Who do think feels better about their effort at the end of the day? Who would have more time and more energy? Net Profit is the wealth number. Net Profit is the growth number. Focus on increasing net profit. You will sleep much better at night.
Contact me about quality dental practice management at www.schustercenter.com or 1-800-288-9393. Or email me at grant@cfpd.com.
Dental Practice Management to serve all
Posted by: | CommentsPart II
It goes without saying that the objective of The Schuster Management Program is to teach dental practice management principles. Management is about organizing the business. In order to be efficient and effective, short and long term, business owners, including dentists, need to learn proven management principles. The Management Program does this extremely well, but other growth needs to occur also.
The next developmental step for successful dentists is leadership. Leadership is about imagining preferred futures, planning, building capabilities and inspiring confidence. Leadership is a recurring theme in the Schuster Center’s alumni program, Performance Coach.
The client who learns leadership changes his life and practice profoundly. Leadership creates value for everyone –team, patients and family. With leadership skills, the dentist becomes more influential and as he transforms himself, he transforms others.
Learning expands us permanently and teaching teaches us. Because we all have something to contribute and learn, the format for Performance Coach is community based learning. Alumni teach each other all year long during conference calls.
We never know until after the fact, what others needed to learn from us and we never know until after the fact, what we needed to learn from others.
As advocates for our clients, The Center is committed to our clients’ continued development. We want clients to experience the camaraderie of community learning, to feel the confidence and energy that comes from their own strengthened leadership and the gratification derived from contribution.
Your Center Colleagues and The Center Team hope you join us in The Performance Coach Community.
The Architecture of Life and Practice
Posted by: | CommentsA power point presentation called “The Dash” has been circulating on the internet. You may have come across it recently. I had heard the term before from a friend who was giving a eulogy and referred to the dates of birth and death with life being “the dash” in the middle.
How quickly that brings reflection about my purpose here. How quickly life can pass us by, and how quickly we get lost in society. Most of the time, it is when we are faced with a crisis or life altering experience that we think about these things. Even then, it is often only for a short time and we resume living out our life as it happens. Unless you are willing to give some time to the purpose and plan for your life, it will continue to pass you by.
Our society is full of cookie-cutter houses with cookie-cutter people living in a sea of conformity. Yet we hunger for personal expression and to live a life of purpose. This hungering gets lost in the ho-hum rhythm of our days.
According to an article I read recently in the az-net news, whether we live simple or complex lives, they are made up of three primary components: work, personal, and social. Each of these components must get an equal share of our time in order to maintain balance. When we expend more time and energy in any one area, we have less time and energy for the other two. This leads to imbalance. For example, if work becomes our primary focus, we may be lacking in personal or social time. Only when the whole equalizes can we experience peace.
Work tends to get most of our attention and we readily recall and give attributes based on a person’s vocation in life. We tend to remember people based on their accomplishments in their lifework. We are fascinated with stories of impossible odds that were overcome or creative approaches the person took to get to where they are. It is the architecture of the human spirit that moved them from one room of life to another that peaks our interest.
We are social creatures and tend to identify with others based on their relationships with friends, family, and colleagues. This is where we find commonality and place ourselves in concert with another based on our similar experiences. It is through our social abilities that we strive to fit into society.
Carving out time for personal or spiritual growth is paramount to the expectation of a balanced life. This tends to be the one area we set aside or give up in order to focus on the other two, not realizing the impact it has on our personal achievements. Think of this as creating a sturdy foundation to the building of your life.
If you were created as a building, what sort of structure would you be? Would you blend in with other buildings around you? Would you stand tall or would you be spread out over a large piece of land? How do you personally fit into the culture around you? If you think about it, we build our lives just like a building, one brick or one piece of lumber at a time. The question is, do you have a plan, or a blueprint that incorporates these three primary areas? Are you following your blueprint and striving for balance? Are the rooms in your house / life connected? You are the architect of your life. I challenge you to fill your rooms and hallways with friendships and love.
“Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will be delightful, old age will bring few regrets, and life will become a beautiful success.” — Louisa May Alcott
“Truest SUCCESS is but the development of self.” — Charles Atlas
The Schuster Center is a business school for dentists where development of the dental practice aligns with the development of self. It is a lifelong network of like-minded professionals in community and spirit.
