Dentistry Uncensored with Howard Farran

When hygienist pre-appoint their own patients to future continuing care they will instantly find out which patients are onboard who isn't . If the patient bought in to do the right oral healthcare thing and schedule their next appointment in advance, you can monitor this vital sign of patient buy in or give a warning sign your back door is open and the patients are going down stream so you can decide if you want to fix the dam or spend the damn marketing dollars to replace them. The hygienist is most responsible for creating this value which is why they have to ask the patient to schedule to come back because when a patient says no they can see exactly when and with who, their hourlong appointment message did not work on in time to adjust w response to this tasks, hence the meaning of the word responseability. The hygienist needs to own it, be measured, and held accountable. How could you expect the front office to be responsible for preappointing the hygienist patients when you obviously can't be responsible for something you don't have the authority to change. Does the front office manager have the authority to trade your hygienist from the Jets for one from Tampa so your team has the right buccaneers to find the treasure? Or does everyone just blame Dr. Ignominy who is the only one with skin in the game.

Perception equals reality despite the world not being flat because trust has more value than logic. The time needed to make a knowledgeable decision reality means that most of us can only master one thing unless you're Torakusu Yamaha who mastered both motorcycles and pianos. Trust is an investment when your infection control builds patient confidence and is being explained by long term staff the patient already knows and trusts providing an economic barrier in the marketing efforts from someone else they don't know. Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent has been the Scout Law since 1908 and will help you become more talon-ted and breaking it is ill-eagle.

Do you reward your new patients with a gift?

Profitability begins with the Financial Arrangement and ends with increasing account receivables, sending statements, then resending again with scary 'Past Due" messages stamped on it with red ink made from a single drop of blood from your CPA, collection agencies, bad debt, negative cash flow, and high overhead. The Financial Arrangement at McDonald's begins with clear prices so you can decide exactly what you want to order, and then you pay in full or you will not get your Happy Meal with McVodka. If Doc Ronald McDonald did give it to you first, and you never did pay for it, assuming they had average dental overhead of two-thirds, then they would have had to buy the all natural ingredients, which I assume was the human hair, from the profit dollars of two previous sales. This is why financial arrangement impacts profitability more than price. If you want to boost profitability i'm lovin' McDonald's order, pay, food. If you prefer lovin' the Profit Hamburgler use Dentistry's order, food, and pray.

If you want to keep your promise you should Underpromise and Overdeliver. The First Law of Customer Service is Satisfaction = Perceptions – Expectations. The Second Law of Customer Service is it's hard to catch up once you are behind! When you over promise and underdeliver you are raising your patient's expectations which is setting up a trap that you could eventually step in. If you under promise to lower their expectations and then over deliver with a fantastic experience you will satisfy your patients by successfully managing their expectations. You should always keep your promise but if in doubt, under promise and over deliver. When a patient breaks their front tooth off and asks you if you can match it, why would you say absolutely! I tell them God made the tooth next to it and you want me to match it?!? I will try my very best, but no one can perfectly match your natural human tooth. Their expectations have been lowered and then they are delighted when they see the final result because I exceeded their lowered expectations. The same with post-operative pain; will I feel any pain afterwards and can I go back to work? I say, "When the anesthetic wares off you're probably going to want to jump off a cliff." When they come back in, they are all happy saying, "I was fine afterwards. That didn't hurt at all." Then I tell them they're probably married with children and they're used to pain and suffering, they chuckle and we're all good. At the Fortune 500 level they almost never pick an extrovert salesperson for CEO because that person has spent their entire career over promising and underdelivering and that never works from the top. They always want an introvert because they listen, think, and then methodically set out with a doable plan.

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I'm sorry, we can't see you today. Please wait in line and give us your money another day. Having your customers wait in line to give you money is an idea that given enough time will make your business obsolete and dead as a doornail from some competitor dentist who doesn't have lines. If I can't come in today and give you money then hit your gas pedal to add capacity, operatories, associates, hours, or buy the technology that allows you to work faster. Or, you can hit the brakes and raise your prices. This will shorten the line by making the people who value you less and are unwilling to pay you more to see you today, to get out of line, so the people willing to pay more are allowed the freedom to pay you more money for the extra value of being seen today. Same day dentistry is the fastest way to increase your case acceptance. If you sell a bottle of water for $1 and your profit margin is 10 cents (represented by the bottled water cap) then your profit margin is 10%. If you raise your price one dime (which would add another cap) you just raised your price 10% and doubled your profit margin from 10% to 20%, reduced the number of people waiting in line, and now have more profit to take home or reinvest in your business as retained earnings. Another way of raising your price is to drop your lowest paying dental insurance PPO. I don't care which pedal you hit as long as you do something. What is not acceptable is to do nothing. Shit or get off the pot but don't sit there all day while your customers are looking around to see if someone else can see them today. When your patient does find another dentist who will see them today they are not going to take the time to call you back and cancel their appointment with you, they will most likely extend the same curtesy you gave them and just not show up without notice known as the "No Show" which comes from you telling them "No" so they give it back as a "No Show" known in my 30 Day Dental MBA as "No Shit, Sherlock."

Is your house in order? Are you poised forward growth? The first Dollar General store opened in Springfield, Kentucky in 1955 and today has 16,368 stores in the U.S. which is 3.5 times as many as the 4,743 Walmarts. They locate their 7,500 square foot stores and plan their merchandise selection to best serve their target customers of the low and fixed income households who are underserved by other retailers, with 75% of their stores in towns with less that 20,000 people. Going where your completion ain't is the antonym of being just another me too product and service. In the past Dollar General had trouble with mergers and acquisitions and found starting their own de nova stores worked better, measuring their success with the final metric being same store sales growth. If your only dental office, or all of your offices are shrinking in same store sales the. you need to stop, adjust and get back to growth before you start expanding. Dick and Mac McDonald, now you know why they call it McDonalds, spent six years starting in 1948 experimenting with hot dogs and BBQ before perfecting their business model and selling their six franchise locations to Ray Kroc in 1954. Krispy Kreme started in 1937 and in the first 63 years only had 142 locations now have just over 1000 locations today.

Dr. Doug Depew has been practicing in the Northwest suburbs of Atlanta Georgia since 1990. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Georgia, received his dental degree from the Medical College of Georgia, and received his certificate in orthodontics and master's degree from Baylor College of Dentistry at Baylor University. Dr. Depew is the founder and Academic Director of Trapezio, which provides formal training for orthodontic staff members and is endorsed by the American Association of Orthodontists. As the program creator, Dr. Depew is frequently invited to speak at professional meetings around the country and overseas. Dr. Depew is also proud to have served as a member and chairman of the AAO Council on Technology. Join the community on Dentaltown at https://www.dentaltown.com

Female-friendly Lowe's started in 1946 and has 2,197 locations. Home Depot started in 1978 and has 2,296 locations. Home Depot focused on men because 90% of the 11.4 million U.S. construction industry workers were males while Lowe's focused on females because they knew home improvement decisions are made by women, who also make 75% of all dental appointments. OB-GYN became a specialty in 1880 and was founded by the horrible unethical man James Marion Sims who is credited as the "father of modern gynecology". The word hysterical comes from Latin hystericus "of the womb" thought to be exclusive to women sending them into uncontrollable and neurotically insane owing to a dysfunction of the uterus, the removal of which is still called a hysterectomy to this day. Today women comprise 58% of practicing OB-GYNs and 84% of residents, with males down to 16%. Today 52% of pediatric dentists are female up from 14% in 1998. Today dental school graduation classes are now 51% female vs 46% in 2009, 35% in 1999, 27% in 1989, and 11% in 1979. If you want to be a cosmetic dentist it really helps to be hot, and if you want to be a pediatric dentist it really helps to be a mom. So, if you're one of those unfortunate bastards like me who's mother was fined for littering whenever she dropped me off at school and always had me hold the camera to take the family photo, you should focus on dental implants since ugly goes all the way down to the bone.