Dental Drills Bits

You get a text message from a staff member that says they can’t come to work today, now what do you do?   In this episode Sandy talks to us about the proper steps we need to take with handling staff members who seem to be absent or miss a lot of work days for whatever reason. We discuss how we can remedy this and how you can ensure it doesn’t spread to other employees. She also gives us a step by step process on how to start this system today!

You may have heard this or possibly, some of you listening, may even think this way:  “we don’t have a production goal because we are patient focused”.   Knowing your income and taking care of patients are two different things. In this episode Sandy gives us the exact formula you need to boost your production. She also lets us know how patient care is woven into this. There is a way to reach production goals without the patient feeling like you are upselling or pushing treatment on them and Sandy let us know how to do this. A great way to look at it is: “Production goals” are the food.. The type of food is patient care.

In this episode we dive into our Facebook group: Dental Gumbo and answer questions you have asked Sandy in the recent weeks. Sandy answers and discusses these 3 main questions: How early to confirm appointments?  How do you deal with assistants or hygienists not showing up for work (slightest cold)?  How to present 3rd party financing as an option and favorite company?

Lately in the last week or two people are thinking ahead and what they’ll do differently in 2023. And we love it! In this episode Sandy gives us 10 key principles we MUST upgrade or improve within our practice! They are: Low retention rate. Too many broken appointments. Bonus systems that don’t work.  Poor Recare systems. High accounts receivable balance.  Low treatment acceptance.  No marketing or poor marketing.  Phones!!  Too many people are falling into the “practice management of the month club”. Doctors not setting performance expectations for their team.  Listen to the episode to discover more details and strategies on how to improve each key element.

A lot of your employees are planning their whole Christmas around their Christmas bonus. However, is a Christmas bonus really necessary? How can you make this “bonus” work for you and how can you stop it if you don’t have the funds but feel the “need” to do it because you’ve done it in the past?!   Sandy gives us the instructions, script, and formula on what we need to do to be consistent with rewarding our team. She let’s us know how she doesn’t always agree with the Christmas bonus but has created a system on how this type of bonus can work for you and the practice.

Most dentists and especially practice owners, watch their money, and the decisions they make to KEEP money is causing missed opportunities and keeping the income down. Now, saving money is not a bad thing, that’s not what we are discussing here. We are talking about how often we step over dollars to pick up pennies.   In this episode Sandy gives us about 7 main reasons on where we stumble and mess up. These 7 reasons/ mistakes are causing an illusion that we are saving money, when in reality we are missing too many opportunities and hurting our potential and profits.

If you ever wanted to be a fly on the wall in Sandy’s Scheduling Academy, this is it!

Should you add 3-4% on the dental bill if people are going to use credit cards? The quick answer is “NO”! This can easily make your patient lose trust in you. Remember people don’t carry cash or checks as much anymore. More and more people are using credit cards. When you add the 3-4% on the patients bill, this is working against your internal marketing!   In this episode Sandy breaks down for us what we should do if our terminal/ credit card charges come with a fee and how we should present it to the patient. We also discuss other great alternatives that you should adopt now to easily get the money from the patient without hassle.

Did you know if your team is less than 10 employees, you more than likely should NOT have an office manager! Some practice owners put someone who has some dental experience in the front and name them an office manager. That is not the right thing to do.    In this episode Sandy breaks down the real responsibilities of an Office Manager and when is it time to bring one on. We also discuss how promoting or having someone considered an “office manager” can actually cause more harm than good. We also discuss how to demote an office manager and discuss the proper script and terminology on how to do this.

There’s a shocking statistic that Sandy mentions in this episode which is: 1.6 million people are changing dentists and 25%-50% patients are lost over a 5 year period. This means we MUST work on our attrition, retaining these patients!    In this episode Sandy tells us the 3 main reasons why we lose patients and how we can stop making these major mistakes. She also gives us a system on what our team should do to make sure our attrition rate is good. We also discuss and talk about scripts on what we should ask our patients to make sure their experience is always above and beyond!

You know what? You shouldn’t even call them “performance reviews” anymore! In this episode Sandy lets us know exactly what we should do with the “one on one” meetings we have with our team members. Meeting one on one with team members is always a good thing.   Sandy tells us how we should call them a “one on one” and bring the employee’s: Attendance record Statistics Ask them “how do you think it’s going”? Involve the whole team   She breaks each one of these things down and dives into specifics on how we should handle every point. Another good thing to keep in mind is we should never tie “one on ones” or performance reviews with raises! Listen to this episode to understand why!

If you haven’t heard “How to Handle “Inter-Office wars” which was the episode before this one, please go do so! It got so much feedback! Because of all the questions we received, Sandy decided to answer those questions and do a part two! The 2 most popular things that people contacted Sandy after the previous episode was: What to do if you are new to the office and you witness “inter-office wars”/ what do you do if you are a team member watching on the sidelines “inter-office war” happening? What should you do?  Team members complaining to the doctor or gossiping to the doctor. Trying to get to the doctor on their side.  In this episode Sandy dives deeper on these two scenarios and also shows you how to handle them from an employee perspective and a practice owner's perspective.

Are you experiencing gossip, negativity, conflicts between your team, dishonesty, and employees always shifting the blame to other employees? This episode will help!    20% of all workers are unhappy with their jobs! This means that 80% are trying to get along with their workers and the other 20% are sabotaging that relationship! A lot of this dissatisfaction doesn’t have to do with the job itself, but it’s with the worker’s attitudes.    One thing Sandy has observed over the decades of handling employee conflicts and “inter-office wars” is that the more organized a practice is, the more the agreements that are in place, the less “inter-office wars” happen! In this episode Sandy gives us the definition of what “inter-office wars” means, how this is occurring in many offices today (either the front office doesn't get along with the back office, or someone on the team keeps gossiping about another team member, etc.) and she tells us exactly how to handle it!

Nowadays there are lots of consultants out there. Specific consultants and consultants who try to cover everything under the sun. However, what is the ultimate goal of a consultant? In this episode Sandy gives us insight on this and what we MUST look out for, when it comes to bringing on a consultant.   Sandy tells us what questions we should ask before hiring the consultant, what their goal should be, how much productions should be going up, how the team should feel, what road-bumps the consultant may face, how can you tell you are getting a “cookie cutter” consultant, and what data they should have.   A consultant's goal is not to be hired and work for the practice forever, it's to work with the practice until the owner (and team) is completely satisfied with the results. Listen into this episode if you have EVER thought about hiring a practice management consultant.

“Quiet quitting” is nothing new, it just has a name now. According to a recent study: “Quiet Quitters” make up 50% of the US workforce! 32% are disengaged employees and 18% are the type of employees that go on social media and trash talk or display how they hate their employer. Why does “quiet quitting'' happen?   In this episode Sandy lets us know how we can identify these "quiet quitters" and what you should look for before it’s too late. These types of employees will kill your productivity and also drag down your team culture and ultimately hinder your growth.    As you’re listening to this episode you may start to identify that you MAY have a “quiet quitter”. So listen to this episode to see how you can handle any “quiet quitting” situation.

Confirming appointments is one of the most important things that a scheduler does every single day. Confirming, when done the right way, assures the schedule will stay intact.    In this episode Sandy breaks down the mistakes we tend to make when we “think” we have confirmed an appointment but in reality, we have not. A lot of the time we tend to send a text or reminder, but the reality is this is doing nothing most of the time.    Listen in as we discuss the proper systems and protocols to truly confirm an appointment for a better schedule and a productive day.

Sandy was doing a mystery call for a practice and noticed a major issue… the practice didn’t answer her phone call… that’s how this episode came up!   There’s two main things we need to do if we want more new patients in our office.   Make sure there are absolutely NO barriers blocking the new patient from reaching you over the phone. Make sure you take away every single barrier that’s stopping the new patient from walking through your door!   In this episode Sandy tells us ways we can improve and elevate our phone skills to ensure that these new patients are not only scheduling, but walking through your door and accepting treatment.

You know that one person who's always missing days, calling in, or maybe they save up time off and leave for a long time. Welp, there’s procedures and systems to prevent that and actually improve all of your employees' attendance!    In this episode Sandy gives us 5 major steps that will improve attendance and help motivate employees to not miss a day! Sit down with your team and talk about your core values.  Create an attendance policy.  Track when people miss work.  Address these no-shows or last minute cancellations immediately! Reward good behavior.  Listen in as we dive deeper into each of these steps and provide a game plan!

Treatment planning starts much earlier than you expect. If you want your treatment acceptance percentage to increase you first have to know what to look for and then implement these specific actions to see results.   Sandy gives us the 10 bulletproof actions steps that will increase your treatment acceptance. One of the first steps is making sure you’re on top of your “Public Relations”. This is something that won’t get you instant results at the beginning but it is something that every practice owner should be thinking about because… your treatment acceptance starts with your reputation!   Listen in to hear the rest of the action steps so that you can increase your treatment acceptance this month!

There's nothing worse than seeing the schedule full the day before, or even the week before, then… once the productive day arrives… the schedule starts falling apart. Why is this happening?! Could it have been prevented?! What is killing this productive day!? A lot of us are unaware of how much productivity is being killed in the practice. Some of us are so used to these killers that we see it as a “norm” when it occurs. Anything that kills your productivity is NOT normal!   In this episode Sandy reveals the 5 most common productivity killers that happen in your practice every week. We discuss them and show you the difference between each one and how some play off of each other if you let it slide or handle it the wrong way. Then Sandy lets us know how we can prevent each of these 5 killers and what systems need to be in place today… to ensure that we are keeping the productivity in our office high.