Walter Hailey and Steve Anderson talk about...

There has never been a better time to be in dentistry than now. Exponential improvements in clinical knowledge and advancements in technology have combined to create a level of oral healthcare that is unmatched. Compared to the state of the art in the 1950s, when it was assumed that one in every two people would lose their teeth by the age of forty, today’s dentistry is nothing short of a quantum leap. The guesswork in the diagnosis and treatment of even the most problematic mouth has been virtually eliminated.

The timing couldn’t be better. Thanks to the generation born between 1945 and 1965, restorative, cosmetic, implant, comprehensive and preventative dentistry has never seen a larger market.

The baby boomers are ready. They are:

• Eightly million strong in the United States alone
• Extremely high wage earners
• Inheriting the largest block of money one generation has ever passed on to another, an estimated 10.4 trillion dollars or about 500 billion dollars annually over the next twenty years
• Turning fifty at the rate of one every seven seconds
• Entirely pre-fluoride, so as adults they need three times the dental attention that post-boomers require
• Unlike the bably-boomers’ penny-pinching Depression-era parents, they believe money can and should be spent. On what, you ask? On looking good and feeling good.

Get your sunglasses

Even conservative trend prophets, most of them outside the industry looking objectively at the facts, estimate that dentistry will expand its annual revenue by at least fifteen—and possibly up to thirty-billion dollars over the next few years.

The future of the industry is so bright that, as the song says, you have to wear shades. But don’t wear blinders.

With a trend as hot as dentistry, there’s always the chance of getting burned. The jury is still out on whether programs like managed care, dental plans and practice consolidations will help or hinder the industry, but one thing is certain: big business has arrived with big money and they are in a frenzy to buy dental practices.

They’ve woken up to the reality that dentistry is one of the best business opportunities around. Consider that:

• 100% of the population requires dental service.
• 50% of the population does not have a happy dental home.
• 80% of the population has a serious periodontal need.
• Dentists make at least 30% profit on their service. To put that number in perspective, a grocer expects 1%-to-3% profit on goods; a corporation with a 10% profit on goods or services is doing extremely well.

What you don’t know might kill you

However, there’s another side to the dentists’ personality profile that factors into the equation. As a general rule, they have been misled to believe that clinical excellence is the ONLY necessary tool to building a successful practice. Of course, it’s essential to have a lifetime commitment to continuing clinical education. But the dentist without the leadership skills necessary to inspire a team, without the marketing skills necessary to position the practice, without the management skills necessary to run the business and without the verbal skills necessary to educate his/her patients and make compelling case presentations is all too vulnerable to the forces that are changing the industry.

Staying on top of the opportunities that the changing industry affords means, above all, maintaining flexibility. The following six recommendations can help you develop your play book; they can be the difference between watching the game from the sidelines or staying on the field to get a piece of the action.

Respond to the changing market

The dentistry of the past was need-based. 90% of future growth in dentistry will be want-based.

These two approaches are as different as night and day—the difference between treatment in a hospital’s emergency room and a visit to the office of a high-class plastic surgeon.

Does your office reflect a drill-fill-&-bill, patch-&-pull style of dentistry, or does it communicate a model of health and wellness?

Does it create the impression that you care for the total person or the only thing your patients’ teeth are connected to is their
wallets?

To respond to these changing times, you need to re-evaluate everything that you do—from the way you and your team speak with patients all the way down to the wallpaper in the bathroom—so that you can create a congruent image that matches the expectations of your patients and inspires them with your philosophy. Teach patients to expect the optimum oral health they can in the first place.
They will love you for it.

Seek your riches in niches

Although there are many different opinions about the keys to success, everyone agrees that the key to failure is trying to be everything to everybody. In healthcare today, trying to be all things to all people may mean you end up being nothing to no one at all.

In the realm of retail, there’s room enough for Wal-Mart as well as Sak’s Fifth Avenue. You won’t expect to get a bargain basement price at Sak’s, and neither will you pay those Fifth Avenue prices at Wal-Mart.

So decide first whom you are in business to serve. To discover your best target market, take a financial survey of you practice. 80% of your business will come from the top 20% of your patients. Once you know your direction, write down your goals on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly basis. Then map out strategies to achieve those goals.

Train your team

Positioning your practice and reflecting the excellence of the doctor requires the active participation of the entire dental team. It’s not just the dentist who should be selling dentistry; it’s the entire team! With contagious enthusiasm and compelling motivation, they need to know how to educate your patients and prospects about all that you can do for them.

You have a support team—use it! The dentist must of course do diagnosis, treatment and everything else legally demanded of the practitioner; but the team can and should be doing everything else. This takes the pressure off the dentist and allows him to do only the things he does best—things that are the most profitable for the practice at the moment.

If you don’t think that your team is capable, consider this: proportional to the level of education necessary to do the job, each member of a dental team enjoys better pay, better benefits, better hours, and better opportunity for growth than almost any other occupation. That’s what you’re offering—the chance for them to fly with eagles. If your present team’s not ready for the challenge, it may be time for a turkey shoot.

Market the practice

Take full responsibility for educating your community about the benefits of your dental practice. While advertising can be beneficial, you’re much better off, especially when you know your niche, with powerful word-of-mouth from your town’s influencers. You’ll get a lot of dentistry when a well-respected individual in the community recommends prospective patients. The single biggest source of recommendations comes form influential females.

Develop patient rapport skills

The general public doesn’t know an impacted molar from a TMJ disorder. They make buying decisions about their dental health based not upon dentistry, but upon how they feel when they are in your office and in your care. The most necessary ingredient in closing a dental case presentation is trust—and the source of that trust is the diagnostic excellence of the doctor. Nevertheless, that is exactly what so many dentists undermine when they fail to tell patients everything they need to know in the initial consultation.

Some dentists are so crippled by “approval addition” that they couldn’t lead a group in silent prayer! Fear of rejection has turned many into accomplices of supervised neglect. After all, patients are healthcare consumers who only know what you tell them. How can you expect people to buy solutions to problems they don’t perceive they have? Your fear of being the messenger of bad news anticipates and stimulates an adversarial relationship. Instead, learn how to deliver the whole truth and then ask the patient what’s getting in the way of getting the work done.

You’re not alone. Nine in ten dentists practicing today are handicapped in the most basic of all dental procedures: giving patients a full comprehensive examination and then communicating the actual and complete work they need.
Furthermore, research indicates that only 15% of success comes from technical skills; 85% is due to the people skills developed in order to deliver technical know-how. With so many new techniques and advancements in the industry, it is even more incumbent upon the dentist to learn how to educate patients and to speak their language.

Get systematic

Dentistry relies on procedures that are tried and true. Replace the guesswork in every aspect of the day-to-day running of the office with proven and replicable systems. Asking for referrals, solving employee problems, dealing with objections to treatment, avoiding no-shows, tardiness and cancellations, making use of the media to promote the dental practice, even answering the telephone—these skills and techniques demand the same degree of concern, and planned presentation, as any other dental procedure.

For example, in spite of the fact that the telephone provides the primary means of exchange between the practice and the outside world, it still remains the most misunderstood, misused and underutilized tool for marketing and communication in the entire office.

Success over the long term from any business is insured when procedures are in place for every aspect of the life of that business. Without a system of inspect-&-expect, in which every member of the team understands their role, the office is as doomed to trouble as the doctor who performs the most sophisticated restorative treatment on periodontally hopeless teeth. Make sure everyone on your team understands that the patient sitting in your operatory is really 250 people—because that’s the number of people that social scientists say that person is likely to influence. This is part of “NEER” marketing—your practice benefits by leveraging the Naturally Existing Economic Relationships in your town. NEER will be a source of success in your practice and be a source of enormous personal satisfaction.

Be a research artist

Healthcare is undergoing enormous changes and dentistry is no exception. Don’t get caught playing someone else’s game. These six action steps are just a few ideas to help you stay focused. Research all your options. Get a plan.
In an environment this volatile, your best position is to develop pro-active, not reactive, strategies. Don’t take a wait-and-see attitude. Stay active. Stay focused. Call your own shots. Whatever you do, make sure you move forward …

and get in the game.

If you would like to learn more about Dental Boot Kamp (www.dentalbootkamp.com) or the Crown Council (www.crowncouncil.com) contact gregs@dentalsuccess.net or call 800-460-3838 x106.