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Getting Poised for Growth

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Humans are social animals. Social animals exist in tribes, and for the survival of every tribe you need order. For there to be order, there needs to be control. Social animals are hard wired for control, and because of this a lot of businesses become unsuccessful because the owner or CEO abhors delegation and feels the strong need to control everything. How does the CEO of a Fortune 500 company run her operation of 100,000 employees if she doesn’t delegate anything? It would be impossible! The leaders who rise to the top don’t fear risk or delegation – they retain and attract quality key people, give them responsibilities and then get out of their way. Success is counterintuitive to how humans operate.

Another great example is how most dentists imagine the way they are going to retire and sell their practices at age 65. At age 55 they start thinking, “Well, I’m going to retire in 10 years, so the last thing I’m going to do with this practice is invest in any new equipment or new technologies or implement any new techniques into my repertoire.” They’re content with milking the cow dry and refuse to feed it anymore oats, grass, grain or water. But here’s the amusing part: when it comes time for that dentist to sell her practice, she thinks it is going to sell for some huge amount, but it’s not going to happen. Nothing in the practice has been updated, new patients have dwindled to zero and it has become a business that nobody in their right mind would purchase at the price in the dentist’s head.

You have to realize the final 10 years that you are in practice are the most important years to double down on your business bet! In this time you can’t be milking your practice of what it’s currently worth only to sell it for pennies on the dollar. You need to modernize your practice. You need to move it from a lousy 1,000 square foot rental space on the third floor of a medical building to a premium 4,000 square foot building right out on Main Street with a huge sign. This is the time for you to upgrade from 2D X-rays to 3D cone beam computed tomography! This is the time to invest in CAD/CAM! In dentistry the only dogs that can’t learn new tricks are dead dogs!

If your practice is neglected because you milked it for the last 10 years, you will end up with an illiquid asset. You have to get your business poised for growth. You can’t sell a sinking ship. Just like with the sale of a home, when a window breaks, you don’t say, “Let’s just wait until two other windows break and then we’ll fix it.” No way.

Here’s another housing example tied to liquidity: a three bedroom, two bath house in Phoenix, Arizona, can easily sell within 30 days, but a 10 room house with an eight-car garage and a tennis court and Olympic-sized pool can sit there for three years because it is just not a liquid asset. Nobody wants it or can afford it. Along these same lines: the corner commercial lot on the corner of 1st and Main, you can sell in a heartbeat for premium price. But if you go just 300 yards down the street either way, you might be looking at half the price and, worse, you might never be able to sell it. I mean there are intersections in Phoenix that are still vacant from when I moved here 25 years ago because they just weren’t perfect. This is why location is key! So if you’re renting in a medical building or you aren’t set up on a great location, you need to be poised to sell, so get moving!

Here’s something else you need to think about if you’re considering retiring and selling your practice in the next 10 years: interest rates on CDs right now are at two percent, so that means for every million dollars in cash you have in the bank, in government bonds or CDs, you are going to make $20,000. Let’s say the average dentist makes $140,000 dollars a year. That means they would have to have $7 million in cash in a two percent government bond or CD at Bank of America or Chase to maintain their income. That is just not going to happen. I don’t know of too many dentists that can walk away at 65, sell their practice and have $7 million in cash earning two percent.

If you’re a renter and you sell your practice for $400,000, that’s it. That’s all you get. But if you owned your practice and you owned the building, you could sell your practice for $400,000, but keep the building, so you would charge rent to the new dentist who purchased your practice. Every year you can adjust the price of the rent based on the Consumer Price Index, and over the next 10 years, you could earn an additional $400,000. Then, maybe, at the end of the 10- year lease, the new dentist wants to buy the building. Then you finance that to the new dentist and you end up with yet another 10-year income stream. Think about it: the renter made $400,000 and gave half of it to Uncle Sam, so she’s sitting there with $200,000, which at two percent is making $4,000 a year. At that point the renter dentist is going to have to go be an associate somewhere else (at age 65) in order to live the way she did when she was practicing! So instead of continuing to rent the space for your practice, you need to get poised for growth. Buy that premium property on 1st and Main or a 4,000 square foot building right next to a WalMart, then sell your practice and rent out your building to earn revenue the smart way.

But this only applies to dentists who want to retire. Me, personally, I never want to retire. Sure, the first year of retirement is fun – you get to golf all the time and go fishing. It’s like a really long vacation. But by the second or third year of retirement, you start to see some dysfunctional behavior. There’s no passion for life. They let themselves go. They don’t have a reason to shower in the morning, let alone get out of bed. Here’s something you should consider if you’re actually considering retirement: don’t retire! I’m serious! There are 5,000 new dental school graduates entering the dental profession every year and they’re looking for a job. These kids are so desperate for a job, when the government asks them to join the military and sit on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the Pacific Ocean or Afghanistan, it sounds really enticing to them. And I hear the excuse all the time from dentists in rural areas that they can’t find an associate because they practice in Middle of Nowhere, Montana. Really? You can’t convince someone to stay in America where nobody’s shooting at them but the government can convince them to practice in Iraq? Stay in practice and be a mentor for crying out loud! Do you know what your unique selling proposition is to these new grads? Do you know what you have to sell more than anything? You! You get out there, you get poised for growth, you go to the finest finishing schools in America like The Pankey Institute or Spear, you get your practice to the very top of your game, and then you get your pickings from 5,000 graduates, some of which are seriously considering going into the military and practicing dentistry in some third world country. Instead you could just reach out and say, “Hey you, new grad, come work for me. You’ll probably look back on this decision when you are 65 years old and realize it was best decision you’ve ever made, because I’m going to teach you how dentistry gets done. It’s all going to be cool, we are going to have a good time working together and you are going to become a very successful dentist.”

Best Tips for Better Practice in 2013

Dentaltown Magazine wants to know what you’ve done this year to make your practice the best it can be! Visit www.dentaltown.com/BestTips2013 to tell us what you’ve done to improve your practice. Keep your eyes peeled for the December issue of Dentaltown Magazine and your tips could be featured in that issue. One lucky contributor will be drawn to win a copy of Dr. Howard Farran’s One-day Dental MBA DVD.

See more at: http://www.dentaltown.com/Dentaltown/Article.aspx?i=334&aid=4538#sthash.iedaYMzG.dpuf

Dentists are Still Doing Way Too Many Three-Unit Bridges

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Dr. Carl Misch, who is regarded by many as the number-one implantologist in the world today, (and who just filmed a series of four awesome online CE courses for Dentaltown.com), wrote in his book Dental Implant Prosthetics that the 15 year survival rate of implant restorations is 95 percent and for a three-unit bridge the survival rate is 74 percent. In this day and age, dentists really have to ask themselves, “If an implant and crown has a 21 percent higher success rate over a three-unit bridge, why are we doing so many three-unit bridges?”

Insurance Coverage?

Is it because insurance still doesn’t cover implants? We all know that’s not true! Twenty-five years ago, when I opened my Phoenix, Arizona, dental practice – Today’s Dental – almost zero insurance companies offered any coverage of dental implants. Today, based on the insurance plans that we have verified and have in our system at my practice, we have come up with the following percent of insurance plans that have implant coverage:

  • Delta of California 86%
  • Metlife 76%
  • Delta of Arizona 74%
  • Aetna 53%
  • Cigna 35%
  • Humana 18%

When I started my practice in 1987, implants were not a covered benefit under most insurance plans, but today, we are seeing an upward trend in insurance companies realizing the benefits of implants; such as, preserving tooth structure and making it virtually impossible for decay to form. With more and more insurance plans covering dental implants, it can’t possibly be a good enough reason to not be placing implants.

Pricing and Presentation?

Here’s another reason why we might be placing way too many three-unit bridges: price breakdown and case presentation. When I graduated from dental school in 1987, I argued with a lot of local Medicaid plans because coverage of an extraction was $2 cheaper than a filling. Moms in lower socioeconomic brackets had the economic incentive to pull their babies’ teeth instead of fixing them, just because it was cheaper. I always thought the extraction should cost $2 more than an amalgam filling, because when it comes to certain procedures for certain patients, affordability was always the key decision maker.

The same thing is happening with bridges vs. implants. Most dentists will offer their patients an exact flat fee for a bridge, and they’ll say they can prep it today and cement it in two weeks. Then when the patient asks about an implant, most dentists break it down to something like, “Well, um, it’s $1,500 for the implant and it’s $1,000 for the crown, but then we might have to do a bone graft, and we might have to do a gum procedure, and I won’t really know what we’re looking at until I pull the tooth to know how long this will take…” It’s a total confusing quagmire! The implant is the better option, but you make it so difficult for the patient to understand. I mean, I’m a dentist with an MBA and an MAGD and because of the way you present a bridge vs. an implant even I would opt for the bridge!

You need to figure out a way to explain that the cost of an implant is the same as the cost of a bridge. If you charge $3,000 for a bridge, then an implant should be $3,000 as well. Now, whether or not you have to do a bone graft or something more, that’s just the cost of doing business. Obviously some cases will be easier than others, but that’s life. It’s also the way everybody else does business. When you take your car in to fix your radiator, they’re going to do it at a flat fee. I guarantee some radiators are easier to fix than others – you’re not going to get nickel and dimed because your radiator was harder to fix than the last one they worked on.

You know what would help you place more implants in your practice? If your implants cost less than a bridge! They have a 21 percent better success rate, after all! You need to take the economic incentive to do the cheaper but less effective option out of the equation. If you tell your patients it’s cheaper to do an implant and a crown than it is to do a bridge, you’re going to be placing a ton more implants, doc!

Specialists?

I recently spoke about this issue with Dr. August de Oliveira, the author of Implants Made Easy, and he brought up a survey conducted by Straumann, which indicated the United States of America currently ranks fifth in total implants placed. More than 85 percent of general dentists in South Korea place implants, more than 50 percent of all general dentists in Europe place implants, and the most implants placed in the world is Israel. When I asked August why he thinks so many dentists still do bridges over implants he said, “It’s a loss in production if general dentists send out the implant case. Rather than learning how to do implants themselves, they do bridges and send out an occasional implant. That is changing as patients are getting educated on the benefits of an implant crown vs. a three-unit bridge.”

In America, culturally, we got into this groove where oral surgeons and periodontists place implants. GPs don’t want to do implants because it’s inconvenient, it’s a loss of revenue to send out, and you have to work with a specialist. If you’re not going to place implants yourself, you need to work with a specialist who will agree with your vision of a flat fee for all implants placed. If you charge $3,000 for a bridge, you’re going to charge $3,000 for an implant whether you place it or the specialist does. You want the safety of being able to tell your patients that they’re going to go to another doctor who will place the implant, it will be the same fee, and there will be no nickel and diming. If your specialist cannot work with the laws of averages like every other service industry does, then find another specialist! Either that or learn how to place implants. Too hard, you say?

Implants Are Hard? Really? In 2013?

I learned how to place implants early on in my dental career. I earned my Diplomat in the International Congress of Oral Implantologists (DICOI) and my fellowship at the Misch Institute. In 1987 placing an implant was hard. You had 2D Xrays, panos and PAs, and you never truly knew what was going on until you laid a flap. Today, with 3D cone beam computed tomography (CBCT), diagnosis is twice as easy – heck, even the software that’s been developed for these systems will tell you how long and wide the implant can be to place in your particular patient. You almost don’t need to think about it. Oh, and anatomical features that scared us to death back in the day, like the inferior alveolar nerve and the sinus, are all spelled out for you in a 3D image. You know exactly what you’re looking at before you even pick up an intrument. This harkens back to my May 2013 column “Is Dentistry Getting Too Easy?” It’s twice as easy to do a root canal today (with high-speed handpiece-driven NiTi files), and it’s just as easy to place an implant with the help of 3D CBCT.

It’s time we all sit back and rethink placing implants. Placing an implant today is so much easier than pulling a wisdom tooth – yet I know more dentists who pull 10 to 30 percent of their wisdom teeth but don’t place a single implant. I think that’s completely backward (and bizarre)! That’s like saying you can repair your car but can’t fix the chain on your bicycle. You need more skill to pull a wisdom tooth than to place an implant. With the technological advancements we have at our fingertips today, it just doesn’t make any sense why dentists don’t place more implants.

Remember the 4,000lb Gorilla in the Room

When it comes to the dentistry we do, nobody likes to talk about the 4,000lb gorilla in the room – mortality. The average man dies at age 74, and the average woman dies at almost 80. When grandma and grandpa go into the nursing home to live out their remaining days, all the dentistry we’ve performed over their lifetime crumbles and rots after 18 months. I’ve been a huge proponent of there being less inert and more bacteriostatic restorative materials in the dental market – and dental implants fit that bill. When I visit nursing homes, it’s sad to say that the lucky ones are the people who have dentures and implant-supported prosthetics. The people who have their mouths full of $20,000 worth of root canals and crowns are the most unlucky, because their teeth turn to mush from root surface decay. These people are too old and brittle to do any extractions or full-mouth restorative, and their home care is essentially nonexistent. You really need to start asking yourselves, especially by the time a patient turns 60 years old, are we really going to do a root canal buildup, a crown and a three-unit bridge instead of titanium implants, which the Streptococcus mutans won’t eat? Think about it.

In Summary

While I was wrapping my head around this issue, I talked to longtime Townie, Dr. Jay B. Reznick, oral surgeon at the Southern California Center for Oral & Facial Surgery, in Tarzana, California, and founder of OnlineOralSurgery.com. He sent me an e-mail that summed up the issue of why dentists don’t place implants more than bridges quite nicely. Jay says:

“A dental implant is designed to be ‘permanent,’ however there are a lot of factors, such as hygiene, patient general health and nutrition, systemic disease, local factors, age, implant positioning, prosthetic stresses and individual variation that will reduce the longevity. I always tell my patients, ‘Dental implants are as permanent as their “permanent” teeth,’ so they understand that even what nature gave them is not always perfect and can fail under the right set of conditions. A three-unit bridge is also meant to last a long time, but dental insurance companies will pay to replace a bridge after five to 10 years (depending on the policy), so that should tell you a lot.

“There are a number of reasons why dentists may choose to do a bridge over an implant. I think the biggest is still the misconception, especially in the older practitioners, that implant dentistry is too complicated. They also feel the bridge will be delivered sooner than in the case of an implant, where the extraction site needs to heal and the implant needs time to integrate. Right behind that is the economic desire to keep all the revenue within their practice, rather than sharing the case with a surgical specialist. Of course, that model is changing rapidly, as more and more general dentists are becoming trained and placing their own implant fixtures and then restoring them.

“We are seeing an increase in the number of dental insurance carriers that are covering implant treatment. They are usually the more expensive plans for the patient or employer, and reimburse at a substantially reduced rate from usual, customary and reasonable (UCR) charges.

“The only advantage a bridge has over an implant is that it is faster. The implant helps preserve bone and soft tissue architecture, is easier for the patient to maintain, and leaves a one-tooth problem as a one-tooth problem, rather than creating a three-tooth problem (which will become a four-tooth problem, and eventually a denture).”

It’s time to change the way we think about implants and the way we present this incredible option to our patients – the future of the dentistry we provide depends on it!

Customer service is not a department, it’s an attitude.

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Customer service is not a department, it’s an attitude. The purpose of a business is to create customers who go on to create even more customers through word of mouth referral. Every person on the team has complete control of their effort and their attitude, which will determine the overall office altitude.

Focus on Your Strengths & Delegate Your Weaknesses!

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Focus on Your Strengths & Delegate Your Weaknesses!

The 5 D’s: Design your plan. Drop everything else. Delay everything you can’t drop. Delegate. Do.

Let’s focus on the 4th D; Delegate. Let’s look at this issue together as if we were standing on the moon starring back at your dental office on earth. Can we at least agree on one thing, someday you will be passing on.

Ray Kroc started McDonald’s in 1954, died in 1984, yet today McDonald’s has over 33,000 restaurants in 118 countries. Sam Walton started Wal-Mart in 1962, the year I was born, died in 1992, yet today Wal-Mart has 8,500 stores in 15 countries. Today Ray Kroc and Sam Walton are gone but through their management teams and systems both men are still managing successful innovating profitable empires from their graves, yet you are alive, have only one dental office location, and still can’t delegate to anyone on your team to take over the responsibly and authority to run anything?

 

Why? Because you are a social animal. Like a dog, cat or an ape, you are hard wired at birth to organize your social group of monkeys without tails into strict hierarchies of organized control through fear, intimidation and violence.  Every organization evolves this way. The military has a 400 pound gorilla on top named The General, then delegates down the chain of command to the Captain, Officer, Private grunt. Religion does the same with Pope, Cardinal, Bishop, Priest, Altar Boy, Parishioner.
Much of our behavior is hard wired at birth and if we do not understand it we cannot be successful because a lot of success runs counter intuitive to how we were hard wired at birth from our 3.6 billion genes. Take “Lazy” for example. People are “lazy” at birth because the only reason we are here after billions of years of evolution is because we mastered how to burn less calories than we consume. When you see a lion eat an antelope in Africa what does he do next, jumping jacks and sit-ups, or does he roll over and sleep for 3 days? Your brain says sit on the couch and chill, while success says work harder and read more than anyone else for a decade and you will rise to the top of your game. Logic says avoid risk, success is counter intuitive because it demands risk for reward.

 

When I see a stressed out dentist, almost every time it is because they are not getting the support they could be getting if they delegated more to their team, and I mean, a lot more. So your staff runs out the door at 5:00pm while you stay behind in your office overwhelmed about your overhead, your cash flow, and trying to make payroll, let alone the bills. Should you focus on the bills or focus more on marketing? You know new patient flow equals cash flow. What about all of this new technology? Would CAD-CAM lower my lab bill even after I paid the monthly lease? Will insurance companies pay for the new 3-D CBCT or kick it down to a 2-D pano fee? What should I do? Should I just log onto www.dentaltown.com and surf 3 million posts all night, again?

 

How would Ray Kroc solve all of your problems, today? He’s dead! How would Sam Walton solve all of your problems, today? He’s dead too! They would delegate.  Most dentists have an amazing team and don’t even know it. You never have given your team a chance to rise and shine. The more purpose you give your team members, the more you delete to your team members, the more they all have a mission, and the more the more they will work every day with blood, sweat and tears.  You already have a happy to be a filling fixer, patient preparer, saliva sucking Dental Assistant, so why can’t you add Marketing Director to the title?

 

Every dentist is book smart or they never would have earned a Doctorate Degree in Dentistry. But the dentists who are also street smart usually make all of their dreams come true. Street smart farmers in Kansas where I grew up can fix any tractor with duct tape and WD-40. Street smart dentists can do everything faster, easier, higher in quality with lower cost. Why do so many dentists have to spend $5000 to fly to a course in an airplane, stay in a hotel, eat out at restaurants, miss their family for the weekend just to learn how to prep a veneer or occlusion?  Street smart dentists fly to the course via photons through the internet and do online continuing education on http://www.dentaltown.com/Dentaltown/onlinece.aspx. Our amazing, brilliant, genius Online Continuing Education Director Dr. Howard Goldstein DMD has put up a full curriculum of over 183 courses and they have been viewed over a half million times. The courses range from free, to $18 a credit hour, with a few a little more. The largest university on earth is the University of Phoenix Online www.Phoenix.edu because it provides the most value, education, for the lowest cost.

 

We have a full curriculum on everything you and your team need. Tell your new dental assistant marketing director to watch all 10 online CE marketing courses on dentaltown first so they can learn from the very best in dentistry. No need to reinvent the wheel. You can also see what the other 163,456 Townies think of them and their marketing ideas. You might want to have your whole team watch them together. Spring for a pizza and sub sandwiches and have a lunch in. I watch most of them on my iPad so I can lounge anywhere I want around the house.

Anesthesia (4)
CAD-CAM (7)
Cariology (3)
Cosmetic Dentistry (11)
Dental Ergonomics (1)
Dental Hygiene (1)
Digital Radiography (2)
Endodontics (10)
Ethics, Jurisprudence, and Malpractice (2)
Fixed Prosthodontics (4)
Health and Medical Topics (7)
Implant Dentistry (16)
Infection Control (3)
Laser Dentistry (2)
Marketing (10)
Minimally Invasive Dentistry (1)
Oral Medicine and Pathology (5)
Oral Surgery (4)
Orthodontics (9)
Pediatric Dentistry (1)
Periodontics (8)
Personal Finance (1)
Photography (2)
Practice Management (20)
Public Health (1)
Removable Prosthodontics (5)
Restorative Dentistry (33)
Sleep Medicine (3)
Substance Abuse (1)
TMD and Occlusion (7)

I always say you only mange 3 things: People, Time & Money. People are over 80% of the equation whether you are talking about your dental office or the Miami Heat who just won the big championship game in part because of the HR move to attract and retain LeBron James from Cleveland and other very important HR moves and decisions.
You may encounter the Peter Principle after you give a team member more responsibility and duties. The Peter Principle is the reality that team members will eventually be promoted beyond their level of ability. Employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence, meaning that they should never have been promoted in the first place. Now they have been promoted and are in over there head, so if their ego permits they need to be demoted back down to where they were before, but due to emotions and complex human feelings, when you do this they usually jump to another tree branch, scream, quit and then eat a banana.

 

But this is what you have to go through to realize that when you take endodontics and performing dentistry more serious than HR (Human Relations) then you will live in a constantly overwhelmed state of mind. Do you enjoy business stress? Why do YOU bear most of this stress. Why can’t you raise your hand and ask your team for help?

 

Everyone knows you never skimp on payroll when you own a NFL football franchise or a NBA team, yet so many dentists I know thinks they are over paying on payroll. You are only overpaying on payroll if you are not getting value for what you are paying for. The Miami Heat made money paying LeBron James $17.54 million, especially considering the Los Angeles Lakers pay Kobe Bryant $27.8 million.

 

Maybe delegating more to your staff will make you have an honest discussion about your team members.  Maybe you don’t have any LeBron James or Kobe Bryant’s on your team like I have HoGo’s, Jan’s and Lorie’s. Maybe you think and say you want to win the big game and be successful but your actions don’t match your words because you are not attracting and retaining star players. Is it because you skimp on payroll? Is it because you are a control freak and won’t trust them enough to turn them loose and set them free? Maybe you need more Dr Phil and less Dr Farran. Relationships are built on trust, respect and love. Are you treating your team members the same way in which you would want to be treated if the roles were reversed?

 

Hire people who are disciplined in their own right. The second you need to manage someone, you have made a hiring mistake.  Manage systems, not people. When you have disciplined people, you do not need hierarchy. When you have disciplined thought, you do not need bureaucracy. When you have disciplined action, you do not need excessive controls. Delegate. I know you can just do it.

The Perfect Dental Office Receptionist…

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The Perfect Dental Office Receptionist…

 

For years I have been saying that you only manage 3 things: People, Time & Money. Today I want to talk about people, specifically, the purrrffectt dental office receptionist. Just like your local professional sports team, trading up for the ultimate players is the name of the game. I want to share what we look for at our fabulous www.TodaysDental.com in Phoenix Arizona were we have been crushing it for over 25 years!

 

Are you tired of the front desk person who has to “Use” the bathroom just to trim her nails? My team can talk on the phone wearing headsets, which will totally free up both hands, so they can trim their fingernails, toe nails, or even apply mascara while booking a new patient!  Who needs to look at a computer screen if you can just remember the details for later while staring into a mirror plucking your eye brows? Did I say ‘Plucking”? I am sooooo sorry; you pluck a chicken and tweeze a brow. No one wants to show up at your dental office only to be greeted by a front desk woman with a 0.01 mm eyebrow hair out of line! GROSS!!!

 

Personal phone calls are much better than having the other front desk staff have to “Use” the break room to watch TV to hear about the finer points of personal life from Dr. Phil and Oprah when you could be loudly sharing salacious, interesting and 50 shades of sensational details of what is NOT working with you and your lover! This is what makes me want to start taping all phone calls at my office. “This Call May Be Recorded for Quality Assurance Purposes. Incase Dr. Farran’s DVD recorder is broken these calls will substitute for the Jerry Springer Show.
You need to find a receptionist who doesn’t need lunch or even a break. I want the purrrffectt dental office receptionist who can chow down a box of Cheez-It’s while checking people in, checking other’s out, putting the doctor’s needy wife on hold while trying to find her an alcoholic friend to hang out with on Facebook, while sorting insurance checks from the junk mail, while double booking the hygienist just to piss her off, while chugging down a Dr Pepper even if he wasn’t really a Doctor. YEAH Baby! We call her Dr. Multitask and she is the Chief Master Primary “Most Important” Player Goddess on every dental office team whether or not your walnut brain knows it or not! Probably NOT!!!  If you have a good one you should thank your lucky stars because I do every day!

 

How Do You Keep Employees and Prevent High Turnover?

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How Do You Keep Employees and Prevent High Turnover?

 

With pensions a thing of the past, most employees don’t have the mindset that they will work for you until they retire! So how do you prevent high turnover and keep those high-quality employees for the long term? Here are a few suggestions after hearing feedback from my employees for the past 25 years:

 

Corporate Culture: Providing a functional, organized and respectful corporate culture is key to retaining employees. If all team members knows what they are supposed to accomplish (goals and job descriptions) and you have functional, high-energy employees on the team who all abide by your Core Values and who are all striving for the same goals (mission statement), you will have a winning corporate culture and they won’t want to leave!

 

Pay Your Employees a Good Salary: You should strive at all times to have the best players on your team. Retaining those key employees means paying them well for giving 100 percent and striving daily to take your company to the next level. The key is having hungry, smart, dedicated, humble, well-incentivized people to make it happen.

 

Recognition: There are two components to recognition. The first one is rewarding someone for contributions and meeting business objectives, basically going the extra mile for the company. The second one is rewarding employees for their dedication or “years of service” to your company. Many large corporations have completely done away with service award recognition and it’s really a shame. I can’t tell you how many people I have talked to over the years who have decided to quit after 10, 15 or 20 years with one company because they don’t feel appreciated for their dedication. They have told me that receiving a corporate card and 10-year pin (for example) was like a slap in the face after dedicating that many years to one company. I know it’s expensive to have service awards in large corporations but they should find a way to make those anniversaries special for the employee.

 

Daily Recognition: We let our employees know their contributions matter not once a year but every day with a recognition program that allows employees to be nominated by their peers and their supervisors for going above and beyond, whether completing a big project or in a small way contributing to the success or culture of our organization. These nominations are posted continually throughout each quarter on a bulletin board in our break room. The one individual that stands out that quarter for his or her contributions receives a paid day off and we have a recognition lunch for all nominees and a drawing for gift card rewards. You must strive to celebrate success as often as possible and give your employees feedback daily. It takes work to have a program like this but it is so worth it in the long run.

 

Service Awards: Our service award program does include a small customized gift for each individual along with a monetary bonus based on years of service. The dollar amount of the award, in my opinion, isn’t as important as the fact these people are recognized for their dedication to the company. Our executive team takes it a step further by taking the individual to lunch with his or her team and presenting the service award. This serves two purposes: it recognizes the milestone accomplishment, but more importantly, it gives the managers/executives an opportunity to talk one-on-one with these individuals to find out how we are doing as a company, pick their brains for an hour in a relaxed setting to find out what they would like to see happen in the future and to get to know these individuals that are dedicating their lives to the company.

 

Remember the key is ensuring you have top-notch employees on your team – it’s an ongoing process as your company evolves. After you find the right team members you then need to reward them for their hard work and dedication – it’s a win-win in my book!

 

Think Logistics!

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A dental assistant should never leave the operatory once a procedure begins. Your biggest costs are labor, lab and time. Why do you slow down to get up out of the operatory to go get something? Every single thing you need for every single procedure should be carried in the operatory in tubs or already be in every single operatory. Think Logistics! If it takes you 90 minutes to do a crown your overhead is usually 65%. If it takes you 45 minutes it is usually 50%. Labor, your collection policy (not your fee schedule), and the time spent doing each procedure are the largest cost drivers in dentistry.

It takes six months to build a Rolls Royce and 13 hours to build a Toyota.

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Perform dentistry faster, easier, lower in cost and higher in quality and everyone wins! Focus on the rich classes and you will most likely be poor and eat with the masses! Focus on the masses and you will do so well you will eat and live with the classes! God gave you two eyes so you can keep one eye on your patients’ needs and one eye on cost. Lowering your cost gives your patients the freedom to save their teeth! Please share your amazing tips and ideas on how you perform the best dentistry, faster, easier and at a lower cost for your patients!