We are returning to a topic about return on investment inside of your practice. However, it’s in a different way that’s not often talked about or mentioned. Yet, it is actually one of the most important indicators and leverage factors for success in any business and especially Dentistry.
As you’ll remember, we did a deep dive webinar training on something I could have called “Return on Your Time” where we went through the actual engineering of your schedule and how to increase the value of your clinical hours and the value of your practice capacity in terms size, space, and people.
If you missed it, you can watch the on-demand replay now…
There is nothing that will determine your results in your practice and ultimately your prosperity and peace of mind than the value you extract out of your time. Except this – or I should say except them.
Your Team. The people taking care of your patients.
That’s right, your return on your team and the value you place in them (and subsequently they place on themselves), will become your greatest leverage factor or it will become your greatest limitation factor.
You get to decide if you want gain leverage from your team or if you want to be limited by your team.
And this does have direct implications into your Million Dollar Schedule and your growth potential as it goes far beyond just the obvious of a hygienists’ production or an assistant helping with ortho or having expanded functions.
Those are basic considerations that I assume you are already maximizing every team member’s skills, abilities, and contributions. If you aren’t (or even if you are), you should ask yourself what are each of your team members doing right now to advance their skills and develop themselves?
Of course, we make it easy with our Dental Success Today approach of constant and never ending improvement by placing our focus on your people and their personal development but over and above that, what skill advancement are they in pursuit of, what aptitudes are they honing, what abilities are they embracing?
And the same question applies to your team collectively and collaboratively. What are you working on together to improve on and expand your team’s value to your patients?
This can be and often is something clinically but what about in terms of process or procedure or education?
I frequently see practices that want better perio but have no structure or system for perio or worse yet have all of the above but are short on execution. Perhaps they have a new piece of technology but no approach to engage patients with it or one team member does but others don’t.
One of the most valuable exercises that should be done from time to time is a clarity of roles and responsibilities for every team member. You must do this transparently with everyone so that every persons combined equals the whole.
Don’t stop at just taking inventory of what is. The lessons learned are where are there gaps, what’s next, what can be improved, or what can each team member do to contribute at a higher level.
The question usually just isn’t asked and no plan is laid out to develop the people or the value of the people (which means the value of their roles and responsibilities).
To state the obvious, you can’t get more out of the same amount of time doing the same things. You have to do something more, better, faster, or at a higher level in the same time. Otherwise, your only option for growth is adding hours and volume; which is a contest where no one wins.
So, what does that look like from every single team member’s perspective as it relates to the position they own and the responsibilities they execute on?
This is the single greatest way to increase your practice performance, profitability, and consistency – by breaking free from any and all limitations on your time and space constraints.
It does always come back to and will always be about the people because the doctor is only one person. While you can create as much dentistry as you want through diagnosis and you can do as much dentistry as possible through bigger cases, you will only reach the levels of success as the people around you facilitate.
Besides, when each team member grows their value they grow their contribution and commitment to the practice. It’s not just about people being valued, it is about people being valuable and it takes both dynamics inside of the culture of your practice.
I’ve given you some assessment and thought-provoking questions. Now, here’s your list to execute on to get you in motion…
It is critical to make sure every team member knows what success looks like in their role and how their responsibilities are prioritized.
As an example, I always find it perplexing when I hear a practice not focusing on the schedule and having cancellations with nothing in place of it, simply because they were busy doing something else.
You should be thinking to yourself, “How can this be because nothing trumps the schedule – what could have been more important?” Obviously, anything time bound takes precedence over something else but they had their value and priorities out of order even though they were still “doing their job.”
In this case, they were doing the wrong job and instead of being valuable they were actually costing us and losing value.
It gets worse… what about when someone says they will have to call the patient later because they couldn’t get it done or were too busy. Too busy doing what? What could be more important than a patient in-person in the practice ready to make a decision and an investment in their health after having just made an emotional commitment and a clinical yes in the treatment room.
The answer is nothing.
And yet this happens all day long and you may not even realize it. It’s not like anyone will admit it because they know after the fact about the costly mistake but they confuse being busy with being productive.
This comes back to learning how to be more valuable with time and that means having a clear focus on what is most important.
This applies to minutes lost in doctor efficiency by leaving the room or by assistants not having everything ready. Minutes lost equal minutes with patients lost equal rushed patient experiences equal incomplete diagnosis equal less valuable dentistry in the schedule and diminishing case acceptance.
I long ago coined the term Value over Volume and it doesn’t just mean the actual number of patients it means everything down to the conversation and communication to the number of visits and dentistry and everything else.
At this point, I’ve given you two giant things that will serve as that rising tide and help you to get a greater return on your team and therefore a greater return on everything else.
Their minutes are either expenses or investments. And while dollar for dollar, in terms of revenue creation and production value, are not worth the same as your minutes, they do add up to outnumber your minutes by a giant multiple.
This week, we talked about both each person becoming more valuable in their skills and actual execution, as well as direct time management and task prioritization to create more valuable accomplishment with the time they have. These go hand in hand and they become multipliers whether it’s being more effective on every phone call or every patient engagement with photographs or not screwing up insurance conversations up front or breaking down treatment in the back.
Next week, we’ll move from return on your people to your treatment. We’ll have conversation unlike any that we’ve had ever before and bring these time components together into one giant leverage point of growth for your practice – all with working in the confines of your existing structure making your practice, time, energy, effort, skills, and knowledge worth more. Stay tuned.
