There is one investment you make in your practice every single day that far exceeds all other. Of course, that is your team of people.
There’s nothing you can do to more reliably improve the quality of your outcomes with patients and the profitability of your practice than elevate your team’s performance because it has a multiplication effect.
Very few practice owners have the proper mindset about this and it’s a key differentiator between the always-thriving and just-surviving practices. To begin with, most see the team as a line item on the expense report and the largest deduction from their profit.
As with any business, if they are the right people, in the right places, doing the right things then they are assets driving growth of the top line revenues.
Furthermore, as the team member becomes more proficient and valuable, they are able to increase bottom line profits as well. They become more productive, achieve more output in less time, produce more dentistry at the same cost, and thus deliver higher value to the business.
If you want the most advanced strategies to get more out of your people, how to keep your winners for life, and build a dream team you can’t wait to work with every day – then save your seat for my upcoming Live Masterclass. I will take you through exactly how to do that no matter what the makeup of your team and the state of your practice is today.
Your people are either the greatest weakness and stressor or they are your most valuable asset and your profit-multiplier. Let’s unlock their full potential.
Learn More About the 4-Hour Live Masterclass…
It doesn’t matter if it’s a hygienist or clinical assistant or someone who ensure your schedule is productive or closing treatment or bringing patients in through the phone – every single team member has the potential to create more dentistry every single day.
It’s your responsibility to identify, nurture, and cultivate their value. Certainly, each person should have a path to grow, clarity of their goals, a plan to succeed, and the tools and support to achieve it.
On the flip side with the Hygienist I also hear complaints about the amount required to have one these days in certain places or everywhere at this point and the real facts are no matter what the investment in the hour for the hygienist to be there beats the alternative because it’s a net sum gain no matter what.
Let’s take the hygienist as example, they are making you money with routine cleanings but then you can layer value with education, retention, referrals, reviews, and procedures through the creation of opportunity by helping patients move down their pathway to health.
You can apply this to every single position in your practice. This is how you take a practice and multiply the profit without multiplying the people (or adding overhead) because you layer the value and you generate more production out of each team member.
Most doctors just hire people and plug holes by putting people into positions instead of training and growing the person to understand the real objectives and (keyword) opportunities of each position. They should understand how valuable they are and how valuable they can become if they level up and learn to execute on greater priorities than just task-based activity within the position they fill.
Think about it this way… just like your schedule, you can fill it with anything and you’ll have a patient in the spot, but if you fill it with the right patient that appointment will be more valuable for the exact same time.
That is exactly like your team members with their spot in your practice. They can fill a position or they can grow the position. They can check off tasks, take up space, use up time, and get through the day or they can achieve valuable outcomes and be a more significant contributor to the practice.
I actually laid out for you a few critical paradigm shifts and mindset adjustments directly related to your team a few weeks back, so I won’t completely repeat those here.
Even what you consider to be your weakest team member can still be a creator and trained to find opportunity. More importantly, they can help make other people more valuable by doing things that elevate those around them.
Some people are simply support players and that often is a key to profitability. Knowing how each person fits in, where their strengths lie, and what their core responsibilities are allows for everyone to be focused on the highest and best use of their time.
This is true for a team of 3 or 30. Everyone must know how they fit together, how they are interconnected, and how they contributed to one another’s success. Not to mention, this lets everyone to feel they matter and realize they are important.
Now, we are starting to build a championship team. You have your all-stars, your support players, and your coach. Next, we execute a game plan to score points.
And remember, championship teams never confuse activity with accomplishment. You should ask your team right now whether they want to have a ‘good’ day or if they would rather ‘win’ the day. I’d challenge you to walk through every single aspect of your practice and sit down with every single team member in order to find the switch that moves them from activity to accomplishment.
Do they clearly understand the goal of every action, what they must achieve to make everything else in the practice work, how they can help every other team member be successful, and most importantly how their role leads to greater patient health?
This is where you find powerful leverage in your team members. In fact, they could do a lot less in a day and still actually be worth more to you if they get this right. It’s not about what they do (activity), it’s about what outcomes they produce (accomplishment).
Finally, that brings me to two bold statements to conclude this week.
First, your people are the most profitable part of your practice if you have the right people, in the right places, doing the right things. Once you that in place, you want to establish built-in accountability for them to self-monitor and then have some checks and balances with other team members.
Secondly, you can achieve zero turnover (though that is not the point in and of itself because people’s lives do change). The key is to keep those all-stars for life and have the ability to upgrade on your terms. You want to attract and keep people who will be fulfilled in their role, attached to your larger mission and purpose, and desire to have an impact in patients’ live – all beyond just being paid.
So, your challenge today, as a profitable practice owner, is to redefine what accomplishment looks like for every team member, make sure they know how to achieve it, layer their abilities to create new opportunity, and become more profitable by leveraging their time to bring greater value to your practice.
It’s a profound and important concept very few ever get: turn your team from an expense to an income-producing asset. That’s how you multiply the profit from your people and win the day.
This is the last call for the few remaining seats in my upcoming Masterclass. It is the experience you need to move your practice forward towards the future you want.
I’ve put everything together into one powerful program to help you Future Proof Your Practice and protect it from the economic and industry forces threatening to derail your success. This live Masterclass is your path to a more prosperous and predictable future…
