As we make our way through the four pillars of leverage in Dentistry, I’m excited to move to the ultimate scoreboard. The Money. Few are willing to say it and yet those same people are the ones that complain most about it.
If you just accept, guilt free, the responsibility of the financial health and take ownership of your own profit then you’d be surprised about how much easier it is to facilitate the growth that results in piles of money left over at the end of every month to show for your work, expertise, sacrifice, and most of all investment.
I’m here to tell you while the diagnosis and case acceptance are the difference makers to overall practice growth, the next two pillars are the ones that will show up in your bank account more than any others.
With every move forward in leverage you find you must break-out of your limiting beliefs in order to go dramatically and assertively against the grain, opposite the norm, skip what is easy, bypass mediocre, and commit to never again accepting conformity or status quo.
The greatest limitation on your practice growth is constrained by time. (In rare cases, some practices are limited by their physical space but simply means maximizing their time value is even more critical.)
Everyone’s time, but specifically your time, is what will give you the greatest multiplier of your own success.
Case in point… when practices are fixated on production, they aren’t focused enough on creation and therefore their production value becomes stymied by the size of the treatment plan, the value of the vision, and the scope of the overall dentistry.
When you slow down and invest more time in diagnosing and case acceptance, you have more valuable dentistry to be placed into your time compartments and you result in a greater return on your time in your practice.
People are never the limiting factor. Not team and not patients. It’s time – the hierarchy of your focus, the prioritization of your efforts, and execution of responsibilities by your team that dictates what your practice (and therefore your time) is worth.
Today, we are talking about how focusing on the money will not only result in increasing the value of your time but also increasing the amount of dentistry patients receive.
Show Me the Money
Is all about shifting 180 degrees the flow of the money in your practice. For most reading this, you already understand the concept because as soon as you decide that money will flow before dentistry and you will not be beholden to patients or insurance – you take back control over your business and practice on your own terms.
Mastering pre-payment on total complete health treatment plans is the single most advantageous ways to explode beyond the four walls of your practice, exponentially increase the value of your time, and ultimately drive more bottom-line profitability to your business than you have ever imagined possible.
Yes, the dentistry must get done and we will focus on it, next week.
This week, we want motivated patients paying for it so we can schedule and produce on demand.
The reason why this is so incredible is because money has no walls around it, no constraints attached to it, no boundaries stay within. It doesn’t take more time or effort to talk about $5,000 over $500, $50,000 over $5,000. Yes, of course, the sophistication of education, patient experience, concerted efforts, level of pre-work, and patient relationship must match – and I would say better yet exceed – the value exchange you are expecting. None the less, the same new patient experience, pathway to health consultation, engagement of x dollars of dentistry all can happen without barriers or limits on your time.
This is why the value of creation (that’s the maximum case acceptance out of the total value of diagnosis), will liberate your practice.
The reason practices get in their own way with this is simply preconceived ideas or limiting beliefs or fear of criticism or insecurities or assuming patients will resist… otherwise known as excuses of the mediocre.
If you want to be a commodity – operate like one.
If you want to be a premium, authority, in demand doctor – operate like one.
Ask for all the money all the time just like you must present all the treatment all the time.
In the morning huddle, you know if patients owe balances, they must be paid. Otherwise, you have accounts receivable and statements and follow-ups and all this stuff that is a total waste of time because it takes away from the experience, from the relationship, from the creation of opportunity and the cultivation of value. Don’t get stuck playing bookkeeper and cashier.
Instead, secure money in advance without apology and start providing a premium experience and avoid the extra work of collecting arrears.
Anything that is in the way of you and your team allowing for seamless flow of cash through your practice you must fix. If not, you’ll continue to be held back, short changed, and stuck beneath your potential.
This could be delayed treatment plans. It could be patients not pre-framed with proper expectations. It could be people too busy, distracted, confused, unfocused on the most important objective of getting paid to deliver dentistry.
It’s not because the money is more important than the patient – in fact – it’s because the patient is more important than the money. If we don’t secure the money, we now have to take time and attention away from the patient and make it about the money when it could have been handled easily in the first place.
This will tell you exactly where things are breaking down because you will see small deposits or little tiny appointments instead of multiple visits and treatment bundled up and pre-paid for.
You can pretend but you can’t hide behind the financial results of pre-payment. It shows us the outcome of the clinical integrity and communication of the clinical team in addition to the outcome of the business integrity and communication of the business team.
Find a way to level up and leverage the way money moves through your practice and how you get paid on your creation…
If you are getting deposits today, go for the whole thing. If you are not, then start.
If you are getting all the money up front now, bundle more treatment and/or raise your fees.
If you are getting stages of payments, give incentive for full payment.
Simply ensure everyone is on the same page, unified in objective, and most importantly confidence with this approach.
Finally, track it just like you would anything and everything else. It’s the only way to continually improve.
Now imagine this: once this is at a level of mastery and is fully incorporated from systems and protocol position… your collection goals (which always have been tied to your production goals), are now tied to your diagnosis and case acceptance goals.
If you diagnosis $25,000 or $50,000 or $100,000 a day, you are now setting your collection goals to match. Or at least some percentage of this plus whatever percentage of dentistry hasn’t been pre-paid that is your production goal for the day.
Now you’ve got a practice multiplier effect that puts you in the money business. Not only is that one profitable, it’s also much easier to make your dentistry happen exactly the way you want.
As I always say, it’s not supposed to be what the patient orders – it’s supposed to be what the doctor orders. When you have a money first practice, it becomes far better for everyone delivering the dentistry and of much greater significance it becomes far better for patients as more comprehensive dentistry is being delivered.
Do the math. Show me the money. Watch your profit soar. And witness happier, healthier patients as a result.
And that leads us full circle to changing people’s lives through the masterful dentistry you deliver… ideally as much as possible in as few visits as possible pre-paid by vision, not visits, by total pathway to health, not procedures. We’ll go there next week.
