I hope you are having a wonderful December and finishing the year in an exciting way! A few weeks ago, I talked you through a successful and productive Huddle step by step and point by point. That should have resulted in more dentistry per day being scheduled and more patients moving forward with healthy decisions every day of your clinical week.
Today we are going to revisit both the Huddle and the Conclusion to the day, to bring this full circle. As we wind down the year, I want to make certain you have the key components to ensure your day is successful and that each team member is working towards the goals you have set for your day.
There are five keys to a successful day in order for you to have the structure necessary to identify who, what, why is going well and who, what, why is not working out so well.
The Five Keys…
1. Positive Start to the Day.
This is inside of the Huddle, usually at the beginning or the end. A fully focused team who is uplifted to the challenge of the day with belief and awareness that the power and the success is in their hands and nothing else is needed but everyone doing their best with their patients.
Motivation never gets old. The need for focused positivity will always be there at the start of every day.
2. Opportunity for the Day.
Again, this we have covered countless times and yet it is seldom done in a way that you could call a professional approach where people are taking seriously the point of the day which is to get results.
In order to do that, you have to be prepared and you have to identify in advance the opportunities to score points, to make patients healthy, to take advantage of the flow of people through your practice and build on the relationships you have created.
This is also critical because if you are lacking opportunity for the day then there are things that can be done to offset that (phone calls, comprehensive exams on patients of record, family member referrals, visiting businesses and offices around your practice nd many other resourceful things).
More on that another time.
3. Individual Goals for each Team Member.
I can’t emphasize this enough. Everyone must know what they are going to be accountable for on the day. They should self-identify their opportunities and their objectives.
Yes, this is something that should be pre-calculated as part of your daily formula for success in general terms… $5,000 out of Hygiene, $5,000 out of Restorative, $10,000 in new patient or emergency treatment opportunities, ortho, implant, smile makeovers, educated patients from each team member.
Every day will be different based on what is actually happening and who the patients are. However, it is easy and every individual Team Member’s responsibility to contribute to the overall goal of the Practice.
If they don’t know it, have it, own it; then obviously it is not going to happen. At least not on purpose or consistently anyhow.
4. Recap at the end of the day. The conclusion and debrief.
I have talked about this before and it warrants an entire Weekly Huddle for another time in the New Year. The bottom line is this: you can’t start the next day without ending this one.
You basically repeat the 3 steps listed above that are part of the Morning Huddle at the end of the day but in reverse order.
Celebrate Victories. Assess Opportunities Seized and Converted. Tally up the Goals Achieved. Prepare for Tomorrow. Rinse and Repeat.
In larger practices, this could be done by department or it could be done with the Leaders only.
You absolutely have to convey and relay information to the Doctors about what their own outcomes were for the day and they have to be held accountable as to their responsibilities for their contribution to the day also.
This leads us to the one every practice big or small, growing fast or living in stagnation, seems to underutilize…
5. Follow-up and Follow-through on all of the above.
It is not enough to talk through the day and then move on. The point is to take action on what has happened.
A patient said yes, wrote a check, is excited about the treatment conversation for the day. They get a hand written card or a call or a letter or a gift or whatever. Patients through treatment get a call or a card or a gift or whatever.
Each treatment opportunity out of each column with each Team Member have to be allocated for and tracked so that someone else now has passed the ball and is going to follow-up to tail the treatment conversion and continue nurturing the relationship.
There has to be a “what’s next” and at the very least an understanding of what happened today and what that means as a result.
If you want to be ultra successful and hit the levels that most only dream of or talk about or probably can’t even comprehend – then you have to be willing to do what others don’t so you can have what others won’t.
You only need to remember this: these five steps don’t create more work – they save a lot of wasted effort and they keep you from doing things that get you no results. These are the differences between making a day count and just going through the motions to get a day over with.
Successful teams who put up big numbers and help patients in a big way follow these 5 steps and complete a successful day from start to finish.
They commit to winning and doing whatever it takes. Something to think about as the year prepares to turn over and you reflect back and look forward.
