Build your A-star team
Your dental practice is only as good as the people who work in it, which is why you will be striving towards building your very own A-star team.
Having an A-star team will happen two or three times in a businesses’ lifecycle because exceptional people are very unique.
If you’ve had an A-star team you’ll know how good it feels and there’s no doubt you’ll want that back.
If you haven’t yet had an A-star team, you will absolutely be working towards one, and if you aren’t, you should be.
Here are some of the reasons why you might not have your A-star team yet, do any of them sound familiar?
Panic recruiting
When you’re short-staffed, it can often feel like a good move to quickly take someone on to fill the gap and many of us are guilty of panic recruiting. In desperation, it can be tempting to recruit a candidate after a great first interview, only to realise later on that they are lacking fundamental skills.
This results in the rest of your team carrying the new employee, and they are therefore a hindrance rather than a help. This ends up creating a very negative and demotivating environment.
Personality clash
You might feel like you have struck gold finding a candidate with all of the desired skills. In the process, this can mean that you may overlook their personality type and the result is hiring someone who clashes with the rest of your team.
This creates a bad dynamic, which can have a very damaging effect on the practice environment. It is often better to hire someone with a smaller skillset but a better personality fit for your business… new skills can always be taught!
Recruitment mistake
Have you made a recruitment mistake but feel too guilty to do anything about it? This happens quite often; while your gut instinct is telling you they are not right you just can’t bring yourself to take action.
You will find that your team bear the brunt of your mistake and they will end up becoming annoyed and resentful.
Find your A-star team
If you don’t have a thorough recruitment process, you will never achieve an A-star team. You need to attract the right candidates by showing off your brand and your business, your values and your culture. In order to do this, you need to incorporate the right processes for recruitment, from advertising through to interview stages.
So how do you do that? The great news is, I cover all of this (and more) in one of my Practice Club modules and it’s ready and waiting for you right now!
Laura
Your fortune is in your follow up
In my early career days as a dental nurse, we had a drawer for patient notes where a treatment plan had been delivered. It would get really full and I would go through it removing the notes when the treatment plan was around six months old. I’d take them to the practice manager and explain that these patients all had outstanding treatment plans… She told me to put them back in the main filing system every time.
I remember wondering how much money the practice could have made if she’d have just made time each week for one of us to call patients for follow up.
My question to you is this: Do you have thousands of pounds sitting in your files that you have forgotten about?
Be proactive, not reactive
When the diary is quiet, do you pull out a list of patients with outstanding treatment plans and ask someone to call them all? This is an awful task to be landed with because, at this point, most of the treatment plans will be a few months old and the person making the call has no momentum to pick up from.
Fear
I often notice that many team members fear being tasked with follow up, or they are uncomfortable with it. This is usually because it is done in a reactive way.
Follow up shouldn’t be scary. It should be proactive, allowing the team to contact the patient soon after their appointment while everything is fresh and the excitement around the treatment is still there. This makes the conversion much easier!
Systems
Effective follow up should be systemised for different types of patient leads. For example, enquiries from social media campaigns might be high volume but they tend to be poor quality. On the flip side, patients who have attended and had a treatment plan delivered are hot leads. You cannot apply a one size fits all approach to your follow up, you need to tailor it for different types.
In addition to this, I always recommend having a tracking system so that you know which patients are mid-follow up and which have been converted. Knowing the cash value of these conversions is crucial… when was the last time you checked yours?
How do I do it?
Constructing a proactive system for follow ups is vital. You need to build on the momentum you created while the patient was in the practice and convert that plan into a paid course of treatment.
Laura
Boost your dental practice with meetings
Does the idea of a practice meeting fill you with dread?
If so, you definitely aren’t doing them right, but believe me, you’re not alone!
There are many reasons why dental practices aren’t carrying out effective meetings, do any of these sound like you?
Negativity
Meetings should not be used to simply give your team a list of tasks to carry out, or to highlight something that hasn’t been done. Whether you are having a team meeting or a morning huddle, they should be upbeat, motivational, and everybody in attendance should be involved in what is happening.
Lack of frequency
Do you know how often you should have a practice meeting? Without regular meetings you will start to suffer from poor communication, a stressful working environment, system problems within the business, and a lack of development within the business and team.
Unsure about meeting content and structure
Many people don’t know what a meeting should cover. This can have a knock-on effect, meaning that meetings are then put off until problems build up, making it a huge drain on the practice manager to organise and deliver.
What type of meeting do I need?
With so many areas of the business, you need different types of meetings to ensure everything is running smoothly. Morning huddles are a great way to begin the day, but only if they are carried out properly. Team meetings are required for various reasons and can be one hour, half a day or a full day depending on what is needed. You also need to dedicate the time for management meetings, one-to-one meetings, and, if you have a treatment coordinator, you need TCO/clinician meetings for this job function work effectively.
The answer
As this highlights, there are various types of meeting that cover different areas of the business, and they are all just as important as one another. Setting a meeting schedule should be your first port of call so that everyone knows what it is, when it is, and what they need to be prepared for. Doing this will mean everyone attends with the right mindset.
Once you have ascertained the meetings you need and scheduled them, you need to plan your content. Meetings should never be reactive; they should have an agenda and outcomes.
Now you know what to do, how should you implement this?
If you would like help then do contact me as I have an online module for you that will explain everything you need to do, how to do it and will provide you with downloadable templates to help. Are you ready to revamp your practice meetings?
Laura
Effective time management
Do you constantly find yourself running out of time?
Do you have an endless to do list but nothing ever seems to get done?
We are all time poor, even me! Most of us are constantly flitting from one task to another without ever fulfilling anything, or we have multiple projects that need attention but we don’t know where to begin. I call this multi-failing. Sound familiar?
If, like me, you have tried various techniques to organise your working life to no avail, you probably feel stressed, overwhelmed and at the end of your tether. Add a pandemic into the mix and it’s a complete recipe for disaster.
Plan for problems
Planning every minute of your day might seem the most logical thing to do, but what happens when something goes wrong?
Sometimes, things happen that are outside of your control that will have to take precedence. It is important to remember that this isn’t your fault; but you must be able to be proactive and adapt to the situation. How do you do that when you have a diary that is jam-packed with everything else you need to complete?
I have discovered that the key is allowing time in my diary for things to go wrong. There is never a week that goes by when things don’t crop up unexpectedly that require my immediate attention. However, having time allocated for problems means that I can resolve these, re-juggle everything else and I’m still on track.
Constant interruptions?
We all need to have protected time. This is especially important for practice managers who will undoubtedly be juggling a variety of tasks in any given day. Having an open-door policy is wonderful for communication but terrible for allowing you to attend to your workload.
Put some ‘do not disturb’ time in your diary and ensure your team know that you may only be contacted if an emergency is happening. During this time, be proactive and don’t procrastinate! It’s your golden hour for ticking off that to do list.
If you would like support with time management you can access my online time management module for £25. Click here to purchase.
Laura Horton