by Karah Karah | Mar 6, 2015 | Bold Biographies
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Quotes & Notes:
- Work smarter and not harder.
- E + P = O or Any event that is in your lifetime + your perception = Outcome from The Energy Bus by Jon Gordon.
- But one of the things I hate to say is and it proves my point later in life, about working smart and not harder, is that I told myself I do not want to work Fridays. My dentist doesn’t work Friday, I’m going to be a dentist.
- My mom, she is a lady that always put me in check. When I come home from school I always had to do my homework right away. No TV, nothing until I did my homework.
- If I have to do something, I get it done right away, no procrastinating because it nags at me and makes me uncomfortable.
- My dad said to me, “The world is full of information and it is up to you to learn it.”
- It all comes down to information. And if you take the time to learn the information, whatever risk of situation coming at you, you can abate that risk.
- The whole other aspect of learning to be a leading is so important.
- Address objection before injection.
- You have to want to know what’s going on, and as long as you are not super crazy you can work these patients through and they won’t have the stress and you won’t have the stress.
Going through dental school, grades are important, but no one ever asks you about grades. It’s more about being efficient in what you do, getting it done in the right way. You’ve got two years of clinical dental school. I would have used those years to better learn how to talk to my patients.
- My first job out of dental school was a fee for service dentist and it was all I knew.
- Vision is very important, for if you don’t have a vision of what your goals are, or what you’re true desires are, you never work towards it.
- If you know what your goal is, just go for it.
- Everyone talks about efficiency and increasing your speed, and I certainly agree with that. Now in my practice I don’t have to be efficient.
- “You should do whatever you do that makes you sleep well at night.”
- People always ask me, “Why don’t you work a little harder, make a little more?” I don’t want to. This is my goal. Here I am at it and I love going to work.
- A lot of times when there is a staff management problem, it may be because they didn’t understand what was going on. Maybe you didn’t inform them of your expectations. They can’t read your minds.
- Dentistry is a lot of psychology, it really is.
- If you can read a patient, you can connect with them. You can make them feel more comfortable, and if you can be more comfortable with them then you guys can get on the same level and actually figure out what is what.
- There are three tiers of types of patients. There’s the bottom that focuses on pure cost. There’s the top tier that value customer service. And then there’s the middle tier which is like the PPO tier which is like, “Hey you know what, I value quality but I am swayed by price also.” If you understand the market and the tiers of the market and understand the market, then you can absolutely be a fee for service dentist.
- If I have a failure, or something that doesn’t go as planned, I might be bummed out at that moment, and I might blow on it for a short period of time. But ultimately I view it as an opportunity to find the solution and fix the problem.
- I am scared about being complacent, I never want to be complacent.
- We make decisions every single day of our life. You hold the power. Don’t hold the economy, external forces for your situation in life.
- Dr. Tuan Pham would suggest every dentist read The Energy Bus, and Crucial Conversations.
If you want to learn more from Dr. Tuan Pham then you can visit at www.dentalmaverick.com or send an email to [email protected].
Be sure to check out Dr. Tuan Pham’s interview with Dr. Howard Farran.
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by Karah Karah | Feb 10, 2015 | Magnificent Marketing
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Quotes & Notes:
- I believe that referral generation is the number one thing for building any person’s practice very very rapidly.
- We want to identify who our ideal patients are.
- You get those people to bring in their friends and families, and then you will have more of those ideal patients.
- We have to do everything we can to build trust. To lower the suspicion level and show that we are there for their best interest and not to just steal their wallet out of their back pocket.
We have an eight-step process where every step-point of the patient has a very set script and it’s choreographed really.
- We have to remember that this is a job interview for us. We want that patient to hire us for their lifetime.
- What we like to do is create a culture within our office that they look like “We know that you are the ideal type of patient but we want more patients like you.” To do this we have a built-in system.
- All we do is take our active patient base and we send them a letter with three referral generation cards inside. For each referral generation card, we have a referral reward.
- When people send in a referral we have a fishbowl on top of our counter. That referral gets dropped into the fishbowl and every three months we pull a grand prize winner out of the fishbowl with the referrers name and referees name and that person gets a grand prize.
- We have a quota every week to get three testimonials and three pictures with the doctors. We only get them with our favorite patients. And that makes it much easier on the staff.
- People will automatically assume you are busy enough and don’t need more patients unless you say you are never busy enough.
A simple thank you will sometimes go a long way.
- If you create this feeling for the patients that they are recognized and everybody on staff knows who they are, when they walk in they feel like norm from cheers, those are the people that will become the walking billboard. They are the rockstars, just because they feel like they belong there.
- If you want to learn more about what we talked about on the relentless dentist, be sure to check out Dr. Mark Costes book, Pillars of Dental Success.
- Be sure to check out the dental success summit, which takes place on March 20th and 21st in Scottsdale Arizona at the Scottsdale Resort, if you want to hear more from Dr. Mark Costes.
The website is dentalsuccesssummit.com. Have any questions? Then email them at [email protected].
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by Karah Karah | Feb 10, 2015 | Maverick Mind Shifts
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A brush with death brings about new life. Karah shares why it’s not how far you fall . . . it’s how high you bounce!
Quotes & Notes:
- Before that [when I had my stroke] I didn’t really know what it was. I thought that it happens to older people…what I realized is that when you have this thing when you are younger, you can have your life back again, and that’s really what has happened to me.
- I remember it all basically until I got there on the flight.
- I was so happy to see our friends and family [in intensive care] like you normally would be.
- I think you realize, that in those time frames it is amazing to have those people around you that you love.
- People sometimes will do anything for you. That’s how life works, that’s how people are so important in your business, in your life.
- Dr. Dave – “I remember some of the big wins and what the celebrations were. They went to go put a sock on, and you took it away and put it on your own.”
- I think you realize when you are in a lower place and life, no matter what it is, what can I do now? I never really thought why did this happen to me? It did happen to you.
- I think 95% of my speech or reading and writing are back.
- I think in some ways it is a matter of realizing that your life will be awesome at times and at times it won’t be awesome, and that is important.
- I when you look at your life, it is a matter of do I have my foundation clear, can I be authentic, can I be the person at work that I am at home?
I think it is about challenging yourself more each day.
- Life is about being forward thinking.
- I am working on meditation, for if I can be better within my body, for example, I can do a lot with other people.
- It is just a matter of be the mom that Bennett wants me to be.
- If you are in it and decide I don’t like this, then you can go beyond where you want to be.
- It’s not about what has been dealt to me. It is about what can I do about it.
- If you are a victim, then something beyond me is controlling me, and I don’t like that.
- I think I have realized that I have goals and I think I am allowed to do things now more than I ever was before.
- If you know what your gifts are, then use them.
- Excuses, oh I don’t like those words at all.
- Status quo, no. Whatever it is I just like to go beyond.
- Lifestyle design, I think it is really good that I create my life better than it was before.
- Epic life, I like that because I think you can get a certain energy from something like that.
- Regret, so I think everything that happens to us is good for us.
- When your family is in a situation like that, you just want to fix it.
- To use the word relentless, that’s what it takes to know what you will do what it takes.
- We all get sidetracked, with the interruptions in life, but it is important that we don’t lose it.
- “It’s not about how far you fall, it’s about how high you bounce.”
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by Karah Karah | Feb 10, 2015 | Magnificent Marketing
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Quotes & Notes:
- The bottom line is we have a huge bank of patients that fall out of our active patient base and never hear from us again.
- What we do is anyone who is past 12 months, we put them in a very specific system of reactivation.
- It is much easier to get that patient who has already been to your practice than some stranger to respond to some external ad.
- Generate a list of people that have been out of your office for more than 12 months, from newest to oldest. Then write a series of letters that say basically this:
- “Hey, this is Dr. David and we miss seeing you around here. We know that life can get away from you but we haven’t seen your beautiful smiling face for the last 12 months (or however long it has been). As a ‘get reacquainted offer’ we would like to offer you a free exam and x-ray if you come into your cleaning. So if you call before X date we will give you this free cleaning and x-ray.”
- So you want to reach out to these people four times reminding them that the deadline is rapidly approaching and that they can come back in.
- I spoke about my offsite assistant in a past interview with you. My offsite assistant is responsible for the birthday card program, the reactivation program, and the referral program.
These things really show the patients that you care.
- The ADA did a study and the top three reasons that people don’t follow through with an appointment or don’t go to the dentist in the first place are because of time, fear of pain, and fear of money.
- As far as money goes, we have flexible payment options that go as far as three months of internal financing.
- There are a million different ways to administer painless anesthetic. And if you can master the best way you will build your practice faster than any other procedure that you learn how to do.
- We have a ten-minute rule at our practice. We make sure that when the patient is out of the reception area, within ten minutes of their appointment time and greeted by some sort of provider. And then we always strive to get them out within that hour/ half hour allotted patient time.
- Be sure to check out the dental success summit, which takes place on March 20th and 21st in Scottsdale Arizona at the Scottsdale Resort, if you want to hear more from Dr. Mark Costes.
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by Karah Karah | Feb 10, 2015 | Prescriptions for your Practice
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Quotes & Notes:
- I believe that some doctors seriously undercharge for what they do. They make assumptions about what patients can or can not afford.
- The real reason I wrote this book is because of the small mistakes that these dentists and doctors make are costing them thousands and thousands of dollars.
- You learn all of the dentistry, but you don’t get taught communication skills at that university.
- Price is always an issue, but it is rarely the issue.
- Many decisions made around emotions, price is never an issue.
Report building is the single most important part of the ethical sales approach.
- You ask questions to really figure out what your patient wants.
- Prescription before diagnosis is malpractice.
- Just a 10 percent discount can equal as much as a 28 percent loss of net profit.
- If you are going to give a discount, at least tell them. There is only one person who knows if they have a discount, and that is the doctor.
- The biggest mistake you must not make is getting defensive.
- Self-confidence, you have to work on it every single day.
- Your patients don’t know how good your treatment is until they have experienced it two months after the fact.
If you want to learn more about Ashley Latter or his book and DVD you can go to ashleylatter.com and sign up for the free weekly newsletter.
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by Karah Karah | Feb 10, 2015 | Magnificent Marketing
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Quotes & Notes:
- One of the biggest mistakes I see dental offices make, is they will get all excited, maybe they read and article or maybe they pick up my book or a similar book about dental marketing or how to entice people to call your office and then they forget to even tell the staff that they are sending out these beautiful new ads or all of the offers that they are putting out.
- A big disconnect is that you need to get the staff on board.
- Rapport begins with the first time they pick up that phone.
- Keep it simple, maybe one or two offers at a time.
- Try to make sure there is a certain flow when they [receptionists] use when they answer the phone.
- Firsts things first, you have to make sure the person answer the phone is the right type of person.
- If you can’t get them to be a pleasant person on the phone then they might be sitting in the wrong chair. I am not necessarily saying that you have to let them go.
Know everything that is happening as far as your marketing.
- Categorize the call right from the beginning.
- The new patient takes precedence over everything else that goes on.
- Google call tracking.
- You can help your team just by letting them listen to themselves and they can be self critical.
- Any dead space is the opportunity to build more rapport.
- If you send a packet in the mail, with testimonials of 30 to 40 happy patients, that is pre-framing trust and that will decrease a lot of barriers before the patients walk in.
- When they walk into the office for the very first time, its so huge that you guys have a culture in place, in the Ritz Carlton they have the 5/10 rule.
- Any chance we get to dig into peoples personal life, we take it.
- We have 3,000 active patients at our office and 9,000 charts on the wall, so there is no way that we are going to remember the bits and pieces about each and every person. But our little prompt makes everything a lot easier.
- We have an offsite assistant, and this offsite assistant is in charge of our birthday card program. So what we do is we have a customized birthday card that each person signs in a different color ink. We have a relationship with the restaurant across the street, and that restaurant will give a free dessert to each and every person that comes in with this card.
- I think there is a time and a place when it comes to digital. I think there is a time and a place for each different type of media and I think it comes down to tracking what is more effective by doing certain types of surveys.
- Be sure to check out the dental success summit, which takes place on March 20th and 21st in Scottsdale Arizona at the the Scottsdale Resort, if you want to hear more from Dr. Mark Costes.
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by Karah Karah | Feb 10, 2015 | Bold Biographies
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Quotes & Notes:
- If you are afraid of failure, you will never succeed.
- Just do it. The most successful people show up before they’re ready.
- The time is never perfect, or if that time does come around, it is so rare or it takes so long your whole life passes you by while you are waiting for it.
- If you wait one year to do this, you will be one year older. Why not just now?
- Dentists just wanted to be helped in a simple manner.
- Our, late grandfather, was a surgeon. I admired him, and one of the things that I liked about him, was that he never took life too seriously.
- Our mom is a serial entrepreneur, I mean ever since I could remember, she had so many businesses, she used to sell wigs from the house, she was the Avon lady, she got into housing, and she had several stores. As a kid I always saw that she always enjoyed what she did. And you have to have that entrepreneurship sense in dentistry.
Our father started from scratch, and owned, a shoe factory in downtown east Baltimore, for many, many years. Both of our parents were entrepreneurs and I think that really rubbed off on us.
- Being innovative is so important. You always have to change, you can’t be afraid.
- You have to be a team. In the most successful practices, everyone has to be involved.
- It seems like the offices that have the most laughter, are the most successful.
- The people that are truly happy with their lives are the most successful financially and the most successful in a loving fulfilling way.
You can learn more or reach Drs. Dave and Rich Madow at madow.com, with [email protected] or by calling 1 (888) 88-MADOW. For out of country listeners, they can be reached also at 1(410) 526-4780.
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by Karah Karah | Feb 9, 2015 | Magnificent Marketing
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Quotes & Notes:
- Make your phone ring with these smart external marketing strategies.
- Dr. Costes’ Dental Success Institute is dedicated to strategically improving the lives of dentists by increasing the profitability of their practices, eliminating their most common challenges and frustrations, while decreasing the amount of time they spend at the office.
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by Karah Karah | Feb 9, 2015 | Prescriptions for your Practice
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Quotes & Notes:
- She is the director of consulting at Classic Practice Resources and is really an authority on creating systems for practices that really help them develop efficiencies and all and all become more productive.
- We are sharing a lot of tools to help them be more productive and have more fun.
- They [cancellations and no shows] are causing a lot of stress, and they are having practices that have a lot of missed opportunities.
- They are just not good for the practice. And many times they can be prevented.
- The biggest reasons for broken appointments are, no real concrete financial arrangements, the patient just doesn’t value the service, and the appointment wasn’t really confirmed properly.
- When the patient starts asking questions, and if those questions don’t get answered, then guess what, they are a no show.
- First of all, a lot of patients are asking for automated confirmation calls, and some of them know how to utilize it.
- We have to keep a hold of the fact that people do not really love to go to the dentist.
- We recommend sending a physical card three weeks in advance, send an email/ text three days in advance when they can confirm, and if they don’t they get a phone call the day before.
- If they confirm and no show, from now on they get the call.
“The more control you have over your schedule the higher your production will be.”
- Determine how much every unit of time is worth in your practice for each provider.
- The worst thing you can do is when you have an opening, call others to try to fit them within that time, for you are teaching your patients that it is ok to cancel.
- “We have worked on this schedule, we know you need this root canal and we have worked it out for you to come in tomorrow at two.”
- For the appointment wrap up, the dental assistant or the hygienist needs to sit the chair in an upright position, and keep the patient seated, and you must leave the patients bib on. Once you take the bib off they think the appointment is over.
- Give them a summery of the procedure that happened today. Its an opportunity to reinforce the future treatment needs and benefits of returning to complete what was started.
- Always, always ask the patient if they have any questions.
- Never send that patient wandering down the hall. There is a hand-off.
- If you want people to keep their appointments, then they have to realize that it is going to get worse.
- They [receptionists] need to be able to control and minimize broken appointments, and this is done through their actions and words, and avoid using the word cancellation.
- The first thing I am not going to do is say “Oh that’s ok.” No.
- Show them compassion.
You can learn more at classicpractice.com, and you can reach Sandy Pardue with her number (800) 928-9289, and email her at [email protected].
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by Karah Karah | Feb 9, 2015 | Magnificent Marketing
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Quotes & Notes:
- You have to get in front of them. The old school advertising term is impressions. You have to get them to your website. You have to convert them, move them to the next step.
- Your four pillars are Visibility, Conversion, Followup, and Tracking.
- There is still a ton of dentists that don’t have enough web presence.
- Not only is google not telling us what people are searching for, what it is, it is a push towards their pay for click advertising.
- Google is moving towards this omnipotent google that predicts and just knows what people are searching for, where they don’t want people optimizing their websites.
- My father was a dentist. That is how I got into it myself.
- It’s unfortunate that you just can’t hang out your shingle and people will come to you, but its a factor of competition, and economics. Why would they want to choose you?
- You need to start advertising and go start advertising where people are looking.
People are looking overwhelmingly online. Do you follow consumer trends?
- What makes a patient want to go to you rather than the one down the road? What makes you different?
- When a consumer makes a decision, in the health care industry specifically, they’re looking at trust and perceived expertise.
- Talk to people in the language they are speaking.
- Do the same thing in your marketing. Speak, as if you are speaking to a person.
- Joe Polish: “Enter the conversation that is already happening. Step into the conversation that the patient is already having in their head.”
- Every dentist wants more time. Every dentist wants to communicate better with their patients.
- There are two big benefits to video, one technical and one not. The technical benefit to video is search engine ranking, its visibility. The other thing that video does is it humanizes dentists.
- If you want Medicare and Medicaid patients, put on your websites that you offer that, because you are going to attract those and repel others.
If you want to reach Colin Receveur is on the website, www.moreandbetterpatients.com and the number is on the website as well.
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