On the first day of the month we all face the same problem. We have about four weeks to make enough to pay the bills, and make a decent profit. Without the new patients and repeat visits of our existing patients, it is impossible to maintain our overhead and grow our practice. The Seven C’s of Demand should help you and your staff ...
Read MoreFAILINGS The nine most commonly cited causes of small business failure are: Lack of financial planning Absence of business records No understanding or use of business records Poor cash-flow management Poor debtor management Poor inventory management Poor costing-pricing Poor market research Over-borrowing Any ...
Read MoreI have been remiss. I should have done this a couple of years ago. Like so many things in life, it seems that only the squeaky wheel gets any attention. Max told me about this book called Getting Things Done by David Allen about two years ago and I immediately downloaded it on my Kindle and read it in one sitting. At the time, I created a ...
Read MoreThe title comes from a commercial on TV, but also has a level of application to most dentists I have met. In the commercial the wife is pressing her remote for the door locks at a Rolls Royce while asking her husband why it won’t open. His answer is that they drive the 5 year-old station wagon in the next row. In dentistry, the story is a ...
Read MoreIn 1993, the number one comedy movie was “Groundhog Day” starring Bill Murray of Saturday Night Live fame. Bill was a weatherman who, for the fourth year in a row, was covering Groundhog Day where this “weather forecasting rat”, as he calls it, comes out and does or doesn’t see his shadow. The problem occurs when he realizes that he ...
Read MoreEnthusiasm is one of the most powerful of all marketing techniques. It proves beyond words that the product or service being marketed is worth getting excited about. It conveys an attitude that is highly contagious. The contagion starts with the doctor. From here, this healthy contagion spreads throughout the staff, then moves into the ...
Read MoreIt seems that writing down my disappointments is somehow cathartic, so like many times in the past, this article originated from an encounter with a doctor. This particular doctor had attended a seminar that we put on here in the DFW area. The doctor requested a one on one analysis of the practice, and since it was relatively close by, I ...
Read MoreI got stumped on a telephone call. I was blindsided with a question I could not answer. A new client asked me: “What makes the difference between a great client and a doctor who doesn’t really perform?” He had already signed up for coaching, but I still would have liked to have said: “Every doctor does well when they hire ...
Read MoreWhile consulting in dental practices for over 20 years, I have observed that many dentists have an unwarranted fear of accepting PPO (Managed Care) plans. The biggest single “fear factor” seems to be the overwhelming focus the dentist places on the reduced fees received from these plans: the dreaded “write-offs”. They will look at a ...
Read More“G o l l y”! As Private Gomer Pyle would say. I have figured out why the profile of the average dentist is so poor. I have discovered why procrastination, blame shifting, and mediocrity are rampant in dentistry in general. I have put my finger on why so many are struggling to be successful in their quest to make dentistry a viable ...
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