Most of us have heard songs that just kind of stick in your head. My most favorite musical is Wicked and the song that really makes me smile is Popular. Kristen Chenowith as Glenda the good witch is talking to Elphie, her roommate. The chorus resounds with: “Popular, you’re gonna be popular. I’ll teach you the proper poise when you talk to boys…” Makes me smile to type the words. When last we spoke of validity, your takeaway should have been that patients need to value you, partly by your ability to get results. You know, how efficient you are, convenient, and all those other points of what we as dentist strive for. But one of the big ones is: How “popular” are you? Who else is coming to see you and become a patient? This validity allows us to raise our fees, stimulates patients to refer others to your office, and encourages patients to stay with the practice. Big secret here: The more validity you have, the less time you have to spend with the patient, the less stress, grief and selling takes place. Remember when I say validity, it encompasses every aspect of your practice. I am not just talking about you, the owner doctor. I assembled a fantastic team because it takes a well-trained team to make these things possible. You have the great location. A great facility is part of being the “it” office. The systems, protocols, hours, what we do, and how we do it, define the results of becoming valid in the patients’ eyes. Each of you should strive for validity in your marketplace. I realized I had arrived when an older person in our church had referred four new patients in one month. This was strange, because I didn’t think she was a patient. So, next time I ran into her, I thanked her for the referrals, but I had to admit that I was a bit baffled. I explained and apologized that I had not noticed that she had become a patient in our office. I will never forget her answer. “Oh, I still go to Dr. Avery, but the minute he retires or dies I am coming to your practice. I know you’re the best dental office in town, so I tell all my friends about you”. You know you have validity when people who are not (yet) your patient are sending you referrals. That’s true validity.
I realize that validity sounds abstract, but nothing could be more important to changing the overall effect of getting stress out of the practice and getting you back in control. With validity and our culture, we actually have removed the case presentation step. Instead, we have a conversation about what they want, their dental IQ, and what they would like to spend. I realize this thought doesn’t really follow, but it came to me that if you have developed your validity to the highest level, you are primed to do away with in-network insurance plans, because the draw of your office offsets most people’s tendency to choose a dentist based purely on price and convenience when it comes to their insurance.
So where does this validity come from? Where do I go or what do I need to do to get validity? I’ve stated this already, but make no mistake, validity does not come just from you. It comes from patients perceiving that you are in demand. Not sure many of you ride bikes competitively, but when bikers ride in a large group, the leader breaks the wind and creates a slip stream where those following only need about 70% of the effort to go the same speed. The same is true for geese flying in a “V” formation. Validity creates this slip stream and when you reach it, you will find that the momentum and trajectory maintain you in this almost magical position of reaping more than you sow. You are no longer paddling against a current or pedaling against the wind. Validity is pushing you forward with very little effort. Think about it this way: When we start out, we really don’t know anything about running a practice. One might say we live in chaos. As we progress, we find that systems and protocols raise us out of chaos to having control of our practice. This is where most good practices end up. Few make it to the point of validity and overwhelming demand. Where systems give you control, validity gives you power.
There are a lot of ways at looking at a dental practice to judge or objectively measure your success. One is demand. If you are an average practice with 20-30 new patients a month, you are getting what you deserve. Average effort equals average results. Not that this is bad, but it is not a practice in the validity realm of success. You might look at this from a “demand” perspective. The more validity, the higher the demand for your services and practice. Like my old adage that “Everything you do, is precisely designed to give you the results you are getting”. If you are not growing every year, you are not giving patients what they want. You are not inspiring them. You are not in the validity zone of a successful practice.
One of the neat ripple effects of having validity is that there is almost no sense of fear that you will lose control of your practice and its results. Please take note that validity is really a perception on the patient’s part, and it has a lot to do with the range of demand that you get. The validity zone is always preceded by high demand for your services.
As a form of warning, each of you are beginning to understand what validity and demand is. All too often I speak with doctors who say they used to have this years ago in their practice. But somehow, at some point, they lost it. They went into more consumer debt, stopped enjoying dentistry, found they really didn’t like people, disliked their employees, etc. They always mention some portion of their success as disappearing because they failed to identify what causes success. They fell back into a current or head wind that destroyed their success. In every case, each doctor had a revelation when we talked about demand and said that they never realized the “why” of their past success.
Failure to be self-aware and have situational awareness dooms you to not understanding when to change and what to keep on doing. Observe, analyze, adapt, and act. I realized after encountering those that used to have the “it” factor and lost it, really struggled more to recapture it than those just doing it for the first time. They lost the ability to understand what prompts demand in the first place. Too many of these doctors just assumed their success was all about them. “They” were the power station that drove everything. They felt that they could coast. In the end, coasting is not possible. You can’t just arrive at some point and maintain it forever. Shift happens and life intervenes. You then wake up one day to find yourself at the end of unintended results. Great results in practices don’t just happen, they are created. Part of this process demands reflection and change to maintain or grow. Just doing the same thing you have always done will not win the day. What got you where you are will never get you to the next level of practice.
Understanding demand is being able to embrace the truth that validity and demand are the natural process of practice growth. As long as you are growing each year, expanding the number of team members you need, creating more profit, embracing consumerism, and making sure there are no physical blockages in the number of ops and size of facility you need, your patients will see you are in demand and perceive the value and validity that they want by coming to you for their dentistry. While systems and protocols can drag you out of the chaos of practice, patient demand will give you the power you always wanted. The power to rewrite your financial, personal, and practice future. An unlimited practice, with little or no stress bolstered by the demand of raving fans who are your patients is the ultimate definition of validity in motion. This is where great practices are “in the zone”. Being in the zone is the perpetual position of doctors with ever increasing patient demand.
Michael Abernathy DDS
972.523.4660 cell
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