Issue #43-4.14.08

Louis Malcmacher DDS MAGD Printer Friendly Version

Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places

As a practicing dentist and a dental consultant at the same time, I know exactly where dentists are coming from when they describe their daily challenges to me. Every dentist that I talk to wants to know how to get many more new patients, how to properly market the practice, how to be faster and more efficient clinically, how to reduce overhead, how to motivate more patients to bigger and bigger treatment plans and a whole host of other issues. 

Dentists will spend all kind of money on books, tapes, consultants, marketing programs, newsletters and other things that they think may improve a particular piece of their practice. Most dentists who are looking for these solutions are always, as I like to say, “looking for love in all the wrong places.” Dentists often overlook the most obvious and impactful piece of their practice: the dental team. 

Having a great dental team will significantly improve all aspects of your dental practice. Having a great dental team solves many of the issues and challenges that face dentists every single day. Do you want more patients? Your dental team should be out there asking everybody they know if they need a dentist, as well as asking every single patient that comes through the door to refer their own families and friends as new patients to the practice. Do you want to market your practice better and more efficiently? Great dental team members will carry your message with them into every single treatment room and accomplish that. Do you want to motivate patients to more comprehensive dentistry and more elective dental procedures, like Lumineers? A great dental team will take the time to plant seeds in patients’ minds about what dentistry can accomplish. They are the most effective communication tool you have. 

A dentist might spend thousands of dollars on a computerized education system that will describe dental procedures when a talented dental assistant could do the same thing with a human and personal touch. That doesn’t mean that digital education materials aren’t useful. But if your dental team members are poor communicators and you buy them an educational piece of equipment, then what you’ll have is a dental team with poor communication skills and an expensive computer. Why not spend that money to motivate and improve the morale and communication skills in your office so that everybody can talk to patients more easily and with better leadership?

Do you want to reduce your overhead? A great dental team will certainly help you by streamlining many of the inefficient processes that occur in daily dental practice. Do you want to improve your cash flow and account receivables? A great dental team is the road to success in every dental office. 

I see dentists wasting their time and money buying into all kinds of gadgets, toys, scams and supposed “systems for success” when they should be spending their time, energy and effort developing and motivating their valued staff members. When I am giving a lecture, I can see immediately who the most successful dentists are in the first two minutes of the lecture. The most successful dentists are the ones who have their dental team members sitting right next to them. If you as a dentist go to a lecture and want to learn about something new or want to institute some kind of a new system in your office, but go to the lecture alone, your staff members will not have the same enthusiasm or initial level of interest that you developed. Success in this scenario is going to be limited and most likely will not happen. 

Look at your dental team members as the valued partners in success that they really are. Staff appreciation is one of the most overlooked, inexpensive and easiest ways to begin to develop a great dental team. In many major studies in employee relations, money is not the most important factor to employees. Number one is staff appreciation and number two is having a pleasant place to work. If your dental team members also realize that they are fulfilling a mission of improving peoples’ lives through excellent oral health, it gives them a great sense of purpose. You could pay a dental assistant $100 per hour, but if the work environment is miserable, your office will never be successful. You could pay your front desk team member $100 per hour but if you have never invested in developing the necessary skills to talk to patients, your office will not be successful. If you pay your dental hygienist $100 per hour but she is just a cleaning lady with no communication skills, your office will never reach its full potential. 

Ultimately, dentistry is a people business. To be successful in this field, you have to love people or hire people who love people. Stress in dentistry is caused by the people who work in your office who are stressing themselves, stressing you and stressing your patients. And if your patients get stressed, they will stress you even more. Hiring the right staff is the first step along the road to a happy office. The next steps include working with your team members and constantly training them and yourself in how to do better clinical dentistry, how to be better communicators and how to achieve all of your goals together. 

Hire, develop and motivate a great dental team by learning leadership skills and building your office from the inside out. It doesn’t help you at all to get 100 new patients per month if your team members do not have the capability or the interest to properly build relationships with your patients. You, as a dentist, typically spend 30, 40 or 50 hours per week in your dental practice—it is equally as easy to be happy there as it is to be miserable. 

If your dental office is a place that loves to work with people, that attitude alone will solve many of the issues that have frustrated you throughout your career. When we consult with dental offices and turn around their team members and make them great and sincere communicators, the office becomes a stress-free, high-producing, low-overhead, fun place to work for everyone. It is amazing what a little appreciation and respect will do to motivate and build a great dental team. 

Dr. Louis Malcmacher is a practicing general dentist in Bay Village, Ohio and an internationally known lecturer, author and dental consultant renowned for his comprehensive and entertaining style. An evaluator for Clincal Research Associates, Dr. Malcmacher is a consultant to the Council on Dental Practice of the ADA. For almost three decades, Dr. Malcmacher has inspired his audiences and consulting clients to truly enjoy doing dentistry by providing the knowledge necessary for excellent clinical and practice management. His group dental practice has maintained a 45% overhead since 1988. You can contact him at (440) 892-1810 or email dryowza@mail.com

You can also see his lecture schedule at www.commonsensedentistry.com, where you can find information about bulding the best dental team ever, sign up for his affordable monthly consulting programs, audio CDs, and free monthly e-newsletter.