The GREAT Advantage: Part 1 – Winning the Call

Transcript performed by A.I. Please excuse the typos.
00:00
This is Dental All-Stars, where we bring you the best in dentistry on marketing, management and training.

00:12
So success comes from 15 % technical expertise. Most of our CE that we take as dentists are going to be technical in nature, but yet when it comes to true success for your practice and for helping patients, only 15 % of it relies on that technical expertise. How great your margins are, how awesome your hygienist is at getting that distal.

00:35
Calculus off of number two the patients don’t know that but what the patients do know is how we make them feel and so 85 % of your practice its success lands on People skills. This is good news and bad news The good news is you as the dentist have control over that 15 % You also have a part or play a part in the 85 % So you have your hands in a hundred percent of the success of your practice

01:02
Welcome to Dental All-Stars. I’m Alex Onikam, founder and CEO of All-Star Dental Academy. And with me is Shelly Van Epps, COO and executive coach at All-Star Dental Academy. And our topic is The Great Advantage, Part One, Winning the Phones. And this is a two-part series from a webinar that Shelly did hosted by Omni Premier Marketing. I know you’re gonna love it. Take a listen. I am Shelly with All-Star Dental Academy.

01:29
I’m the COO and executive coach with All-Star Dental Academy. And as she mentioned, I have over 20 years. It just keeps tacking on. We’re now all the way up to 24 years in dental. Got my start in insurance and billing and then worked my way through the practice and everywhere, administrative, office manager, and then also chair side assisting in hygiene, hygiene assisting treatment coordinator.

01:54
And through that journey, I was exposed to a lot of different areas where things were going really well and things just weren’t working very well. And so along that way, I actually had a coach, our office had a coach and she presented some different things. And I went, oh my gosh, this is exactly what we need to be doing in our office. And it took our patient experience from a transactional experience to a relational experience. uh

02:23
And that really resonated with me and it took that sales part of dentistry and put it at bay. So that’s what I really want to talk about today is how do we make our patient experiences relational and not so much about a transaction. So when I decided to leave the actual dental practice a few years ago, I was introduced to Heather and Alex Nottingham. They’re here on the screen.

02:51
Alex is JD, MBA background, uh attorney. He was the top Tony Robbins coach and his father who’s on the right hand side is a dentist and his dad’s practice was suffering. It was near bankruptcy. And so he asked Alex to please help him out from the business side. So Alex absolutely was happy to help his dad.

03:15
And they found that a lot of calls were coming in. He helped with the marketing and things and those phones were ringing, but they just weren’t converting. And so they weren’t seeing that, that needle moving forward. So he brought in his then girlfriend, Heather Nottingham, who’s here on the screen, who had a background in sales and high end retail at Bloomingdale’s and Kate Spade and some of these high customer service. um

03:45
stores and they brought her into the practice and immediately she found that everything that they were doing was very transactional. They were answering the phones, but they weren’t building rapport. They weren’t really connecting with the patients. And so she started teaching and integrating some of that into the practice. And all of a sudden the practice just took off. So between the marketing pieces and the customer service pieces coming together, the practice grew.

04:13
And they actually took that practice to 2.4 million in just 18 months after almost near enclosure. And so that gave them the inspiration to then start All-Star Dental Academy. So Alex, our CEO, he talks about the five steps to an All-Star practice. And number one is always knowing your vision. Where do you want your practice to go? If we don’t know where our practice is going, who the patients are that we really want to serve, um

04:41
what type of dentistry we want to do, who our team is going to be, who we’re surrounding ourselves with, all of those things really matter to have clarity of where we want to take our practice. Once you know that, now you need to bring in those right team members. And so that’s something that we found was really hard for a lot of practices, finding that right team member. So along the way, we actually integrated and brought in Robin Reese, who was one of our coaches early on.

05:09
and she started um the hiring service. So we actually find team members for practices around the country because getting that right person on the bus is so crucial. If you’re trying to do this on your own and going into some of these steps that we’re about to go into with case acceptance and you’re not surrounded with people who see the same thing and who are bringing that same customer service to your patients, um

05:38
It’s going to be a struggle. It’s going to be a struggle. You’re going to be frustrated. And so having the right team on the bus is really important. Then we go into the training aspect. Both your clinical excellence is really important, obviously, but also mastering a great patient experience. And what does that actually entail for the patient? How do you train that into your team, utilizing systems that you know work? uh There are systems out there that don’t work, obviously. Those are the ones where you go,

06:07
and you just go with your gut and you change what you’re doing at the whim and it’s not going to be consistent. You might get a good result today, but you may not get the same result tomorrow. So we believe strongly in having some systems in place that set your team up for success.

06:23
Always have a coach or a mentor, an accountability partner that you can lean on, that you can run ideas by, somebody who’s able to help you to be able to continue taking your practice through to your vision. And then we love masterminds, always surrounding yourself with like-minded people who you can, again, they’ve been where you are, they’re going where you are currently, and you can connect with them. So we work to make sure that we’re able to support all of those different areas.

06:51
And obviously the training is the one that is probably one of the most important, but also one of the hardest to integrate into your practice. So we always lean on the concept of habit stacking and helping your team learn one thing at a time. So as you’re listening today, maybe jot down one or two things that you hear that you’re thinking, yes, I could start implementing that today in my practice.

07:19
by just connecting with a couple of my team members and teaching this part to them. So I encourage you to do that as we go from the consideration to the commitment. So a lot of patients will come to the front. um I was a front desk team member, so I would hear it and they’d say, oh, I want to go home and I want to think about it. um What that tells me is that we didn’t connect with our patient in a way where we knew exactly what they wanted and why they wanted it.

07:46
Most patients will find a way to move forward with something that’s really important to them. So if we figure out what’s important to the patient and why that’s important to the patient, we’re gonna have much more success in helping them to get healthier faster.

08:04
So success comes from 15 % technical expertise. Most of our CE that we take as dentists are going to be technical in nature, but yet when it comes to true success for your practice and for helping patients, only 15 % of it relies on that technical expertise, how great your margins are, how awesome your hygienist is at getting that distal calculus off of number two.

08:30
The patients don’t know that, but what the patients do know is how we make them feel. so 85 % of your practice success lands on people skills. This is good news and bad news. The good news is you as the dentist have control over that 15%. You also have a part or play a part in the 85%. So you have your hands in 100 % of the success of your practice. However,

08:58
This means all of your team, whether adjunct, administrative, assistants, whomever you have on your practice, they are integrating, or I’m sorry, they applying or causing 85 % of your success to be totally on if they’re present with your patients. Are they applying that customer service so that your patients leave feeling heard, feeling valued, having a good experience? Every single one of them.

09:27
has a part in whether or not this is successful or not. So if you have one team member who has that face that we all know what that face is, has that face that’s not smiling, that’s not happy, that’s not present with your patients, that’s going to impact the success of your practice. And that’s just one team member. You start multiplying that and you have issues. At the same time, you have a whole team of people who are really on top of it, really understand that.

09:52
patient experience is so important that they walk by, they smile at them, they greet them. That’s going to automatically take your success and go up and elevate that very quickly.

10:06
Patients don’t know how great your margins are. I mentioned this a few minutes ago, but they do know how we make them feel. And so as we’re doing this, we have to have our customer service in check. So the system that we’re gonna rely on um in this is going to be with regards to our phone skills, as well as our case acceptance. So 94 % of success is on the systems. That leaves 6 % off to people. If we let…

10:33
run the way that we do this and we don’t have a system in place, we are running the risk of failure. At the same time, if you have a clear system in place, there’s this saying that our president of coaching uses all the time, clarity in our expectations creates excellent execution. So if you don’t have a system, if you’re not clear in your expectations, the chances that your team member, that 6%, that person who’s making their own decisions, the chances that they’re gonna be successful

11:03
Diminished greatly you have to be clear and exactly what you want and how you want it done. I Want to put a caveat here because we are focusing on people and so although there’s a system you have to be adaptable you have to be able to read the room you have to be able to use critical thinking and Listen to what the patient is saying and adapt your communication, which is why at all star we’re not about scripting

11:30
We’re about systems and giving you an outline, but we’re not about scripting. And so as we go into this next step, which is our great call process, keep in mind that we’re not asking teams, we’re not telling practices to say things robotically, we are about building a relationship.

11:49
The reason being everybody knows the golden rule. usually interact and ask what’s the golden rule. And everybody says, treat others the way you want to be treated, which is great. Love treating others the way we want to be treated. But what we want to focus on is utilizing the platinum rule. And that platinum rule is treating people the way they want to be treated. The only way you can treat them the way they wanted to be treated is to ask them to have an actual conversation with them so that you know, what is their goal? Why are they actually here?

12:20
treat others the way they want to be treated. So we’re going to start by the natural law of research, which is helping us to be able to elevate our expertise just by having a conversation. This is something that Heather, I mentioned earlier, our co-founder, Heather Nottingham, developed the great call process. And this is something that we have trademarked for All-Star Dental Academy, but I encourage you to utilize this for

12:48
your phone experience and actually your patient experience as well. So we’re going to outline this as an acronym for how to handle the phone because our number one marketing tool that we have is the phone. And I know we’re working with Mark with Omni here and they’re marketing and they’re driving the phones and the phones are ringing just like what happened with Alex and his dad’s practice. The phones are ringing and they weren’t converting. Why?

13:15
It wasn’t necessarily that the marketing was poor. It was that the phones just weren’t being handled the way that we need them to be handled so that we can increase our case acceptance at the end of the day and get more patients healthy or faster. And so I’ve been at that front desk. I get it. I get it a hundred percent. You’re checking people in, you’re checking people out, you’re creating treatment plans, you’re reviewing treatment plans, you’re refilling the schedule, all of the things that are happening and that phone rings. And every now and then it’s like,

13:43
man, if that phone would just stop ringing, I could do my job. And unfortunately, that is where we get to because we’re juggling so many things. So we have to really come to the realization that if that phone stops ringing, we don’t have a job to do anymore. That phone is like gold. It is the one thing that we have to be able to take care of. So obviously, the great call process is something that we’re very passionate about because we have to be able to answer the phone if we expect to have patients coming into our practice.

14:12
Which brings us to this study that we did. So a long time ago we did this study. So some of the percentages might be slightly different, but I just want to share this with you first. So we call bills businesses in all different industries. And we find out 78 % of them never asked for the caller’s name when they answered the phone. 56 % it took more than eight rings before they answered the phone. 42 % just said the price without hesitation and then started listing off other things that they offer.

14:43
34 % said the price and then nothing else just hung the phone up just okay gave you your price That’s all you called for 12 % said they didn’t know and asked them actually asked the caller to call back and then 8 % put the caller on hold for over two minutes Which we know that on hold is at least double as long in the eyes of the person who’s actually been put on hold I’m sure every one of you have been put on hold in the past and it feels like forever and so that two minutes

15:13
to the person on the whole four, five, 10 minutes is what it felt like. So let me decide, okay, let’s, we can’t possibly be that bad with dentistry. So let’s go ahead and we’re gonna call some dental offices. 100 % never asked the patient’s name or the caller’s name. 100 % never thanked them for calling. 75 % gave the prices immediately. What do you charge for a crown? $1,500, $1,800, whatever. 65 % gave the price and then nothing else.

15:42
20 % gave the prices of each service separately. What does it cost for cleaning? Well, the cleaning itself is $100 and then your exam and then this and then this and then this. And so they just start rattling off all these prices, which is overwhelming to anybody on the other side of the phone. And 5 % the phone was actually busy and never got an answer anyway. So that tells me that we had a lot of opportunity to continue to strengthen our phone calls. So I love this great call process.

16:10
So the great call process is taking it from transactional to relational. We’re taking from people determine, I should say people determine the quality of care and the quality, by the quality of service. So how high is your care as a dentist? It depends on how high your quality of customer service is. So if your front desk is not answering the phone, that automatically gives the illusion that your dentistry is not as great either.

16:35
So we have to make sure that we’re taking care of that. And unfortunately, a lot of times the very first person that goes on the phone, or I’m sorry, a new team member comes into the practice at the front. First thing we do, go ahead and answer the phone. They’re not trained, they don’t know what to do. And so this great call process gives them a framework to be able to answer the phone accurately and successfully. We wanna make sure that we’re discovering their service expectations and then exceeding those expectations.

17:03
And the more you know about another person, the more they believe that you know about everything you’re doing. gives them trust and confidence in you when you already come into a conversation, knowing something about them. Put yourself in the patient’s shoes and you walk into an office and you just told the front desk person that you have a toothache and they take you back. And the first thing that your team asks them is what brings you in today? But they just went over all the details with the person on the phone.

17:33
This tooth has been waking me up at night. It’s been bothering me for about a week. I have swelling, all of the different things. And then the first person that they come in contact with in your office knows none of it, or they know, but they still choose to ask the questions. If instead they started that conversation with, I know that you talked to Betty on the phone. She mentioned that the tooth on the upper right has been bothering you to hot and cold. Is pressure bothering you yet? Just

17:59
elaborating and acknowledging that yes, we communicate within our team. That’s going to take the level of confidence in your practice and escalate it greatly for that patient. So the more we know about another person, the more they believe that we know about everything that we’re doing. So we have to make sure that this law of research is followed. With the Great Call Process, as I mentioned, it’s an acronym. So we start with G for greeting. um Then we move into R for rapport.

18:28
E for engage, A for ask for the appointment, and then T for taking the information and thanking the patient. The order is what matters. Many times when we listen to calls, they might pick up on bits and pieces of this, but they’re actually taking information before they ever even know the patient. They start the phone call with, okay, what’s your name? First name, last name, date of birth, social security number.

18:55
insurance information and they know nothing about this person. And so what we do and what we train and want to recommend is that we’re taking that call and shifting from an initial conversation of transaction over into a rapport immediately upon answering that phone. You’re not going to go, thank you for calling. How can I help you? How much does that cost? $1,500. Instead,

19:22
Thank you so much for calling. Again, my name is Shelly. Who do I have the pleasure of speaking with? We’re starting off building rapport with that patient. We’re going to then transition, learn more about them, what prompted them to call, who can we thank for referring them, all of those things. And then eventually now you mentioned that you were looking for the cost of a crown. When was the last time that you saw a dentist? It was 12 months ago. Okay, so what makes you feel as though you need a crown today?

19:48
I have a tooth that’s bothering you. Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry to hear that. How long has it been bothering you? You’re building rapport out of their question instead of just giving them an answer. Then you can get to, I’m so glad that you called. Dr. Chavisty is amazing. He will take great care of you. How about we find an appointment? Would a morning or an afternoon sound look best for you? Now you’re asking for the appointment, which is skipped so often.

20:17
And when I’m looking at phone calls and I’m listening to this, I’m thinking to myself, nobody accidentally fell on their phone. The phone rang and they called the dental office. Every person called with an intention of seeing your dentist, seeing your practice coming in for some purpose, a cleaning, whatever it might be. They wanted to do something. And if that piece is missing, we’re missing a huge opportunity. It can’t be missing from your phone calls. So asking for those appointments.

20:45
And then finally take their information at the very end so I can reserve your appointment. Let’s get all of this information entered in. We want the phone number up front just in case we get disconnected. But everything else, insurance, date of birth, why does the date of birth matter right off the gate? It doesn’t until you actually reserve the appointment.

21:06
Here is a copy of our great call intake form. So you can see that’s outlined, but there’s not necessarily scripting. It’s basically walking your team straight through all of these different sections using a transition statement, which is how we transition out of their initial question into building rapport. It’s giving them some tips and tricks about asking open-ended questions and being active, using active listening, making a conversation friendly.

21:34
then going into the engage and sharing some sizzle points about your practice, what makes you special, then getting that appointment and then getting their information at the very end. If anybody would like a copy of that, feel free to message and we’ll definitely get you a copy of our great call form.

21:52
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Dental All-Stars. Visit us online at AllStarDentalAcademy.com