Shelly VanEpps and Alex Nottingham JD MBA discuss the importance of phone skills in converting new patients, enhancing the patient experience, and how team training is key to dental office success.
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About Shelly VanEpps
Shelly is the VP of Business Development & a Mastery Coach with All-Star Dental Academy. By aiding in the growth and expansion of All-Star, Shelly’s passion for dentistry allows the company to focus on guiding dentists and their teams towards achieving their vision of a successful dental practice. Because each office has their own definition of “success” Shelly focuses her attention on customized coaching by applying her 21 years in the dental field to each department within the office. In addition, as a John Maxwell Certified Leadership Coach, Shelly enjoys working with doctors and office managers on shifting their approach from a managerial approach to a more effective leadership style.
About Alex Nottingham JD MBA
Alex is the CEO and Founder of All-Star Dental Academy®. He is a former Tony Robbins top coach and consultant, having worked with companies upwards of $100 million. His passion is to help others create personal wealth and make a positive impact on the people around them. Alex received his Juris Doctor (JD) and Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Florida International University.
Episode Transcript
Transcript performed by A.I. Please excuse the typos.
00:02
This is Dental All-Stars, where we bring you the best in dentistry on marketing, management, and training. Welcome to Dental All-Stars. I’m Alex Donningham, founder and CEO of All-Star Dental Academy, and with me is Shelly Van Epps, COO and lead coach at All-Star Dental Academy. And we are talking about everything, phone skills. What did you say? Something about the ring? What was that comment you made? It’s all about the ring. It’s all about the ring. All right.
00:31
So I’m having, I have Facebook open, Facebook live. I think we’re also on LinkedIn as well live. And so we’ll kind of, as the comments come along, we’ll start discussing phone skills and the comments. So while we’re waiting for that, Shells, tell us about why phone skills so important. Because we actually, before you say, we did a poll, we want to say, what do you want to talk about? And everybody wants to talk about phones. So I guess they know something. I guess so. Yeah. I mean, phones are.
01:00
entry point, if you don’t answer the phones properly, you have no patience. So it’s kind of critical that we focus on the phones and that’s one of the starting points with All-Star is it’s all about the phones. We are a phone conversion company. I mean that’s not the only thing we do but that is a primary focus. One of the things that we do, you can’t do anything else that we do until you convert patients over the phone.
01:28
And so any potential caller is an opportunity. And when the team member doesn’t see that as the case, there’s an issue. And I’m guilty. There were times when I’d be super busy in the practice and the phone would ring and I would think, oh my gosh, just stop ringing already. I need to get my job done. And then somebody politely reminded me, Shelly, or in your way, Shells, if the phone stops ringing,
01:55
then we’re gonna have a real issue here because then you’re not gonna have a job at all. And so that kind of was an aha moment for me a long time ago, a long, long time ago, when it was one of those things where I thought, oh my gosh, you’re right, I do need to be appreciative that this phone is ringing and not look at it as a distraction. Yeah. And just kind of talking about the part of the genesis of All-Star,
02:25
with Heather Nottingham, our co-founder. And well, I’ll just tell you quickly for those who don’t know, I’m all of you like, now you know this story, but we’ll hear it again. Imagine how many times I’ve heard it. So with the story, my dad is a dentist. His practice is facing financial trouble. I was a Tony Robbins coach, a lead coach. I had my MBA, my law degree, because my father said, don’t be a dentist, be a.
02:53
be a lawyer or business person, because they’re the ones who make money, not dentists. Because he was frustrated with insurance companies, with corporate dentistry, which are still a problem to this day, that was there. And I was taking over his marketing, we’re getting a ton of phone calls, but they weren’t converting. And so Heather, my wife, their VP of training, eventually our phone skills instructor, co-founder, she was working for Bloomingdale’s. She, just so you know, she was studying molecular biology, she wanted to do on medicine, but she loved…
03:22
fashion and I supported her just to do fashion. And she was great. She had a million dollar client book in Bloomingdale’s and she was training people at other great companies like Kate Spade theory, but the hours weren’t great. So I said, why don’t you work for my dad because I’m sending business but they’re not converting. So we brought her into the practice and she was shocked. No systems, the phone was not important. When you’re in retail, you love the phone. You want clients. They would, Heather would have patients or not patients, but her clients would call her and say, I want, I don’t know.
03:51
$10,000 worth of clothes, laid out for me. I’m coming in there and they buy it. People with these black cards, whatever. So she dealt with a high level clientele. So she’s like, phones are incredible. Your client list is incredible. What are you doing? So she says, all right, let me handle the phones. You don’t have to worry about it. Send them to me, but leave me alone. Don’t bother me. So we took a struggling $1 million practice and brought it to 2.4 million within 18 months. Yes, the marketing was important. The phone was ringing. I did that.
04:21
But what Heather did was superb. And from that experience, we use what she did, built our great call process, and that was kind of the beginning of All-Star. Phones was the portal of success. And Heather made sure that was a priority. It’s scary. It’s actually scary. We do some different call grading and different things, you know, within All-Star, and we use the great call process to be able to monitor that and measure success.
04:50
And it’s scary. Some of the phone calls that are out there and doctors may not have any idea that when somebody is answering their phone, they’re not even saying the practice name. It’s like dental office. Please hold and placing them immediately on hold, not welcoming them, not telling them who they even call specifically their name, asking for the person’s name. Who do I have the pleasure of speaking with? Like skipping it all.
05:20
Everything that we teach is just completely gone. Not in the, in the phone call at all. And then they wonder why is my schedule empty? Why don’t I have any patients? Why is everybody canceling, you know, all these different things. And I’m like, we need to look back at the phones. And it really, truly our marketing companies, our, our partners. I mean, they, Patrick with Omni Premier, he’ll tell you.
05:50
Oh my gosh, I can, like you did for your dad’s practice, I can send people to a practice, but if they’re not converting, that’s when doctors get frustrated and we have to look back at the phones. And so it’s so, so important. And that’s why we’re here to talk about it today. Absolutely. And, you know, I think no wonder we understand and sympathize with them, like where they’re coming from. But because we talked about this in one of our, our program with the rubber band is we’re comfortable what we’re comfortable for.
06:19
You can’t fault people for following what they know. And it’s a distraction, I don’t want to do more work. We did a whole discussion about buy-in that leads in there as well, we were talking about this. Like there’s a lot of elements that happen when we see this, there’s a reason it’s there. We want to change course. So the first most important thing to realize is it’s important, right, Shelley? It’s important. And why is it important? So one is,
06:48
Dentists will hear the phone call and go and kind of cringe like that’s not how it should go. That’s one issue. And then others, they might say they’re nice on the phone, but you have to look at we’re converting. Now, this is very important. What we, critical, what we teach at All Star is we use a service mentality, not sales. So we want to convert the phone call without manipulating. And so that’s our premise. That’s what we teach.
07:18
But we have to also realize the cost of when we don’t convert a phone call, what it’s costing. And we do a whole math. Do we do a webinar? Alls backslash webinar. I’m not going to go into the math here, but in there I explain what it’s costing you. And I’ll tell you, all these broken appointments and lack of conversions, you’re looking at a quarter million dollars a year. I’m giving it away, but you’ll see how I did the math in the webinar. The point is it’s costing you money. And that shows it. So
07:47
Now we see kind of part of the issue. You want to say something, it sounds like. No, I’m good, I’m good. You’re like, this is good, this is good stuff. It’s expensive. And I know what you say over and over again, show me the money. Let me see your KPIs as coaching, your lead coach. So what are the KPIs saying? And you’re getting crushed because you’re not converting patients. So we know we have to do something about it. So we better like it. And that’s what we’re all about of All-Star is how do we enjoy, how do we like.
08:15
phone skills, how to get better at phone skills. So while we’re talking, I just want to say this for those on Facebook and LinkedIn, let us know some questions that you like to hear about phones. I know our phone skills instructor is watching us and she approves so far of what we’re saying. But I want to hear from everybody here on there. What are some things you want to hear us talk about with phones? We’ll ramble along about phones. I know you want to learn about phones. I mean, there’s so many different.
08:40
types of phone calls. And that’s why I think a lot of team members get really intimidated because when that phone is ringing inward into the practice, I mean, it could be, do you take my insurance? It could be, I broke a tooth. It could be, I need to cancel an appointment. It could be all of the, I’m a new patient, I’m new to the area, all these different things. And you almost have to feel like you have to be prepared for anything that could possibly come at you. You know, I have a bill, I’m mad. And so a lot of team members are
09:09
afraid to answer the phone out of fear of not having an answer. What I like to do in utilizing the great call process that Heather so graciously put together for all of us is build rapport. It’s the most important part. Find out more about that person. If you focus on the relationship, then you can help them. You might not know the answer and that’s completely okay.
09:35
but you can gather enough information to be able to help that person at least get in the right hand. So that’s what a lot of like hygienists and assistants say, I have no business answering the phone. Why? Why not? Because I don’t know how to answer the questions. Okay, well let’s talk about that. Who on your team does know how to answer that question? Shelly does. Okay, well how about you gather the information and then transfer it to Shelly then? If I could do that? Yes you can. I’ll show you how.
10:04
And therefore the patient isn’t automatically getting sent to voicemail or being placed on hold immediately. That is my the hold button is my pet peeve. I it just makes me cringe. If you have you ever listen, please hold, please hold. Right. Have you ever listened to one of those phone calls? I do this in some of my coaching calls when I’m talking, I’m like, okay. So when we’re talking about how long it feels to a person, when you put them on hold.
10:33
And I sit there and I count and I just count to 30. Like how long did that feel? Everybody’s like, everybody on Facebook Live is going, did I just stall? Like, did we have a glitch in the software? Like what just happened there? That’s how long they’re just sitting there wondering, did they forget about me? What’s going on? And so I have a pet peeve with the hold button. I wish it didn’t exist.
10:59
There’s only one time, one kind of a phone call that I’m okay with that hold button, and that’s when they’re trying to cancel on me. Now, then you make them hold. That when I get to hold, and it’s when I’m going to find out what the doctor would like us to do about getting that person rescheduled, or to get the information from the doctor about how to reschedule that person or whatever. Not really going to get the doctor, but that’s the only hold that I try to do as much as possible. So. So I have a question from the Facebook audience. Okay.
11:29
How do you train team members that are nervous about the phone role play? So we, well, it could be a couple of things. One of the ways, let me just set it up for you that we understand here. First is identifying the problem. We talked about that in the webinar, also dentalacademy.com, backslash webinar. We talked more about this. The identify the problem, then we have to learn the material. And it’s pretty what we teach. It’s pretty straightforward. Service not sales.
11:56
We have a nice acronym, GREAT, that stands for greeting, rapport, engage the patient, ask for the appointment, take information, and we even give you a little free gift on the webinar that you can help you with that. So now the next step is, okay, you know it academically, do you know it? Let’s start role playing. Let’s hear a live call. Let’s grade a live call. We grade live calls, not mystery calls. We do it in a very gentle way. But we find you may be nice on the phone.
12:26
Talk, because it’s almost like public speaking when you’re put on the spot roleplay for me. Answer the phone call. It’s awkward, especially in front of your peers. It can be uncomfortable. Sure. And the law of the rubber band is one thing you could really push team members and say, no, you’re going to roleplay. They’re going to get nervous. They’re not going to take it seriously. They’re probably going to be giddy and giggling. You know what? I like where you’re going with this, Shelly, with the rubber band mentality. I think that’s a good analogy.
12:55
That’s what it’s about. You got to stretch a little bit. You’ve got to, you’ve got to go a little bit out of your comfort zone. We were at, so I’ll tell you, we were at our mastery event in Chicago and a lot of level two is role play. Nobody wanted to do it. Day one, everybody was like digging their heels in going, I don’t want to role play this particular verbal skill. I just don’t want to do it. Nobody’s volunteering. Very few are volunteering. By day two, they were like, Ooh, can I go first?
13:24
And I remember one of our coaches in one of the breakout sessions. I’ll call her out. Larissa did this. It was amazing. There was one, yes, go Larissa. Um, there was one team member who really was uncomfortable. I mean, she, you would have thought she was going to start crying. She was extremely uncomfortable with the particular situation. She just didn’t want to role play in front of a bunch of people. Larissa said, you know what? Stay behind. We’ll role play just the two of us. That is.
13:54
Okay, if you don’t do this as a full team, it’s okay to pull one person aside and say, all right, let’s practice within your comfort zone. Listen to your own calls, engrave yourself, get a feel for self-assessment. If you’re afraid of other people’s assessment of you, assess yourself first. Start there. Then once you start seeing, okay, I’m getting it, I’m getting it, practice it, practice it out loud, practice it.
14:22
Record yourself, listen back, I don’t care, whatever it takes, but you need practice. Nobody goes about this perfect from day one. Not even you, Alex. Not even Alex. Day one, not even the great Alex. Phone call answers. Oh, perfect. Everybody makes mistakes. I did it for 20 some years and I make mistakes. I’m so good at phone skills.
14:47
I’m so good at phone skills and client services. I’m not allowed to speak with any new, any potential members. It’s only later in the, in the conversation. I mean, you could be Heather would make mistakes on occasion. Heather does not make mistakes. No, no, there does not make mistakes. Heather is on here. Heather is perfect. She does this. She is. She does not make mistakes. Nope. Opportunities for growth. That’s what I want to build on. I want to build in this rubber band. We talked about this in one of our.
15:15
Alex and Shelley shows that we do. And I think it’s a great analogy to do. So before I get to the rubber band, Heather’s point is, is very important about, or critical about the nervous person on the phone, because what that has to do is, and then I have another question that came in. So what that has to, to deal with is our approach to training. We understand that most people are nervous when it comes to role playing.
15:45
to something new, which goes to the law of the rubber band. We’re stretching ourselves beyond what we’re comfortable with going above our comfort zone. So we at All-Star understand this. We’re very sensitive to this. That’s why in our program that we teach, our online training program, we give an action plan of how to do that. And we want gently, we give gentle ideas. We’ll talk about that of how to implement. Coaching is another way of helping because a coach can help with implementing. But it’s important.
16:13
That’s my new word of the day. Important. It’s my new word that with, with the team. So we talked about how the value of training and so on that, that with the team, they feel held in a space because sometimes other programs and doctors just get really excited about it. Even with our program, we say, don’t do this as they come in.
16:38
We’re going to be doing it. And they’re not scared as much because you’re used to being abused, I guess, and criticized in dental school. Is they come in, I love this. And I did the program and I know the stuff and we’re going to do it, you go. Like, first of all, you’re a dentist, you’re a power position and it’s very intimidating. And so, and I think dentists kind of fall on a spectrum. They’re too aggressive or they don’t want to engage your team at all. We talked about buying and so on.
17:06
So we have to just explain that feedback is important, learning is critical, and that’s what we’re gonna do. So we wanna set things up properly. And like you talked about, once we set the stage, then it is, like you were saying, there are ways to incrementally improve. Love the rubber band is that what you teach, Shelly, is if you stretch, you don’t wanna stretch too far or too little. A little bit of stretch, you grow. And I think you have to meet your team with where you’re at. So tell me.
17:35
Shelly, for those that are nervous, give me some examples. What have you done with the team as a coach to help ease them into role play? Yeah, so one thing is not having to look at the other person in the face. So in our office, we actually had phones in different areas. And so I would literally call them, this patient, and they would be in the consultation room and I would be this patient. And then they would do something a little off.
18:04
from where, what we were aiming for and I’d say, okay, now I’ll stop right there. How is it? What do you think about what, how that conversation just went? And they’re like, yeah, I messed up. I’m like, okay, so how would we do it different? They would do, they would just say it in a conversation. I’m like, perfect. Let’s do it again. And we’d hang up and I call them back again. And we just sat there in, in role played it that way. It was more comfortable for my team members to not have to face me. For whatever reason, even if I’m sometimes putting your backs to each other and doing it.
18:33
Because when you’re in a group, especially a group of people who enjoy each other, they tend to start to goof around a little bit and have some fun, which that’s fine. That’s good to have some fun while you’re doing it. I mean, I’ve had different people put on costumes, right? I remember I hosted something in my living room and every team member, we had wigs and we had scarves and glasses and we role played and we practiced and actually not calling it role play goes a long way. Oh, wow.
19:03
skills practice, Dr. David Pierce said that one, one time. And I’ve always just called it like that. It’s like, you don’t go into the game without practice first. You don’t go into the game without a strategy of playbook. The playbook is a great call process. You practice the great call process first, and then you go into the game. You go on stage. And so it’s one of those things where putting that into analogy for the team and saying, Hey, we don’t expect you to do this perfect without practice. We don’t.
19:32
Everybody needs practice. People who have been doing it for years should still go back and practice. Michael Jordan still practiced when he was at his prime. Everybody needs to do it. Because if you don’t, you start to fall into entropy, which is falling back into old habits. And so when that starts to happen, all of a sudden you’re using vocabulary and words that you used to use before you knew better, just out of comfort. This becomes a new norm. And all of a sudden it’s beautiful. It’s like butter.
20:01
It’s like butter. You just can be very smooth and have that process down. Next question, Shelley. Yeah. How can the phone verbiage help the entire team? Oh my gosh. I love this. This is one of our top questions. Why do my hygienists have to listen to this thing about the phone skills? Why do my assistants need to listen to it? Number one, they can act as a backup.
20:30
on the phones. It’s like that’s pretty important that they’re able to do that and they’re comfortable doing it. But I want you guys who are thinking that to think about your patient experience. When they walk through the door, Alex, what is the first thing we do? Greet them. We greet them. What’s the G in the great call process? Greeting. Greet them. Exactly. Then when we take them back into the treatment area, what do we do? Hopefully we’re building some rapport.
20:59
then we’re engaging with them. We’re asking them to schedule an appointment. We’re taking their information or taking their money or thanking them for coming. We’re doing the great call process every time a patient comes in. And so it’s so important for the team to listen to this whole process and really take it into what is my part in this patient experience?
21:21
How do I walk out to the reception area and call my patient back? Do I walk up there and go, Alex, and turn around and take off before you’ve even gotten up out of your seat? Or do I walk out with a smile on my face, hey Alex, nice to see you, come on back. I’ve been looking forward to seeing you today. You’re happy that nonverbal goes so far, the tone, all of the things that we teach with what we say on the phone. They can’t see you on the phone. They can see that.
21:52
face that some people, one of my best friends, she called it her thinking face. She, maybe, maybe she’s watching, but it was that face. We all know the face. It’s the face of the person that you don’t want to go up and talk to because you think they’re mad at the world. And she was like, no, that’s her thinking face. And I was like, okay, well stop thinking then because everybody in the team and the patients are scared of you right now. You have to have a smile on your face.
22:20
Is that why sometimes I say, Shelly, what’s that face? You go, I’m thinking. Maybe, maybe I caught, right, Peggy, if you’re out there, I’ve caught the thinking face, evidently. No, it’s one of those things that just goes a long way. You have to have a smile on your face. You have to be welcoming and enjoy having those people and build relationships with them. People want to come and see their friends. And they wanna be known when they come into your practice. They wanna, when you check in,
22:50
Don’t say, checkin’ in. Say, hi Alex, nice to see you. I’ll make sure to let Betty know that you’re here today or that you’re here, she’ll be right out for you. Grab a water, help yourself to some coffee. The restroom’s over here. Give them a mini tour of your office. Make sure they feel comfortable. Like they just showed up at your home, right? They just showed up at my home and I’m greeting them, I’m welcoming them in with open arms. Come on in. There’s the restroom. How many of you have had
23:19
A patient get there, they wait in the waiting room for five minutes or whatever. And then as soon as you go to call them back, what’s the first thing that they need to do and you’d use the restroom. So if the admin team just kind of took that a little initiative to say, if you need to use the restroom before they call you back, here you go. Otherwise the patient just sits there twiddling their thumbs going, I don’t want to go anywhere. And I think what you’re speaking to is just this. I learned this from Tony Robbins. Can I constant and never ending improvement?
23:49
And this is what we believe here at All-Star and everything with these podcasts, while we keep putting out podcasts, our online training, our webinars, our coaching, our events, everything we do is this constant and never-ending improvement. And I think that’s what the theme here is, why phones are so important, why we’re always the rubber band you talk about is we’re constantly stretching, we’re constantly improving. And that is, that’s something that we do as a community. That’s something we need to raise people up.
24:18
to continue, come on, let’s go. Let’s put a smile on our face, let’s work. So Shelly, great stuff, we can spend hours on this. I appreciate Facebook for giving us so many great comments to talk about great, of course, the G-E-R-E-G-R-E-A-T, our Great Call Process. And to learn more about the Great Call Process, we have a webinar that we do, alls backslash webinar. We’ll teach you the entire Great Call Process, we’ll give you a bonus cheat sheet you can take home and you can use.
24:47
So definitely check that out. And also let’s have some conversations, comment on Facebook, on social media, wherever you hear or if you’re listening, obviously you can’t do that drive, but if you’re watching a comment and let me know how you’re using the phones or any questions you have about phone skills, you Shelly, Heather, our entire team are happy to respond and we can have a conversation and learn together on phone skills and practice management. So thanks for joining Shelly Van Epps.
25:15
COO and lead coach at All-Star Dental Academy. And until next time, go out there and be an All-Star.
25:29
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Dental All-Stars. Visit us online at allstardentalacademy.com
