Assets Recovered

It is hot in Florida. Which is why I was grateful to head up north for a week.

My first stop was Baltimore, MD where I spent 3 days with the team from Chase Health Advance financing company. Chase was the major sponsor of a seminar during the AGD national session. The subject-Oral Body Systemic Connection. It was my pleasure to meet and learn from two masters on the subject of inflammation and the connection of periodontal disease to cardiovascular disease. Neil R. Gottehrer, D.D.S. and Marvin J. Slepian, M.D. presented their research and conclusions. This is a true asset for Chase Health Advance who has a helpful Resource Guide.Visit www.dentistryhasaheart.com  for the tools that you will need to promote this link with your patients.

My second stop was Wilmington, DE where I visited a friend from one of my client’s offices. Jean and I share a love for cooking and it was such a pleasure to dine together and visit a DuPont estate called Winterthur. My actual reason for being in Wilmington was to celebrate with a different client’s family. I was invited to the wedding for their daughter. The event was held in the elegant DuPont Hotel in downtown Wilmington. The bride and groom were happy and my friends, Joe and Joani, hosted an exceptional experience. Thank you Joe and Joani for including me in your lives for 16 years!! My relationships with my clients, past and present, is my greatest business asset.

Last stop on the tour led me to Joe’s office in Collingswood, NJ. There I partnered with an expert in Softdent training named Jan Keller. She is very knowledgeable and executes training in a meaningful way. She taught me and the team to recover hidden assets in the A/R by running 3 reports and so I will share them with you.

!. Accounts Receivable summary-here you will see the aged patient balances and insurance balances. Your team member is going to focus on the insurance receivable first by running the next report…

2. Outstanding Insurance Claims by company-find multiple patients covered by the same insurance carrier on one page. What a time saver when dialing for dollars.

3. Accounts Aging Report by Oldest Balance Order first-the person who has owed you money the longest is at the top of the list. Start there and make good financial arrangements where needed. Check the website at www.ftc.gov for the guidelines on the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act. Call me if you would like verbal skills.

Looking at reports will give you answers. Know what you are looking for. Numbers are your practice’s greatest asset. You can set goals, analyze data and come up with a plan. My clients are experiencing up to 23% growth in revenue and collections this year. To find out how we plan, I am able to offer a FREE seminar called Beyond Your Bottom Line, (normally a $ 595 value). If you are interested in attending on August 28, 2009 in Naples, FL, please contact me at 800-637-3947 or by email at jamisonconsulting@verizon.net.

Celebrations

We have two things to celebrate here in my family’s household. My son, Wil, is graduating from elementary school . My baby:(  He is moving on up to middle school next year and is prepared and excited to do that. The second item is that we are celebrating that my husband sold his motorcycle. It got too dangerous to drive around. I am grateful the he has made that decision and is ready to move on.

Celebrations are important!! In your practice, do you take the time to celebrate the little things? It is the little celebrations that really count because it could be a month or a year before you celebrate something huge. So here are a few suggestions for saying thank you to your team members when they finish a project, do something special for a patient or hit a weekly goal.

Enjoy!

1) Time spent with you on a personal basis. 2) Personal notes of encouragement. 3) Hand out mixed bags of Hershey’s Hugs™ and Kisses™. 4) Plan a team retreat for encouragement and renewal. 5) Write a note on a blank puzzle, break it apart and send the pieces. 6) Give a video rental gift certificate with a bag of microwave popcorn. 7) Have a mobile detail service come to wash cars for the day. Give a 100 Grand™ candy bar with a note: “You’re worth 100 Grand to us!” 9) Give a long stemmed rose. 10) At your next meeting, surprise everyone with party decorations. 11) Feature a member of the team in a newsletter or in your reception area. 12) Have a massage therapist and nail technician come in for an afternoon spa day. 13) Send a cookie gram.14) Make a button for everyone with “My boss appreciates me.” 15) Personalize Christmas ornaments for the holidays. 16) Have a whitening party. 17) Submit photo of your team to the local media and run an ad that shows appreciation for the team. 18) Personalize a coffee mug for each team member. 19) Give a seasonal bouquet of flowers. 20) Have t-shirts made with the team photo on them.

If you have ideas that you would like to share, contact Laura at jamisonconsulting@verizon.net or by calling 800-637-3947.

Back to basics

My husband and I shared a good laugh this weekend. A new washer and dryer were installed a month ago. My husband, Tim, bravely installed it with a friend. When the first load of laundry went into its spin cycle, our whole house shook violently. It took several weeks before Tim got back to the installation process. He fortified the floor, set the washer and dryer side by side, even dismantled the machines to look for something wrong. After many hours of frustrating efforts, I called Maytag. The very young female voice on the other end of the phone asked if we had removed the “packing straps and bolts” from the machine when it was installed. I was told that if not, then the machine would shake frantically. “Oh Honey. Did you remove the packing straps?” In looking at the installation manual, guess what Step One says? Remove the packing straps. Problem solved!!!

How often do you feel that you need to complete a lengthy process of trial and error to figure out the solution to a problem? Dentists tend to be isolated in their approach. They don’t really know what is causing their production to decrease or their collections to plummet. I recommend several things:

1) Know your numbers. Set goals and range norms in place to follow daily, weekly and monthly.

2) Have a business agenda at one of your team meetings each month. Discuss the numbers and the problem areas with your team. You will be amazed by what their insight is.

3) Go back to the basics with your systems. There is a good chance that what was step one in a system for phone enrollment, appointment scheduling, your new patient exam, financial arrangements has been missing for some time. It could be that a new employee never got that bit of information or an employee of record just didn’t want to do things the way you outlined them.

Oh, the mystery of step one. Where do you feel that you can go back to step one in your practice? Call me if you would like the help. My number is 8132-251-6401 and my email address is jamisonconsulting@verizon.net.

Spring Cleaning

In Tampa, Florida you know that spring is in the air. The oak pollen is driving most people crazy. It leaves everything coated in a yellow dust that is tenacious in clinging to everything that it encounters.

When yellow pollen needs to be cleaned, it requires a deeper scrubbing and evacuation of the stuff. It occurred to me that during this deepening recession we as dental business owners must be digging deeper. This recession doesn’t seem to be easy to brush away.

Spring cleaning is a time of renewal. The act requires that we plan our approach to the deeper cleansing. We create time to take a little longer with our process. We know that it isn’t something that we do daily or weekly and so we do a better job with spring cleaning.

In your dental practice, determine what problem areas need to be addressed. Schedule time to discuss your approach with your team and take some of the time that may now be available to you due to broken appointments to conduct training, research answers and share with the team or actually clean the office. When cleaning the office, tour the facility as if you were a new patient with a discerning eye. Examine the parking lot, the grounds, the entryway, the reception room, the appearance of the business office and each treatment room. Get rid of the old magazines, mountains of brochures and sticky note wallpaper. Dispose of tattered posters and old ceiling tiles. Paint the baseboard. Freshen the reception desk with weekly flowers. Spring is in the air.

This is a good time to get rid of the newspaper in the reception room. There isn’t any good news anyway and they look messy as the day goes on. Be selective about the magazines in your reception area also. Keep the bloody disasters off your counters.

I know that spring is a time for opening the door again. Be open to doing things differently. If you wish to have an objective eye look at how you are meeting your patients, please call me at 813-251-6401.

Picture yourself once your cabinets and closets have been cleaned. It feels great to see the fruits of your labor after a day of spring cleaning, doesn’t it?

Have you noticed?

You’ve noticed, haven’t you? It seems that the world is evolving very quickly in the field of customer service. In my interaction with 20 different businesses over the last month, it seems that 19 now have made a solid commitment to excellent customer service. Airlines, hotels, cable providers, you name it. I have heard more sincere acknowledgements for my business in the last month than I have heard in one year.

How does this apply? The statistics from Michael Gerber’s EMyth Revisited invite us to believe that 500,000 small businesses start each year but by year ten, only 20,000 are still in business. What do the success story owners have to share about their frutifulness? They have learned that you must treat the customer in a way that exceeds their expectation not once, but every time. There is a formula for this. It is E=R5. Effectiveness=doing the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, for the right person, knowing that the customer is always right. Be grateful for every business opportunity that exists for you.

I am grateful to the Midwest Implant Institute Fellows for inviting me to be part of their mid winter meeting. I am impressed by the technology involved in performing live surgery and beaming it into the conference center for dentists interested in implants to learn from some talented doctors. Dr. Michael Cohen of Seattle Study Club is also on my list of people I am grateful to this week. I had the opportunity to make a presentation on the importance of appointment scheduling to students at the University of Washington. Dr. Cohen invited me to come and we spent time reliving his experience with all of his attendees at the SSC annual symposium. He reassured me that teaching dentists how to relate to their patients is going to continue to be a big part of what I can bring to the table. Dental consulting, particularly, Dental management consulting is what I do. Lastly, I am grateful to Chase Health Advance financing options and Lighthouse PLZ for sponsoring the program at MII.

Who are you thankful for? Have you noticed?

The Boss reigns (rains)

Do you know The Boss?!? Bruce Springsteen was in town for the Superbowl. I was smart enough to register as a volunteer to participate as a fan on the halftime field. Oh My Gosh!!! If you saw it, you know what I’m talkin’ about. Glory Days!

As fans we rehearsed all day on Sunday. It was hot. I met a lot of nice people from Iowa and from California. The next rehearsal was on Thursday. From the time we checked in at 2pm until we finished early at 8:30pm, it rained. I mean it poured. I was never so thankful for hooded ponchos. But in my squishy running shoes and wet jeans I began looking for the positive spin to this story. We were there and trained to be cast members. The Boss and the E Street band performed flawlessly in the pouring rain not once but twice on Thursday night. I was impressed.

Why might this observation be relevant to your dental practice? Practice makes permanent. In these critical and challenging economic times you better be rehearsing. Don’t leave key situations to chance. This includes the telephone intake, the new patient experience and the hygiene visit. If your practice is slow, commit to practicing regularly. It is all about the relationship. The producers of the hafltime show continually reinforced how much Bruce Springsteen wanted the fans to interact.

The Superbowl experience was unbeatable for me and my husband. Is your practice Super?

Are you green and growing or ripe and rotten?

I was recently approached by a woman who is experiencing a difficult time financially. Her economic situation was opposite of what it currently is only five years ago. She had a home, a good job, beautiful clothes. Now she risks losing her home, she’s let herself go and feels defeated. I was happy to share a thought with her that I want to share with you. “You are your own best investment. There is no one else worth taking a risk on more than yourself. Believe in yourself and your ability to work a plan that will enable you to shine in 2009.”

Last night I had the honor of being invited by Chase Health Advance to present a webinar on Dentaltown. It was a wonderful opportunity to share some solid planning principles with the dental community. Thanks go to Susan Richardson, Jennifer Heald and Barry Trexler of Chase Health Advance and Ahmad Shams, Ken Thompson and Dr. Tom Giacobbi of Howard Farran Media/Dentaltown for their effort in bringing the evening together.

We have benefitted from an inspirational chapter in our history this week in the Inauguration of President Obama. My favorite quote was, “Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.”

Yes, we choose to be either GREEN and GROWING or RIPE and ROTTEN.

New year. New idea. Inaugural event. Dentistry has a Heart month is February 2009

Happy new year!!! Inaugural events are exciting. Things are surely cooking in Washington D.C.

Dentistry has a heart month is an exciting event. This year dentists can promote Dentistryhasaheart.com to their patients and their cardiologists. The website is initially developed to provide the dental community with products, letters and educational information about the health link between oral inflammation and heart disease.

Do you have articles that you would like posted? Please email them to jamisonconsulting@verizon.net. If you have ideas on how to present the dental/heart related marketing program, share them with us. This site is going to continue to develop over the years.

If asked what dentists want help with, I believe that it is comfort zone marketing. Educating patients is important. Health is a buzzword. Dentists and team members play a huge role in identifying health related issues such as high blood pressure. The patient may see their dentist more often than they see their doctors. Dentistry has a heart marries the best of education and marketing.

Blankets and Piggy Banks

We are so excited about our sixteenth annual session of Beyond Your Bottom Line which was held December 5-6, 2008 at the spectacular meeting room at the Alden Beach Hotel in St. Pete Beach. Mark Iacobelli, D.D.S. and I enjoyed hosting 23 participants, dentists and auxilliaries for a two day, information packed seminar on the subject of running your dental practice as a business. The ability to surprise these wonderful people with gifts of blankets, piggy banks and inspiration boards made me feel good about celebrating their contribution to dentistry. They deserved the celebration. You might wonder about the piggy banks. We filled them with coins because the theme was, “Change is good.”

Look for promotional products and uniforms for promoting Dentistry has a Heart month. You will see the products, articles and video streams to inform you of how to host Dentistry has a Heart month by the end of December. Dentistry has a Heart month is in February and coincides with American Heart Health month. Stay tuned.

Laura Jamison