Numero Uno complaint from practice owners – “My associate doesn’t do enough dentistry or doesn’t sell enough dentistry.” Invariably there are two things absent from these practices.
Absent item #1 – no sales training/no selling system.
Absent item #2 – not understanding that a big key to a successful associate set-up is at least some of the dentistry is being performed at full fee.
The answer of course is to get off of your bu** and market for fee for service patients AND sell correctly to both insurance and fee for service patients. These two things are the obvious elephants in the room. [FYI – My newest book in the Dentist’s Unfair Advantage Series Volume 3 – The Ultimate Guide to Niche Dental Marketing spends a lot of time discussing the insurance game, full fee dentistry, and marketing budgets.]
If you’ve got an associate (or two or three), why haven’t you fixed these??? For goodness sake invest in your associate and your practice with an actual sales training and then get serious about marketing!
Okay…now for the associate.
Numero Uno complaint from associates – “I don’t make enough money.”
Admittedly, a practice discounting everything under the worst contracts makes this more of a challenge BUT having basic sales skills means selling more efficiently under any and all insurance policies and it also means having some patients opt for better treatment. Both equal more money in your paycheck. While I’d like to blame this all on dental insurance this complaint is heard even from practices that are all fee for service. Guess what the one or two things absent in these practices where the associate is saying this is? It’s either #1 from above OR both #1 and #2 above (remember again some of these practices with an associate making this complaint are fee for service!). If you are an associate reading this, get the practice owner on board to invest in you and the practice or at least split the tuition! Step #1 for stopping the associate/practice owner whining is to doing something tangible in fixing sales/sales process/sales steps.
Here’s a real curve ball for either a semi-retired dentist who wouldn’t mind making as much as an associate without doing any dentistry. Why not be the sales guru of a booming practice where the treating dentists don’t have time to spend in one on one time with patients during the key steps in selling? There’s a huge value in this. Last week a new member practice in up-state New York brought this up as a something they were considering.
Only wished I had thought of it!
