Welcome to the Madow Brothers Audio Series with Rich and Dave Madow
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Welcome to The Madow Brothers Audio Series with Rich and Dave Madow
Madow: Hi this is Dr. Richard Madow and welcome to another of The Madow Brothers Audio Series. Our guest today is Kirk Behrendt. Kirk is founder and president of Act Dental Practice Coaching and I think you’re on the line there all the way from Kansas City. How are you today Kirk?
Behrendt: I am Rich, how are you, I’m fantastic. I’m having a great day and I’m super excited to be on the line with you.
Madow: That is so good to know because I am just as excited if not more to be on the line with you and I’ll tell everybody listening why I’m excited to be on the line with you and that is because, I know I’m getting old, I’m in my mid fifties and I’ve been, you know, in dentistry for thirty years and I’ve seen so many coaches and speakers and experts and so-called experts and all those people and we’ve only met fairly recently. But I’ve gotta say, I think you’re one of the most enthusiastic and dynamic and motivating and knowledgeable and helpful people that I’ve ever met in the dental profession. So, as you can tell, I really, really admire what you’re doing and how you’re helping so many dentists out there and most of all how you deliver your message, so welcome to the audio series.
Behrendt: Cool, well thanks Rich. I appreciate that. I, you know, getting to know you guys here in the last year or so has been a real treat for me too and I just feel grateful to be on this journey and I’m excited to call you my friend, so.
Madow: Excellent, great, well thanks for taking the time out of your schedule to be here. Now, again, I introduced you as founder and president of Act Dental Coaching but maybe some our listeners aren’t that familiar with what you’re doing. Just give like a real quick idea to people how you got started in this dental thing and how long you’ve been doing it and what you hope to accomplish, just a little Kirk Behrendt 101.
Behrendt: All right, well I never thought I’d ever do anything in dentistry and I got involved in the lab business while I was in college and two lab owners, they were great guys, took an interest in me and they said gosh you’d be great with dentists and I thought no dentists are crazy, I don’t want anything to do with dentistry and they said no, no, no it’s actually quite fun. And I learned a lot about the lab business early on so and you know, you could tell by the quality of an impression what was going on in that practice and so it was very telling or me. And it was a fun time for me because I was single and I could, you know, experiment a lot with CE and stuff like that and so I took a lot of courses. And I started looking around in my early twenties and actually contemplating leaving dentistry and I had a couple friends of mine take some interest in having me go to a couple of courses and I remember one course I went to, I really wasn’t very excited about spending three days to listen to an older dentist speak because I was thinking to myself, you know, I don’t really want to invest three days doing this and it was one of those courses that really changed my life in a lot of different ways and that course was, The Top Ten Course, with Pete Dawson. And as a kid I remember just taking notes after and I thought this is fantastic and her would always say things like, “if you do the right thing, money will follow”. So it really lit my fire a lot and he was such a great influence on me early on and I got very, very hungry for CE after that and it’s amazing how things work. A couple years ago, Pete Dawson helped me to teach The Top Ten course, so it’s been a fun journey for me, been a fun journey ___, but back in 1998 we started a company called Act Dental and we just started working with practices one on one and I just have so much, I always wanted to be a school teacher and I had a couple of family members of mine that kind of talked me out of being a school teacher and I found a way to get back into teaching and I gotta tell ya, I just absolutely love it. I think dentistry is the greatest profession ever because there’s no rules, you can make this up as you go, you can practice where you want to practice, really it’s a very clean palette in how you want to create your life, so and make a dramatic impact on other people’s lives, so it’s been a very exciting journey for us.
Madow: Way to go, well you’ve been doing it and anybody that was at TBSE 2012 knows that Kirk was our kind of special unannounced guest speaker and you came out there on stage and blew everybody away. You were just fantastic, you got everybody so psyched and you got a huge standing ovation, the promise that you’ll be back in 2013, so we’ll talk about that a little bit later. But let’s get down to some really cool information, you know, for all of our listeners today and we’ll start with a maybe slightly difficult question, but I think you’re the right person to answer this. You know, it’s, we’ve been through these crazy economic times, whether you want to call it the depression, the recession, retraction, who cares what you call it, people have been complaining about the economy for a while and it’s on that seesaw, it looks like it’s getting better, then it’s getting worse, what have you seen out there? Maybe say in the last two years, anything different? Are people reacting differently to this economic climate?
Behrendt: Yeah I, we pay a lot, very close attention to a lot of the data. So we travel to a lot of different practices and some of them have been doing extremely well, some of them struggling, and then some of them have actually seen a little bit of a decline and I always try to pay attention to the patterns and what I have seen is this is that I find we have some practices that had jumps over twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty- eight percent last year and my question to them is always this question and this is a great question to use when you meet anybody that’s successful in anything, whether it be parenting, you know, athletics, business, finance, I always ask them the same question. What’s your secret, like what is your secret? Because people that have done pretty well in anything, they want to give you their secret. So today I’m gonna share with you a little bit of their secrets and what they’ve done, but they’re rethinking how they connect with patients. It’s not necessarily about how many more numbers can we get, but how do we go deeper with the people that we get to know. How can we create a greater impact in their lives and they’re realizing that it isn’t like the old days where you’d have patients come in for a comprehensive exam, they’d come back for a consult and then all of a sudden the third appointment would be a prep. Now they’re seeing that patients are requiring a whole lot more touches and sometimes those could be touches on the phone, sometimes they could be touches in person, and sometimes they could be touches from other people that might be saying great things about you. But what I’m finding is, is that I don’t think dentistry is ever gonna go back to the way it was in 2007, I just really don’t. I think there’s a lot of people that are sitting and waiting for the recession to end and I don’t know if that’s the best tactic to use. What I am finding thought, is that people are, when it comes to the recession, I see a lot of our practices that we really admire, they’ve done very well, they all live by one philosophy and it’s this, choosing not to participate. Because as a dentist, it’s very easy to say those words, you know, we can get our brain around that, we chose not to participate, but choosing not to participate in a recession is very much a healthy mindset because the world’s gonna do what it’s gonna do anyway, but how you respond to it we have complete choice over that. And it’s very important for the dentist and the team members to understand that any moment and every moment you can influence the situation. You can influence what happens on the phone, you can influence what happens in your practice, and you can certainly influence what happens in conversation with patients. So that’s what we’ve seen a lot in the last twenty-four months is we’ve just seen people reengineering how they communicate to go deeper not necessarily farther with patients, does that make sense? Madow: It does, I just want to clarify the terms though. Are you saying that getting our current patients to participate more in our practice, get more involved in their treatment, is more important these days than just going for huge gross numbers?
Behrendt: Yeah, well it used to be really about the numbers a lot where people, you know, would target dollar dentistry when it comes to diagnosis with patients and things like that and now what people are understanding more than ever is that we’re a culture, we’re an absolute culture that, of people that don’t want relationships, we’re starving for them. We have a lot of friends on Facebook but I don’t know if we should really call them friends, they’re kind of acquaintances and it’s one of those worlds where we feel very much connected to somebody whose able to go a little bit deeper with us, create a little bit more of a significant relationship, do a little bit better job of listening and that not only happens business but also happens in our personal lives where we just go a little bit deeper. And I’ll describe to you a little bit more about what I mean by that, but I think it’s just; this is the perfect opportunity to create more significance than trying to focus so much on success for ourselves.
Madow: Ah interesting and I’m imagining that if you do create that significance, then success will follow?
Behrendt: Absolutely, absolutely, dentistry is an amazing profession. You get an unbelievable opportunity to make a huge, a huge impact in people lives. And one illustration that it really comes to mind, I had a chance to go to the Cooper Clinic in January and that’s often, you know, regarded as one of the premier preventative, preventive places to go when it comes to health and my wife and I had been talking about going there forever and it was really a mind blowing experience. I got to meet, I got a chance to meet both of the Coopers, Tyler and Ken and what they shared with me was this, they said you know what, we’re not really involved with the medical community that much because we don’t participate with insurance. People that come here want to be healthy and I started sharing with them a little about what I do in working with dentists and he said you guys are the key. I mean, dentistry is the key, because the majority of the health problems that they see come to them happen with two things. It’s what people do to their mouths and what they put in their mouths and how they move their body. And really we’ve become a culture of very sick people and so their opinion was this, there’s no one in the world that’s better positioned to make a dramatic impact on people’s lives from a health standpoint than a dentist and I believe that to be true. The dentist is the, has to opportunity to be the primary healthcare influence in people’s lives. Who spends this much time with a patient and the answer is nobody, nobody. So I think dentistry offers an amazing opportunity to change people’s lives.
Madow: Yeah great perspective and, you know, people like us and our colleagues who educate and teach dentists, it’s easy for us to blow our own horns and say dentistry’s great, dentistry’s great, but to hear it from Dr. Cooper at the Cooper Clinic, that’s pretty amazing, cool stuff.
Behrendt: It’s very cool, it’s very cool.
Madow: Ok well hey let’s talk about our topic today, I was going to say let’s talk about what we were going to talk about, and that is, you’re calling it a new perspective in the new patient experience, so you know, it sounds like you had a great mentor in Pete Dawson and everybody’s kind of got their own view with the new patient experience, which is anywhere from throw ‘em in the chair and give ‘em a quick exam all the way to a, you know, long stretched-out model. How’s your perspective in the new patient experience involved?
Behrendt: Yeah, we have what is called the treatment coordinator conference where we invite the best treatment coordinators all over the country to come in and share. So they, about two times a year they come and they share data with us and these aren’t people that are speakers or authors, they don’t do any of that. Their specialty is actually working in dental practices, very high caliber, high quality practices and they share a lot of cool stuff with us and my question to them is the question I mentioned earlier, what’s your secret, like how do you guys do this because these are the people that are experiencing very big jumps and what they shared with us is what I’m gonna share with you here in the next couple minutes, just how to rethink the new patient process because the keys to all of this are being able to create a deeper connection and so there’s really four ways that patients can come into your office and I’ll take you through each one of these. But what they’ve done is they’ve made it easy for patients, you know, traditionally functionally trained dentists had a hard time back in the nineties because it, there was just a lot of dogma in the way that things that should be done, here’s step one, here’s step two and if patients didn’t like it we dismissed patients. But there’s a whole new thinking now and the thinking is this, let’s make it easy for patients but let’s listen, let’s listen instead of trying to respond so much and I find that to be one of the biggest challenges. So when it comes to the phone call there’s four ways that patients can come in to the office. Obviously, if it’s a highly referred patient, they can go into what’s called the records appointment and a lot of dentists call that a comprehensive exam, but it’s an hour to an hour and a half, sometimes two hour appointment where you gather significant data, get to know the patient in a _____ and it’s usually the best opportunity to start a relationship off with the patient on the right foot. The second way that people can come into the practice and this has been the biggest opportunity in the recession is to come in what’s called in a meet and greet. And some people call that a look and see, but really a meet and greet is a thirty minute, no charge appointment where the patient gets to experience the practice. Now the important thing about this particular appointment is not to over think it because people over think this way, way too much. Studies show that between phone call and when the patient actually experiences the practice, if it goes beyond seven days, we find that they’re likelihood of accepting treatment significantly drops. It’s not that they won’t say yes, but people’s life circumstances change all the time, you know, people’s life circumstances are often effected by what happens on a weekly basis or going to the mailbox, you go to the mailbox you get more bills. My life changes every week depending on what’s in that mailbox. So what we find is, is that’s if it’s easier for patients to come in, they can see what we’re about, we can engage with them and we can build value for having them come back for what’s called the records appointment like we shared a little bit earlier. But the meet and greets thirty minutes no-charge, it’s just a tour and we take some photos and them some great questions. And sometimes our treatment coordinators that we have a chance to work with, some of them can do as many as three of them in a day and a lot of dentists tighten up and they say, gosh I could never do three thirty minute no-charge appointments in a day. And the truth of it is they don’t, so it’s always done in an extra column that’s guided by the treatment coordinator and this person has to have the gift of hospitality. So being able to listen, to give a great tour, and be able to connect with patients is hugely important. Now a couple keys with the tour is this. We’ve learned that there’s huge difference between left brain and right brain communication, you know, left brain is a little bit more linear, right brain tends to be a little bit more emotional, visual and that’s really where the relationship side of things happens and we find some of our best treatment coordinators will often engage patients in a really good conversation at the front desk before any of this happens. So I’m gonna digress with you a little bit to share with you the magic in making appointment number one work and appointment number two work really, really well. And one of the first steps is this; our practices usually have a new patient telephone slip. In a day and age where you should be paperless, it’s really good to have a new patient telephone slip and I like to have it in either fluorescent yellow or fluorescent pink and that’s just a code, it’s a system that allows everybody in the practice to know what’s happening when this person is on the phone with a new patient because there’s no greater pet peeve in the world than to have somebody staring at you or standing next to you when you’re trying to listen intently to somebody else on the other line, does that make sense Rich?
Madow: Totally
Behrendt: Yeah, so and really I joke with team members, I say this, you know, when you see your team member on the phone with a yellow sheet of paper in front of her, that is code for if the practice is on fire, let’s contain it before it gets to her because nobody should interrupt her. And what they want to do is they have a chance just to be able to listen and engage the patient and really try to understand. Here’s an important point and I’m gonna ask you to write this down. The problem with the world, not just dentistry, the problem with the world is this, people listen to respond, they don’t listen to understand. Because most treatment coordinators have an automated response when patient start asking questions. Well do you participate with my insurance, you know, what’s your fee, what do you, and they have an auto, instead of responding, you’ve gotta get good at really, really listening. I think this, now this is a whole different phone call, but when it comes to dental insurance and somebody says to you, do you take my insurance, you can’t answer the question, you have to ask a question. Our best treatment coordinators say this, when a patient says do you take my insurance, the treatment coordinator will say this, Mrs. Jones it sounds like that is a very important thing to you, can you share with me a little bit about why you ask that question. Because now you’re gonna open up the conversation and the patients are gonna go a little bit deeper with you. And they’re gonna say gosh you really do understand, you’re starting to listen to understand and it changes the nature of the relationship. Now that’s one of the big keys, the other big key is using, when you listen to people, you have them start to engage that right hemisphere of their brain. They start to paint a picture of what looked like how this might be as we start to go a little deeper in our relationship. The second key is this, most of our treatment coordinators will ask the patient, when they’re on the phone with them, Mrs. Jones are you near a computer and eighty percent of our treatment coordinators say that patients will say yes, I’m right near my computer. Can you put in our website in a URL right up there and I’ll wait for you and they’ll actually make the patient go to the website and they will have the patient go to the team page and point themselves out as they’re talking to the patient and getting them prepared for the appointment. They’ll say Mrs. Jones go to our website, if you click on the team page and you see that first smiling face right up there? That’s me, I’m Rosemarie, I’ll be your first smiling face you see on Tuesday when you come in for your new patient appointment. So they want to start engaging them visually, emotionally, they want ‘em to say, they want the patient to say to themselves, I’ve never even had an experience like this on the phone and sometimes those new patient telephone calls, those can be twelve, fifteen, twenty minutes and that’s where we’re seeing people reengineer their practices because they know how important those phone calls are to the whole new patient process. Now other elements of the new patient telephone call that lends itself to a great new patient experience is a transfer of trust and we’ve been taught this for a long time. But there’s a couple of key phrases that we always teach team members to use and it’s this, number one when patients, when you start to engage patients about an appointment, you want to let the patients know that they have made a good decision of calling your office. Say Mrs. Jones you certainly called the right place, what you’re looking for is exactly what we do. The other thing I like in transfer of trust is letting them know how awesome your doctor is. Our doctor is amazing, you’re gonna love her, she is fantastic. So you want to make sure that the transfer of trust is very, very strong and a lot of team members are often afraid to do that. But that’s a key piece in having somebody say yes or having them come and experience your practice. So those are some of the keys in setting up those first two appointments, the records appointment or the meet and greet and they lend themselves all to a great, great experience in the practice. The third way the patients can come into the practice is through a hygiene appointment. Now, it’s not that people are bad when they say hey look I just want to get my teeth cleaned. Often times that’s all they know and I’ve watched a lot of practices just become too regimented about the way patients come into their practice and they end up losing a lot of opportunities with people that would otherwise be great patients. So if people insist on getting their teeth cleaned, what we tell ‘em is absolutely, we’re gonna set you up with one of our expert hygienists and doctors please refer to your team as experts, it’s works vise versa the team members have to refer to the doctors as experts and the doctor has to refer to his or her team members as experts. I love it when a doctor or a front desk person or anybody of the team describes a hygienist as an expert hygienist because it implies two things. Number one, that you value what the person does, number two, it also describes a value in which people aren’t gonna get anywhere else in your town. We don’t have hygienists on our team, we have expert hygienists, does that make sense?
Madow: It does, it almost implies without saying anything bad, that all the other practices have regular hygienists and we have, all the expert hygienists come here, it’s great.
Behrendt: Yeah and it’s not, it’s not that you want to make other practices look bad, but the thing is, is that you guys all work hard. The reason you’re listening to this particular audio series is that you want to make your practice better; your lives better and provide better, higher quality of care, which puts you on the path of being an expert. So make sure the people know that. That you’re trying to be an expert or you’re on your way to being an expert. So and in that particular appointment that patients come in and that third, third particular way that they come in, we don’t make big promises to them about being able to clean their teeth because you know as well as I do, you know, sometimes you don’t know what you’re gonna see when these patients come in. So, if we can, we will clean your teeth and, you know, you’re gonna see one of our expert hygienists and her name is Lisa and she is awesome and you will love her. The fourth way that patients can come into the practice is called an emergency. Now this is probably the least preferable way to have a patient come into the practice, but what I ask all of our practices to do is change that word, don’t every use the word “emergency” because Rich when I tell you an emergency, what do you think? What’s the first thing that comes to your mind?
Madow: I’m hearing sirens and, but, you know, well sometimes you also think, I think sometimes in the dental office when we hear emergency it means the patients in pain, they don’t want endo, they can’t pay, and they’re gonna disrupt your entire day.
Behrendt: Absolutely, absolutely and you know, I ask team members this all the time, what’s the craziest thing you’ve ever heard when it comes to an emergency. Like how long has to tooth been broken? And team members will go well the patient will say the tooth has been broken for two years. And you know what, when we use the word emergency we create an urgent factor in their brain that exacerbates and, you know, our problems when we force them into the schedule. I ask everybody change that name, don’t ever use emergency. From now on, use the word comfort appointment because there isn’t a dentist in the world that can’t get a patient comfortable in just a few minutes. The other thing it does is it lowers expectations. Patients know when you say look we will get you comfortable, I can’t promise you that we’re gonna fix the problem, but we will get you out of pain. Patients start to manage their own expectations about what’s being done, because most offices say come on in let’s take a look at it, which the patient, I know what you said, but the patient here’s this, you’re gonna fix it and that causes problems in the schedule, it puts big huge pressure on some of our A patients and some of these people don’t pay and they don’t come back. So from now on call it a comfort appointment. And the whole time we’re prompting these patients to come back for the most preferable way, which would be through a records appointment or comprehensive exam in which we get to know ‘em a little bit more. Now patients that come back for either consult, you know, cosmetic consultation or Invisalign or sometimes a second opinion, we put ‘em in the same column that we would do a meet and greet and we’d almost consider it the same thing. I’m watching a lot of patients now go around and ask for second opinions and that’s ok, that’s part of the way the world is working right now but what we also find is that we ask patients to come back and visit our office after they’ve had a second opinion because research indicates that people will most likely go with the last person they speak to, not necessarily the cheapest. So you want to ask the patient, Mrs. Jones is it all right if we talk, if we give you a call after you’re had your second opinion and we’d just like to have you come back in because we care about you as one of our patients. We want to make sure you’re in great hands and it’s ok if you decide to go to another dental office, we just care about you and we want to make sure you’re in great hands. Does that make sense?
Madow: It does, interesting research too about the second opinion, I’m guessing that goes too for car mechanics and electricians and everybody out there.
Behrendt: Yeah Madow: The last person you speak with is the most memorable one for some reason.
Behrendt: Absolutely, you see people in construction and home repair; they always want to be the last person you speak to for that exact reason. So it’s very interesting how all that works. Now we’re also, we’re watching people still have their consult, after their normal consult appointment that they would typically have after a records appointment and for most dentists that can mean thirty minutes or an hour to review all of their findings and discuss future treatment, but what we’re watching now is people adding another appointment after that. Remember what I said at the beginning, we’re seeing that patients often require more touches than they used to and this is the perfect opportunity to add one additional touch. Now our treatment coordinators report this, they do what’s called a pre-op appointment. And when I first heard that I thought what is a pre-op appointment for a treatment coordinator and the treatment coordinators all said this, I’m gonna make this really simple for you. They said we want to protect the doctors’ schedule with our lives for the next seven days; nobody and I mean nobody gets in the schedule unless we have really clear expectations prior, seven days prior. So the pre-op can either be an appointment in person, some of them were having the patients come back and be able to review everything, see if the patient had any additional questions, they could, at that time, talk about shade, shape, translucency, bring in some pictures of either celebrities, when it comes to some cosmetic things or just talk about anything that still might be lingering when it comes to questions. One of the things that they require is that we come to an understanding about how this is gonna be paid for because what we find is that the earlier the payment, it’s not necessarily about making sure the patients pay all this in one visit, but we want to have them make some type of financial commitment before we actually put ‘em into the schedule and so half of the, it seems like half of the treatment coordinators are having that appointment in person and then the other half would do it over the phone and it was just an opportunity to just get clear before we put you in the schedule. And I even had a couple treatment coordinators say this, no payment, no appointment, because we know when they pay they what?
Madow: They stay
Behrendt: Show up, yeah they stay and they show up, yeah.
Madow: They pay and they stay.
Behrendt: Absolutely, now a couple other keys that I have to say is this, is that that phone and so many people say this, but the most important piece of equipment in the office is your phone. It’s more important than the Cerec, digital radiography, anything and if we can use that really well, it has a magnificent impact on the business. The person who answers your phone, she doesn’t represent your business, she is the business, she says everything about the business and so in our training sessions we call ‘em sunshine pumpers. I tell ‘em, when you’re starting with us I say your job is to manufacture sunshine into the phone. Like when it’s a lousy day out, it‘s raining, you have to create sunshine into the phone and with that comes a great responsibility. So that’s part of the whole process in making sure that people, make it easy for patients to come in and we get a chance to wow ‘em, engage with them, and give ‘em a reason to come back. I think in this whole other process, a couple other things that are very important, number one, the patient can never lose control of the process. While you might be guiding them through a system, once the patient loses control where you start being the authority and you start telling the patient what’s gonna happen next, that becomes a very dangerous proposition. We always want to make sure that the patients are in control of their decision making. And some of my highest producers use the same language all the time, they will say, Mrs. Jones my job is to take the best care of you, tell you what I see and make sure that you’re in control of your future. Now you decide what you want to do here, but my job is just to tell you the truth about what I see.
Madow: You decide, do you want to have a beautiful smile or do you want to let your teeth rot, you decide, but, you know, I hope…
Behrendt: Yes
Madow: …I hope people have been putting this on pause and writing down some of these great phrase, you’ve given just a ton of these nice, eloquently, simple phrases to, you know, just explain to the patient, in their terms, what’s going on and what their decision making process is and it’s just a great way to do things.
Behrendt: Absolutely, thank you, thank you.
Madow: So I’ve got a few questions for you if this is a good time to interrupt you for a second.
Behrendt: Please, please
Madow: Good, we’ll just back up for a little bit, you talked about this yellow sheet that you keep by the phone or pink sheet, is it the same sheet whether it’s yellow or pink, same thing?
Behrendt: Yeah whatever color makes you happy, there are some offices that like fluorescent pink, it has to be obvious to the eye, so that if I see as I’m walking up the hallway and I see that color, that is code for me that I’m gonna triage this patient into the consult room or I’ll have the patient have a seat. A lot of team members, they just over think collecting money or making the next appointment, they have so much anxiety about that and really the most important thing that’s happening right now is that somebody at the front desk is talking to a brand new patient. That’s the most important activity. Madow: But my main question was on that yellow sheet or pink sheet or green sheet, whatever, what is actually on that sheet?
Behrendt: Well you get to decide, I actually do have one of my favorite, actually the best new patient telephone slip that I’ve seen in probably twenty years was created by an office that we work with in South Carolina. I’m happy to send you that sheet and you can get an idea of some of the questions and verbiage, you know, if you want to send an email to me at [email protected], I’m happy to email you one of those. The thing is, is that you have to create a very simple and I really don’t like it to be more than a front and back. This particular sheet that I’m gonna send you; you’ll see it has a front where all the questions and their processes and their systems are super clear. Any team member of any level could pick up one of those sheets and listen to a patient and guide them though how we take excellent care of our patients, it’s that clearly written out. The cool part about this is as an office, you get to decide what’s on that sheet of paper. But often times we don’t have a system for how we engage patients in the practice. So I’m happy to share with you one of the best I’ve ever seen.
Madow: Great, so any of our listeners, [email protected], to get a great sheet.
Behrendt: Yeah
Madow: Ok, now, ok, so, I thought your four ways that people come in were interesting, emergency or comfort appointment we’re all familiar with, hygiene appointment we’re all familiar with whether we like it or not. How do you decide then if it’s a comprehensive exam or records appointment versus a meet and greet appointment?
Behrendt: Well usually this is where it comes down to really identifying the type of patient that you’re looking for. In the marketing world, we call an avatar, you know, an avatar is an actual representation of what you would consider being your ideal patient and a lot of our offices have identified who their ideal patient is. They’ll say something like this, our ideal patient is a sixty-two years old female, her children are out of the house, she’s probably not had the best dental care in the last ten to fifteen years, she’s fairly healthy for the most part, and she lives in this particular zip code. You can get as clear about that as you want and it really does help this process, but I think what ultimately is the best help is that you just, you’re listening, really very carefully to the things that are important to the patient and seeing if they match up to your value system because Rich, you realize this in dentistry, your favorite patients believe the same things that you believe. The hardest thing in the world is trying to convince somebody a belief system. If they don’t believe the things that you believe, that’s gonna be a little bit tougher road. So the key is being able to listen. And most of the people that have been working the front desk for more than a year understand who a highly referred patient would be an ideal candidate, obviously if they’re referred from another A patient, we want to put ‘em right into a records appointment because those are our best referrals in the practice, but if they’re a little bit on the fence, they’re not so sure, people aren’t necessarily excited making an hour, an hour and half commitment, then we want to make it easy for ‘em. Take the pressure right off of ‘em and say hey I understand that you don’t want to come in for that particular appointment, let’s do this, let’s get you set up for what we call a meet and greet, it’s no charge, it’s thirty minutes, you get a chance to meet us, the doctor, see our office, and then you can make the best decision for you. So really if it’s a highly referred patient or if you’re on the fence I still like ‘em to go on a records appointment and if you can feel even the slightest bit of resistance, what we want to do is put ‘em right into the meet and greet. Madow: Well I love the no charge meet and greet especially if a patient has a million questions about their insurance and do you do this and can you do that and then, you know, it just kind of comforts them and let’s them know they’re in the right place, but, so, but it just seems like it’s getting a little, like a little bit much, I mean, it’s possible a new patient can call, they’ll get the meet and greet, then they’ll come back for the records appointment, then if they need more than just a couple simple restorations and a cleaning, you may want to have them back for a treatment plan presentation or whatever you chose to call that appointment. So that’s three appointments already and nothing’s been done clinically and then you’re saying bring them back for a pre-op appointment after that, this, it’s a lot.
Behrendt: Well it’s not necessarily every patient, now let me clarify this. This is, you, this is where your freedom comes in, you, at these particular junctures you can make decisions with patients and some patients aren’t gonna want to come back that many times, I totally, totally agree. The key is, is that you have to understand the nature of and you already understand this, but a lot of times people don’t understand what makes a great comprehensive or restorative practice. People think that a great restorative practice just does, you know, full arches and quadrant dentistry all day. I find that some of the best practices in the country, really half of it or more than half of it is just really single tooth dentistry, it’s very simple procedures and then maybe forty to fifty percent or even thirty percent of the dentistry that’s being done on a monthly basis is just a few case, just a few. So really what it comes down to is, in the scope of it, if you have twenty-four new patients a month and three or four of ‘em make it all the way through that longer process into the pre-op appointment, you’re looking at a really actually very successful practice in that respect. It’s not that everybody’s gonna go through a multitude of all these appointments, it’s that some, you know, most, most or at least half of the patient are really just gonna want single tooth dentistry and it doesn’t necessarily require that they have to come back for a consult. So you get to decide whether or not you want to have a patient come back for a consult and usually what I find is that people, dentists and team members, when they’re having conversations with patients, if it goes over a certain dollar amount or if it requires multiple teeth or interdisciplinary discussions, then they will just as the patient to come back for a consult. But if it’s really a single tooth procedure, they’ll talk about treatment at that particular appointment and schedule treatment for the next visit, does that make sense?
Madow: Totally makes sense
Behrendt: Yeah, so thank you for asking that question, because sometimes people take things too literally and have patients go through the whole entire process when they’re not even interested.
Madow: Exactly and I think, in dentistry sometimes, especially when we’re listening to somebody whose expertise we want to take advantage of, we start making a list and say well Kirk Behrendt says I have to do it this way, so I’m gonna be doing it this way. And I’m just picturing like, you know, a twenty-five year old patient with, that’s never had a cavity and has never had a pocket over two millimeters is being put through eighty-five appointments before they get their teeth cleaned, so.
Behrendt: No, yeah, great point, great point, but another thing that, you know, every once in a while we’ve gotta jump out of dentistry to understand a little bit more about what our patients are going through. But if you’re gonna spend more than three or four thousand dollars on anything now a days, you’re gonna want to do your homework and you’re gonna want to know that this company that you do business with or individual really understands you and listens to you and it’s not necessarily, those aren’t knee-jerk reactions. So be clear about what it is that you’re trying to help patients with and if it starts to go, if your dollar amounts start to go into those thresholds, understand that buyers need a little bit connectedness to you in order to be able to make those decisions because I’m certainly not gonna spend that type of money with somebody I don’t know that well.
Madow: I agree and it’s interesting when we started this call you were talking about touches and that’s a big word these days, you know, touch can be an office visit, it can be an email, it can be a phone call, it can be a birthday card, whatever it is and I think, I may be misquoting you, but I think you said that in some cases there could be five to ten touches with a patient while they’re still brand new in the practice. Are there any other, any other touches you want to talk about?
Behrendt: Yeah, I think the more visual you can do the better. You look at some of these younger generations that are coming up, everything is visual, you know, twelve year old kids now are making videos and that’s how they’re communicating. Instagram, my kids, I have a couple younger than the age of twelve and Instagram is so incredibly popular among these kids in younger generations and I think the world is just gonna move in that direction. And if you look at Instagram or Pinterest, which has come into the world, it’s all visual, it’s all visual, there’s literally hardly any words that are associated to those images and that’s what people are bonding with, they’re finding connections through images. So the more that you can create images that people can connect with, whether it be taking them to the website on the computer, on their computers or sending them a follow-up email and now we have products like Smile Reminder, Demand Force, which people can become visually engaged in your practice. You’re not necessarily asking them to go to your website; you’re taking them to the website when you use vehicles such as that. I’m also seeing a lot of specialists now and this is very cool, use products like ScreenFlow, if any of your are familiar with that, there’s products, ScreenFlow is usually used for Mac’s and then Camtasia used for PC operators when they’re talking about interdisciplinary care and being able to make greater connections with their GP’s. So, for instance, a great oral surgeon that I worked with in Austin Texas, he used to write twenty, twenty- five minute treatment plans on these patients because he does a lot of implants, now he’ll just go back and talk into a computer and he will actually capture all the images of the patient that’s being referred from the GP, he’ll save that in a movie, and send that to the referring GP’s and the GP’s always comment the same thing, they say gosh that’s amazing, nobody’s communicated with me, because the GP’s won’t read a treatment plan that’s written, some of ‘em will, but a lot of times people don’t read the information you send them. They will watch a video that’s ninety seconds. It’s amazing how much easier we want our lives to be and when something’s in a video format or visual format, that’s a great way to do that with other human beings.
Madow: Now and speaking of visual formats, you know, sometimes I’ll do these audio series and, you know, and there’s tons of great information, I always say, but if there’s one thing you’ve gotta do from the interview, do this and I was, there’s so many things that I could already say that about during this interview but I just want to reiterate something that I thought was so cool and that is when the new patient or the potential new patient is on the phone speaking with the front desk personnel to say, “are you near a computer, please go to our website”, that, what a great idea and then they’re looking at the person’s image on the website when they’re speaking with and you know, they’re, you know, if their mind is multitasking or, you know, they want to do something else, then they’re clicking on other pages of your website, they’re not getting distracting by other stuff, they’re really focusing on your practice and learning about and visualizing, so I love that technique. Behrendt: Yeah, well a lot of dentists spend, you know, fifteen, twenty thousand dollars developing they website and I can guarantee you half of their patients have never been to it ever. What a great opportunity to take almost everybody that calls your office to the website whether they become a patient or not and start using that as a fantastic vehicle.
Madow: No question, great stuff, all right Kirk I’ve got another questions for you. Going back to the meet and greet, which first of all I’m a big fan of this, Dave is, you are, so many people I talk to, don’t be uptight about a no-charge appointment, you know. It’s such a great way to get a patient indoctrinated into your practice, so I know we already made that clear, but I just wanted to reiterate that, but it sounds like you’ve got a really great technique or flow for this meet and greet appointment. What do you suggest that our offices do during the meet and greet or the no-charge consult or office tour or whatever we want to call it?
Behrendt: Yeah, a couple things, there’s one thing I want to say about the meet and greet. This is probably the toughest time that any of us can remember for asking people for money when we first meet them. But it is the easiest time to ask them, once they’ve gotten to know us and they’ve already done business with us already. So the meet and greet offers an opportunity for people to say yes to something from you, it’s free, they can get a sample of how this all works, they get to meet you as a person, and they can see that you’re authentically interested in them, that’s the key. Now there’s four questions that we train all of our team members to use and you might want to write these down, but I call ‘em the four million dollar questions that you have to ask at some particular point, whether it be at the records appointment or the meet and greet, but especially ask these in the meet and greet. The first question is this, what is important to you? I don’t care if you do websites, I don’t care if you do construction, and especially in dentistry you’ve gotta ask people what’s important to you. Mrs. Jones, it’s very important to us to know what’s important to you. I could tell you a lot about what we do for patients, but the most important thing to us is just to know what’s important to you, that’s the first question. Number two, it’s really key that you take photographs somewhere in this process and I like earlier than later because talking is the absolute worst form of communication on the planet. When you take photos and you ask people questions, they have to become engaged, they have to and so the second favorite question I like to ask people is where do you see? Because Rich, if you and I looked at the landscape, I couldn’t assume that you’re looking at the same thing I’m looking at. We’re gonna look at the mountains and describe two different things and especially you being a dentist, you’re gonna see a different landscape than the patient’s gonna see. So it’s very important to ask the patient what do you see. The third question, which is really key is this, what would you like to see? Because when you ask somebody what do you see and what would you like to see, that’s called a positive difference. People love positive differences, they hate negative differences. Negative differences are this, this is what I see, you’re a mess and we’re gonna have to fix it this way. That’s a negative difference. A positive difference is what do you see and what would you like to see because now the patient’s gonna build their own bridge and the bridge that they build for themselves will always be stronger than the bridge you build for them, ok. The fourth question that I always like somewhere in the new patient process as early as possible is this, have you ever considered a budget for your dental care and it’s just a question. Don’t be equip with an answer or a solution or don’t even get into a long dissertation about why you asked the question. The fact is that you just want to introduce the question because somewhere down the line you’re gonna find that patients that do comprehensive dentistry are gonna say this to you. You know you asked me at the first visit, have you ever considered a budget for dental care and I didn’t, at that particular time, but here’s what I’m thinking, the point is this, you just have to know what they’re thinking, because if you’re thinking twelve thousand and they’re thinking twelve hundred, we’re pretty far away, right? I just want to know what they’re thinking that’s it. So make sure that you ask those four questions and remember, listen to understand, not necessarily listen to respond. And when people answer those questions, ask them a few more questions.
Madow: I love the budget question. I gotta say when you first said it I felt a little bit uncomfortable, but thinking about it, the way you’re doing it, you’re not really pressing them for an answer, you’re just asking them if they’ve ever thought about it, so then they probably haven’t, but then they’re gonna go home and think, well that’s an interesting question, what is my budget, you know, if I can get my smile looking like I describe, how much would that be worth to me.
Behrendt: Yeah, I think it’s thoughtful more than anything. Yes, actually not too long ago I spoke at the Utah dental meeting and I ate at a Sushi restaurant right across the street. And when I sat down the Sushi chef that, I sat right at the Sushi bar and the Sushi bar, they guy behind the Sushi bar was highly recommended and he was wonderful and his, one of his questions early in the process was this, do you have a particular budget for this because I want to give you a fantastic experience but I want to be sensitive to your budget. Cause I can imagine, being a Sushi chef, he’s seen the look of shock on plenty of his customer’s faces right?
Madow: No question about it.
Behrendt: And you know what, I love the guy for just asking me the question because I’ve done that several times and you get the bill and you go that was insane cause Sushi can be expensive.
Madow: Yep, interesting, I feel like I’ve learned so much from high-end Sushi bars too, just the way they treat people and the way they talk about pricing and budgeting and presentation and making a simple piece of fish look so enticing. It’s really a fascinating place.
Behrendt: I would go back in a heartbeat and I thought he was very thoughtful about the experience.
Madow: Very cool, good stuff, hey I was curious about something. This is way off topic, but I feel like I can throw anything at you.
Behrendt: Yes you can
Madow: You do a lot of speaking in dentistry as well as coaching. I think you’re absolutely one of the best dental speakers I’ve ever heard, I mean, you’re really great, enthusiastic, great information, but you also, you speak to high school football players. What’s something you’d say to a high school football team that you’d also say to a dental team?
Behrendt: Well let me tell you why I have such a passion for high school boys, now I can only speak for males because I’ve only been a male my whole life, I can’t speak for being a female but I will tell you young males go through what’s called the gap and the gap is between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four, where you leave your parents, specifically your father and you try to figure out things for yourself. Now the gap is very dangerous because if you get around the wrong people in the gap, it can take you to a very rough place, because you’re so impressionable at those stages and you actually resist any advice from your father. Now I love my dad. My dad was my hero, is my hero, but there was a point in the gap where I couldn’t hear my dad and so I’m passionate about that. Now my experience in the gap wasn’t the greatest. I actually did get into a lot of trouble and I’m lucky to be alive right now and so I’m passionate and committed for the rest of my life. I will talk to anybody, anybody that’s in the gap and I think these young men have an incredible opportunity to influence their own lives and so I tell ‘em this, you know, they always say well life is hard, it’s hard. I totally understand it, but you think life in high school is hard, try getting a wife and kids and a job and responsibilities, that’s where life, life is only gonna get harder and you can’t wish it’s gonna get easier, you have to get better. We all get to chose two pains. You can choose the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. One weights ounces and the other weighs tons. See one is temporary, the other one is permanent. The decisions you make, we are all defined by our choices, they’re called choice patterns. When you start to make really good choices, it has an expediential impact on your life and so I’m hugely passionate about helping kids understand when you make choices, you’re the product of your choices. And the key is, in the gap, you’ve gotta pick really, really good friends and the same thing happens in dentistry. You are the average of the five people you hang around with most, so make sure you pick some tough friends. I’m forty-two and I’m constantly evaluating who am I hanging around with the most because I need some tougher friends, I need some people that are going to challenge me to become more of myself. There are some people that are not interested in your growth and so you’ve just gotta be careful about that.
Madow: Good stuff, great advice and it covers just about every situation in life too really love it.
Behrendt: Well thanks
Madow: So hey we are excited to announce that you will be appearing at TBSE 2013, after your incredible performance in 2012, which as many of our listeners know will be in Las Vegas back at the Plant Hollywood, right on the strip on November 8th and 9th . I’m so excited but maybe you can give a little preview what we’re gonna see and hear from you at TBSE 2013. Behrendt: Yeah I’m very excited, now this particular conversation we just had Rich, I love this, but this is hard cause I can’t see you and I can’t go crazy and show you information, I mean, this is all, we’re doing this from an audio sense and what you’re gonna see at TBSE will be a complete visual experience. We’re gonna see some of the best high-energy marketing anywhere in the country from some of the best practices anywhere. A lot of people, like I said, have had some incredible jumps and I’m a collector, I basically fly around the country with my camera and take pictures and gather stuff, none of this stuff I create, I just want to pass it along to you so that you could make sense of it, make deeper connections with your patients and still experience the thriving aspect of what’s happening in dentistry. So you’re gonna see a lot of high-energy marketing. I’m an energy guy, I like people that have energy, I like ideas that have energy and I think that ultimately gives us that fire in our belly when we wake up in the morning. So you’re gonna see that at TBSE in November.
Madow: That is fantastic. Well I know all of our listeners are gonna be there in the front row, well they can’t all fit in the front row but they’ll all be psyched to see you at TBSE. But if somebody wants to get in touch with you in the meantime between now and then and just learn more about what you are doing, maybe they want to take advantage of your kind offer to send that bright yellow telephone, well it’ll be white when you get electronically but you can put it on bright yellow paper, but anyway, to contact you for anything, how do we get in touch with you?
Behrendt: Yeah you can ask me any question on any, I’ll help you in any way that I can. My email address is [email protected], that’s also our website actdental.com. You can see our video blog that we produce weekly on there and all the information about everything we do is on there. Feel free to contact us, we’re here to help you in any way that we can. Madow: How about if somebody wants to use the old fashioned Alexander Graham Bell?
Behrendt: You can call me at 800-851-8186, call us any time.
Madow: Fantastic, well Kirk thanks for the great information. I’m so glad you pointed out too that this an audio format, it can only get so exciting even though you gave great information, you listeners have not heard or seen anything until you experience what Kirk is like live. It’s just a mind blowing life changing dental and personal experience, so I can vouch for it and I’m really psyched you’re gonna be there in Las Vegas in November, but also great information on this audio program. Again, I know your schedule’s busy, you’re traveling all the time, you’ve got your clients, so I really appreciate you carving out the time to come up with this great information and to spend the hour plus on the phone with us today. So we’re gonna sign off. Kirk thanks so much for being with us.
Behrendt: My pleasure Rich, thank you so much and I look forward to seeing you all in November.
Madow: Excellent, talk to you soon.
Behrendt: Thanks Rich, bye, bye
For more information on this interview be sure to visit madow.com. While you’re there check out The Madow Brothers Seminar schedule, as well as the many different ways that Rich and Dave can help you and your practice. And be sure to become a fan of The Madow Group on Facebook and follow Madow Group on Twitter. Remember you’re not alone anymore.