So I had the ‘opportunity’ to go to the dentist this week.  It’s not my favorite thing to do, although luckily there were no issues!

On this trip I distracted myself from the scraping and polishing by observing how they ran their operation.  Maybe  a lot of dentists are this way these days (I’ve been going to the same one for quite a while) – but they have things running like a well oiled machine.

It got me to thinking – what could other business owners learn from this?

photo by azrainman

Although it’s a medical treatment, there are a lot of similarities with other kinds of businesses.  They have customers who have an issue, they create the solution using fixed resources and generate revenue based on their team’s efforts.

What could you learn from my dentist?  Let’s take a look:

Build the schedule

It all starts with efficiently building a schedule.  Because they’ve been doing this for quite a while, they know what their capacity and throughput is.  They know how many slots they have available each day.  To make it work, they do a great job of committing clients to their next appointment before they leave the building – letting them build the schedule out 3 to 6 months in advance.

They also do a good job of maintaining that schedule.  You can expect that you’ll get at least 2 or 3 calls, starting as early as 2 weeks ahead of your scheduled appointment (along with a reminder card) to make sure you know and recommit to your scheduled time.

What could you learn?

If possible come up with a clear, tested results of how long and how much effort it takes to ‘do the work’.  Estimates are always going to have some guesswork, but you should be reviewing and improving them all the time.

Schedule the work as efficiently as possible to maximize profitability.

Efficiently line things up and follow through up front to minimize wasted efforts / no-shows.

What could they do better?

My only thought for improvement is to use automated electronic / email reminders instead of the post cards (or maybe instead of the phone calls).

Work the System

Once you get to the office it’s a pretty impressive scenario.  They have 4 levels of staff members – the first level checks you in and gets the ball rolling (and checks you out at the end).  The second level welcomes you, reviews the file, sets everything up at the chair and does some basic setup.

The third level – the hygienists come in to clean the teeth and that’s all they do.  The whole process is built around making sure the hygienists are very focused and productive.

The hygienists even have a step in the process to up sell a fluoride treatment or a whitening treatment (pending their observation of the teeth).

Finally – the dentists are there to do the final walkthrough, answer questions and make sure you are officially ‘checked’ at their superior skill level.

What could you learn?

Create and use strategic processes!  I know of very few businesses that have anywhere near the documented and executed operational processes my dentist office is using.  It’s clear they have strategically created and tweaked every step of the maintenance visit process (which is the bulk of their work).

Maximize productivity by having people focus only on their strengths.  The dentist doesn’t answer the phone or run the credit cards.  The hygienists don’t spend any time making you feel welcome or looking at paper work.  Everyone has a strength and a focus and that’s all they do!

What could they do better?

Not much – although they are incredibly efficient, there’s nothing interesting or unusual that they do….although I suppose excellent operations is probably unusual enough by itself.

Get the Money!

Finally at checkout they do a great job of making it easy to pay them and make sure that everything gets submitted the way it’s supposed to.  If you pay in full at checkout you get a 10% discount, encouraging better cash flow and fewer hassles.

They also encourage a referral by giving out a card that gives the new patient some free up front services.

What could you learn?

Make sure you get paid!  I don’t know how many people pay in full at check out, but I bet it’s a lot more than might do it without the discount.  Would they like the additional revenue?  Maybe, but I bet they’ve built their pricing so that it accounts for the discount.

Make it easy!  They understand that the insurance piece is a headache at best for  people, so they have figured out how to totally remove it from the customer’s plate.

Ask for referrals!  The best time to ask is when your clients are happy with what you’ve done.

What could they do better?

The referral card is a good idea, but the person giving the referral doesn’t have any incentive to pass the card along.  They should consider giving both the current customer and the new customer some sort of benefit (especially considering the lifetime value of a new customer!).

Summary

As far as I know, they don’t really do any marketing other than the referral piece – likely because they are near the maximum capacity with the space and number of dentists they have.

The kicker is they typically only work 3 or 4 days a week (3 for ‘regular’ visits) and even though those are long days, they still enjoy significant time off every week and a high level of revenue and profit – primarily because they’ve created the systems and hired the right people to make it all work like a well oiled machine!

Is your dentist this efficient?  What could you do in your business to learn from this example?  I’d love to hear thoughts – share them in the comments below!  (And if you need a new dentist in Kansas City, drop me a line – I have a referral card for you!).

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business Coach

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Business growth can feel really challenging – you figure a few things out, you achieve some success and now you’ve got even bigger obstacles in front of you!

In fact one of the biggest mistakes made is when people talk about a growth curve.

Smooth Growth Curve

What does your growth curve look like?  If it’s not flat, then it’s probably like you’re on the uphill slope of a rollercoaster – sure it might be kind of steep but it’s smooth and if you just keep doing what you’re doing you’re going to move right on up the hill.

But here’s the secret – growth in the real world doesn’t look like that!  And if you’re working under the assumption that you just have to rev your engine a bit to get up the hill, then you’re going to be in trouble!

The reality of small business growth looks a lot more like a set of walls…or a staircase!

The Real Growth Curve

It’s not a smooth curve, it’s a series of straight up walls that have be navigated if you want to get up to the next plateau of success!  If you just barrel ahead, you’ve going to hit them head on.

Growth is good…isn’t it?

People always say that growth is a nice problem to have, but if your business is running into one of these walls – it’s going to hurt and it could push you backwards.

Picture this – you’ve got a great product or service and you’ve really tapped into a set of customers that need what you can deliver.  You start small, but pretty soon the phone starts ringing and business really picks up.

You start working extra hours, but the revenue is flowing so it doesn’t feel too bad.  In fact you realize that you need to get help so you hire a couple of people, friends of friends that you like.  You parcel out the excess work and keep churning out product (or service).

Unfortunately one of your new employees doesn’t quite do things the way that you do them.  They’re bright, but they don’t have much tolerance for clients who want things a certain way…and they make a few people angry.  Eventually it gets bad enough that you have to fire them (or they leave) and you’ve got 5 or 6 former clients who aren’t happy with your company.

You’ve hit a wall – if you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you are going to keep getting the same results that you’ve been getting (and work really long hours, making less money than you should)!

How do you avoid the walls?

You can’t really avoid the walls of growth, but what you can do is be strategic about how you’re going to grow.  Here are a  few things to consider as you’re looking at growing smart:

1.  What’s your biggest constraining factor?

Do a candid end to end review of your business and identify the top 2 or 3 things that are constraining your growth (if you need help with this – call me and I’ve got some tools and a process that could help you).

Are you constrained by new leads?  Do you have plenty of leads but you’re not closing as many of them as you could?  Are you constrained by actually delivering the product or service?  Are you delivering plenty, but not doing the little support things (like invoicing clients or paying bills) and that’s impacting you?

Or are you personally the biggest constraint?  There are only so many hours in the day and you’ve maxed out the time that you’ve got, but everything has to run through you (because you’re the only one who really ‘gets it’).

What’s holding back the growth…be honest and thorough.

2.  What are 3 things you could do to ease the constraint?

Once you’ve got a pretty good idea of where your biggest bottlenecks are, you need to come up with some ways to alleviate the situation.

Maybe you need to start marketing, or outsource the marketing that you’re currently doing.  Maybe you need to hire the right sales person so you can close more deals.  Maybe you need to automate some of your key processes that are taking up a lot of your time (or your key employees time).

Look at your business like a set of systems – once you identify the subsystem that’s not working well, then you can figure out different ways to improve that system.

You need to come up with a few ideas that you know would make a difference if they were implemented.

3.  Pick a solution and commit to implementing it!

With the last step, you came up with a few potential ideas that could help you improve – any one of them might not get you all the way there, but as long as it’s a sustainable, repeatable improvement, then you’ll be heading in the right direction.

Now you’ve got to make it real – the real key to getting to actually getting something like this done is to develop a strong focus – I’ve used the analogy of a high pressure nozzle before, but at the end of the day you have to commit to building a better system.  What ever needs to be done, isolate the work, carve out dedicated time to deliver it and then make sure it stays on the top of your list.

The great news is that once  you make that improvement…things are going to be easier!  You’ve moved up the wall – there will always be more things to do, but if you’re truly implementing and improving your systems and not just throwing money or people at the problem, then you’ll have a lot more through put when you start to focus on the next issue.

What do you think of growth?  Is it a curve for you?  Or have you hit a wall at some point?  I’d love to hear your thoughts – please share them below in the comments!

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business Coach

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It’s a short film (16 minutes) entitled Validation and I think it says a lot about what motivates us and maybe an observation on how bad things are today (in terms of how we treat each other).

Check it out:

If you can’t see the video or it’s not working, you can find it online here:  Validation

I’d love to get your thoughts on the video?  Did any of it ring true for you?  Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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Your marketing is a net that you throw out to capture the attention of your best prospects.  You want to snare those prospects (and only those prospects) with the information, benefits and outcomes that speak to their situation.  That’s not going to happen on a single visit or interaction, you need to get in front of them with the right message several times…in fact a big part of your marketing job is to stay top of mind as a value added resource so you’re a no brainer decision when they’re ready to buy!

One of the best tools you can use to build your marketing net is some variation of email marketing.  There are a lot of great reasons you need to be using email marketing with your business – here are few to get you thinking!

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line – and as a business owner the point you want to reach is making money…and email marketing can help you do that!

1.  Drive sales to existing customers

People like to buy from someone that they know, like and trust.  Your existing customers (assuming they had a good experience) already know what you can do, they understand your approach, they trust you since they’ve seen the results…but they may not know what else you can do for them.

Email marketing to existing customers – whether that’s a regular newsletter or a special offer to those special people who have been your customers can be a very effective way to drive additional sales. 

2.  Drive sales with new prospects

Let’s say you do something to intrigue me – post an interesting article, tell me a good story at a networking event, run some sort of ad that catches my eye.  Whatever it is, I go to check out your website and although I’m not ready to buy, I’m interested.  In exchange for a special report, I give you my email address and you add me to an focused email campaign through an autoresponder.  You send me additional information and make targeted, low pressure offers specific to my interests over the course of the next few months (sending something every couple of weeks).

Once I’m ready to solve my problem and spend some money, you’re top of mind in a positive way as the likely provider who can help me.  Your positive persistence has paid off, I’m ready to buy!

3.  Get more out of other marketing tools

Almost any marketing approach you can think of can be complimented by an additional layer of email marketing.  Have a great radio ad?  Newspaper or magazine ad?  Direct mail campaign?  Use it to drive traffic to your website – people who are really interested will raise their hands and gladly sign up for more information…which you can deliver via an email campaign.

Maybe you meet a lot of great people networking (or social networking) – they aren’t ready to buy anything right now, but you (and they) would like to stay in touch.  A perfect scenario for your email newsletter.

You’ve written a great blog post or created a really powerful video – email marketing can be a great way to let people know about what you’ve got out there.

4.  Build relationships

Good relationships take time and effort – you have to stay in touch, you have to communicate to get things to work out over time.  Your customers, your partners or people that just like the cut of your sail want to build a relationship with you.  One way to do that is to communicate with them on a regular basis – which is what an email newsletter is all about.

5.  Educate

Unless your product is a really simple commodity, you can get a huge lift from educating your customers and prospects on your industry, the problems you solve and the outcomes you deliver.

The more you can teach them…the more value you can add…the more likely they are to view you, not only as an expert, but as a trusted advisor.  You know, the kind of person who commands a premium rate…not just because of what you know, but because you have consistently proven you have their best interests at heart.  Email marketing can be a great way to share your knowledge – doling out useful information as needed and over time.

6.  Trigger activity

Let’s say that you have a targeted list of 500 people who know, like and trust you and are interested in the problems you solve and the outcomes that you can deliver.

And let’s say that you have partnered with another company that offers a complimentary product relative to what you do – that other company is willing to offer your email mailing list recipients a valuable free offer for every purchase they make from you.  How would that tally up for the parties involved? 

• Your email list – gets a free bonus for their next purchase from a trusted relationship. 
• Your new partner – gets exposure to 500 new prospects and gets to inherit your relationship with those prospects
• You – get to give away a valuable bonus, driving additional sales and goodwill.

Do you think that would drive activity?  Email is a great way to share those kinds of fusion offers.

In terms of driving activity, you could also just offer special discounts or offers to your customers as a reward (and help drive activity during a slow period perhaps?).

7.  Start a conversation

Almost all marketing is strictly one way…from you to your prospects.  Email marketing allows you to start a valuable conversation and easily get responses back.  That could be as simple as asking questions as part of a regular newsletter or sending out an email survey.  How valuable would feedback and interaction with your best customers (or prospects) be to you and your company?

8.  Facilitate Word Of Mouth

Let’s say you send out a direct mail postcard with a great coupon for your product or service.  As a recipient of your postcard, let’s say that I’m not a fit but it would be perfect for my sister-in-law in St. Louis.  How likely am I to forward that postcard?  Sadly I might have great intentions, but it would be a lot of work to restamp and re-address the postcard…the odds are slim that it would make it back out the door.

However…if it was in my email inbox and I could just hit forward and send it…maybe even to several people.  Email makes it easy to share.

9.  Stay top of mind

We’ve already talked about people buying when they’re ready to buy.  Your job isn’t to try to convince them to buy when they don’t need you…your job is to build the relationship and be hanging around…to be top of mind when they are ready to buy.

Email marketing is a low impact way to keep your name in front of someone.  Even if they don’t open the email, the odds are good that they saw it…and that alone will count as bringing you top of mind – albeit in a lesser way.

10.  Permission Marketing at it’s best!

If you’re sending an email to anyone who didn’t explicitly indicate an interest or desire for your email, you’re spamming them!  Even if you buy a mailing list from a local chamber that you’re a member of…that’s not email marketing, it’s spam.  That approach may not get you in legal trouble, but it will generally not be a positi
ve step.

On the other hand, if someone raises their hand and says “I want to know more” – you are giving them exactly what they want in the form of email marketing.  And if they change their mind and opt-out, you need to honor that request as well.

The reason permission marketing is so powerful is that you’re dealing with people who have asked for you to educate them…and sell to them.  It doesn’t get much better than that!

What about you?

Are you currently using any form of email marketing?  Any particular service?  Did I miss any benefits that email marketing brings?  Share your thoughts in the comments below – I’d love to hear them…and since I’ll likely use this with my email newsletter, I’m sure my readers would love to hear your thoughts as well! 

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business Coach

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The internet is an amazing resource – you can learn how to blow the shell off of a hard boiled egg (actually used this a few weeks ago – it’s pretty cool!).  You can learn why the sky is blue (handy when the kids start asking questions) or you could learn the lyrics to ‘If I had a boat’ by Lyle Lovett (one of my favorite songs).

If I had a boat
I’d go out on the ocean
And if I had a pony
I’d ride him on my boat
And we could all together
Go out on the ocean
Me upon my pony on my boat

But what’s even cooler about the internet is when you stumble across those hidden treasures that really make you say ‘Whoa….’! 

I’ve been lucky enough to find two of those kinds of resources in the last week and I wanted to share them with you – hopefully you’ll find them as interesting as I did!

Change This Manifestos

Change This has been around since 2004 – it’s a non-profit movement (for lack of a better term) that’s dedicated to sharing ideas that will spark rational, positive communication.  People submit interesting ideas and they get created into Manifestos.  A Manifesto in this case is a PDF file formatted around the idea that can be freely shared, distributed and read.

There are hundreds of Manifestos across all sorts of topics and thoughts –and all of them I’ve seen are extremely well done and thought provoking.

There’s a lot of really amazing content on Change This, but I was especially struck by Brainwashed – 7 ways to reinvent yourself.  The idea for the site (and Brainwashed) is attributed to Seth Godin (if you’re not familiar with him, you need to check out his blog at the link above – very thought provoking).

Check out Change This!  – the next time you want to stretch yourself, be challenged, learn a new way of thinking…you’ve got a great new resource to start with!

TED – Ideas Worth Spreading

I’ve written about TED before – it started in 1984 as an annual conference of interesting people in the Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) fields sharing their most interesting ideas in the form of a presentation that’s 18 minutes long.

In the last few years they have started publishing the presentations and making them available online – and it is a treasure trove of amazing things.

The video below might not sound fascinating to everyone – Jill Bolte Taylor is a brain scientist who had the ‘opportunity’ to undergo a stroke and be able to analyze what it did to her brain…from the inside out.  It’s an amazing story and she gives you a lot to think about in terms of how we actually work on the inside.

If you can’t see the video above, you can link through and find it on the TED website – Jill Bolte Taylor.

What amazing hidden resources have you found on the internet?  Share them below and let me know what you think.

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business Coach

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