Episode 601: Attract, Convert and Deliver: Reliable and Efficient Systems in Your Practice

You're listening to the Phil Klein Dental Podcast.
The first interaction you have with a potential patient is critical. You need to portray your
practice in a way where that person wants to become your patient. Now in order to do this, you of
course have to have the right staff and they need to be properly trained. But as important is the
follow-up. The follow-up to that first phone conversation is critical in getting them to come
back to your practice. And to have a successful follow-up, you need to have a system in place
that's designed just for that purpose. To tell us all about it is our guest, Dr. Todd Snyder.
Dr. Snyder is a regular contributor to VivaLearning.com. He's a cosmetic dentist, international
author, lecturer, and consultant to a variety of dental companies. He can be reached at www.legion
.dentist. Dr. Snyder will be joining us in a second, but first, if you're doing endo,
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marita.com slash USA. Dr. Snyder, thanks for joining us. Thanks, Phil.
So to begin, let me ask you this, Dr. Snyder. Let's assume an office is doing a very good job at
marketing, and as a result, they're getting lots of leads. What is a common problem that occurs in
some of these practices? You know, I'll go back to the last one saying the first thing, obviously,
is the communication that happens on the phone call, because that communication needs to be in such
a matter that they've collected information and either have booked the patient or they've put them
somewhere in their system such that they can continue to track and follow up on these patients. You
know, we get so busy in the office and, you know. Different employees may answer the phone, not
always the same one. And so some are trained at different levels and some may write something down
on a sticky note. Some may put someone into a schedule and not follow up on it. So I'd say that
communication becomes important. But from there, it's the follow up system that what happens after
that phone call is done is critical. How is the interaction with the staff members to know that
something was there and what needs to be done for the next stage for that particular patient?
So what are you seeing dentists typically doing with these leads? Even for that basic phone call
where a person calls up and asks, do you treat young children? Do you treat sleep apnea?
Do you do any kind of orthodontic treatment? Those kinds of questions and interactions.
What are your recommendations for handling those kinds of interactions? Well, and that's where I
think the employees need to be trained in such a manner. They understand that there's a flow to the
office. So if you look at a flow chart, okay, if this person had said they're making an
appointment, we've done the appointment, then they're going down a different section of this flow
chart. Someone else that was calling and asking questions and they're still shopping around, so to
speak, well, that's a potential lead customer that you need to follow up on quickly. And so that
becomes a different type of interaction and goes into the funnel in a different place. And so some
of these have... that we're implementing now, that we can send stuff back to them on a regular
basis. So instead of us having potential human error, automation to send things back to the patient
periodically without us even having to think or lift a finger becomes critical to success.
The same as the person that has set the appointment, they need automation as far as reminding them
that their appointment's coming up or sending out documents that they can fill out before they show
up for their appointment. And we can see that the forms are filled out before the appointment. So
we know they're not going to be taking up our time when they get to the office. So I'd say
automation becomes critical. Can you give us some examples of software or tools that a dentist can
use to streamline all this? Yeah, you know, there's a lot of different types of software out there
nowadays, especially stuff that's not even in the dental arena. You know, so you could use
something as simple as, let's say, an Excel spreadsheet, you know, just to track people. If someone
puts the information, you know, good information in, gives you good information back out. But
there's other software you could say that are like CRM sales systems that you could implement that
have automation on them, that should you plug a potential candidate into that software, it has the
ability to automate and push things out. based on how you've configured it or someone's configured
it for you. With that also, there's potential software in the dental arena that,
again, if they're a patient of record in the software, that it can do some automation.
But I find that the dental ones typically aren't as good as stuff, again, in the business world
that has a way better job of sending things out through automation and tracking capabilities.
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What about texting? Is that a good way to keep the patient engaged? Definitely. Research has shown
that text message is one of the best ways to interact with people nowadays. I forget what the
engagement level was, but it's substantially higher than phone calls or emails. With all the junk
phone calls we get nowadays and spams in our inbox, texting is the way to go for sure. And that,
of course, is not limited just to reminding patients of an appointment, correct? Yeah, there's ways
nowadays with different softwares, again, that if you have patient's information, you can put them
into your database and actually send automated responses to them based on certain lines of
questioning they ask, or you can specifically send things out. So like forms can go out,
the same as people send out reviews currently. You can send forms automatically before people ever
show up. You can send information. to people before they ever show up or if they're just kicking
the tire, so to speak. There are key words you can say that, you know, hey, if you have questions
on this, this or this, you know, please say A, B or C and it will automate all that process.
For the same token, if someone calls your office and they can't get someone because the phone lines
are busy or someone stepped out for lunch, you can get an automated response back saying, hey, this
is Stacy. I'm away from my desk or I'm with a patient. I'll call you back at my earliest
convenience. And so people think you wrote them, but yet it was all automation. Yeah, and the way
AI is moving forward so quickly, we will certainly begin to see AI built into dental software
applications in the years to come, for sure. So, Dr. Snyder, you're a big advocate of training, and
we both agree that having a properly trained staff is critical to a successful practice. But some
dentists resist training for their staff. They feel it's very expensive, and they would rather hire
team members that are already trained and already know how to do the things they're supposed to do
in a dental practice. Give us your thoughts on that. And also tell us about your training program
at legion.dentist. We spent a lot of... talking about, again, marketing,
how to attract the right type of customer and changing the mindset so you can be more productive in
less time without all the constraints potentially of the insurance as well. And from there it
becomes, okay, training is very critical. You know, communication is critical. So converting
someone, you know, requires that your employees have been trained well and have goals each day and
have accountability and tracking capabilities that everyone knows where they're at and who's
responsible for which task. So systems become critical as well as that communication aspect of,
you know, interacting with a client, both on the phone and in person is also. something that needs
to be trained on regularly so that one can become very skilled at it. And so inside of our
programs, we train on these different things. I've already mentioned previously, like singularity,
inception. And based on all of those things, we find that our offices just have a huge shift and
instantly see the results and find that they're, again, more productive in less time and enjoying
more freedom to do the type of dentistry they've always desired to do, but fear had always held
them back. And I think most dentists feel they have to continue running on that treadmill every
day, you know, seeing as many insurance patients as possible to get paid peanuts, you know, from
the insurance company. And I can tell you, as soon as you slow down and take more time with
patients and change your systems, life becomes far easier if that's the type of practice that you
dream of owning. And if you would, Dr. Snyder, share with us the website where our audience can get
in touch with you regarding training. Yeah, Legion Dentist is the best way to find me. Appreciate
your time, Dr. Snyder. Thank you very much for the input, and we'll see you on another program.
Thank you, Phil. If you're enjoying this podcast, please leave a review or follow us on your
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Thanks so much for listening. See you in the next episode.