Dr. Cribbs Overcomes Objections, Improves Patient Health, and Grows Revenue
Dr. Terrie Cribbs, GG12 Member
WHALYA TRAFFIC JAM
I’ve been a GG12 member since October 2014, and, in that time, my practice has received nothing but phenomenal guidance from Dr. Tom Orent and his team. We may pay them to help us, but they are the most generous group of people I have ever worked with. It doesn’t matter what problem we are facing. They will get into our practice and give us the agency to fix it. I have never seen another consulting team go through as much effort as they do to see us succeed. Because of their constant support and guidance, I have always felt safe deploying the various Gems the GG12 Coaching Team encourages. I know we can rely on a team of experts to fall back on if we stumble. When it came time to deploy the WHALYA (While You Are Here) Gem, I was a bit hesitant. This Gem encourages dental teams to save patients the time and hassle of another visit by asking if the patient would like the dental practice to “Take care of that today.” Problems diagnosed today, treated today. The WHALYAs “Gem” encourages team members provide top-notch customer service to our patients while scoring another boost in profits. It’s a win-win! BUT … this Gem required me to change my mindset. I was hesitant because I was under the impression that you should never complete a treatment on the same day it’s recommended. I had it in my mind that this was low-class service, and it wouldn’t be seen as important to the patient. I WAS HESITANT, AND I WAS WRONG!
"Making a change is never easy, but the results have been well worth the work we put into it."
We were overbooking ourselves, and we were adding too much stress to our already full workloads. We worried we were making previously scheduled patients wait too long and creating too much extra work for the benefits we gained. Never give in! We shifted our focus. We devoted our next staff meeting to find a solution to our WHALYA traffic jam. We decided to rearrange how we utilize our three dental chairs, and we now use our third dental chair as our overflow/emergency chair. Now, whenever we find an unexpected cavity on a patient using our WHALYA challenge and the DIAGNOdent pen, we have a specific chair devoted to their care, and the original chair they were sitting in opens up for another patient. After this shift, we were trucking along with our WHALYAs with little interference. Occasionally, we struggled with patients who were skeptical of our DIAGNOdent pen. I had a choice … quit and lose out on the benefits we were already reaping OR find a solution that works for us. Thanks to the confidence and support of my Gems Family, I chose the latter! I watched the DIAGNOdent presentation (GOLDMINE UNDERGROUND TEAM TRAINING TOOLKIT 033) again, and I learned a handy little trick. I was reminded to say, “Although extremely rare, if it’s a false positive, we will seal it for free.” This line was magic, and more people were trusting us! OVERCOMING SKEPTICAL PATIENTS’ DIAGNODENT OBJECTIONS
After boosting revenue an extra $1,600 in the first week we deployed this Gem, I can’t imagine ever doing it another way again. (That’s an extra $77,000 each year!) I now understand that even if a patient has a condition, the motivation to come back to our practice for an appointment is minimal. We may never perform the treatment, would miss out on the profit, and our patient would suffer with a festering condition that will only get worse and potentially painful as it progresses. Much like the other Gems our practice has deployed, I knew we couldn’t just tiptoe around this change. So, I went out and purchased a DIAGNOdent pen with the sole intention of pairing it with our WHALYA Gem. The best part was I scored a great deal on the pen … I bought it on eBay and only spent a third of what I would have spent on a new piece of equipment! Essentially, we had nothing to lose. Time for me to introduce the concept of WHALYAs to our team members. Of course, this meant we had to role play to really nail our communication with our patients. After practicing the simple WHALYAs verbal skill, we agreed our team would try for one WHALYA each day … and the tactic was an immediate success! It was a WHALYA frenzy.
Boy, was I wrong.
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