Your Practice is perfectly designed to…
Hi everyone. Angus Pryor here, multi-award-winning practice growth specialist. I want to ask you a question. Is there anything that’s happening in your practice that’s maybe not generating the results you were hoping for? Maybe you’ve got grumpy patients, maybe the team’s not doing what you think. Maybe you’re not happy with new patient numbers. Whatever the case is, I want to finish that sentence from before. Your practice is perfectly designed to generate the results you’re currently getting. Have you ever thought about that? If you go, “Angus, we’re not getting a lot of new patients,” guess what? Your practice is perfectly designed to produce the number of patients you’re currently getting. If you’re not happy with them, you’re going to have to change something.
If you’ve got patients that are maybe leaving the practice after one visit and never coming back, and that’s happening more than about five or ten percent of the time, then your practice is perfectly designed to produce patients who don’t keep coming back. Now, that’s a bit of a confronting statement, and your reaction may be, “That’s because my staff are no good,” or whatever the case may be. But typically, what happens—and I’ve read about this and spent a lot of time looking at it—the number one reason is to do with the systems you’ve got in place. If you’re not producing lots of new patient numbers, it’s because your marketing systems are not working. Whether you’re doing that internally or you’re sending it externally, that could be the case. In terms of the patient experience, if patients are not happy, if they’re not walking out of there saying, “That’s the best dentist I’ve ever been to,” that’s because your practice is perfectly designed to produce that kind of outcome.
And it’s not because someone’s having a bad day, it’s not because someone’s a poor employee, it’s because the systems you’ve got in place make it hard to produce a different kind of outcome. Think about this: McDonald’s is a billion-dollar business run by teenagers, and that business is perfectly designed to produce that outcome. Now, my son worked at Maccas for a while. I’ve read the manuals, and it’s their systems that set them apart. It’s almost impossible for them to produce a bad outcome, and it’s a bit confronting for us as business owners. But if there’s a part of your business that’s not working well, it’s almost certainly the systems. And so, I have to say again, your practice is perfectly designed to get the results you’re getting now, which means you’re going to need to make a change.
See you next time.