When you go
to the petrol station, there can be a bewildering choice of fuels available
Including
- Super unleaded
- Unleaded plus
- Unleaded
- Super diesel
- Diesel plus
- Diesel
- Bio diesel
Which fuel
you chose will affect you cars performance.
I often think
that the type of petrol you put in your car is like the patients you put in
your practice, one grade of patient you practice will be a fulfilling happy
profitable place to work and another and dentistry becomes soul destroying,
miserable and difficult to make ends meet.
I like to
categorise patients into 5 different grades
A category patients – these patients love you, refer
people like themselves and and have ample funds to pay for your treatments. A
patients are your ideal patients and will be 20% of your patient numbers and
provide 80% of your profit.
B category patients – These patients love you, and are
maybe not quite so well connected or have the funds to take you up on treatment
options without making sure it fits into a budget. B category patients will be
80% of your patient numbers and 20% of your profit.
C category patients – C category patients are not emotionally
connected to you and will not feel any special allegiance to your practice.
They are probably not especially interested in their teeth although with the appropriate
motivation could become great patients. C category patients need to be
encouraged to become a B patient by becoming committed to themselves by helping
you help them, alternatively they should find someone who can serve them better
than you can.
D category patients – D category patients are the heart
sink energy vampires the type of patient for who is never happy. They will have
high FTA rates, cancel at the last minute, complain and quibble over everything,
are rude to your team. They are the patients you see their name on your list
and you groan inside. Category D patients sap your time, make you feel bad and
divert your attention away from your category A and B patients. D category
patients do not belong in your practice and they need to be politely asked to
change their behaviours or change practices to another dentist who can better
meet their expectations
E category patients – are our patients that we treat for
emotional reasons, we always spend more time with them than we know we should,
we do extras and don’t charge them. For one reason or another we treat them at
a financial loss, it could be they were your first patient, they could be a
great friend, you may feel sorry for them, all sorts of reasons, and the
reasons are emotional rather than commercial. Every practice has and should
have E category patients, they question is do you have too many to make your
practice viable?
I have
discovered that a great team building exercise is to work with your team to define
the characteristics of category A,B,C,D and E patients, and allocate each
patient to each category. As the c’s to commit, and ask the D’s to leave. Focus
your time and attention on your A’s and B’s and ring finance your time for your
E’s.
I choose to
tithe my time and always give away 10% of my coaching time to individuals or
charities that would really like coaching personally or professionally and don’t
have the funds to pay for it. I am coming towards the end of a coaching project
with one of my clients which is a charity, and have space for a new E category
client. If you know of an individual, business or charity who would really benefit
from some coaching and is willing to commit 1 hour a fortnight in coaching
calls and additional time to implement the decisions they have made, please
nominate them by e mailing Jane@iodb.co.uk stating why you think they are a
really deserving case.
I look
forward to hearing from you soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment