Dr. John Meis: On today's episode, three questions that'll grow your practice 15% tomorrow.
Dr. John Meis: Here's a principle you may not have thought of: The human mind cannot not answer a question. So by carefully putting questions into your conversations with patients, you can grow your practice easily 15%, and I'm going to give you my three power questions that will have an immediate impact.
Dr. John Meis: The first question is, when someone calls the office to schedule an appointment, ask them if there's any other family member that needs an appointment. Now, I learned this from one of the Big Idea trophies. At our annual summit each year, we have a contest, we call it the Big Idea Contest, and all of our high level members, these are the super-successful folks in our group, our high level members all compete to win the Big Idea trophy, and one of the winners of that trophy gave me this idea and showed me the data. And the data in their practices was simply this, that if you added that question, you were 15% more likely to schedule another person than if you didn't. 15%. So that one question alone can increase the number of encounters and visits by 15%. A pretty powerful question.
Dr. John Meis: The second power question I have is, since you're at high risk for tooth decay, would you like to know some things that you can do to prevent it? Now, of course there's a set up for this. The set up is using our Caries risk assessment, that's a tool that helps patients understand that they are at high risk for dental decay, So once you've used that tool, the patient is already aware they're at a high risk, and by asking this question, it allows you to talk about, it has the patient asking you for information, it's a switch. Instead of you just trying to talk them into something, they're asking you about it. They want to know about it, and they want to make the choice. So it allows you to give them options on how you can prevent decay, whether that's dental sealants, or whether that's topical fluoride in the dental office, or home fluoride, or fluoride trays, or any of the other things that we can do to help our patients avoid tooth decay. Asking that question will absolutely increase production in the hygiene department by 15%.
Dr. John Meis: The third power question I have is, if possible, would you like to do that today? Any time a patient is found to have some dental problem that needs to be prepared, asking them if they're willing to do it that day. Now, you'll be shocked at how many patients are excited about doing it that day. We don't see it happening, we don't think they're going to respond that way because usually the minute you take the bib off the patient, they are racing right to the front desk to check out and get out of there, right? So you think everybody's done and they want to go. But the reality is, people have organized their life around being in your office at that time on that particular day, and if they can stay a half hour, forty minutes and get something done and they wouldn't have to come back, about 80% of patients will jump at it. So all those down times, all those failed and canceled appointments are really opportunities to be doing same day dentistry like this.
Dr. John Meis: So those are the three power questions. If you do those and start doing them tomorrow, your practice will grow tomorrow. So if you have any questions about this or any comments, don't hesitate to put them on YouTube, and be sure to share this with anybody who you think it might be helpful for.
Dr. John Meis: I always like to stop each episode with an inspirational quote, and this inspirational quote is the be, do, have quote. "You have to be before you can do, you have to do before you can have." And this is from Zig Ziglar, one of my mentors, and it's simply that you have to be the kind of person that will do the work necessary. Once you do the work necessary, the rewards will come. But you can't have without doing, you can't do without being. So be, do, have, in that order.
Dr. John Meis: So one final thought. Most of the successful dentists I know didn't really figure everything out on their own. They simply modeled somebody who was doing it successfully already. And to do that, they had to be in a room with a bunch of people that are already doing it successfully, and that's what we do at our Champion of Dentistry Summit every year. So this is a meeting with speakers, with lots of ideas, the Big Idea trophy. Candidates will be presenting their ideas, we'll be crowning the winner at that time. So to register for this, this is April 26th and 27th, and to register for this, go to ChampionsofDentistry.com. That's ChampionsofDentistry.com, I look forward to seeing you there. That's it for this episode of the Dr. John Meis Show.
