If you’ve been taking action on this month’s bogs, then you now have all the elements in place to have an awesome dental month.
And let’s go one step further.
Why stop with just one pet dental health month – why don’t we make this an on-going dental program for your practice….
Why not make what we’ve been discussing ‘The way that we do this here…”
Think of the great patient outcomes, the really happy clients and…
… – maybe this is important too – the extra cash in your pocket.
This week’s blog is all about making this an on-going system in your practice.
Click Here to listen to the Podcast
TRANSCRIPTION:
Building You On-going Dental Program July 25th Podcast
Hi it’s Diederik Gelderman here. Welcome to week four of your planning for dental month series.
Last week, we talked all about building the value for the client. In this video, we’re talking about making this whole process on-going for your practice, and building the value for your practice.
In this video, I’m going to just share a number of short, sharp tips, and it’s going to be the shortest video of all four of these videos.
The first thing to do to make this on-going is to set goals and targets.
So, decided whether you want to do 10 dentals this pet dental health month, or 20 or 30 or a 100, or if you have an over flow, are you going to do it for two months? What are you going to do? Set goals, set targets,
As we discussed in the first video, this has got to be all about better patient outcomes, better client outcomes.
You’re not setting a 50-pet target because you’re going to get $300 per pet, and that’s an extra $15000 income to the practice. Your team does not want to hear that. This is going to be all about better outcomes for the clients and the patients.
I’m going to suggest that you reward your team.
I’m not saying that you give them extra $20 in their pay check, it might be that you take them all out to dinner afterwards. There may not be a target, you may not have a target. It may be just at the end of the pet dental health month, you say, “Hey guys, fantastic, we’ll share out everyone with pizza and beer, and we can have it in-house, or I’ll take you all out.”
Or, at the beginning of pet dental health month, you can actually set some targets that are around better patient outcomes, but you’d a number on that, a target, and you take them out to whatever it is that you want to take them out to. It could be ‘go carting’ for example, or it could be mini-golf. Do people still do mini-golf anywhere? Anyway, you want to find something in your area that you can take your team to.
Part of this pet dental health month thing is that you should be making this on-going in my opinion.
We’ve talked about pre-booking the next six month visit in the last video, and we’ve also talked several times about educating clients about whatever it is that you need them to do to get better patient outcomes in whatever sphere that happens to be.
You need to introduce an idea to them between seven and 14 times before they understand it.
With pet dental health disease, it is important to talk to the client seven to 14 times before you’re going to get them to take things up. To get this to be on-going, you need to have an on-going conversation with your clients about this.
I’m going to suggest that for on-going dental health that you start to talk to your patients about dental health care at their first puppy and kittens vaccination, and at their second puppy and kitten vaccination, and then at their third puppy and kitten vaccination.
I’m going to suggest that you also (this is something that a few of my marketing students are doing) scheduling a 20-week visit.
So that your puppies and kittens will get the six-eight week vaccination, for example, then 12 and the 16, or they may only get two and that finishes at ten weeks; depending on what vaccination protocol you’re using.
And then they’re typically getting desexed at six months.
But most dental texts will tell you that you need to have your canines, deciduous canines out by about 20 weeks. That you should NOT leave it ‘till 24 weeks when they’re desexed…
Or if they’re desexed a little bit later because people are desexing their larger dogs later now because of the tibial plateau issues and cruciate disease issues.
So, especially in that scenario, you need to have those deciduous canines out at 20 weeks, otherwise, you’re going to have a greater potential for permanent issues, or issues with those permanent canines.
A lot of people are now scheduling in 20 week examinations of dogs, and especially the predisposed dogs like the Staffies and the larger breeds, but let’s just make it a blankets thing; let’s say every 20 week old dog needs to come in, and that then is scheduled on the back of the last vaccination.
So, you’ll have dental conversations at the first vaccination, second vaccination, third vaccinations, or if there’s only two, then there’s only two, and on the back of that last vaccination, the 20-week dental deciduous check is booked.
That exam may be a charged for thing, or it may be a complimentary thing.
Most practices are making it complimentary because they want to ‘look good’. They want to ensure high compliance, and if those teeth need to come out, if the deciduous canines have not come out, then either the desexing is brought forward, or an extra procedure is scheduled to take the teeth out, and obviously that’s charged for.
This is real practice builder, and also a real builder of preventative dental care.
In that on-going system, that pet’s going to have dental disease talked about at the yearly vaccination, you’re going to put plaque discloser in. And this will happen annually thereafter.
That whole process can be systematized and documented and everyone in your team trained so that you have an awesome dental program functioning in your practice.
All this is part of the client bonding process, this creates huge value and creates a huge perception of “My vet cares” in the eyes and the minds of your client”, and those clients will be clients for life.
Now there are a couple of last big picture things I just want to share.
This year maybe be a little bit late to get everything in place in your practice. But I had other things scheduled for June that’s why I didn’t have these coming out until July.
But realistically, you need to have a two-month lead-in training and marketing period for any monthly program that you do.
So, if you’re going to do a pet dental health month or a senior month, or a feline month, you need to roll your marketing out with Facebook and everything we’ve talked about in video one, two months before the due date or the date on which you want it to start working – at least two months.
This is really important, that two months’ lead time.
Now, just on dentistry, if you’re looking from a whole of year perspective, what percentage of your income should be coming in as dentistry?
About 8% of your practice income should be coming in as dentistry, that’s dentistry, not including anaesthetics, drugs, pain relief, hospitalization or anything else like that…
8%, and that’s quite readily achievable.
If you’re struggling to hit that KPI and you want to have an idea on how to do that, send me an email, or hit reply to this email, call me on 0408 793337, contact me on Skype and we’ll set up a session to talk. I’m only too happy to help you through the strategies that you can implement to do this.
A last couple of things.
- Do yourself and do your clients a huge favour, put a system in place.
- So, when these pets come back for whatever check they’re having, whether it’s the 20 week check, whether it’s post-op check after dentistry, or whatever else it happens to be that the clients are coming for, put in a system, train your team in a system to ensure that every patient, every client that’s coming in, they’re checked with respect to I’s there anything else that the client needs’, whether it’s flea control or it’s heartworm control, whether it’s internal parasite control, worming.
- At these dental revisits, systematize the conversation that your team has with the clients, to ensure that all your patients and all your clients’ needs are met and are constantly up to date. That’ll do your patient a huge favour, your client huge favour, and it’ll do you a huge favour as well as clean ethical money into the practice. It is really, really important that you schedule that at these revisits. That creates continuity for the patient, continuity for the client, and continuity for the practice. This is gold standard medicine, and every pet, every client and every practice deserves to have that.
Lastly, just sort of two words of advice, it’s all about baby steps.
They are my words of advice; it’s all about baby steps.
If the last four weeks have been a little bit overwhelming, and you think “There is far too much to do, I’ve only got a month to do it.”
Just pick three, or four or five things. Put them in place, and then next year, add more stuff in, or later this year, add more stuff in. it’s all about baby steps…
Second piece of advice is; it’s all about progression, not perfection.
So many practices won’t roll something out, won’t do something because it’s not perfect yet.
In my mind, perfection is an excuse for procrastination.
“It’s not perfect so I won’t do it.” Yeah, that’s a crap excuse.
It’s about baby steps, and it’s about progression. Every day, try and get things a little bit better than they were the day before. It’s progression, not perfection.
I hope this has been valuable to you, I hope you got an awesome dental month plan for August or wherever else you are in the world, whatever month it happens to be.
I look forward to catching up with you next week in which we start on a brand-new group of topics.
See you then.