One of the most time consuming tasks many of us face in managing a business is managing people. We wish we could just hire folks and have them do what we want them to do without having to be told. Then, when they finish, we would prefer not to have to follow up. It takes time to provide clear guidelines of exactly what it is we want our employees to do and then guidance as they progress through the work. It can make machines quite appealing. But we have employees and we wouldn’t have it any other way. They make intelligent decisions no machine could begin to make, they are artists, they have people skills, they’re our friends. So what’s the answer?

Last month we spoke about the Ten Commandments of Customer Service. It serves as a nice segway to discuss Client Retention.

What gets measured can be managed!

My first thought is we should be measuring doctor retention. A simple spreadsheet comparison will suffice. Take all of the doctors that were active with you. You get to define that but I would suggest a reasonable definition. Maybe an active account is one that has done work with you in at least half of the months for the previous year and averaged some minimal monthly threshold sales like $500. Now compare last year’s Dec 31st list of clients to this year’s. If there were 50 last year and 50 this year, it does not mean retention is 100%. Check to see if any have changed. If you have 5 new clients that replaced 5 lost clients your ‘churn’ or ‘turnover’ is 10%. That means you are actually rebuilding an entire lab every 10 years.

It is remarkable how many “prospective” buyers there are in the market. Equally astonishing is the fact that 80% of these individuals dismiss dozens of options each year as not the “right” opportunity. Often they lose credibility with a particular broker or community of their older colleagues as merely “players” – really not serious about transitioning into ownership. Desire does not equate to action or results in life or business. The reality is that unless one has accurate knowledge and clear understanding of their personal needs, wants and abilities it is more likely that they will be unable to make such a commitment. From our experience, this leads to frustration for everyone involved!

If you are serious, but tentative because you don’t feel comfortable about the process or are solely relying on your accountant or other financial advisor to make your decision, perhaps the following tips will help you move forward with more confidence:

It often starts in school; you find someone who shares your passion and you decide that it would be an ideal business partnership…partnerships are like marriages; none are perfect. It takes more than the initial passion for the profession you share. The true test of partnerships happens when things aren’t going perfectly or there is a crisis that affects one of the partners more than the other. The reality is that most people want to, and do, enter into relationships in practice with the best of intentions and highest of expectations which over time are challenged by the natural evolution of the individuals’ personal and career lives.

When I was at DTI, we called and recorded the way our 16 labs answered the phone and played the results at a quarterly managers’ meeting. We heard everything from an abrupt sounding “dental lab”, to the perfect eloquence of a well rehearsed phone answering protocol. These ten ideas aren’t really “Commandments”, that’s just a catchy title to get you to read this article. I don’t have all of the answers now and I certainly never will, but here are a few customer relationship rules that will help you with client relations.

...will you know when it’s calling for you? At this time of the year, we are contacted by those preparing to graduate, and practice owners dealing with career and business issues. Whether managing change or being the agent of change, there are rewards, risks and challenges that are intrinsically part of our leadership roles in all stages of our careers. Opportunity is usually disguised as challenge and the sound of opportunity knocking can be drowned out by the little voices in our heads – negative self-talk.

Darwin was well traveled and documented his amazing journey around the world; he claimed that the evolution of species usually increases survival by their adaptation to their environment. This theory also applies to other areas such as product lines, relationships and the professional workplace. For example, in the 1800’s, barbers routinely extracted teeth as well as cut hair; today the evolution of the profession of dentistry is incredibly advanced, evolving from the days of modest knowledge of human anatomy to highly educated people working today with the newest technologies.

Can the question “What is a new client worth?” be considered a “$ 64 000 Question”? It depends, doesn’t it? It would be rather difficult to predict as there are many determining factors involved. However, if these are some of the questions that have come up to your mind in an attempt to arrive at an answer, I like your way of thinking. You may be asking yourself:

John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) said, “We must use time as a tool, not a crutch.”

If you have ever regretted missing out on an opportunity, or were too late to take advantage of one you may be suffering from survival-based thinking. Timing is said to be 70% of success in business. If you make the right decision, but it is ill-timed, that is an opportunity lost. Reaching our long term goals for success takes vision, planning, preparation, and discipline. In a recent article published in Psychology Today, the ability (or should we say inability?) to conceptualize and follow through on long term (more than 6 months) goals is partly determined by how much our brain has evolved over the centuries. That article kindled a spark on the topic of critical thinking and achieving our vision as professionals.

The whirlwind of new ideas and new technology has brought with it new expectations for us. Are you, as a lab technician or manager, ready for these?

One of these expectations is that you will be prepared to receive communications and requests in digital format. Some of these will be simple e-mails, others will include the attachment of graphics that might range from prescriptions to charts, to photographs, to impressions to define a work order. It is wise to not only receive these but also to make them part of your case histories, automatically cataloged and indexed in a way that will allow fast and easy retrieval whenever needed.

Making choices that affect us and others – employees, patients, colleagues, partners, etc – is something that challenges all of us throughout our daily lives and careers. Our motto/philosophy in this regard is: do the right thing, at the right time, for the right reason. This doesn’t mean doing whatever is easiest, but making your decision reflect your core values and that fits with your vision and goals for your career and practice. Anything less leads you astray on your success journey.

For approximately the past five years, a company (Zirkonzahn) located in the middle of the Alps, has made headlines in the news of the dental technician world market.

Their primary breakthrough product has been the invention of the manual milling system for zirconia, but they are also recognized as one of the few companies that can produce their own zirconia.

In 2003, Zirkonzahn basically was a starting one-man company. However, in a relatively short period of time it has expanded exponentially. Presently, the company delivers products to dental technicians and dentists in more than 80 countries and has 80 employees working for them in their headquarters in South Tyrol, located in the German speaking part of Italy.

Another recent success of Zirkonzahn has been the development of their own CAD/CAM system – once again setting their competing companies on edge.

At the leadership and mastermind of this company we find Enrico Steger, a man of creative and progressive visions. Enrico Steger’s success is to a certain extent accredited to his thirty years of experience as a technician, author, speaker and researcher. In this interview with Enrico Steger we will get to know a truly “heart and soul” master technician, one who likes challenges and believes in ideas and the success that hard work brings.