Dental Analogies: A Collection of Descriptive Dental Analogies Based on Ideas from Practicing Dentists by Dr. Rick Waters and Dr. Bill Powell Everything is Marketing: The Ultimate Strategy for Dental Practice Growth by Fred Joyal It's Okay to Be the Boss: The Step-by-Step Guide to Becoming the Manager Your Employees Need by Bruce Tulgan Guerilla Marketing: Easy and Inexpensive Strategies for Making Big Profits from Your Small Business by Jay Levinson The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done by Peter Drucker The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business by Patrick Lencioni The One Minute Manager by...

Statistics are like x-rays or a car's dashboard. Statistics tell you and the employee what's going on in a specific area of the practice. Some statistics can be assigned to a specific employee. For example Number of Patients Reactivated. If a statistic is trending down, then it is likely that something changed which means you need to figure out what changed and get it reverted back. Typically this happens when someone new takes over a position and changes things or some successful action is changed or stopped. As an example, you see that the New Patients statistic is trending down and...

It is best if practice owners do NOT spend a lot of time on management.  They should instead focus on servicing patients with the best possible care. Stay focused on helping patients get better; not on the money. The money will come if you stay focused on helping as many people as possible in your community by improving the quality of their lives through excellent dentistry. Revenue normally follows close behind when a dentist really puts attention on communicating with the patient and honestly cares about how he or she can help the patient improve their oral health. Many times, it’s...

As your dental receptionist becomes familiar with patients she will know a little more about them and will be able to talk to them about their interests, etc. This is very important. She should make a point of bringing up what she talked about last time the patient was in. For instance, if the patient just went on vacation, ask them how it went. If the patient had a baby, got a new job, is looking for a job, just got married, had a ballgame, went to a ballgame. . . anything! It makes the patient feel much more comfortable if...