Episode 408: The Real Problem: Why Fixing Symptoms Won’t Free Your Practice with Dr. David Moffet

Lester De Alwis: Welcome to the Less Insurance Dependence podcast. I’m your host, Lester De Alwis, and this show is dedicated to helping dental professionals build stronger, more profitable practices with less reliance on insurance. Today I am excited to welcome Dr. David Moffet, dental practice coach and founder of the Ultimate Patient Experience. Dr. Moffet grew his own practice from a small two room office into a $3.4 million business, then spent the last decade coaching dentists around the world using what he learned along the way. Today’s episode is titled It’s the Real Problem: Why Fixing Symptoms Won’t Free Your Practice. Dr. Moffet, welcome to the show. 

Dr. David Moffet: Great to be here, Lester. Thank you very much for the invitation. I’m very pleased to be a guest on your podcast. 

Dr. David Moffet: I guess one of the big lessons, probably the biggest one, was a lesson I learned from Dan Kennedy, one of the world famous marketers. He said that if he had to start a business in any town, he’d just look at what everybody else was doing and then do the opposite. At the time when I started my practice, I was concerned that insurance was coming in and clinics were opening up, owned by insurance companies, and I thought these guys are gonna take our patients away. But what they did was they took the insurance driven patients away and left the paying, fee-for-service patients there. So my practice actually became busier because I got to see people who really cared about their dentistry and didn’t use insurance as, oh, I better get my insurance worth this year. 

Dr. David Moffet: There’s a video on YouTube of a man in his courtyard, and there’s a gate, and it’s flooded, and the flood is coming through the grate, and he’s got a bucket picking up the water and tossing it back over the fence, but it keeps coming back through. The solution isn’t to get rid of the water from the courtyard. The solution is to find where the water’s coming from. Here’s a classic one in dental practices: we’ve got too many patients in our filing cabinet that need reactivation, so they need to get somebody on the phone. But the reason these people haven’t come back is they’ve lost faith or trust in the practice. It’s not something you can fix by ringing them up. They’ve already decided they’re either going somewhere else or not coming back at all. 

Dr. David Moffet: Dentists don’t tell people that, they use softening language. They say, oh, it’s just a little crack, it’s a small hole, you need a filling. Nobody buys fillings. What they buy is removal of active decay that is getting near their nerve, that could cause a root canal. Oh, I don’t want that. So create urgency and concern, but also create relationships and trust so that people will come back. Once they do start coming back, then all of a sudden you don’t have to reactivate people. 

Dr. David Moffet: When they ring and say, I need to cancel my appointment, the first thing you have to teach those people to do is say, just let me pop you on hold while I check Dr. Smith’s notes. Because when they’re ringing to cancel an appointment, it’s not like changing a coffee, they’re coming for their health and for treatment. Oh, I’ve just checked Dr. Smith’s notes. He said that if we don’t do this this week, there’s a chance that crack could spread and you could end up breaking that tooth and need an extraction and an implant. Is that what you want? So the discussion then becomes between the patient and the notes of Dr. Smith, not the patient and the receptionist. 

Dr. David Moffet: Who cares if you’re 18th in line, it’s Charles, George, William, then that’s it. They don’t wanna be, oh, what number am I on the list. They want to think, there is no list, I’m gonna be calling you because Dr. Moffet wants to bring your appointment forward. So when you call, you say, remember Dr. Moffet said if he got a change in his book, he was gonna call, he asked me to call you. Well, guess what, we’ve had a change. And they go, oh great. So we create anticipation and excitement and they’ve already committed to it beforehand. 

Lester De Alwis: I also wanted to give a shout out to Ekwa Marketing. They are the digital marketing agency that also helps dental practices build trust online and also build a reputation with better visibility, where your patients can find you and also trust you and choose you for the reasons that they need you. If you are looking to do a practice audit on your digital marketing, you can go ahead and book a complimentary marketing strategy meeting at lessinsurancedependence.com/msm or book a complimentary coaching strategy meeting with Gary at lessinsurancedependence.com/csm.

Dr. David Moffet: If you haven’t got the team culture right, you can’t build a patient experience, you need the team to be on board. This comes from James McMannon who worked for the Ritz Carlton in America. He said that if he was starting a business, he would start with culture and value statements first and only employ people who shared in that common culture and value belief. Once he had that, then he would work on the systems needed and then train those people. It’s very hard to train people to have a culture. They either believe it or they don’t. 

Dr. David Moffet: There’s a movie, The Remains of the Day, Anthony Hopkins plays a butler, and there’s a line where he says a man’s whole purpose in life is to serve his employer. Even as a business owner, your employer is your customers. They’re employing you, because if you don’t look after them, they’ll go elsewhere. So be that servant all the time. How can I make their experience better today than it was last time they were in? 

Dr. David Moffet: If you find a problem, you’ve probably got a few happening. So what they need to do is take a weekend or take time away and say, let me have a look at what’s going on. Where are the issues in my office, and are we just stumbling through them, or do we have systems and processes? But systems are no good unless we have accountability for those systems. 

Dr. David Moffet: The crown that the patient was due to get was lost. He had to have another temporary crown, another impression sent away. As soon as he left, I went to the lottery office and bought him a scratch lottery ticket and put it in a card, and I said, we are so lucky to have patients like you who understand that sometimes things cannot go the way they’re meant to. The scratchy was worth up to $62,000 if he won something. So all of a sudden he’s angry for a day, but how many people do you reckon he told about the dentist that sent him a scratch lottery ticket? Cost $10 to send and try and make it better. 

Dr. David Moffet: They can reach out to me by sending an email to my email address, which is David@theupe.com. That’s the UPE, for Ultimate Patient Experience.com. You can find me on Facebook and send me a Facebook message, I’ve got an open Facebook page, it’s not closed. You can find me on LinkedIn and send me a message there too, it’s Moffet, M-O-F-F-E-T. It’s a rare way of spelling it, but it’s from the French. Easy to spell and easy to remember. I’m happy to answer any questions if anyone reaches out to me. 

Lester De Alwis: Dr. Moffet, thank you so much for spending your time with us today. 

Dr. David Moffet: It’s my pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.