Dental Guiding Point
To make the business side of dentistry less lonely, less stressful, and more successful — by giving away the practical knowledge, systems, and leadership insights from someone who has been in the trenches, growing from $0 to $21 million a year. The lessons here are real, hard-won, and designed to help dentists thrive — in practice, and in life.
Dental Guiding Point
How We Increased Collections (Without Hiring More Staff)
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What if the fastest way to grow your dental practice isn't hiring more people—but getting more out of the team you already have? Dr. Mark Dill and Toria Plank share the simple game system they use to increase collections, improve office culture, motivate employees, uncover future leaders, and build a more profitable dental practice.
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We're talking about the number one thing that's gonna make you more profitable. You like money? I love money. You like profitability? Number one are we gonna talk about how you become more profitable and how to have fun doing it. Hey guys, welcome to Dental Guiding Point, where we talk about the problems that plague your office each and every day, and we offer solutions that we have found that will make you more profitable and a heck of a lot less stressed. Today we're talking about the number one thing that's gonna make you more profitable. I'm Dr. Mark Dill, and with me is Ms. Toria Plate. Hey y'all. All right, guys, so let's talk about games at work. We're not talking about pranks, we're talking about games. They're more fun, and you don't get paid back. Well, you kind of do get paid back. Yeah.
What is a game?
SPEAKER_01So what is a game? Basically, it's a goal and a reward for that goal.
SPEAKER_00I thought we were going to talk about monopoly.
SPEAKER_01We could. Uh, I beat you at that too. So, guys, I get it. Like, money is not everything, and that's not what we intend. And anytime we talk about money on this show, we are only talking about doing good, honest, ethical dentistry. So we will never actually make a bunch of recommendations on what you should be doing clinical, upselling, or anything like that. It is always, always, always when you're diagnosing from a clinical standpoint, you've got blinders on. We talk about collections, but I want to preface collections with one thing. What does collections mean? I asked that question to a lot of dentists at different times, and they think it means basically like money, like profit, how rich someone is. If you ask staff and you say, you know, collections in an office, collections goes up, we have more money. But for those of you that have like bought a practice, built the practice, and grown the practice, you realize that you go through growing pains and that the more you do isn't always the more you make. Sometimes it's just more headaches. So this is why we're here is to teach you these things. And one of the things that I want to address is collection isn't profitability and collection is nothing but teamwork. That's all it means. If our marketing isn't doing great, the phone doesn't ring. If the phone rings and our receptionist is unwelcoming, unfriendly, then they don't get a, they don't make a conversion into a appointment or the patient makes an appointment but doesn't show. If they come in under our hygienist and our hygienist are aggressive or rough or whatever the case may be, then they don't really care what the doctor says they've got going on. They're not coming back. If the doctor comes in with bad bedside manners or is off-putting, they don't care to go over and sit down with the treatment coordinator and hear them out because there's no way they're letting that doctor touch them. And if the treatment coordinator is pushy and high pressure cells and all this other stuff or confusing, or the doctor's confusing, that that's usually the case, then the patient doesn't accept treatment. If they don't accept treatment, they don't come back in. You know, even though we do a lot of charitable work, not everything is charitable. But when all of those things click, then the patient is getting healthy. And when they get healthy, they're paying us for it. When they pay us for it, that is revenue. That is our collection staff. That's all it means. Doesn't mean that we're rich, doesn't mean that we're profitable. So we're talking about collections and we're talking about being able to increase your profitability with the staff that you've got. You don't have to go out and hire the unicorn staff. Watch our video on hiring staff. Uh, but you don't have to go out and hire that. We can work with the staff that you have in order to be able to get the results that you want. So, how do we do this? Well, we play games in the office.
SPEAKER_00And there's so many different kinds of games. There's, I mean, you can play games with daily, weekly, monthly in the moment.
SPEAKER_01So, what you're doing is you're setting goals that support your purpose. Your purpose is to get your community healthy from an oral health standpoint. What supports that is the games that you want to play. And then we're going to give you some ideas on rewards.
SPEAKER_00If you sit down and you do a panel of people and you ask them like, what is something they would love in their office? It's the one thing that they will all have in common acknowledgments. So acknowledgments for their accomplishments. And that's where incentivizing them comes in for them. And competitive, you'll know who your staffs are. That's uh very competitive. Um, I am very competitive. I love to play games. Um, but those will take your office to the next level.
SPEAKER_01This leads to a freaking energetic culture that you are gonna love being in. So, you know, imagine that you work in a workplace and you go out and you get reviews and stuff, and nobody ever mentions it. Like you just got a review, what whoopty do. So when you're giving your staff acknowledgments, there is a high five, you got that review. But then there's also the public acknowledgement where you're giving somebody an acknowledgement in front of other people. So when you play these games and people are getting rewarded by playing the game and winning the game, that oftentimes happens during staff meetings or something like that, and they're being acknowledged for what contribution they gave uh towards the betterment of the office and the patient's care. This creates an amazing winning culture in your office. It uh gives back to your staff. Think about it. You could go out and pay a third party, which you know, we work with third parties from a marketing standpoint, but you could go out and you could pay somebody that doesn't actually work in your office a bunch of money to bring in new patients. But why not take care of your own people? They're people that you spend time with that you're, you know, maybe even spending as much time with them as you do your family. And like they're your people, they have your back. Why not give them opportunities to earn a better living for them and their families? So instead of paying it out to third parties that gets watered down, like give it to your very own staff. Who knows your office the best? Who's gonna be the best ambassador? The very people that you trained that are right there providing the care for the patients. Incentivize them and give them an opportunity to earn a little extra. Here's another really valid point.
How games reveal future leaders
SPEAKER_01When you play games, some people are gonna play and some people aren't. What does that tell you, though? It tells you who cares about your practice. I'm sure that you guys probably talk to your staff about taking ownership, taking ownership of their area, taking ownership of like the office or their department of the office, taking ownership for the patient's care. If they're in charge of the patient's cleaning, they take ownership and pride in the quality of care they give the patient, or the temporary that they make for the patient. So if they're going to take ownership, well, games allow us to be able to see who's in it to take ownership. So the fuddy duds that are sitting on the side, they're fine, they're they're good employees and stuff. Uh they don't necessarily have to go out the door or anything, but the ones that are like on fire and they're playing the games with good energy, good attitude, they're willing and they're happy. Or cheerleading the other ones on. Cheerleading the others on. Those are the people that you gotta like watch really carefully because those are the ones that you want to think about promoting. The leaders will play games and they'll play it happily with no holdback. Uh the others, they're just there. So your leaders you will find might not be the ones with the most seniority, might not be the ones with the most skill or knowledge, but they are also the ones that are the most capable. So pay attention. When you play games, it's the gift that keeps on giving over and over and over. It is some of the most high value money that you could spend to grow and build your practice. These are people that you're already paying. And when you give them a little extra for growing the business, that is increasing your profitability. It is far less expensive to pay your staff to help grow your practice than it is a third party. So there's where your profitability, there's one area where your profitability comes into play.
SPEAKER_00I just played a game with a staff this morning. We wanted to bring in more in-house referrals, right? So how to roll out our new referral game. And it's all how you like roll it out. And I'm sure Dr. Jill's going to cover that. But I asked them, like, okay, who wants to make an extra $50 an hour today? And like everybody raised their hand. And I'm like, great. Who wants to make an extra hundred dollars an hour today? And they're all raised their hand. I'm like, how many of you think that you can get two character shares in? And like you seen they were sitting there thinking about it. And I had like several raise their hand. I said, But if we teach you how well to how to get these in better, do you think you can get it? And they're like, Yeah. So today, today we have added two new patients that was not on the schedule that nobody knew about from the care to share because we did the training for it.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so case in point then, you actually start to figure out who your people are, but you're also figuring out who can actually get the job done correctly. When you're promoting your leaders in the office, one of the main criteria you should be considering is who actually gets the job done the way that I want to get it done. Not necessarily who's been here the longest or who knows the most or who has the most skill. Because not all like those people are valuable in the office, but not always do the most skilled people make the best leaders. Then it's a double-edged sword. It actually cuts you both ways because you lose your clinically really good skilled person, and then they become a leader, but they're a bad leader. So now you got bad leaders without good clinical skill, and you've just like cut yourself both ways. So you want to make sure that you're promoting people. Now, oftentimes the people that do become leaders, they also have pretty good skill and knowledge, and oftentimes they've been with you for a little while, but uh that's not the main criteria that I look at. I look at who knows how to be able to make things go the way I want them to go and be able to get things done in a very quick fashion. That's what you want.
SPEAKER_00This couldn't have come any better. So I have my Apple Watch on and I just got a text. What does that say?
SPEAKER_01Got got five.
SPEAKER_00Five, five care to share scheduled.
SPEAKER_01Now, just in case you're wondering, when these patients come in is when they get credit for it.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01Like just because they made the appointment doesn't mean anything. They could cancel the game. We call them care to share, call it whatever you want to call it. But these are like little business card looking things. In this case, if this employee, you know, that's $250 uh that she's made. If she got one of those a day, that adds probably six bucks, seven bucks to their hourly pay for the day. Um, because she might not be able to keep up five, you know, and then get five tomorrow and five the next day. Uh, maybe she can. But then if you look at it from like a financial standpoint, if you talk to any third parties out there that are going to go get you patients, you're looking at two or three hundred dollars to acquire a patient. Well, when it comes to this, I mean, that's 50 bucks. We don't always pay 50 bucks. Sometimes we might, well, most of the time it's 20 bucks. But, you know, if we've got something going on where we really want to push it out, this is a quick way to be able to generate patients quickly. Okay,
What kinds of games do we play?
SPEAKER_01so now for the juicy part, because I know you're all sitting there going, well, I okay, you got me convinced to play some games. What are some games that I need to play?
SPEAKER_00Any area that you want to increase in within your practice. So if you want to increase those Google reviews, you want to increase collections, productions, maybe even um just like product sales, um, any of those natures, you want to be able to put a game on it. And that game could be, for an example, let's say you want 50 new patients for the month. And so it's like, okay, well, let's play a game. If we get 50 new patients for the month, then the staff is going to go on a shopping spree or something of that nature. Before we go over like rewards, always the best thing to do if you get where people are not playing games or seem interested in it, and you're the one who came up with it, survey your staff. See like what they would what would motivate them and see if that's even in your budget, but you can make that budget anywhere that is feasible for you.
SPEAKER_01Literally, what do we what app do we use to be able to send out surveys to our office when we do that?
SPEAKER_00On Google Forms, you can create your survey questions. You can ask whatever you want. Um, and it can be that they have to fill in the blank, it could be multiple choice, it could be any of that nature. You can even have it where it will like make graphs for you with certain things. Um, and then you can have it where it directly emails you the survey link. And so you can take them all and put them in and see what the majority is. It's super easy. Google walks you right through it.
SPEAKER_01But hey, what rewards would you like? If we played some games in the office, what rewards would you like? We've had people, you know, put down like roller skating, and uh is one of our doctors, and we played a game with that. Evidently, roller skating is out, at least in my office, because we taint. Other games, though, they are a slam dunk. We're gonna go over some rules about playing games here in a second, but like let's throw out some things that uh pretty big hit. We actually asked staff one time, would you rather leave work early or would you rather come in late with pay? So one hour late or leave work one hour early. I would rather get on out an hour early, but the popular overwhelming choice was come in one hour late. We got a little wheel that's got where we can write with a dry race marker on it, and uh they can spin it. So you could play a game where you get to spin the wheel and get, you know, get whatever it lands on. So that's one way to be able to roll out some games. But on that, you can have different prizes that are worth whatever amount you want it to be. You budget for these these prizes, obviously, bonus money, or you could give them a shopping spree in some form or fashion.
SPEAKER_00That's usually always our go-to.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, talk to your accountant about how to be able to do that, keep things squared away with IRS. But uh oftentimes bonuses like go to their kids' back to school stuff, backpacks, whatever, or their spouse takes it and goes and buys something dumb. So they don't necessarily get to like spend their bonus like, you know, in kind of like a cheesy way or whatever. So, like if you can work out a way to where you could do a shopping spree and you say you have to spend this on you, people will love that. They go out and they they'll buy, I mean, shoes, and we've had them get key fobs uh where their key fob went down, but they didn't have the money to get, you know, a new key fob, I guess. Um, a tattoo, piercings, and then of course, all kinds of clothing, sunglasses, perfume, makeup. Grab bag. We kind of talked about grab bag in the past with uh you just have like a little black bag and you get the poker chips and you ride on the poker chips, five dollars, ten dollars, fifty dollars, hundred dollars, whatever, but they would get to reach in there, you know, and uh pull chips out, and that's how much money they get. Um, make sure that you don't make them all like five dollar chips, put plenty of like larger stuff in there so that every so often somebody will pull out a 20 or a 50 or something.
SPEAKER_00We also did grab bags with different gift cards in there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you can do uh gift card grab bags, catered lunch. That's uh a good one. So one of the first games that we probably ever played was get 25 reviews. Now, our office different size, 25 reviews may be low for you, it may be high for you, you know, but uh 25 reviews in a week. And so pretty much what they were doing is our staff meeting was on Wednesdays, and so they would go Wednesday to Wednesday, so the end of a staff meeting to the beginning of the next staff meeting, and that was qualifying them for a catered lunch for the next week. Now, how you do that is you have somebody in your office, for us at the time, it was our receptionist, but they can they can figure out like eight different restaurants in the area that'll bring food. Now we got like Uber Eats and all this other stuff that that will bring us food. Uh, but back then it was maybe a little bit more like restaurant delivery. Pass out the menu to every single person, create an Excel spreadsheet of what every single person wants as far as food and drinks. And then we would order food before the staff meeting would start. They would make sure that the food was there and that it was all set up around the table and everybody's names were labeled at their seat. And so when we got ready for our staff meeting, we'd walk right in, we'd sit down at our food and we'd start eating, and the staff meeting would start and there'd be no delay. So this was working out fantastic. We were getting 25 reviews, then 25 reviews, then 25 reviews, and I was getting a catered lunch. I loved it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but very much.
SPEAKER_01We're gonna go over some rules in a minute as to like why that ended up not working. If you've got like a minor league baseball team or something like that, you know, that you could do a uh a skybox or something for your staff, uh, travel, any kind of travel. You can play individual games where you're gonna pay for somebody to go somewhere, do something.
SPEAKER_00Those are your bigger games.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, bigger games. Yeah, that's gonna be like, you know, months-long kind of games. Any kind of swag that you have for your office, you know, the t-shirts and hoodies and toboggans and gloves and all the stuff that we can get, you know, little wine glasses with our names on it and stuff, all these things we get for our patients. Well, our staff's like, oh, I want that, I want that, I want the umbrellas. It's like, okay, cool. Let's play.
SPEAKER_00It's actually pretty, pretty popular.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00That I was really surprised how many staff was willing to fight for an umbrella.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and and make it easy. Like, you want them like having swag for your office. So, like, those games may be a little more obtainable than you know, some of the other stuff, just because like it's kind of like a win-win. Like, okay, they they win a game, they get some swag, it's advertisement, that sort of thing. Plus, you know, they can sport it at the office, and maybe that makes patients want that swag too. And then um, a surprise. You'd be surprised at a surprise. Didn't realize that was gonna happen. Did you come up with that all of your own? So sometimes the unknown is scarier, you know, and sometimes the unknown is more exciting too. So when you're playing a game with somebody and you just say, look, if you make this happen, then I'll have a surprise for you. They love that. Absolutely love it.
SPEAKER_00Now sometimes it's awesome because you're you're trying to come up with something for them at that moment.
SPEAKER_01And when it comes to your doctors, maybe you're gonna play games that are a little bit more expensive. You may play some games with your doctors. Uh, we had a doctor moving into a house and she wanted some furniture and stuff, and we said, okay, well, we could play this, and if we obtain that, then we can get you like a gift card, you know, to a furniture store. I think we got our TV, TV, um, you know, gym set, stuff like that. Now, again, I'm not an accountant, uh, you know, you've got to talk to your accountant on like how you can make some of these things work. These are just ideas that you guys can use uh and then kind of go from there. Big games do take a little bit longer to play. You can't necessarily earn something in like a couple weeks or a month, but in general, some of these smaller games where we're just talking about, you know, a spa day. We didn't mention that, did we? Spa day? Maybe I did.
SPEAKER_00No, I don't think we did.
SPEAKER_01We shut a spa down. Like we we called the spa, we said we got this many people, we want to come on a Sunday, and we completely shut it down. It was a little weird because uh, you know, some of the guys that worked in the office weren't going. Um, we didn't have as many guys in the office back then as what we do now, but uh it was mostly female, and uh I walk in and like they're all in robes, and I'm like, whoa, did I? Going to the wrong place. But uh, so, anyways, so they were there, they got to choose. We worked it out with the spa and they got to choose, you know, do they want a facial, a massage, you know, pedicure, manicure. Yeah, all those other things.
SPEAKER_00They made a little menu that they could choose one service. Um, so it made it really just very cool to the stack.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and it was it was a lot of bonding and a ton of fun, and it was a couple hours out of a Sunday, and they they really
Make sure you set clear rules
SPEAKER_01enjoyed it. Okay, so the the game needs to be short. And when I say short, I'm just talking about not like our if we hit an annual goal of you know, X amount of dollars, we're gonna go on a cruise, or we're gonna go to Hawaii, or we're gonna go to this dental conference or whatever. You could have that, you can have that, but and that's fine. Not saying that there's anything wrong with those, but you want to play smaller games along the way uh to keep each week, each day, each month like on target for that big game. Because let's be honest, when you get to the end of that year, like you as the business owner probably think about that overall goal um every day, every week, every month. But like really with the staff, are they thinking about that trip to like Hawaii or the cruise or whatever each and every day? Um, it depends on that staff. Yeah. I like the shorter games, I like the instant rewards, which gets me to the next point. You want to reward them quickly and efficiently. So, you know, when they hand out these uh referral cards and they come back in, like they get paid that week for like their referral cards. And then um there has to be a time limit, like what Tori was talking about $50 for the report referral cards. That's for the next, we've got about three weeks left in this month. So that's for the next three weeks. If you just say, Oh, well, we're we got this thing going on and for three months, well, it doesn't create urgency. You want to create urgency with your staff. You can always extend it, but especially if the game's going good, keep it going. So you can always extend it, but you can't necessarily like just say, okay, well, you know, it's it's good for three months or the rest of this year or whatever. So uh and they have to have clear goals and rules.
SPEAKER_00I have seen offices where they'll try to roll out games and it's so confusing. Like, even I, when I read it, I'm like, this makes no sense. If it's not going to make sense to like most, like ask somebody, does this make sense? If it don't make sense to them, it's not gonna make sense to a lot of your staff. So be sure that it's it's pretty easy read um or when you announce it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, easily read, easily understood. And don't roll out games with a tone like this when you just like us. We need to up our reviews and blah blah blah blah blah blah. Put it in their terms. What's in it for them to play the game? My very last point about games is it must support the purpose of the practice. So you don't play games to like say, oh, well, let's see who can like do the coolest pumpkin decorating contest.
SPEAKER_00I mean, that's cool for social media content, but not for a game.
SPEAKER_01And specialists will do it, you know, with their um like, you know, general dentist or whatever, like, you know, to create some engagement and some cross-marketing and things. Um, and if you're gonna publicize it, then that's okay because you're raising awareness for the for the practice. But, you know, just to play games to be playing games, um, let's say you can paint this wall the fastest, you know, it needs to be painted. Maybe that's a better example.
SPEAKER_00So I'm gonna play that next time I get a wall painted.
SPEAKER_01So you you want to play games that support the purpose of the practice, and that is what are you trying to achieve? Yeah, what are you trying to achieve? Ours is to have happy, healthy patients and have fun doing it. So um, you want to make sure that you're supporting the purpose of the practice with your games and make sure that there is a direct link from the results of the game and how that helps the purpose of the practice because you want your employees to understand why we're playing that particular game and how it benefits us, and then how it benefits them, understand the rules, understand the rewards, and then try to get them the rewards as quick as possible.
SPEAKER_00Agree.
SPEAKER_01There you go, guys. So titaloo for now.
SPEAKER_00See y'all.