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| Experience and success |
| Scheduling |
| Patient cooperation |
| NP enrollment & selling orthodontics |
| Marketing and customer services |
| Analyzing your practice |
| Consulting fees |
| First Visit Process |
Consulting
Experience and Success Make for a Great Consultant
As you may know, Ken Alexander has been teaching management and marketing to orthodontic practices in North America and Europe for the past 25+ years. Few groups possess the information and practical applications and systems found with Millenium. Many of our clients are the very largest orthodontic practices in the world with great efficiency and turn out beautiful smiles. Your best bet for understanding who Ken is and what he can do for an orthodontic practice is to call some of the references listed below and talk to some of his many happy, satisfied clients. Most of the secrets to success are available from 5-10 orthodontic consultants, but knowing which ones to apply to your practice situation requires the right consultant with a proven record of experience.
Practical Information that Works
I believe that you will find that my greatest asset is that what I teach is practical information and systems that are already working in hundreds of offices around the world. These ideas should help you jump from where you are now to having many more days of fun and enjoyment in the practice. In most cases Millenium systems and ideas can significantly increase the number of starts that can be efficiently seen each year, and provide a daily schedule that works on-time and allows for practice growth.
Scheduling
As you know, scheduling affects the entire practice, its stress level and marketability. The foundation of a great scheduling system is the Template Schedule that takes into account doctor and assistant time. It is important that you have Template Schedules that are complex enough to handle your many different procedures and yet simple enough that staff members are effective working the system. It is also important that the Template Schedules be set up in such a way that patients and parents will accept the times available for specific procedures.
Ken Alexander is considered one of the pioneers and very best at creating a system of scheduling that works effectively year after year. We will spend approximately half of our consulting time together working up the information necessary to create a super successful scheduling system for your practice. You will be given all the necessary principles and ideas for staying on-time. Many areas of efficiency will be suggested and Template Schedules designed for your technique, practice potential and goals.
Scheduling success at only 99%! Once a practice is on a Millenium type scheduling system they never walk away from it as it always works far more effectively than any other system and the benefits are gigantic:
- Reduce average wait time in the practice to 0-5 minutes
- See 10-50% more patients with the same doctor and assistant time possibly reducing your work days by 3-4 each month
- The doctor time is distributed nicely throughout the day and the assistants know their responsibilities and have a good pace of work
- The key benefit is a significant reduction in stress and frustration for the practice, patients and parents.
Patient Cooperation
This is an area on which Ken Alexander has lectured extensively and has pioneered many systems and ideas to help the orthodontic practice form a partnership with the patient in treatment cooperation. Patient cooperation cannot be separated from scheduling. FUN, motivation and excellent results are achieved for patients and staff when our patient cooperation program is implemented.
Staff Management and Excellent Relationships
Ken Alexander believes that relationships are the most important things in life! With this perspective he has great relationships with his hundreds of clients and their staff members. The visits to practices are significantly motivational and usually produce a change in attitude and behavior for both doctors and staff. Ken has many years of graduate training in communications and personal relations and has lectured extensively at the AAO and around the world on the important subjects of staff organization and staff management. Ken is in the business of transforming lives as he develops teams to “speak the truth in love!"
New Patient Enrollment and Selling Orthodontics
Today there are many options for developing a strong New Patient enrollment process and training a Treatment Coordinator. The concept of the treatment coordinator was developed through the Millenium Society program and Ken Alexander was one who helped to popularize it in many lectures over 25 years. Whether a practice wants to one-step or two step, or if a practice just wants to dance their own dance in selling orthodontics, few, if any consultants have the knowledge and experience that Ken has to set up or streamline this vital aspect of the practice. Ken has helped to train and script well over 400 practices both large and small and has lectured to thousands on the most effective selling of orthodontics and how to select and train the right TC.
Marketing and Customer Service
Most offices grow to 40-50 patients a day and stop growing because that is as much hustle as the doctor wants to do each day, or their systems cannot sustain increased growth. Our marketing ideas and programs have proven effective in greatly increasing practice size, but the practice systems and facilities must grow along with the marketing or the “fish will outgrow the aquarium.”
- Significantly improved systems create marketing opportunities as patient satisfaction is significantly increased. Scheduling, Patient Cooperation, Staff Management and Treatment Coordinator systems each impact practice growth either positively or negatively!
- The important area of the Treatment Coordinator and selling at the Exams and Consults is one of my areas of expertise. I have been the key lecturer on this subject at the past two AAO meetings. This position in the practice can dramatically improve Customer Service, save a significant amount of doctor time... and grow the practice.
- Ken has developed many fun and exciting marketing systems for the orthodontic practice. Some of these you may be doing, but probably not with the flair and super image that our systems can create. Millenium marketing ideas and systems are very strong for both internal and external marketing, along with keeping dental referrals well thanked and appreciated.
Analyzing Your Practice and Making Valuable Suggestions
Two types of orthodontic consultants seem to have appeared on the scenes over the past few years. Many of the newer consultants are specialists focusing in on one particular area of the practice such as financial, or Treatment Coordinator, Staff Management or perhaps even Scheduling. Ken Alexander, Ellen Grady, Dean Bellevia and Karen Moawad are a rare breed who can effectively handle almost any area of an orthodontic practice, including partnerships and buy-sell agreements. We are the veterans of the business who know the business inside and out. When you work with a specialist who focuses only on financial or new patient enrollment, you run the risk of not analyzing the practice as a whole, and perhaps trampling on the needs of one area of the practice while trying to benefit another area.
Who knows what the consultant will see until he/she sees it! The value of consulting is not only in the information I can bring, but also the observations I can make in comparing your practice to others your size. Little suggestions can make a world of difference in efficiency, marketing and relationships. The analysis will allow the client to clarify the practice goals and to develop specific steps to achieving them.
Let the Buyer Beware
Purchasing consulting services is much like buying anything. If you go for the lowest cost you risk losing your entire investment, or worse, damaging your practice and its future. Even expensive programs that send in inexperienced consultants can do more harm than good. I have had the opportunity to follow many of the consultants and consulting groups into practices who have used their services only to find that it was one big waste of money, but worse yet a waste of energy. This damage leaves a bad taste for staff members that makes the experienced consultant’s job doubly difficult to motivate… but we always turn things around. You will never regret sticking with a well referred, long time consultant who can work with your entire practice. Check out their referrals carefully and make sure they can go back 5-10-20 years with hundreds of success stories.
Consulting Fees
Consulting fees can vary slightly based on the size of the practice and the number of days required for the consulting visit. Each practice is quoted a fee or fee range based on its unique situation and opportunities. In most cases the daily rate for consulting runs somewhere around the same cost as the cost for a full case in treatment. Ask yourself if you can give up 1-3 treatment fees to have the potential to gain hundreds more extra starts through excellence of service. In most cases it is estimated that Millenium clients have more than made up the cost of the consulting fees with three months with greater efficiency and improved marketing. Hundreds of Ken’s clients continue to use his systems and ideas at levels 200 – 400% larger than when Ken first began to work with them. They often tell Ken that he was the best investment they have ever made.
A Full Implementation First Visit Process
If you are looking for Millenium’s full program you can count on 1 ½ or 2 days of in practice consulting and 12 months of follow-up availability. You would receive information in advance of the visit that will allow you to gather some specific statistics in advance of the consultant’s visit. This information does take some time to gather, but it is not burdensome on the staff like some other consultants might request.
Day one consulting: Ken usually arrives the evening before the scheduled date to meet with you for a brief dinner to discuss the practice and the goals of the visit. The first consulting day is a time for the consultant to find out as much as possible about your practice. Ken meets with the doctor and the staff in the morning and observes practice in action from 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. The evening of the first consulting day Ken meets again with the doctor for dinner to make decisions and continues to build the important consulting relationship.
Day two consulting: The second day (or half day) no patients are scheduled as we spend this time designing Template Schedules, Patient Cooperation Program, Staff organization and management, New Patient Enrollment and Marketing Systems.
Follow-up Work
After Ken’s return to his office he develops a 20-40 page report of findings and decisions that forms the basis for the projects the practice will undertake over the next 6-12 months. Many of the systems and ideas discussed during the visit are documented to allow for easy implementation. An hour or two a month of telephone and email work is anticipated for follow-up the next 6-12 months at no additional charge.
References
As happy satisfied clients are my best marketing, please feel free to call any of the following practices. All of these practices are significantly larger than yours and use Millenium Scheduling and systems to achieve “on-time” scheduling and fabulous customer service
