Are you Setting Goals in Your Dental Practice?

How often do we need to set goals?  Why do we need goals?  We never attain our goals anyway, so why have them?  These are all things I hear from clients or dental teams.  Goals are something to attain, yet we don't know how to use that value to get to a new level.  Even more, when we don't share them with our teams, or the knowledge of why to have them help attain them they are even harder to attain.  It doesn't have to be this way!

Goal setting should be easy, measurable, and attainable.  Goals are not always monetary, but should include some number, so you can keep track of the health of your practice.  Focus on the goal to help your patients at a deeper level, and the monetary value of it will follow.

Do you know how to set goals?  I can't believe it but the new year is already approaching. The start of a new year is a great time to start and set out your goals, though you can start at any time.  What do you want to accomplish next year?  Add an associate, build out your office, depend less on insurance, better work/life balance?  The list can be endless, so focus on your 2-3 things that you MUST do in the next year and then add in 2-3 other goals to do next year.  

Regardless of what your goal is, you need to have something to measure it with.  If you want to add an associate, you have to measure patient base and overhead. If you want to build out your office, you have to have the capital, patients, and space to do so.  Measuring goals is the most important thing you can do, because you have no other way to know if you are attaining them.  To have a feeling that you need an associate may not pay off if you are not retaining your current patients or can't collect money properly.

There are a few wonderful companies out there that measure KPI's and we measure within our company for our clients.  Find a source that makes it easy for you.  

Now that you know what you want to accomplish and know how to measure it, you need to relay it to your team.  If they understand what you are trying the accomplish (the why) they can much easier understand how to help in that.  There is an art to introducing it to the team though.  Remember, they don't own the business, so they are not invested.  You are a source of a paycheck.  If you have a team that feels they are underpaid, the why needs to be very good, so they will buy in.  I recommend explaining goals in terms of what will serve your patients at a higher level.  Example: If you want to add an associate, so you can work less, you would want to explain that you need to improve new patients and retention, so you can bring in another dentist to serve your community and help more people.  At the end of the day, that is also going to increase revenue and bring your practice a new dentist, but that was not they reason why of the explanation.  

The result of setting goals, being able to measure it and getting buy in from the team is accomplishing your goal!  It is as easy as that!  If it is not that easy, then you need help from someone who can make it that easy.  Bite size pieces, great leadership and vision makes goals easily attainable.  We would love to show you how! 

For more information, visit completedentalpracticeconsulting.com