As we move through the third quarter the conversation continues around the dental practice annual planning and how to move your team forward with your goals. One of your goals might be to add a membership plan or a “loyalty” plan to help make dental care for uninsured patients more affordable. How to integrate a membership plan and how to track it in your Dentrix software is always a topic of discussion.
Today I am joined by one of my dental friends, Brad James with Kleer. I have been working with team Kleer for many years and they are a great group of people to be connected with. You will find my tip sheets and videos up on their website to help dental teams integrate the Kleer system into the Dentrix software. For more information on Kleer and to schedule a free demo CLICK HERE
Enjoy!
Dayna Johnson 0:08
We are super excited you have found Novonee on the go, the premier Dentrix communities free podcast. I’m Dayna Johnson, the founder of Novonee, and my goal is to give you about 15 minutes of juicy content to take back to your practice and help your team have a more productive and less stressful day. Enjoy and welcome everybody. I’m Dayna Johnson, your Dentrix expert. And my goal is to help dentists and dental teams understand their metric software better. So you can create systems to improve the profitability of your practice, optimize your appointment book and have a more stress free day I started Novonee to be able to give all Dentrix users a platform to attend live one on one events with me and tap into best practices resources for optimizing your software. If you want to become a member of our exclusive membership, go to novotney.com click on the little green Join Today button in the upper right corner. And you will have access to all our exclusive content. So welcome everybody. I am here today with my colleague good friend Brad James, who is the manager of strategic partnerships with clear that’s actually what it says on his email signature and probably his his business card. Which means that he is a relationship builder. Brad goes around in the dental industry and builds relationships with dental practices and other industry experts and other vendors out in the dental industry. And so many of you have probably heard me talk a lot about clear. I’ve been working with them on membership plans for gosh, many many years. And Brad’s been my my point of contact for many of those years. So welcome, Brad to our podcast.
Brad James 2:06
Hey, Dayna, thanks for having me on.
Dayna Johnson 2:08
Yeah, I appreciate it. So this whole quarter of content right now we’re in third quarter of 2022. And our whole discussion or all of our topics are revolving around annual planning for the dental team for next year. You know, sometimes people think it’s a little too early to start planning for next year. But you’re already scheduling patients into next year. And so then right now is a really great time for teams to really start strategically looking at what their practice might look like, for next year. And I think membership plans is on people’s minds, you know, they’re very relevant right now there, I’m seeing a lot of dental practices, launch a dental membership plan or a loyalty plan, as some people might call it. So if I’m a dental practice, if I’m an office doing my annual planning session right now, you know, what should I be discussing with my team? When it comes to membership plans or a loyalty plan? What’s your take on that? What should we be discussing as a team right now?
Brad James 3:23
It’s a great question. And I like that it’s really team oriented. I think some practices do a really good job at that, and others can definitely improve. But when it comes to figuring out what can your team handle, I think first and foremost, as a practice owner, or a practice administrator, whatever your role is, within the business, you just need to figure out, can we handle it? Right now from a workload perspective, I know a lot of different practices are struggling with hiring new talent or backfilling roles that they might have lost, even prior to the pandemic, Dental. And health care, in general, always is a fairly high turnover industry. So I think it’s really just acted as a catalyst during that time the pandemic for turnover within the industry. So I would say, make sure your team feels like that they can handle an implementation for a membership plan. And it’s really not that big of a project. I feel like some practices may overcomplicate it or may look at it as just another thing on their plate. But it really is not too complicated if you’re looking to work with third parties that can allow you to outsource a lot of the admin work. And then the I would say the second thing is, why are you doing it? What’s your initiative on wanting to implement a membership plan? Are you potentially planning on dropping certain insurances and you want to leverage a membership plan as a retention tool? That’s one option that we see that’s pretty that’s pretty popular. Another one is just what is the state of economics right now, a lot of people may be maybe laid off, they may be furloughed, whatever it may be, they could potentially be at risk for losing their benefits. And they might want to, they might be looking for some type of new coverage options. So having something that increases patient accessibility to better care, that is less restrictive than traditional insurance is always another reason why practices are implementing. And then the last one is like, membership plans, there’s usually correlation with increase in case acceptance. So to wrap it all up, make sure your team is comfortable with it. And just make sure everyone’s on the same page of why exactly do we want to implement this new project within our practice?
Dayna Johnson 5:47
Yeah, I think that’s a really good point. I love that what you said about starting with the why I’m a huge Simon Sinek fan. And so I’ve read his book several times Start with Why. And then I think, discussing the why first during your annual annual planning is, why do we want to do this? And I think it needs to become part of the core values of the practice, you know, does it fit into the mission of the practice, and because when you do get the whole team on board with the why, then the implementation piece is really the easy part.
Brad James 6:26
Exactly. And people just feel like that they have a say, and some ownership in the day to day, and the decision making behind the business, which really just improves and elevates team culture as well. So it’s a lot of practice, a lot of best practices, from a business standpoint, that you are seeing some practices, dental practices really excel with. So I always feel like that that’s a really important component of culture. And, I guess, satisfaction and happiness within the practice, which, if your team’s happy, I feel like everything else falls into place.
Dayna Johnson 7:00
Love that. I agree with that. And I love the fact, you know, getting the team to help make the decisions in the practice. And when the team is helping with those those decisions, they feel like they’re really part of a, a home, they’re part of a board on the board of directors, you know, for the for the dental practice.
Brad James 7:24
Yeah, definitely. And like, if you’re just thinking about the business, the the practice owner, or the even the office administrator, if it’s or office manager, if it’s a pretty big operation, sometimes you can get caught up in looking at everything at a very high level, it is always helpful to get insights from the people that are the quote unquote, boots on the ground, I mean, your hygenist, your front office, people, they are really in the know of the pulse of the practice health, if you will, and just what’s going on what patients are asking for, what they’re looking for, et cetera. So to your point, I really do think it’s always important to get input from team members, and, you know, make make the decision you need to make but I feel like either way input in and clear communication is always beneficial.
Dayna Johnson 8:14
Oh, great. Oh, yeah, I agree that with that, because a lot of people do divulge a lot of, you know, personal stuff to their hygienist that they might not say to the rest of the team, they really create this really personal relationship with their hygienist. So I love that idea of bringing everybody even the clinical team on board with these conversations. So let’s say that the practice they’re on board, they’re ready to talk about, you know, kind of take next steps with launching their membership plan. How does an office How does an office decide like what type of plan or plans will work well, with their unique office? You know, every office has different demographics, different geography, different patient base, how do they decide what type of plans will work best in their practice?
Brad James 9:13
Yeah, I think first and foremost, the types of practices that membership plans are a really good fit for are general dentists. And that includes cosmetic restorative, whatever, just general, dentistry, Periodontist, and also pediatric dentists. Those are the types of practices that can really consider implementing a membership plan because the key component are is hygiene visits. So that’s first and foremost, is you kind of have to fall into those buckets. On top of that, I would say, I mean, to your point, the thing that’s always difficult is the nice thing about membership plans is the practice has full autonomy so they can create their care plans as they can offer many as they want, they get the set the pricing, the treatment protocol, et cetera. But with that, I mean, you’re always hear the phrase paralysis by analysis, that’s when there can be a lot of different pieces that can almost hold up the implementation or the rollout for those membership plans. So, generally speaking, we see most practices, most of our clients will offer like three care plans. And it’s typically a children’s plan and adult plan and a periodontal plan. So, like I said, the practice, they know their patients best, I feel like that they can really map out and list what’s going to be included in treatment protocol. And they can also make pretty wise decisions on like procedural discounts. But I would say pricing is the biggest, it’s the biggest hang up for a lot of practices. I mean, anecdotally, we’ve just seen some of our clients when they came in, they either price their plans to affordably, so too low, and a lot of patients signed up. But if something’s too affordable, and a lot of patients are signing up, you’re going to be losing cash during that process. So that’s one potential hang up. And then on the other side of on the other end of the spectrum, there are, we’ve seen practices that pricing too high, then patients don’t see the value in the membership plan, and no one ends up signing up. And then everything just kind of folds and fails within itself. So those are, I would say pricing is the biggest hang up, make sure that either you’re just evaluating your own market, if you want to do some homework and click on some local dentists within your market and see if they’re advertising a membership plan on their website, that can give you a good idea of what the pricing is. But overall that that is why some some practices will see the benefit of of outsourcing or working with a third party to help them solve that issue. But pricing is the biggest one. And otherwise, it just it all fits into the identification of the practice. Like you said earlier, are they high end? Are they in a more Medicare region? Those are just some of the components that take into account?
Dayna Johnson 12:15
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Good point. So you know, when we were talking earlier about, you know, can the practice take on adding a membership right now, doing that kind of analysis might be a little overwhelming for the practice or for the team or the office manager? Does Kleer offer that benefit? Or that that help? Like, do you help guide them through that? Do you do it for them? What’s kind of the what does that look like for practice? You know, like, let’s say one of our audience members is like, yeah, you know, I really like what Kleer has to say. And I like the idea of them helping me with the pricing. Is that something that you guys walk them through? Or do you just give them like a to do list and they still do it themselves? What does that look like?
Brad James 13:05
So we do walk them through the process we have. So say they’re onboarding as a customer, we have two separate calls. That’s like an onboarding call, and then a training call to train a team. But when it comes to pricing in particular, that’s where, you know, we have something that we call smart pricing. And it’s an algorithm that was created by our chief technology officer. And essentially, what it does is there are multiple factors that are active variables in that algorithm. But we are ultimately able to look at a few few factors like patient demographics, their fee schedule, practice location. So geographically, where are they located in the United States, and there are some other, there’s some other variables that come into that equation. But we’re essentially able to spit out an ideal figure for marrying up profitability for the practice, and then affordability for the patient. So yeah, even though we recommend that the practice, they don’t have to abide by that figure that we’re that we’re suggesting, it really is just, that’s what it is, it’s a suggestion. So they can price it a little bit higher, lower whatever they want to do. I think it is very insightful for a lot of our clients, and customers to just understand where that bar should be set for the pricing. And then once they have that knowledge, they can, they can have the autonomy to to make that decision on their own. But that’s that’s one component. And then obviously, we help them design their plans, configure their plans, and then training is a really important component as well. And then, once they’re launched as a customer, they’ll always have a point of contact and our support team to reach out to if there’s any questions or issues.
Dayna Johnson 14:56
Yeah, yeah, that’s good point. Training is such a big part of it, I know that you and I have worked together, you know, trying to create tip sheets and videos and I created a course on membership plans. And there’s so many variables that the training is, you know, one of the biggest pieces, I think. And so I think that’s another thing that the practice needs to look at when they are thinking about launching membership plan is that there will be some training involved, you know, you will have to, go through not only training with you, but there may also be some software training, like within your practice management software. Now, of course, I’m Dentrix all the time. So, you know, I only look at Dentrix. But if you’re, if you’re using you know, another software like Eagle Soft or Open Dental or something you might have to go through some training with with their software too. Because there, you definitely want to incorporate it into your practice management software, in order to track revenue. And in order to get ROI numbers back out of the the analytics.
Brad James 16:08
Absolutely, yeah, everything needs to be entered cleanly and accurately within your within your PM software, otherwise, everything’s just going to be a mess. And that’s where our partnership comes in handy for our Dentrix users. And Dayna, I can’t tell you I think I think I might have emailed you. But I haven’t really articulated it to you yet. But our success team was so excited when you sent over that video. Seriously, they were so excited. So thank you for doing. Oh, that’s great. Yeah, I think it’s really important for because we had like the guide for people that like those steps, but the visual component, I think a lot of people are visual learners. So I’m sure we’ll get started to get feedback from our customers that that’s valuable. And that just lives in our portal. So thank you.
Dayna Johnson 16:57
It’s great to have those, those visual, you know, little videos that you can kind of follow along with. Okay, so let’s see, what we’ve gone through the planning, we know that we’re on board with it, we’re going to launch a membership plan for next year. Now, how do we prepare? Like, how do we get the word out to our patients? Like, do we have a brochure? Do we put it on our website? What do you see is has been like really successful launch? You know, ways of launching the membership out to the world?
Brad James 17:39
Yeah, I think the most obvious one is marketing, internal and external marketing, how do you get it out there for your active patients? And then, on top of that, how do you get it out there for prospective like new patients or dormant patients that you’re trying to reactivate? In office it’s pretty straightforward, you want to add a minimum put together some type of brochure. And that’s where the patients can really look at it, they can take it home with them, they can kind of mull it over. Some people are slow with that type of decision making. But it’s important to be able to have it in multiple components of their visit. So have a brochure or have them physically hold it when they’re in the waiting room when they’re leaving. But then I think the one that a lot of practices can overlook. And this is really where best practices come into play. And when I say it, it’s going to seem so obvious, but a lot of you know it can the ball can be dropped in this component. And it’s really just communication. And it builds on what you what you and I were talking about earlier about having everyone on the same page, having a team, not just in the know about the membership plan and trained, but but having them understand why it’s important for them, for your practice, the business, and also for the patients. I mean, if you’re covering those three aspects, why it’s important for me as an individual, why it’s important for my job for my business for this practice that I work in, and why it’s important for the patient that I’m serving your, your employee, or whoever, whatever team member in the practice, they’re bound to see the value of one of those three options. So if you’re be being very communicative with your team, they understand the importance of the membership plan and how it touches on each aspect of the business, how it fits within your mission. That’s something where the patient is constantly going to be hearing it and some practices say they don’t feel comfortable selling to your patients. I mean, the membership plan. It really is it’s the best deal for the practice, and it’s the best deal for the patient. So if you if you as a team member understand that you should understand that it’s not selling your patient. It’s educating them on this new Um, dental insurance alternative that you’ve created a better coverage option for them. So when the hygienist is having a conversation with the patient, when they’re hearing it from the front office, the office manager, they have a brochure about it. And then maybe there’s some type of text or email marketing that the patient gets pre or post visit. That is when we’ve really seen practices accel, and they see huge numbers with patient penetration on huge numbers of patients enrolling onto their membership plans and retaining it year over year.
Dayna Johnson 20:34
Now, I, I agree with you 100%, especially when you are saying about the word selling, you know, nobody likes the word selling. And I don’t think anyone in the dental practice ever thinks that they are selling anything, but they sell every day, they’re selling all day long. They’re selling optimum dentistry, and oral health care every single day. And, you know, they may not think it but every time they’re educating patients about a benefit that we’re solution of oral health, you know, they’re selling dentistry. And so I think membership plans is a way of helping patients afford dentistry afford, you know, better oral health, you know, afford optimum health care. And, and I think when they understand that it is a benefit to serving their patients. And if we are serving more patients with optimum care, then it’s a benefit for me in the form of maybe increased revenue, which leads to pay raises, which leads to bonus programs or things like that. So I think that a membership plan is just another way of helping our patients afford the care that we need.
Brad James 22:04
Yeah, exactly. And it just adds versatility to your practice. Because ultimately, patients when they’re coming back, and they’re a loyal patient, there’s something in your practice that they value. It’s the great dentistry that they’re receiving. Or maybe it’s the relationship they have with the hygienist. Or it could be the experience that the dental practice has with a culture that they feel when they visit and they feel comfortable visiting the membership plan, like you said earlier, it’s a loyalty program, they’re gonna feel like they they are a VIP patients within your practice. So all you’re doing is really just casting that net even wider for the value and the experience that patients are receiving when they do visit your practice. Because people definitely want to trust their dentists, or any health care provider in that matter. So all it’s doing is creating a better patient experience. And, you know, everything else will fall into place as well.
Dayna Johnson 23:03
I agree 100%. I love all of that. And I love everything you said, you know, we were on the same page. Alright, so let’s see. So kind of wrapping up. I know that you’ve said a couple of times that, you know, you definitely help offices walk through all of the onboarding and the training and everything. And so I want everybody to, to know that in our show notes. For today, I will be putting in a link so that you can get more information, if you want to pursue the idea of working with clear, I would highly recommend it. I love them as a company. I love the people there. And so I’m going to definitely put a link in there. And but if just you know looking at membership or loyalty plans for your practice, I would love to see all of you in the audience listening today, just to put that on your annual planning agenda for this year. And I think it would definitely be a great new benefit solution for your your patients who maybe don’t have those those dental benefits to tap into. So, Brad, let’s wrap it up anything any last minute words that you’d like to say to our audience listening to this, this podcast episode?
Brad James 24:31
Yeah, if anyone has any any questions that they just want to ask someone directly. My email address is just [email protected]. Don’t hesitate to reach out I’m more than happy to point you in the right direction and or answer your question. And just on top of that, we have some really exciting product features that we’re rolling out this year. That should really make a lot of teams lives easier, especially in the front office. So feel free to contact us whenever and thanks so much for having me on Dayna. I really appreciate it.
Dayna Johnson 25:04
Awesome. I’m excited about that too. I’m excited to see what what new stuff you guys are rolling out. All right, great. Well, if this topic today resonated with you, and you know other doctors or other dental teams that would benefit from our podcast, please share it, rate it, review it. Wherever you listen to your podcasts, whether you’re listening to Apple podcasts on your iPhone, or if you are listening to this on SoundCloud, please rate it, review it, share it with your, with your friends, it’s really gets helps get the word out of our Novonee family of resources. I look forward to watching your journey of becoming a Dentrix super user and make sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, you know we’re on all the social channels. Please comment, give us some feedback. We look forward to watching your journey of becoming a Dentrix super user.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
