What are you in pursuit of? Our dental mentor will help you hone a results-driven business

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Andy McDougall, dental business coach, asks “What are you in pursuit of?”[/caption]At Spot On Business Planning, the analogy we use to explain the journey to achieving your desired goals is the sat nav. When you switch on your sat nav, it locates your current position. It asks where you would like to go (the required result), offers you a choice of routes based on different criteria: scenic, most direct, etc., and then once you decide, it indicates how to achieve your desired destination and provides measures along the way to assess progress and ensure you arrive as planned.

Not all results are equal

Business planning is the sat nav for getting better business results. Dental business coach Andy McDougall says we always get a result, but it isn’t always the right one or the best one. In business there is a hierarchy of results and the one thing that overrides all other outcomes is achieving the desired levels of profit.Some weeks ago Andy McDougall delivered a seminar to a room of dental practice principals and dental practice managers. In preparing for the day, he considered focusing on marketing, finance, people management … any one of the specific areas of business focus in a dental practice, but in the end he decided to concentrate on results, or more specifically, financial results.Andy began the seminar by asking what the role of the dental practice manager was, to which he received shouts of ‘to pass the CQC inspection’; ‘to ensure the team is performing well’; ‘to attract new patients’, and so on. And all were true! In each of the scenarios offered you would really want to deliver the correct result. But here’s the rub: if you scored excellent in every one, but the business made a financial loss, have you had a good year and did the manager do well? No! Everything must come back to the numbers.

An intangible vision is a delusion

Most dental businesses continually look for better results, and their owners have an idea or a vision of how they would like the dental business to look in the future, but in the vast majority of cases the vision ends up a delusion.Why? Because it isn’t based on anything tangible. We recently asked a principal for his vision and he said ‘to be the number one dental brand in my county’. Number one for what we asked: employer, quality, volume, price, breadth of treatment, number of patients, profitability, turnover? He didn’t know. So what criteria would his business sat nav use to ensure he achieved his desired result? It was a delusion.

Today’s decisions are tomorrow’s destiny

The basic premise is to establish where your dental business is today and define your vision of what you would like the future to be. In sat nav terms, it means knowing where you are and where you want to go. That’s the easy part.Now you have to decide which route to take, but just like the sat nav, different routes or different decisions will deliver different results. In journey terms, the scenic route may be nicer but it takes longer. In business terms, having to part with staff to downsize may be necessary but difficult.So, making the right decisions is the first key to obtaining the right results, and at the heart of this is modelling the financial permutations of each decision to see its impact and to ensure you pick the right path. Our experience tells us it only requires a few wrong decisions to get a very different result.

What next?

Tune in in a fortnight for part 2!

Free consultation

Spot On Business Planning specialises in the dental sector and offers a tailored service because your dental business challenges, like your performance monitors, are unique.Finance is at the heart of what we do and we have a track record of transforming under-performing dental businesses and taking well-performing dental practices to new levels. Our analysis uncovers the challenges facing your dental business and by taking a structured approach, we plan a completely different financial performance for the future.Spot On Business Planning offers a free initial consultation whereby we will analyse your dental business accounts and highlight where opportunities and risks lie. For no more than a few hours of your time you will get a better understanding of your dental practice, its weaknesses, its strengths and the focus of your approach to achieve improved results.To arrange a free consultation with Andy McDougall call 01949 851723 or email info@spoton-businessplanning.co.uk