Advice from the Dental Practice Accelerator mentors
With the Dental Practice Accelerator programme in full swing, Hannan Saleem gives an insight into the journey, and shares the best tips and advice from the four mentors.
Once I graduated from university, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do but I knew I wanted to get into business. So, in the short-term I decided to join the family business with a view to do an MBA or follow the corporate route.
However, along my journey I started listening to various podcasts with Justin Leigh, Sandeep Kumar, Sameer Patel and Shaz Memon, which really opened my eyes to a whole new world of dentistry and created a different vision of what I could actually pursue.
When I saw the Dental Practice Accelerator competition on Dentistry.co.uk, it resonated with me because I was struggling to run and grow the business, and the prize was to work with these four mentors that I had been avidly listening to and looking up to. I have been so grateful to win and be on this journey.
The first meeting with the four mentors was incredibly nerve wracking but also exciting. It was very eye-opening as we broke down where the practice currently was and where I wanted to take it, which gave us some valuable action points to begin working on.
The beginning
We started with our vision, where we wanted to take the practice and how we communicated that to the team. We discovered that if we weren’t clear on what we wanted then the team wouldn’t be able to help us on this journey.
Recruitment and retention was the next thing we began working on, such as selecting the right people – not just based on experience and skills, but really looking at whether these people were a good fit for the practice and the team. We have placed a lot more focus on the soft skills, such as patient communication, because the patient journey is a key part of our vision, so every member of our team needs to be aligned with this.
The third thing was about working on our sales skills; how could we integrate digital workflows and systems to increase sales and educate our patients? This also tied in with our vision because it came back to how we wanted to operate and how we wanted patients to view us.
We believe that if we can provide the best patient experience then we are able to position ourselves differently. While we are a private practice, we realised we were in quite a scarcity mindset, so we intentionally shifted our focus in order to give our patients a better quality of service.
The challenges
One of the biggest challenges I faced coming into this was that we had quite an established team who had always done things in a particular way. We had to shift them towards our new ways of working and make sure we had team members who were on board with our vision and wanted to grow the business with us. The mentors have really helped me to make sure I had the team who really was going to be supportive of me for the future.
Another weakness in our practice when we started on the Dental Practice Accelerator journey was that I was wearing a lot of hats. So, we began differentiating everyone’s roles within the practice and creating complete clarity of what everyone is responsible for.
The next step was to work closely with Justin on leadership and how to hold the team accountable and responsible for their roles, supporting them to do what is required of them rather than just taking the work back on myself, which is what I used to default to.
Key changes
The first change we made was to our systems and workflows. There was a lot of reliance of individuals meaning that we had no proper system, so we started out by documenting everything and creating clear processes to introduce some consistency to the practice.
My brother, Daniel, has now also joined me at the practice. He has integrated a really great CRM system so that we can follow patients through the entire pipeline. This allows us to know where each patient is on their journey with us and how many treatments are outstanding. It shows how much money is on the table and how much value we are not yet capturing.
We have introduced treatment coordination for every patient who has an open treatment plan: there are multiple contact stages which keeps them within our pipeline to make sure they complete their treatment. We also introduced a task management system so that the team has better communication, and we can see what everyone is doing and provide support where required.
Leadership skills
Justin has been working with me to refine my leadership skills, and while there is still a lot to learn, it’s really helped me with engaging the team, selling the vision and getting them on board to help us grow the practice. One of the things that I loved early on was the discussion with Justin about growth mindset, which means that although we might not be where we want to be right now, we have to believe that we will be there in the future.
Clinical excellence is, of course, crucial to us. We are very fortunate to be surrounded by brilliant clinicians in our practice, so we needed to understand how we could support that. With this in mind, Daniel and I have been attending lots of industry events and encouraging our clinical team to go on courses to bring back and implement that learning into the practice.
We have also started to utiltise our Itero scanner as an educational tool to teach and show patients about their oral health, rather than just telling them about it.
The most valuable change
We are now in a strong position with the team. It took a lot of effort and there were many hurdles, but I am proud of the team we have now. Everyone is incredible. For me, we can have all the right systems in place but if we don’t have the right team, it’s never going to work. I think that’s been the biggest takeaway – you must surround yourself with the right people.
The biggest surprises
Aside from a lot of things being difficult and hard to do, one of the biggest surprises for me is the fact that a lot of the things that push the needle the most are really easy to implement. It’s the bread-and-butter things, like how we are greeting the patient at the door, that make the most impact and are often overlooked.
Daniel Saleem added: ‘By attending the Mismile conference and Invisalign Live events I discovered that there is a whole industry of people with the same goals and ambitions who are willing to help you. They have different levels of expertise and they are all people that you can learn from – the Dental Practice Accelerator programme has really opened that up to us.
The CRM system that I have created was inspired by a young dentist that I met at the Invisalign Live conference, he showed me his own system and from that it gave me a baseline of what I need to put in place. I was really taken aback at how open and generous he was.
It’s about understanding that there are enough patients for everyone so rather than competing we should be sharing our expertise and collaborating where we can to lift each other along the way.’
What advice would you give others?
Daniel Saleem: ‘Attend as many events as you can in order to engage with the community and network with people as this will help you to learn as much as possible in a short amount of time. I would also say to utilise data, this is great advice that we have had from Shaz, Sandeep and Sameer.
Things like tracking statistics from your website to help make improvements and analysing patient data from your patient management systems can also have a huge impact. I believe data-driven decisions will really push our business growth even further.’
Hannan Saleem: ‘Network, network, network. Get to know people and immerse yourself in the dental community. Everyone is so welcoming and helpful. In addition, while it was daunting at the outset, having a growth mindset has really helped me to get to where I am today and, I have to say, I am proud of myself.’
To the mentors… what does the future hold?
Sandeep Kumar, founder and CEO of the MiSmile Network, said: ‘Clarity precedes mastery. If you’re not clear where you’re going, you’re not going to get anywhere. I’m happy to say Hannan and Daniel have clarity. It’s a bumpy road but they have a vision and know the steps on how to get there. I’m really happy to see how far you’ve already come.’
Shaz Memon, founder of Digimax Dental, added: ‘I see this becoming a destination practice, not just a convenience practice. It will become a real patient conversion machine through attracting more of the patients they want, who will tell more patients like themselves. This will develop into a very high-quality practice with an extremely happy team who are treating individuals that really appreciate the brand that these two brothers are building. It’s super exciting and this is just the beginning.’
Justin Leigh, founder of Focus4Growth, concluded: ‘I can see so much potential here, it’s really exciting for us as mentors and I think you have a very exciting future ahead.’
If you would like to accelerate your practice and clinical growth, Align Technology can help you get to the next level, leveraging the Invisalign system, Itero intraoral scanners, and the Align Digital Platform.
For more information about its education and growth support programmes visit www.invisalign.co.uk/gp/become-a-provider.
