Full Arch Is a Business Inside Your Business | EP. 5 | Char Watson

Char Watson

It’s so easy to say, the marketing’s not working. Let’s change the marketing. It’s not working. When really there hasn’t been enough time and or. They don’t have the operational infrastructure to support the volume that’s coming in.

chelsea: Welcome back to the Full Arch Growth Show. My name is Chelsea Morsi, CEO of the implant engine. Today I’m sitting down with Shar Watson. Char is the founder of Watson Dental Consulting, fifteen years in dentistry and one of the sharpest operations minds working in Full Arch practices right now. She’s going to walk us through why Full Arch is a business inside your business, the three levers she pulls when she walks into a new office, the exact 90-day runway for training a treatment coordinator to close at up to 40%, and the one-page follow-up document that keeps cases from disappearing. Let’s get into it.

Chelsea Morrisey

Shar, I’m dressed very casually today. And part of that is because I just

Char Watson

I love it.

Chelsea Morrisey

feel very comfortable with you. And I consider you a friend at this point. And I just am very excited for this conversation because from the moment that I first met you, I just thought she’s different. You know, she really has the ability to move through this world and really make people feel at ease. And you’re so knowledgeable, but also just so kind and approachable. And I really enjoy that about you. So I’m really looking forward to this conversation. I just want to start by you telling me a little bit about your background and how you arrived where you’re at and kind of what you’re up to.

Char Watson

Sure. Yeah, sure. Well, gosh, I’m gonna age myself totally, my friend. So I’ve been in dentistry for about 15 years. Nobody do the math or else I’m gonna be crying in my sleep tonight. but

Chelsea Morrisey

Ha ha

Char Watson

I’ve been in dentistry for about 15 years. I started literally from the ground up, started in a receptionist moved my way up to office manager, then regional manager. And then about five years ago, that’s when I transitioned over to full arch. It was kind of a luck of the draw, if you will. I’d actually started with this DSO on the coaching side, which was four GP offices. And then this opportunity came up for me to come in onto their full arch DSO side. And I wasn’t familiar with Full Arts at the time. And so I started with them as their startup manager, which is basically equates to me opening their new offices. So I learned project management around that. I did the hiring, then I got into the training. And then I just slowly moved up into eventually just overseeing all the regional managers for this full Arch CSO. So really it was like an incredible experience just because I was able to see things from ground zero all the way up to these offices just completely blooming and being successful.

Chelsea Morrisey

Yeah, I love that. What is your biggest takeaway from that time of your life?

Char Watson

gosh. well, that time of my life I was also going through personal transitions as well. So this was the period of time of becoming a single mom to three little girls and then moving into a new niche, you know, within the industry that I had no no like knowledge of at all. So my biggest takeaway from that honestly was you gotta believe in yourself. Like it was a big leap of faith on all fronts. And I was Willing and wanting to learn it, but it meant that I had to commit time outside of the office hours for me to really understand this niche. But then also too, just learning a better balance for myself. You know, how do I ground myself? How do I decompress from the day? How do I show up a hundred and ten percent the next day? Those were my biggest takeaways from that time.

Chelsea Morrisey

Yeah, and you always show up with such a positive attitude. Is that a is that a you thing or is that have have you had to work on that? I mean, what is this you bring this energy that I think it’s just infectious? Have you always been like that?

Char Watson

You’re so sweet. Yes, I really have.

Chelsea Morrisey

Right.

Char Watson

I really have. It’s just me. I mean, honestly, life is life is good and there’s a lot to learn from it. And yes, we’re gonna have stumbling blocks, but it’s about learning and it’s about getting better. So why not have a positive outlook on it?

Chelsea Morrisey

Yeah, so what do you do now? Talk to us a little bit about your your consulting firm.

Char Watson

Sure. So at Solo, it’s just me right now. basically I come in, you can think of it as a partnership. Think of it as a fractional operations partner, you know, whether you want to give it a title or not, that doesn’t really matter. But I come into these practices and I come in at the ground level and I come in to help them support not just their success in full arts, but what does their operational infrastructure look like? What’s our ecosystem need to be? What who’s our team? What do we need to have on our team? Who’s our marketing company? Let me get involved with them. Who’s our CPA or CFO? Let me get involved with them. And so really I come in as that right hand to these offices to really help support every angle of the full arch practice and not just focused on sales trading or how do we close cases or what’s the consultation flow? There’s so much more than that. So then these these practices can really boom and excel.

Chelsea Morrisey

Yeah. There is so much to say about that, but why do you think that this is so needed for these dentists and for the full arch industry for someone like you to come in and support in these ways?

Char Watson

good question. My my honest answer, and I I don’t want to make anybody uncomfortable with the hard truth, but when you’re building a full arch practice and a lot of my clients, a lot of you know individuals looking into this, they’re namely GP, right? Not all of them, but most of And so the name takeaway here is that when you’re in a GP practice, you can’t expect your processes and systems to support a full arch practice. So when you’re building that floor side, you kind of have to look at it like you have two different entities under one umbrella. You have to treat them that way. And so having someone that can look at the operations at a full scope and be able to be more of that partner, whether that means we’re doing interviews, I’m looking for team members, I’m doing training, I’m meeting with marketing companies, we’re getting stats and metrics and data, it doesn’t matter exactly. It matters on everything and making sure that everything’s working cohesively together. Because if the practices don’t understand that, that the systems and processes have to operate differently to be successful, then it ends up kind of crushing in on itself. And it doesn’t you don’t see success to the end.

Chelsea Morrisey

Now, I’ve always said that the full arch business is a business in their business. And is that of what you’re saying? And can you elaborate on that a little bit? Because I think it’s a really important subject that you’re touching on.

Char Watson

Yeah, it it is a business within a business. When you’re building the full arch side, this means you have to dedicate so much more time to consultations, for example. When you’re in a GP practice, you know, sometimes those consultations can’t take up to 15 minutes, but it’s pretty in and out. Here’s your treatment plan, here’s what insurance is going to cover. Boom, you’re in and out. And the initial knee-jerk reaction is it’s okay, we’ll just use our team. It’s okay, we’ll just keep doing things how we’ve been doing them. And then this the momentum just keeps getting stuck. And so the glass ceiling feels like it’s down here. When it’s all the way up here, it’s just we don’t have our foundation built. And so as soon as you can as you can acknowledge that, and then we can start separating them out, meaning we’re looking at what is our office manager doing? Who’s our treatment coordinator? Can they support both sides? Do we have someone to take these leads and follow through with them? And when we when we’re being really honest with ourselves, there’s a lot of opportunities there we have to build first, not just immediately jump into marketing and hope for the best.

Chelsea Morrisey

Yeah, I see it all the time where offices try to make their current staff, a full arch team. And sometimes it can work, but sometimes it doesn’t to the extent that they want it to, even if it’s working partially. And I think that has to do with a couple factors, and you can kind of chime in here. But I think a lot of that is desire. The team didn’t sign up for this. I mean, they they interviewed and and had a job description for a completely different job. when you’re thinking about team and you’re analyzing team, what are you looking at? What are you looking for to determine if this is a team that can scale a full arch office?

Char Watson

First and foremost, they I think that the CEO needs to have the vision for it. I think it’s too easy to say, let’s just add full arch, let’s add some more revenue. That’s not a dream, that’s not a vision, that’s not a direction, that’s not a North Star. That’s just saying we need to add more revenue. And so that lack of clarity from the top and making a swift movement to add the full arch is the number one factor that these teams are like, What the heck just happened? I didn’t sign up for this, I didn’t know we were going this direction. Secondary to that, it’s also having that honest conversation with yourself and saying, hey, you know, do my do my team members have what it takes to do this? And if you don’t have the experience in full arch, I will recommend something if that’s okay, I have a full arch playbook. It’s it’s simple, but it’s productive in the sense of like, what are we looking for? And it’s a really good tool just to analyze where you’re at and what you need to do next. So going back to the team. What I’m looking for with the office manager, what I’m looking for for the TC, what I’m looking for that for that lead setter are all separate roles. What I typically see though is that we’ll have the office manager also be the TC. And then now this office manager TC also has to do the full arc site, and their bandwidth gets exasperated so fast. And when I come to them and I say, Hey, Chelsea, do you enjoy doing treatment coordinating? And they’re like, No, I really don’t. I’ve signed up to be Office manager, I want to take care of the team and the office and operations. Okay, great. Thank you for sharing that with me. We need to find someone else. So when you’re looking at this, you have to, like you said, you got to look at their innate skills. You can’t want it more than they want it. But then we also need to look at the direction of where they’re going to. I think that’s also super valid. If we’re building this full arts practice, if you take your office manager out of this role and put him completely into the TC role, what’s gonna happen with your operations? Right. So you gotta look at it not just at the the short term, but the long term of where we’re going.

Chelsea Morrisey

let’s just talk about off GP offices that potentially want to get started with this, but not in the position to hire a full new team to to trial this out and see if this is something they want to do. What are some easy ways to kind of set that vision and temperature check your team to see if you feel as though you can roll this out even incrementally with your team?

Char Watson

First, I’d look at the schedule. So if if I’m gonna commit to us having an hour long committed consultation for these patients, and I mean committed, I don’t mean we have a TC that’s in for five minutes, a dental assistant that’s holding up for twenty, the doctor comes in for like that’s too scrambly. So really look at the schedule and make sure, hey, if with the team I have right now, do I have the bandwidth and the capacity to do consultations? That’s the very first place we’ve got to look. If we don’t have that capacity and we’re throwing them into the fourth or fifth column and we have full schedules, this won’t work. You’re gonna end up with consultations that are 15 to 20 minutes long. We’re not getting emotionally in depth with these patients, therefore we’re not gonna close cases and it quote unquote doesn’t work. So starting there, once you can kind of identify where this can work a little bit better, maybe you have days like mornings that are a little bit slower, maybe you have dedicated afternoons for ortho, something like that where you have These patterns that you can pull out. we actually have some buckets of time if we just manipulate the schedule here, here, and here. That’s where I’d start. I’d start right there. And I started a very low marketing budget just so then the team has time to acclimate to us doing hour long consultations without us drowning out the schedule and then the team is panicking and now we’ve lost all of this momentum.

Chelsea Morrisey

So as a full arch consultant, you walk into an office that wants to be doing more full arch, typically a GP office.

Char Watson

Love.

Chelsea Morrisey

What are the three levers you’re gonna pull right away that are gonna have the biggest impact on their success?

Char Watson

Good question. So this is probably gonna sound like a broken record, but I wanna go back to the team. Team is number one. People are my number one out of my four core that I look at with any office. So number one, the team. Who do we have on the team? What are their roles and responsibilities and subset of that? Do they understand and have clarity on their roles and responsibilities? The reason I ask that is because a lot of times even with GP practices before they get into full arch or any other, you know, practice type, they The team members half the time have clarity on their responsibilities somewhat, but then there’s a lot of this gray area where it’s a crossover, they’re not sure it’s not getting done, so they assumed, etc. So if they aren’t super clear on their roles and responsibilities, then how can we assume that they can take on more? So I want to look at the team, what what those roles are, and then evaluate their bandwidth from there. Secondary to that is going to be the doctor’s time. So I prefer for the consultations to be TC dedicated, meaning that the treatment coordinator is running the majority of these consultations. The doctors just need to come in for five to ten minutes. There’s other approaches to this, but nonetheless, we want to make sure that the doctor has the time and capacity to come in to these consultations and be 100% present. If we’re if we’re solid booked three columns deep, and then now we’re adding the consultations over here to the far right, typically I see those doctors come into these consults and they’re so scrambled. They’ve got someone talking in their ear. They just walked out of surgery. They got to come in for this consultation and and and and and and you can see that. You can see those nonverbals. You can see, you know, the doctor’s a bit frazzled. And so that it doesn’t, they don’t really connect with the patient. So doctor time is going be number two. number three is I wanna understand financially where their comfortability is at for them to get started. Like I said, I would start typically on a lower budget for marketing just so the team can get acclimated. We can build those systems and processes. We can really refine. But some of these practices are already in the negative and they’re wanting to add on here. And so now it becomes pressure tensed in the sense of this has to work right right now. And so then it actually ends up going backwards on the team because instead of them getting the training and support, it’s like we go yesterday. And we’re expected to do a and ten percent and be successful at this.

Chelsea Morrisey

when you’re thinking about the financial piece, Shar, what are you looking at? Like what are the financial indicators they’re ready to move forward?

Char Watson

Yeah, good question. And some it guess that depends. Some clients, like when I first start with them, they’re like, Here, have access to my QuickBooks and find what you need. Others aren’t so comfortable and it’s just I need this to work tomorrow. So if I’m getting that indication of we’re in that really pressure tense sense, then I say, you know, I don’t think that it’s time for you to hire a consultant. It sounds like we need to do X, Y, and Z first, meaning going back to the financials. P and L is the number one place I would go. Yes, the top line revenue obviously is important, but I want to understand break-even points. I wonder and understand what their profit margin has been historically, at least for the last 90 days, if then not the last year. And then I want to understand what they have tried over this past 90 days, six months, a year to be able to improve not just only that top line, but also their break-even and their profit margin. And that’s where I get a good really indication of. Okay, are we in this sense of we have a vision and we’re driving forward and we’re willing to take risks that are calculated? Or are we just in this super anxious state and we’ve tried everything, we’re throwing spaghetti at the wall, it’s not working, and we’re changing too fast. That’s the

Chelsea Morrisey

Mm-hmm.

Char Watson

other, that’s other indication you can pick up pretty quick. So those are my three that I’m really looking at to make sure we have that comfortability level around doing any sort of marketing, whether it’s starting small, medium, or big, we got to make sure that we have that buffer room. To allow for the marketing company to really take off and be successful.

Chelsea Morrisey

So let’s talk about some mistakes that they make with marketing. what are the biggest mistakes you see offices making with marketing companies?

Char Watson

My number one would be is not having enough of a connection with the marketing company, meaning they kind of set it and forget it. They they hire this marketing company, but they do the onboarding, and then there’s nothing else to follow. They’re not getting reports from the marketing company. They don’t know what data points they’re looking for. So not being involved into the marketing company is the number one mistake. It really needs to be fluid like a partnership. If there’s something that the marketing company’s seeing, or there’s something that you’re seeing, you need to be able to have that communication to to with each other and say, you know, hey, what’s not working? What do we need to do differently too? That’s the other kind of side of the equation with the marketing company and these practices hiring this marketing company is we got to look at the operations. It’s so easy to say, the marketing’s not working. Let’s change the marketing. It’s not working. When really there hasn’t been enough time and or. They don’t have the operational infrastructure to support the volume that’s coming in. And so what I typically will see is even on the GP side, they’ll get the marketing going, they set up the go high level, and then the team’s not following up on the leads. And then the leads will respond and then they get back to them two or three days later. And then the lead comes in, but they don’t really have a great experience because they didn’t really get to learn about this practice. They didn’t understand the UVP, et cetera. So You gotta go backwards to go forward. You gotta make sure that operational infrastructure is there. And then you’re gonna be able to have more of a cohesive partnership with that marketing company. But those would be my top that I see kind of the deficiencies when asking for a marketing company to join the practice.

Chelsea Morrisey

I think the doctor being present, if this is their vision, is really important. it’s

Char Watson

Yes.

Chelsea Morrisey

it is one of the determiners of whether a campaign is successful or not.

Char Watson

Totally.

Chelsea Morrisey

We want the doctor to be present, we wanna know how the consults are going, we want the doctor present with our sales coaching conversations with we want the doctor present because we want you to be successful.

Char Watson

Yes. Which And I will say a lot of the newbies coming into the forage space, the expectations of the marketing company just taking off and we’re closing 100K first month, oof, man. I mean, I would love that for everyone. But it’s it’s it’s the reality behind it, right? If you don’t have that connection time, they can’t express what their expectations are of the marketing company and the marketing company doesn’t have a chance to also express what those expectations can be. So then it starts to dilute that partnership and then it dissolves eventually just because nobody was really clear on what to expect.

Chelsea Morrisey

Yeah, totally. the the other thing you kind of talked about is the doctor prioritizing these leads. And and one area that we see doctors fall short on, and you can kind of comment on this is just prioritizing it in their schedule. You’ve got to get these leads in and and we do same day appointments with a lot of our really successful offices. We do next day appointments. We don’t want to get them in later than 48 hours.

Char Watson

Yes, a thousand percent. I see. And that’s why I said, you know, that’s one of the number one levers to pull is that you gotta look at that scheduling and your capacity to see, but also to the team, you know. And that’s why I love what you have, Chelts, too, with you having the call center available as part of your process. that makes such a big difference because these offices that again, going back to an office manager or TC that’s already floating the GP side. And now you’re asking them to call these new leads, follow up with these leads, then do the consultations. Like they don’t have any time for anything. And so everything’s going to be cut short, even on the GP side. So there’s a lot of opportunity costs that would happen. So I love that you already have at least that one solution in place so that the, you know, these clients can come in and get started and at least know that their leads are going to be taken care of. And then we can work on the infrastructure on the operational side.

Chelsea Morrisey

what are questions doctors should be looking at when they’re vetting, a full arch agency or really any marketing agency?

Char Watson

I number one, I’d be looking for how do I get data? I would and I’d ask that, are you sending me a report once a month? Is there a platform that I can get on that I can see where things are at in real time? What does that look like for you? And I love what you’ve set up, Chelsea, with you having the looker studio because at any time I can pull it up and see exactly where everything’s at. Other marketing companies, I have to ask, what have we spent on Google? What do we spend on Meta? What’s our cost per lead? You know, just all of these these metrics and numbers that matter so much in the success of this going out into the world. And so number one, I want to understand what is that marketing or excuse me, what is that reporting going to look like? And what is the frequency of that? So if they don’t have anything set up where you can just go in and tap in and see what that data is at in real time, then the next is okay, how soon are we going to meet? And then I wanna see too, and I don’t ask this question. This is something I just quietly observe, but how well do they come prepared for those meetings? Are they coming prepared with an agenda? Do they have the metrics? Do they know what they’re working on on their side? Do they know what’s happening at the practice side? And if they come and the meeting’s just like, so what do you guys want to talk about? we’re out. Because there’s no organization here. And that means to me that we’ve we’ve met a marketing company that’s doing more of the set it and forget it. And that can never be successful. So those two are the number ones that I look at reporting and their organization.

Chelsea Morrisey

call. you’ve hired many treatment coordinators to come in and fill roles. What do the best ones have? What do the worst ones have? what lessons have you learned? Talk to me a little bit about that.

Char Watson

Yeah, that’s a good question. So I think notoriously I kind of shot myself in the foot with this one. So the you know, take from my mistakes. when I first was working with this Full Arch DSO and we were hiring team members, I was only looking for team members that have been in the dental industry. And I’m not saying that the individuals in the dental industry can’t be successful in this role. That’s not what I’m saying. But I was only looking at those team members. So that was my mistake, right? I wasn’t opening up to who else is out there and I wasn’t really getting enough into the cell psychology at that time because this was new for me. So number one thing that I look for is that level of cell psychology. Do they understand how to lean in to the uncomfortable space where the, you know, these patients need just a little bit more hand holding. They need a little bit more of that empathy. Can you lean into that? being able to front load objections. So getting ahead before the patient even focalized that they aren’t willing to do, you know, move forward with the smile design because they need to talk to their spouse. How do they get ahead of that? How do they help walk them through that? And so I found through trial and error, I started kind of opening up my scope and my belief. And I started looking for sales individuals outside of the industry that were still in this, you know, high value treatment. Think like aesthetics, you can think like even like plastic surgery, even car cells, which isn’t my super favorite, but I have seen success with those individuals as well. But looking for those outside of the industry that have those natural innate skills and then coaching them into the dental, they have by far been my most successful TCs. Individuals who have been in the dental industry that want to grow into cells, they can, but I will say it is a bit harder because typically our individuals on the dental side are either heavily clinical Or they’re heavily operational. And so you’re trying to build a skill set somewhere in between of cells, and that can be really stinking hard. Even on

Chelsea Morrisey

Yeah.

Char Watson

the lead call side, right? Like they have to have a level of cells in there. And unless unless they can lean in and be able to walk through these uncomfortable conversations, they’re not gonna be able to be successful. So I would say, hands down, you know, looking for individuals who can lean into the sales. They can lean into the cell psychology, they can frontload objections, they’re comfortable with big numbers, that’s who you need. Don’t worry if they’re not from the industry. Dentistry can be taught. but then also have an honest conversation with yourself too. You know, if you have a team member and they’ve been in the TC role for a long time and you’re like, yes, I wanted to take over this full arch, like really be honest. How what’s our case acceptance rate at? What is our like how has our trajectory been? Are we closing more and more every single month? Or we’ve been staying stagnant for last six months to twelve months? If that’s the case and you don’t really have someone that’s in sales, you have someone that’s more in operations. And so they’re probably not gonna be the right team member to do the full arch consultations.

Chelsea Morrisey

how are you evaluating results from a new treatment coordinator how long should training period be? What should your expectation be on their close rate initially over time?

Char Watson

So we we had a treatment coordinator, we end up letting her go, and then we hired someone else. And she came from jewelry cell. initially, again, you wouldn’t think, that doesn’t necessarily transfer over, but it does. She leaned into that empathy, she leaned into the hard conversation, she was comfortable with the big numbers. I knew with her not having any sort of dental background and what I set for myself and for the team members is plan on having about a 30-day runway of really training. So that means I’m coming up to the office, I’m doing the consultations with you. They’re just observing. They’re not doing them. I have them listen to consultations. I have them do, you know, their own education at home. I give them tools and resources to learn what these procedures are, what these treatments are, so that they can get comfortable with and they don’t sound robotic. So With any new TC, I would say you’ve got to give them at least that 30 days and plan on having someone there or having the resources there to make sure that they have support 110%. And it’s not just kind of learn you go and then fumble and then learn as you go and then fumble. Like give them the runway, give them the resources they need so they can be successful. So once I once I kind of establish that, then after the 30 days, I want to start seeing what they’re gonna do with the follow ups. So that’s a That’s actually the first place I go to. So consultations already that have come in. What is their natural innate thought or process or cadence to follow up with these past consults? And I want to see how much they can get back into the office. Because that’s kind of an easier, that’s actually an easier slide in than doing consultations first because this

Chelsea Morrisey

I got it.

Char Watson

patient’s already come in, they have education. We’re just trying to get them to the sales point. And this person should already have those sales skills. So they’re not leaning. So much on that dental knowledge. So I want to see how they do after the first 30 days with the follow-ups. Once we go through the first 60 days, now I want to see the consults closing. Initially, it’s going to be probably around 5 to 10%, but I want to see it incrementally going up by percentages every single month. So if we start closing at about a 5% rate, then I’m going to set the goal for the next month to close at 10 and then at 15. Because it really doesn’t have to be super long, but I wanna get them to where we’re consistently closing at that twenty-five percent, if not more. But that runway from start to finish to really get them there, we’re looking at at least ninety days.

Chelsea Morrisey

So ninety days of intensive your indication is you need to be seeing progress on the close

Char Watson

Mm-hmm.

Chelsea Morrisey

rate and you’re starting them with shadowing and reps on follow-ups. just kind of side note, how many follow-ups do you recommend doing from a consult? And do you have a specific sort of process for following up with consults?

Char Watson

Yes, I actually put together a document that I like. I call it the kitchen counter document. It’s the easiest way to explain it, but basically what that equates to is that when the patient is done with the consultation, we have a one pager that outlines here’s what we’ve talked about, here’s what’s important, here’s your treatment plans, and then here’s our commitments to each other. So on that commitment, I want to make that within twenty-four, no more than forty-eight hours of either following up on the action items they had or just following up with us with them. So 48 hours is at the very most, but I try to follow up either same day, end of day, or the next day. Then the 48 hours, if we didn’t make either two of those windows. and then I do a one week two weeks three weeks, and then I move them every 30 days. Unless the patient’s communicating with me and saying, hey, I have this date or I need two more weeks to do X, Y, and Z, then I’ll follow up at that time. But in if I’m not getting that sort of communication from the patient, then I try to keep it really, really close and on at least a once a week basis for the first

Chelsea Morrisey

Okay.

Char Watson

four weeks.

Chelsea Morrisey

Yeah, good. All right. would you say most treatment coordinators fall flat on the follow up?

Char Watson

a hundred percent. Yeah. Yes. And it’s no it’s no scuff on them. It’s just talking about what we’ve been talking about, that they’re also being TCs for everything else in the practice. And so their bandwidth gets exasperated pretty fast.

Chelsea Morrisey

And I think there’s no system to track who they followed up with, how many times. tax accountability. I think that a simple spreadsheet where every consult goes in the spreadsheet is not difficult to make with AI.

Char Watson

It’s not

Chelsea Morrisey

Put it in, even make it manually. Put categories in of grades of leads even me as a career salesperson, I only close ten percent of people on that first call. I mean, it’s like if I just had one call and didn’t do massive amounts of follow up, I would not have a company. it’s like if

Char Watson

Thousand percent.

Chelsea Morrisey

they’re ignoring their follow up process and just focusing on how they are in the consults, then it it’s not enough. It’s not even nearly enough.

Char Watson

No, it’s not. And honestly, on average, most of these cases are closing within 45 days. It’s not often they close the same day. So you gotta you have to be prepared prepared for the long game because also we’ve had patients that have come back, you know, three years later and they just needed time because they had all these life events going on, but there was such an amazing impact and the team kept following up that three years later they closed that deal. So you can’t underestimate the follow ups by any means.

Chelsea Morrisey

What are some things a doctor could do today to get, more success out of this marketing?

Char Watson

Hands down, I would have a consultation tracker. So it like you said, you can make it with AI. I also have it available on the Full Arch playbook. There’s a link in there so you can make a copy. But having a consultation tracker, we need to see in real time what’s happening with these consultations, what’s our follow-up, and then also gives more data for the marketing company. If you’re tracking, you know, here’s the zip codes that we’ve had the most success with, here’s how many patients we’ve been able to see this month and been able to close, it gives more data back to the marketing company. Also it’s going to allow you to have better organization for the follow-ups as well. Secondary to that, I like to put together a weekly KPI tracker. This just basically basically breaks down here’s what our goals are. And then I want to see what’s our production, collections, number of arches closed, the percentage of finance applications we’ve submitted with those consults, et cetera. So that in real time the doctor has clarity on where the practice is at for the full arts side and the T C has that accountability and ownership. Those would

Chelsea Morrisey

Yeah.

Char Watson

be my very quick hands down will make a huge difference.

Chelsea Morrisey

Love that. we have what we have noticed is one of the most effective things we can do in our meetings is go through each appointment and have the TC tell us what happened on that appointment. You have to go through and figure out did you follow up with this person? They were approved for 50K. no, I haven’t. How long ago? Was it four weeks? Okay. So what are we doing? How are we falling up? When are we falling up? So just going line by line, they could do huddle, or if you have a good marketing agency and they they could do that with you, you know, and and really help hold your sales team accountable. the biggest one we see in terms of sales process issues is they’re not even applying for financing in the console. We have a column called apply in these GP

Char Watson

No, exactly. Yep.

Chelsea Morrisey

offices, their column is full with did not apply. Our successful offices have almost nobody in that category. And that’s a big one. They’re like making assumptions or they’re not having them run financing for various reasons that aren’t good reasons.

Char Watson

Yeah, exactly. And that’s that’s why I put on the KPI tracker, that weekly one, because you want to see that at least at fifty percent. If you’re not seeing fifty percent applications rate for these consultations, then a hundred percent your TC is either A not comfortable with these financial conversations or they’re they’re too busy, right? And they’re not slowing down enough to help the patient walk through it, or like you said, they’re making assumptions the patient’s not gonna get approved.

Chelsea Morrisey

Yeah, exactly. And those assumptions kill your deals. we have, you know, elderly people that come in, retirees, and I mean, that generation, they’ll they want to keep on for everything. They can never afford anything. I mean, the

Char Watson

Yeah.

Chelsea Morrisey

but they can easily HELOC their home where they have cash, they have mattress money, whatever.

Char Watson

Yes.

Chelsea Morrisey

But that’s just their verbiage, right? Everybody

Char Watson

Is nice.

Chelsea Morrisey

when it comes to something this expensive is always gonna want to feel like they’re getting a good deal. Getting a good deal is different than wanting the lowest price possible. We cannot make assumptions. And we have to realize that price shoppers are natural and normal at a 50, 60 K price point. Anything over 20K, people are gonna negotiate price.

Char Watson

and the thing I’ll just add the caveat to that, Chelsea, is that what I see with these practices is they start to just drive down the cost really fast and then pretty soon we don’t have a profit margin anymore because they want to make the sell. But we gotta slow down. Not every patient’s chasing the dollar for the decision. They’re chasing the experience. They’re chasing the value, So if the team doesn’t if it can’t express like why, why us? Like why do you need to come see us? Why are we the best option for you? You’ve already lost it.

chelsea: Unfortunately, our audio got corrupted at the end of that episode and it cut out. So I just want to say Shar, thank you so much for coming on the show. If you’re a practice owner listening to this and you’re trying to figure out why your full arch numbers aren’t scaling, I promise you the answer is in this conversation. So I hope you enjoyed it. To find Char and grab her full arch playbook, head to Watson Dental Consulting dot com. Links in the show notes. She’s the real deal and she’ll tell you the truth about your operations. If you got value from this episode, share it with one dentist who needs to hear it. I will see you next week.