Tag: David Schwab Ph.D.

Killer Interview Questions to Help You Hire the Right Person

Killer interview questions help you hire great team members  Start using these questions now.

I also suggest that you ask applicants to write a cover letter explaining their special talents or abilities. Applicants who do not include a cover letter should not be considered because they failed to do their very first assignment. You can learn so much from cover letters—including the applicant’s level of sophistication, their command of English, and the strengths they choose to emphasize.

Here are the questions:

BACKGROUND

Why are you applying for this position?

WORK HISTORY

What special aspects of your work experience have prepared you for this job?
Describe one or two of your most important accomplishments.
How much supervision have you typically received in your previous job?
Why are you leaving your present job? (or, Why did you leave your last job?)

JOB PERFORMANCE

Everyone has strengths and weaknesses as workers. What are your strengths?
What would you say are areas needing improvement?
When you have been told, or discovered for yourself, a problem in your job performance, what have you typically done? Can you give me an example?
Do you prefer working alone or in groups?
What kind of people do you find it most difficult to work with? Why?
What are some things you would like to avoid in a job? Why?
In your previous/current job, what kind of pressures did you encounter?
What would you say is the most important thing you are looking for in a job?
What were some of the things about your last job that you found most difficult to do?
What are some of the problems you encounter in doing your job? Which one frustrates you the most? What do you usually do about it?
What are some things you particularly liked about your last job?

EDUCATION

What special aspects of your education or training have prepared you for this job?
What courses in school have been of most help in doing your job?

CAREER- GOALS

What is your long-term employment or career objective?
Who or what in your life would you say influenced you most with your career objectives?

What would you most like to accomplish if you had this job?
What might make you leave this job?

SELF-ASSESSMENT

What kind of things do you feel most confident in doing?
Describe a difficult obstacle you have had to overcome? How did you
handle it?
How would you describe yourself as a person?
What do you think are the most important characteristics and abilities a person must
possess to become successful in this position? How do you rate yourself in these areas?
Do you consider yourself a self-starter? If so, explain why ( and give examples).
What things give you the greatest satisfaction at work?
What things frustrate you the most? How do you usually cope with them?
What qualities are you looking for in a boss/supervisor?
What have been the sources of stress in your work history?
How so you deal with work related stress?
What was the last major problem at work that you were confronted with? What action did you take on it?
What have you done to further your professional development?

MOTIVATION

What motivates you to do your best work?
Can you give me examples of experiences on the job that you felt were satisfying?

Describe how you determine what constitutes top priorities in the performance of your job.

WORK STANDARDS

What are your standards of success in your job?
In your position, how would you define doing a good job?

LEADERSHIP

Do others view you as a leader? Why or why not?
What approach do you take in getting others to accept your ideas?
What specifically do you do to set an example for your co-workers?

 

While these questions will certainly help you elicit insights from applications, please remember to consult with your attorney to be sure that all your human resources policies, including hiring, are in full compliance with all applicable laws and regulations.

David Schwab, Ph.D.
www.davidschwab.com

The Easy Way to Create a Dental Patient Education Ebook

The prospect of writing any kind of book can be daunting, but there is an easy way to get all that knowledge out of your head and into a dental patient education ebook. First, let’s define the purpose of the ebook. The content should be interesting and useful to the reader, but your goal in producing the book should not be to become a best selling author. Your objective should be to produce quality content that you can give away to patients and potential patients to promote your practice.

Value of an Ebook

An ebook has value because it positions you as the expert and enlightens and informs readers who are interested in the dental health topics you discuss. If you are the dentist who wrote the book, then you are the expert. Because you are not trying to make money from selling the book but are using the book for dental patient education, the ebook format makes perfect sense.

It is not worth searching for a publisher or producing a paper book yourself and paying for paper, printing, binding and much more. With an ebook, you can share your knowledge without incurring incremental costs for each book distributed.

The Easy Way to Create an Ebook

I interview doctors and use the transcripts to create social media content, including blogs and posts for Facebook and other platforms. The purpose is to foster patient education and improve search engine optimization. Once the interview process is complete and a year’s worth of weekly blogs are created for you, that same content can be re purposed into an ebook.

Charles Krauthamer’s best selling book Things That Matter is a compilation of his past newspaper columns. In a similar matter, your blogs and social media content, which I create from interviews conducted with you by phone, can be edited and organized into an ebook.

You should offer your ebook to patients who visit your website and enter their e-mail address in a contact box. In this way, you capture valuable new leads and give potential patients a wealth of information. The e-book should also be shared with existing patients, of course.

Click the following for more information: social media content creation.

You speak volumes in your office to educate patients. By capturing your thoughts and organizing them into a dental patient education ebook, you can attract more patients and further explain the benefits of quality dentistry.

www.davidschwab.com

Dental Implants: Explaining Long Term Value

In this video produced by Glidewell, David Schwab, Ph.D. discusses “sticker shock” that patients often experience when they review the cost of dental implants.  There is also a new twist on a favorite analogy that can be used to explain why dental implants are a great investment and value for the dollar over time.  Glidewell’s permission to use this video is gratefully acknowledged.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgOmXkzr-qM

Podcast 4: Internet Marketing Requires Team Training

Internet marketing generates patients who are a different breed of cat. Because they are not referred by family or friends, they are starting from a different place and need more time and education to convert them to good patients. Many patients who make an inquiry from the Internet will not come in or accept treatment. It’s a numbers game and you should look at the big picture and not get discouraged. Find out why even when patients say no, it’s not a waste of time because you are getting closer to the patient who will say yes. The key is team training and setting appropriate expectations.

The Personal Report
by David Schwab, Ph.D.
TPR episode 004 – Internet Marketing Requires Team Training

www.davidschwab.com

Dentists Need Scripts for Three Reasons

Dentists need scripts for three reasons: to make the practice more efficient, increase case acceptance, and provide consistent dental patient education. The word “scripts” is used as a short-hand method to suggest what are also called “talking points.” It is not a question of reading word-for-word prepared scripts when patients ask questions, but having key phrases available that each team member can weave into their own speech patterns.

Make the Practice More Efficient. A common scenario is that patients are told they need a certain procedure, such as dental implants. The benefits of dental implants are numerous, which is all the more reason to have a script that concisely conveys the most important information. For example, “dental implants are the most advanced tooth replacement system ever devised. They look and function just like natural teeth. They never decay or require root canals, and they can last for decades or even a lifetime with proper care.” One can always expand on this explanation, but notice how much information is conveyed in a short message.

Increase Case Acceptance. When patients cannot decide whether to go forward with recommended treatment, you can use a very compelling script: “The proposed treatment will never be more conservative, more cost effective, or less invasive than it is today.” Let’s unpack that sentence. Everyone wants conservative rather than radical dentistry. “Cost effective” is a very good term for conveying value. Finally, if patients delay treatment, they may need more extensive treatment in the future. The concept that the treatment will never be “less invasive than it is today” nicely captures that point.

Consistent Patient Education. For procedures that you commonly provide in your office, you need to have an agreed upon list of benefits. This list, or script, creates consistent patient education. If a patient asks why a crown is needed, it is likely that everyone in the office can provide correct answers, although the answers will no doubt vary depending on the person who is responding. The great advantage of having a script is for everyone literally to be on the same page and give patients consistent answers that the doctor has deemed in advance to be the best way to answer the question.

The wording used to answer commonly asked questions should not be left to chance.  Dentists need scripts to remove variables and provide a consistent and efficient way to provide dental patient education and increase case acceptance.

www.davidschwab.com

Podcast: Cell Phone Use in the Dental Office

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:45 — 5.4MB) | Embed

Subscribe: RSS

The issue of cell phone use in the dental office causes a conflict between two competing interests: the need for a total focus on the patient and the fact that we live in an electronic age where employees depend on cell phones to stay in touch with family.

This podcast puts forth a common sense solution to the problem and challenges practices to develop a clear policy that keeps employees’ cell phones out of the sight of patients but still allows opportunities for team members to discretely check cell phones during the workday as long as this privilege is not abused.

The issue of patients using cell phones in the office will be addressed in a subsequent podcast.

Price Shoppers Need Dental Patient Education

One of the greatest threats to dentistry is that it is often perceived by price shoppers as a standardized commodity. This off-the-shelf mentality undermines the dentist’s message and the value of dental services and creates a dental patient education challenge.

The mentality is as follows. Your child needs braces? No problem. Just shop for the orthodontist with the lowest fee, because—in the minds of many—the treatment is all the same and the orthodontist is programmed to work the same way again and again. Start with crooked teeth, put on braces, straighten the teeth, remove braces. Repeat with the next patient. Most people do not appreciate the diagnosis, treatment planning, and clinical skill necessary to get an excellent result in orthodontics, especially with complex cases.

Price shoppers are of course not limited to orthodontic treatment but are pervasive throughout the dental marketplace, whether the treatment involves impacted wisdom teeth, dental implants, or even a single crown. When told that a crown is necessary, a patient’s first question is often related to the cost of the crown, not the type of crown or the expertise of the doctor who provides it. If you told your patients that you have boxes of crowns in your supply room organized by sizes, like shoes, many would believe you and wait for you to grab one off the shelf to test the fit.

The need for dental patient education to combat this perception grows every day. When the patient says, “I can get it cheaper somewhere else,” the message should be:

Dental treatment combines my artistic judgment with all my training and experience in the science of dentistry. You can get something similar somewhere else, but the crown that I provide is unique because no two crowns are exactly alike. I am committed to high quality dentistry that is customized for you.

One well placed volley will not necessarily slow the onslaught of price shoppers who come to your practice, but the “dentistry-is-an-art-and-science” message is both high minded and resoundingly true. You are a Picasso in a studio creating masterpieces, not a Sam Walton opening chain stores filled with mass produced merchandise. There is no sale on crowns in aisle four of your practice.

Like so many other artists, you may not be fully appreciated in your own time, but you are teaching patients, often individually, and exposing them to unique dental artwork.

David Schwab Ph.D.

www.davidschwab.com

Dental Marketing: The Patient’s Point of View

Have you heard of “the curse of knowledge?” If an astrophysicist tries to help a high school student with his Algebra I homework, the supremely educated adult may not understand why the student just does not get it. Part of the answer is that the astrophysicist knows too much—that which is obvious to the scientist may leave the student oblivious.

Micah Soloman has an interesting article in Forbes on the curse of knowledge.  Mr. Soloman writes:

“In healthcare, where the stakes are extremely high, the patient experience and patient satisfaction often suffer from devastating manifestations of the curse of knowledge.  It can lead healthcare workers to deal poorly with the distress experienced–because they’ve seen a similar non-life threatening situation (say, a broken ankle) so many times before and it always turned out all right that they discount the pain and fear experienced by someone for whom this is happening now.”

A similar scenario plays out in dental offices every day. A patient is scheduled in an endodontist’s office for root canal therapy. Let’s say that the patient has been told by his brother-in-law that root canals are very painful. The brother-in-law is seldom right but never in doubt, even though he has never personally had this procedure.

Based on modern misconceptions of root canal therapy and comments from his uninformed brother-in-law, the patient is very nervous upon arrival at the office. To allay the patient’s fears, team members in the endodontist’s office may simply say, “Everything is going to be fine.” This message is part of their mantra because every day patients show up afraid and leave saying that they cannot believe the root canal was so easy. This message, though meant to be helpful, may not be Continue reading Dental Marketing: The Patient’s Point of View

Marketing Dental Implants: New Teeth or New Car

Dental practices often use car analogies when talking to patients about fees for dental implants. A typical response to a patient who recoils at the fee for dental implant treatment goes something like this: Think about what it costs to buy a new car. Dental implant treatment lasts longer so it’s a better value. This message is good but it needs to be much more specific and cogent to be an effective way tool for marketing dental implants.

I believe that car analogies should only be used in certain situations. If the patient has been fully educated about the benefits of dental treatment, including quality of life benefits, and still has a hard time accepting the fee, then a skilled treatment coordinator can talk about the relative value of optimal oral health versus a new car.

The problem is that most patients are unprepared for a large dental fee. The average person may assume that a visit to the dentist for an exam, cleaning and x-rays will be in three figures. Patients also often know ahead of time that treatment for something more extensive such as periodontal disease or the fabrication and placement of one or more crowns will be in four figures. Few patients, however, are ready at the outset to come to terms with a five-figure dental fee.

Once the patient has heard the fee and is wrestling with the cost/benefit analysis, then you can talk about cars. Here is a great message for patients:

The average person in the U.S. buys a new car every six years. The average price of a new car is about $33,500. If we add an inflation factor and subtract trade-in value, the average person will pay over $100,000 for four automobiles over an 18-year period. Dental implant treatment typically lasts for decades. In fact, with proper professional maintenance and home care, many people have dental implant treatment done once and it lasts a lifetime. The bottom line is that dental implant treatment improves the quality of your life and over many years it is an exceptional value for the dollar.

Patients who have dental implant treatment often say that it was money well spent and they wish they had had the treatment sooner. Prior to dental implant treatment, however, it is often necessary to talk about value, and the car analogy has its place in marketing dental implants when explained properly.

David Schwab Ph.D.
www.davidschwab.com

Bezos Drives to the Post Office

In a television interview, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said that in the early days of his company, he collected packages bound for his customers, loaded them into his personal vehicle, and drove them to the post office.   You won’t see Jeff waiting in line at the post office to ship packages these days. By Cyber Monday 2013, Amazon was selling items at the rate of over 300 per second! The company had net sales in 2014 of $89 billion and Amazon is on track for $100 billion in sales in 2015.

Jeff Bezos is an inspirational figure. He started a very small business, scoffed at his critics, and created an empire.

There are start-up dental practices that have few patients. There are doctors in these new practices who are wondering if they can generate enough revenue to keep the doors open.

While the challenges are daunting, there is always a market for excellent dentistry. Every day 10,000 people in the United States turn 65, and our youth-obsessed culture creates a continual market for cosmetic services, even as patients need care for periodontal disease, the replacement of missing teeth with dental implants, and basic restorative services.

The next time you wonder if your fledgling dental practice is going to succeed, think of Jeff Bezos carrying packages into the post office. He started with a vision, understood that people wanted to take advantage of easy, online shopping, and built his business even while the skeptics were wringing their hands. Now consider the latest brainstorm from Mr. Bezos: delivering packages to your front door via drone. It is easy to imagine all sorts of practical problems, not the least of which are drones falling out of the sky and causing hazards, but that vision of drone package delivery will probably also become a wide spread reality.

Entrepreneurs with imagination and perseverance often succeed, a lesson that applies to dental practice management.

David Schwab Ph.D.

www.davidschwab.com