Episode 117: How to Become the Dental Office with the Highest Number of Google Reviews in Your Community

Naren: This is the less insurance dependence podcast show with my good friend Gary Tackas and myself Naren Arulrajah. 

Gary: We appreciate your listenership your time and most of all weNaren: This is the less insurance dependence podcast show with my good friend Gary Tackas and myself Naren Arulrajah. 

Gary: We appreciate your listenership your time and most of all we appreciate your intention to reduce insurance dependence in your practice our goal is to provide information that will help you successfully reduce insurance dependence and convert your practice into a thriving and profitable dental practice that provides you with personal professional and financial satisfaction.

 Welcome to the episode of the less insurance dependence I’m Gary Tackas your cast co-host. We have an awesome topic for you today. The topic, you might have seen it-it is how to become the dental office with the highest number of google reviews in your community. Hey, how’s that for a challenge. Well, we’re going to put the challenge out there and we’re going to show you how to succeed with that wouldn’t that be cool for you to be the dental office that has the highest number of google reviews in your community. Hey before we get into the topic, this is our first less insurance dependence podcast of 2021 and on behalf of Naren and myself, I want to wish you all a very happy new year. I hope that your holiday season is joyful and certainly different I’m sure as it was for everyone but hey, I don’t know about you but I was pretty excited about turning the calendar turning the page on the calendar for 2021. So, on behalf of narrative myself Happy New year to you and your team and we’re going to make this one your best year yet for sure. The topic, Naren you know something about google reviews that’s an understatement of the year but I could call you the google review master but you know a bit about this kind of set the table for us.

Naren: Absolutely, I really like this topic you pick Gary, especially given that this is the very first podcast we are doing in 2021. How to become the dental office with the highest number of google reviews in your community.

Gary: Now first of all that’s bold isn’t it that’s a bold goal 

Naren: Yeah 

Gary: But let me be the optimist, there’s no reason why every one of our listeners couldn’t achieve that objective.

Naren: 100 percent, 100 percent and even if you become second you’re still going to be better off for trying it because imagine having 150 reviews and many of these reviews are what Gary and I call love letter reviews which are paragraph reviews where they kind of praise the people and appreciate the dentist and appreciate what the practice means to them. Now those reviews are going to do so much for you. It’s going to help you rank higher it’s going to convince people who are coming to your page to choose you and it’s going to attract more people like the people who love you and who you love. So, it’s like, you don’t I think Gary’s court is TGIM, the thank god it’s Monday, so you have TGIM every day as opposed to oh man you know I

Gary: When you’re taking care of people who appreciate you 

Naren: Yeah 

Gary: Every day is TGIM 

Naren: Exactly

Gary: And then when we have the other days when we’re taking care of patients that all they care about is whether insurance pays for it or not that that’s not the thank goodness it’s Monday perspective 

Naren: Yeah

Gary: In the context in the context of this podcast, what’s this podcast all about help helping our listeners successfully resign from PPO plans and I want to set the stage very contextually for this podcast, for the theme of this podcast. If you’re a PPO provider your number one source of new patients is the insurance plans. That’s the number you don’t like it I’m not sharing a message that you’re very happy about but it’s just reality if you’re a PPO member your number one source of new patients becomes the PPO plan and when we go out-of-network that source of new patients literally is eliminated overnight it’s like the faucet Naren out in your garden you’ve got a faucet it’s like the faucet was on when you’re a PPO provider the water’s on and then as soon as you go out of network the spigots turned off the faucets turned off

Naren: Yes, Yes

Gary: And so, the reason this is so important is you have got to replace the force which was really the single most single largest source of new patients in your practice. You’ve got to replace that and you need to do it proactively before you go out of network and Naren, and I’ve seen the by-product of when there are times when dentists get impatient and it’s like, I know we’re not quite ready to go out of network but I’ve just had it I’ve had it up to here and if I’m on a zoom call I see them literally take their hand and hold it above their eyebrows like I’ve had it up to you here Gary I’m done I’m just done I looked at my I went through your insurance write-off calculator and my blood point was boiling and then I just realized I’m done and although I’m not ready I’m going to bail and if that’s the I mean I can understand their emotions around that I mean Naren couldn’t can you understand that?

Naren: Absolutely Gary I know it just reminded me of the reducing insurance dependence class you did for your coaching clients and like these are the best of the best but some of your newer clients, they are giving the insurance company hundreds of thousands something 

Gary: There are early in their journey 

Naren: Yeah 

Gary: They’re early in the journey yeah 

Naren: And so now having a different way of getting those patients and of course reviews is a big part of it and without giving a cent to the insurance companies or anybody you know what, I mean you keep all the money that’s the beautiful part it’s like those that extra 200 000 you’re giving to somebody else now you get to keep it and you get to do whatever you want with it that’s beautiful 

Gary: Here’s an example of a client who was writing off 537 thousand dollars a year 

Naren: yeah 

Gary: In insurance 537 000 and when you break that down by the month that was annual you break down the month it was forty-four thousand seven-fifty a month and when we said doctor you realize you’re spending 44 750 on marketing because you’re paying the insurance company to provide you patience I mean that’s enough to let anyone’s blood boil but the context here and the reason why the reviews are so important the context is that you’ve got to have a source to replace because it’s you’re not tested anymore on the insurance company PPO networks and it eliminates it doesn’t like trickle-down it doesn’t slow down it literally like a light switch it was on and then now it’s off. That’s the number one reason why you have to have another source of news second reason is you’ve placed any that you might lose but that’s really a secondary reason and Naren, as you’ve taught me and you’ve so accurately summarized successful dental marketing is two things. Helping people find you they got to find you they can’t pick you they got to you got to help people find you and then secondly you got to give them a reason to choose you and reviews answer both of those goals 

Naren: Yes

Gary: More reviews help more people find you and they give people reason to choose you because now we’ve got the voice of the patient who wrote the reviews singing your praises from atop the rooftops. They’re singing and they’re doing it in ways you couldn’t do yourself because if you did it you would sound pompous and arrogant and suspicious but when a patient says things about you it literally is the best form of flattery. So that’s the context and that’s the context of this topic as relates to this podcast because we want you all to succeed massively and I hope with the start of the new year, maybe it’s inspiring. New years has always been a wonderful time for me there and personally because I love the idea of setting new goals new objectives. I love the idea of a clean slate in front of us and it’s like opportunity and certainly, I hope our listeners embrace that and I hope 2021 becomes the year for those of you that are on the sidelines kind of thinking about it, I hope it’s time to jump in the water’s warm and that’s why we want to do this topic now at the beginning of the year to sort of be an inspiration to all of you but now that the context, let’s get into the tactics Naren, can I dive into some of the tactics of how to become the dental office with the highest number of reviews in your community?

Naren: Absolutely and I want to kind of thank you Gary because my dentist literally told me that since you urged her to be the number one office with the most number of reviews, she now has 190 reviews, 190. She’s not a client of yours yet but she did attend the MBA, I mean you have helped so many practices in their journey of becoming less insurance dependent find their own legs sea legs so to speak and so I want to take a moment to thank you, Gary 

Gary: hey speaking of the MBA Naren, we now have at least a partial calendar for 2021 and I do want to make an announcement to our listeners. Our first thriving dentist MBA live stream workshop is at the end of January. It is January 29th and 30th they’re two half days it’s an eight-hour workshop they’re two half days. So, four hours on the 29th and four hours are on the 30th and during that workshop, I go over in detail the ten elements of a thriving practice and one of those elements is successfully reducing insurance dependence. So, I want to invite all of our listeners to come to join us. Naren if they go to lessinsurancedependence.com forward slash MBA they’ll see information to register for that it’s a virtual workshop, it’s Live stream. You’ll get eight hours of CE what a great way to start out a new year of CE imagine that by the end of January you could already have eight hours of CE and we’ve made it hyper affordable we don’t have to I don’t have to get on an airplane we don’t have to rent meeting rooms I don’t have to pay for catering and we made it really affordable. So come join us on that that MBA program on January 29th and 30th it is limited attendance we do sell out. We limit it because we run it as a workshop and we want to give attention to our attendees. So our past workshops have sold out. It’s likely that this one will. If you go to the website there are spots available to jump in but I’d love to have you join us at the end of this month if you would Naren, you just reminded me of that workshop. So sorry for getting off track here let’s talk about how to do this. I’m going to share a five-step process that anybody listening can do everybody can do and it will cost nothing how’s that for compelling.

Naren: Five steps 

Gary: Five steps easy and zero cost and it will turbocharge your reviews okay here it is. In the morning huddle and I hope you are having a morning huddle if you’re not having a morning huddle go listen to the podcast let’s put the link in the show notes let’s put a link to our morning huddle episode on lesson insurance dependence podcast.

Naren: We’ll also put a link to the MBA so anybody can easily find it

Gary: Perfect, perfect. so, in the morning huddle, step one is to have one of your team members come to the morning huddle with the email addresses of everyone you’re seeing today, everyone you are seeing today. Understand you might you know between yourself and hygiene you might have I don’t you know 20 pages you could have 30 pages whatever that number is your dental practice management software has a report function where you can print the email addresses of everyone that you’re seeing today, step one. Step two, highlight any patients you’re seeing today that have a Gmail address now the reason why that’s so important is because in order to write a google review patient has to have a Gmail address now you could ask someone to go get a Gmail address it’s free and then write you a review and everyone will nod their head okay, okay, okay, and then nobody will do that because you’re asking them too much you’re asking to the ask is too great so just identify the patients that already have a Gmail address and if you have 20 patients today it might be four or five you know something like that it could be less whatever it is so identify the ones that have a Gmail address. So we’re looking for the low fruit on the tree. Number three look at those highlighted names and decide as a team who loves you and would write a five-star review and again the statistics are that if you have five of those you might be four out of those you know it might be five when in doubt don’t put them in the S column I don’t want to and don’t ask Debbie Downer to write your review or dawn down or to be gender-neutral because on their best day it might be a three and that’s if their meds are working if their meds aren’t working who knows what we’re going to get so only ask those that you… it’s like if you’re hosting a party at your house a dinner party you’re not going to invite people that aren’t going to be fun to have a party only invite the people that are going to be fun to be at your dinner party right 

Naren: Yeah, absolutely yeah totally because you want those lovely reviews so you want people who are excited about you to have that personality where there are positive people who would say you know 

Gary: Of course, I would love to write a review and it’s going to be glowing step four as a team decide who’s going to ask

Naren: Right

Gary: Very important and in our office, we do this in the morning huddle and in our office, it usually pops up organically like Kelly one of the high just might say oh I know Linda I see her three days a week in yoga class. We’re buddies I’ll ask her it’s natural, it’s natural if it doesn’t come up naturally then that is possible determine one team member in your office that becomes the default if you don’t have somebody down there’s usually one of your team members that has more of an outgoing social gregarious personality they everyone’s an instant friend who those are right there and you’re like everyone’s our new best friend yeah they just emanate positive energy that’s the person that will ask and then step five print out a little card it could be about three by five size five by seven slightly larger than a business card and simply print out the instructions of how to write a google review, how to write a google review, and here’s how… let’s say Kelly decides she’s going to ask Linda the patient. Here’s how Kelly would do that Linda I love seeing you on my schedule I know when I see you on my schedule I’m going to have a good day and I sure appreciate you as a patient hey as much as we love our existing patients we also love seeing new patients here at life smiles I have a favor to ask of you would you be kind enough to write a google review about our practice when you get a chance and here and now she hands her the card and said I went ahead and printed out instructions as a cheat sheet for you and I want to take a minute and thank you in advance thanks for your help and there’s the ask 

Naren: Yeah

Gary: Now that process has worked so incredibly, we’re going to build on this, Naren, I’m going to put you to work here while I’m talking would you look up how many google reviews, we have at life smiles and tell me what the average five stars are and I’m doing that just to show you what’s possible now as Naren, doing that I want to go

Naren: Found it, Gary, you have you have, 641 reviews five-star reviews and their average is five stars 641. 

Gary: 641 and I’m not saying that I’m not I didn’t ask you to pull that number up to boast by the way I didn’t know what it was I haven’t checked it since last week but 641 wow okay now there’s no potential new patient on the planet that’s going to read 641 reviews but they see that in the maps in the google three-pack in the maps and when mom sees go ahead and pull up near and I’m putting you to work on this pull up the maps and tell me the three will likely be one of the three that is in maps and you tell me don’t name the other practices but tell me how many googles reviews the other two in the three-pack have okay 

Naren: Right

Gary: So, we’ll be in it I’m sure because we are the office that has the highest number of google reviews and that’s one of the very important credits]

Naren: I’ll tell you so you are there you have 641. 

Gary: Okay 

Naren: The next one has 146. 

Gary: not bad I mean 146 by itself isn’t shabby right, right, but next time compared to 641 

Naren: 641 you do have competition there are two others one has 530 51, and then 141 and 141, yeah and the other one has 49 so yeah like I mean 

Gary: So why were there four listed in the three-pack? 

Naren: Yeah, I mean I’m looking at google maps so it’s showing me more than four when I keep scrolling down and down and down but you are number one

Gary: you’re not really looking in the 

Naren: Yeah, so okay in the three-pack it’s 146 641 and 551. So those are the three

Gary: So certainly, the office that has 541 is theoretically, is impressive but again it doesn’t we have more than 100 more 

Naren: yeah exactly 

Gary: so when mom looks at that, she’s going to qualitatively think we’ll look at this one this one’s the best because they have the highest number of reviews so let me go to another tactic and this is something that’s a very important one of our 24 systems in, we teach the concept of having 24 business systems in the practice so your practice runs like a finely tuned swiss watch one of those systems is how to consistently get more google reviews because you not only want to have a high number of them but there are two other factors that are important to Google when it comes to your reviews and the second factor is the velocity of your reviews, in other words, do you keep getting more reviews or does your office go dormant and go to sleep and go through periods of times where you’re not getting new ones. I had I attended a google conference before COVID and all of the speakers were from google and of course, they wouldn’t tell us the ranking algorithm but they gave us clues throughout the conference and one of the speakers talked about from google, google, execs said velocity of your reviews are important to let me give an example and this was a business audience, not a dental audience so he said if you have a business that says has a hundred reviews and the most recent one is yesterday versus an office that has 150 reviews, a business that has 150 reviews but the most recent one was four months ago, we will rank the office that has a hundred reviews higher than you because the most recent one was yesterday. So that has to do with velocity. So the third criteria so number velocity one and two and the third criteria are the character of your reviews and what they meant by that is you want these long-form narrative love letter, we call them to love letter reviews where the patient’s just effusive in their praise with all kinds of keywords like they’re gentle they’re caring they’re on time there, all those things and so the second tip that I’m going to share with you is going to help you master all three of those number velocity and character and that’s that I want you to designate a team member in your practice to be your google review champion, champion, and this person is going to be the quarterback of getting more reviews and your office. Now she doesn’t have to get all of them but she’s simply quarterbacking it. She is simply making sure that it stays top of mind in your office. She’s reporting in your morning huddle. She’s reading reviews especially when they call out names of team members of praise and she is keeping it front and center, so it doesn’t drop off. We’ve all experienced system backsliding system degradation where we had something in place and the next thing you know it’s you know we’re off chasing another squirrel and that system disappeared and so that person is going to be your google champion and that person is responsible to keep it front and center and now let me give you a third tactic and this is a great way to experiment with a starter bonus system and a way to kind of make this motivational for all of your team members and even if you have an existing bonus system this is a nice addition and here’s a suggestion. First of all, you have to kind of index what your goal is for more reviews every month and I’d want the bonus to be a little bit of a stretch. So, if you have historically gotten five new reviews a month I want to push us a little bit and I’m going to set the goal higher than five and the challenge of setting the goal is you want it to be a little bit of a stretch but you also want it to be realistic. Naren, back to my example if an office historically got five reviews a month, I wouldn’t set the goal at 50. Okay, we’ll give a little bonus if we get 50. Because that’s such a big stretch it’s all man it’s not realistic. So, if the office had historically gotten five, we might set the goal at 12 and we’re going to do something like hey if we as a practice get 12 or more reviews this month everyone gets a hundred dollars now a hundred dollars isn’t lottery money but everybody would like an extra hundred dollars in their pocket. Naren how would you feel if have you ever left cash in your pocket and your pants go through the wash and then the next time you put the pants on you reach into your pocket and you find a 20 bill 

Naren: Yeah, yeah, it feels good 

Gary: what if it was a 100 bill 

Naren: Yeah 

Gary: Yeah, it feels good. So, it’s not going to break the bank and think about that 12 I just picked 12 just an example your example might be maybe you’re getting 10 and you want to bonus it at 15. You get the idea you said it yourself. Hey in my example of 12 if this happened every month in the next year you had 44 new reviews next year and how would that be if you whatever you have now added 144 to it a whole different echelon whole different standard

Naren: let me put it another way right the other option is you write a 300 000 check to the insurance company where you don’t write any check to the insurance company instead you give your team members a few thousand dollars of like a hundred bucks a month and they are so appreciative. It’s just a totally different way to think about this yeah well hey let’s put a ribbon on this one Naren and I’ll let you summarize it but this has been a fun one lots of tactical stuff we’ve given you the context and I hope we’re inspiring you to become the dental office that has the highest number of reviews in your community.

Naren: Thank you Gary and I also want to take a minute to wish everyone and so that they all we all have the best year yet and I think after 29 we all ready to make 2020 I mean after 2020 we all ready to make 2021 the best year yet and what Gary’s absolutely right make this your-goal you want to be the office that has the most number of google reviews. Follow the five tips we’ll include that- in the show notes, so you don’t have to kind of go and hunt for it. We’ll make it easy for you and in the process appreciate your team and I think that’s a good thing that Gary always talks about gratitude and appreciation this is a great way for you to make the team who without them you want to have a practice that’s thriving, so I think it’s a win-win-win in all three counts and finally, you know our name is less insurance dependent so it’s one more way you can become less insurance dependence the more 

Gary: You are making it a big step 

Naren: Big step, take a big step forward in achieving that goal 

Naren: I want to take a moment to thank every one of you we continue to have some of our best months ever. So, I appreciate what you do for us you can subscribe to us on iTunes on google play even many of you are sharing it on social media like specific episodes. So, if this is an episode you think is of value share it and one last tip Gary talks about a buddy so maybe have a google review buddy so pick a practice who’s not in your city but maybe somebody you went to school with and say guys hey john let’s team up on this let’s see you know how many reviews I get and you’d see how many reviews you get and we’ll keep score and 

Gary: Maybe put a maybe put a dinner on it 

Naren: Exactly

Gary: This month you and your colleague and whoever gets the highest number of views gets a dinner next time you get together at your favorite restaurant how about that little challenge

Naren: Brilliant

Gary: the loser pays 

Naren: the loser pays exactly a friendly challenge so it keeps you motivated. 

Gary: Yeah

Naren: And thank you everyone and thank you for everything you do

appreciate your intention to reduce insurance dependence in your practice our goal is to provide information that will help you successfully reduce insurance dependence and convert your practice into a thriving and profitable dental practice that provides you with personal professional and financial satisfaction.

 Welcome to the episode of the less insurance dependence I’m Gary Tackas your cast co-host. We have an awesome topic for you today. The topic, you might have seen it-it is how to become the dental office with the highest number of google reviews in your community. Hey, how’s that for a challenge. Well, we’re going to put the challenge out there and we’re going to show you how to succeed with that wouldn’t that be cool for you to be the dental office that has the highest number of google reviews in your community. Hey before we get into the topic, this is our first less insurance dependence podcast of 2021 and on behalf of Naren and myself, I want to wish you all a very happy new year. I hope that your holiday season is joyful and certainly different I’m sure as it was for everyone but hey, I don’t know about you but I was pretty excited about turning the calendar turning the page on the calendar for 2021. So, on behalf of narrative myself Happy New year to you and your team and we’re going to make this one your best year yet for sure. The topic, Naren you know something about google reviews that’s an understatement of the year but I could call you the google review master but you know a bit about this kind of set the table for us.

Naren: Absolutely, I really like this topic you pick Gary, especially given that this is the very first podcast we are doing in 2021. How to become the dental office with the highest number of google reviews in your community.

Gary: Now first of all that’s bold isn’t it that’s a bold goal 

Naren: Yeah 

Gary: But let me be the optimist, there’s no reason why every one of our listeners couldn’t achieve that objective.

Naren: 100 percent, 100 percent and even if you become second you’re still going to be better off for trying it because imagine having 150 reviews and many of these reviews are what Gary and I call love letter reviews which are paragraph reviews where they kind of praise the people and appreciate the dentist and appreciate what the practice means to them. Now those reviews are going to do so much for you. It’s going to help you rank higher it’s going to convince people who are coming to your page to choose you and it’s going to attract more people like the people who love you and who you love. So, it’s like, you don’t I think Gary’s court is TGIM, the thank god it’s Monday, so you have TGIM every day as opposed to oh man you know I

Gary: When you’re taking care of people who appreciate you 

Naren: Yeah 

Gary: Every day is TGIM 

Naren: Exactly

Gary: And then when we have the other days when we’re taking care of patients that all they care about is whether insurance pays for it or not that that’s not the thank goodness it’s Monday perspective 

Naren: Yeah

Gary: In the context in the context of this podcast, what’s this podcast all about help helping our listeners successfully resign from PPO plans and I want to set the stage very contextually for this podcast, for the theme of this podcast. If you’re a PPO provider your number one source of new patients is the insurance plans. That’s the number you don’t like it I’m not sharing a message that you’re very happy about but it’s just reality if you’re a PPO member your number one source of new patients becomes the PPO plan and when we go out-of-network that source of new patients literally is eliminated overnight it’s like the faucet Naren out in your garden you’ve got a faucet it’s like the faucet was on when you’re a PPO provider the water’s on and then as soon as you go out of network the spigots turned off the faucets turned off

Naren: Yes, Yes

Gary: And so, the reason this is so important is you have got to replace the force which was really the single most single largest source of new patients in your practice. You’ve got to replace that and you need to do it proactively before you go out of network and Naren, and I’ve seen the by-product of when there are times when dentists get impatient and it’s like, I know we’re not quite ready to go out of network but I’ve just had it I’ve had it up to here and if I’m on a zoom call I see them literally take their hand and hold it above their eyebrows like I’ve had it up to you here Gary I’m done I’m just done I looked at my I went through your insurance write-off calculator and my blood point was boiling and then I just realized I’m done and although I’m not ready I’m going to bail and if that’s the I mean I can understand their emotions around that I mean Naren couldn’t can you understand that?

Naren: Absolutely Gary I know it just reminded me of the reducing insurance dependence class you did for your coaching clients and like these are the best of the best but some of your newer clients, they are giving the insurance company hundreds of thousands something 

Gary: There are early in their journey 

Naren: Yeah 

Gary: They’re early in the journey yeah 

Naren: And so now having a different way of getting those patients and of course reviews is a big part of it and without giving a cent to the insurance companies or anybody you know what, I mean you keep all the money that’s the beautiful part it’s like those that extra 200 000 you’re giving to somebody else now you get to keep it and you get to do whatever you want with it that’s beautiful 

Gary: Here’s an example of a client who was writing off 537 thousand dollars a year 

Naren: yeah 

Gary: In insurance 537 000 and when you break that down by the month that was annual you break down the month it was forty-four thousand seven-fifty a month and when we said doctor you realize you’re spending 44 750 on marketing because you’re paying the insurance company to provide you patience I mean that’s enough to let anyone’s blood boil but the context here and the reason why the reviews are so important the context is that you’ve got to have a source to replace because it’s you’re not tested anymore on the insurance company PPO networks and it eliminates it doesn’t like trickle-down it doesn’t slow down it literally like a light switch it was on and then now it’s off. That’s the number one reason why you have to have another source of news second reason is you’ve placed any that you might lose but that’s really a secondary reason and Naren, as you’ve taught me and you’ve so accurately summarized successful dental marketing is two things. Helping people find you they got to find you they can’t pick you they got to you got to help people find you and then secondly you got to give them a reason to choose you and reviews answer both of those goals 

Naren: Yes

Gary: More reviews help more people find you and they give people reason to choose you because now we’ve got the voice of the patient who wrote the reviews singing your praises from atop the rooftops. They’re singing and they’re doing it in ways you couldn’t do yourself because if you did it you would sound pompous and arrogant and suspicious but when a patient says things about you it literally is the best form of flattery. So that’s the context and that’s the context of this topic as relates to this podcast because we want you all to succeed massively and I hope with the start of the new year, maybe it’s inspiring. New years has always been a wonderful time for me there and personally because I love the idea of setting new goals new objectives. I love the idea of a clean slate in front of us and it’s like opportunity and certainly, I hope our listeners embrace that and I hope 2021 becomes the year for those of you that are on the sidelines kind of thinking about it, I hope it’s time to jump in the water’s warm and that’s why we want to do this topic now at the beginning of the year to sort of be an inspiration to all of you but now that the context, let’s get into the tactics Naren, can I dive into some of the tactics of how to become the dental office with the highest number of reviews in your community?

Naren: Absolutely and I want to kind of thank you Gary because my dentist literally told me that since you urged her to be the number one office with the most number of reviews, she now has 190 reviews, 190. She’s not a client of yours yet but she did attend the MBA, I mean you have helped so many practices in their journey of becoming less insurance dependent find their own legs sea legs so to speak and so I want to take a moment to thank you, Gary 

Gary: hey speaking of the MBA Naren, we now have at least a partial calendar for 2021 and I do want to make an announcement to our listeners. Our first thriving dentist MBA live stream workshop is at the end of January. It is January 29th and 30th they’re two half days it’s an eight-hour workshop they’re two half days. So, four hours on the 29th and four hours are on the 30th and during that workshop, I go over in detail the ten elements of a thriving practice and one of those elements is successfully reducing insurance dependence. So, I want to invite all of our listeners to come to join us. Naren if they go to lessinsurancedependence.com forward slash MBA they’ll see information to register for that it’s a virtual workshop, it’s Live stream. You’ll get eight hours of CE what a great way to start out a new year of CE imagine that by the end of January you could already have eight hours of CE and we’ve made it hyper affordable we don’t have to I don’t have to get on an airplane we don’t have to rent meeting rooms I don’t have to pay for catering and we made it really affordable. So come join us on that that MBA program on January 29th and 30th it is limited attendance we do sell out. We limit it because we run it as a workshop and we want to give attention to our attendees. So our past workshops have sold out. It’s likely that this one will. If you go to the website there are spots available to jump in but I’d love to have you join us at the end of this month if you would Naren, you just reminded me of that workshop. So sorry for getting off track here let’s talk about how to do this. I’m going to share a five-step process that anybody listening can do everybody can do and it will cost nothing how’s that for compelling.

Naren: Five steps 

Gary: Five steps easy and zero cost and it will turbocharge your reviews okay here it is. In the morning huddle and I hope you are having a morning huddle if you’re not having a morning huddle go listen to the podcast let’s put the link in the show notes let’s put a link to our morning huddle episode on lesson insurance dependence podcast.

Naren: We’ll also put a link to the MBA so anybody can easily find it

Gary: Perfect, perfect. so, in the morning huddle, step one is to have one of your team members come to the morning huddle with the email addresses of everyone you’re seeing today, everyone you are seeing today. Understand you might you know between yourself and hygiene you might have I don’t you know 20 pages you could have 30 pages whatever that number is your dental practice management software has a report function where you can print the email addresses of everyone that you’re seeing today, step one. Step two, highlight any patients you’re seeing today that have a Gmail address now the reason why that’s so important is because in order to write a google review patient has to have a Gmail address now you could ask someone to go get a Gmail address it’s free and then write you a review and everyone will nod their head okay, okay, okay, and then nobody will do that because you’re asking them too much you’re asking to the ask is too great so just identify the patients that already have a Gmail address and if you have 20 patients today it might be four or five you know something like that it could be less whatever it is so identify the ones that have a Gmail address. So we’re looking for the low fruit on the tree. Number three look at those highlighted names and decide as a team who loves you and would write a five-star review and again the statistics are that if you have five of those you might be four out of those you know it might be five when in doubt don’t put them in the S column I don’t want to and don’t ask Debbie Downer to write your review or dawn down or to be gender-neutral because on their best day it might be a three and that’s if their meds are working if their meds aren’t working who knows what we’re going to get so only ask those that you… it’s like if you’re hosting a party at your house a dinner party you’re not going to invite people that aren’t going to be fun to have a party only invite the people that are going to be fun to be at your dinner party right 

Naren: Yeah, absolutely yeah totally because you want those lovely reviews so you want people who are excited about you to have that personality where there are positive people who would say you know 

Gary: Of course, I would love to write a review and it’s going to be glowing step four as a team decide who’s going to ask

Naren: Right

Gary: Very important and in our office, we do this in the morning huddle and in our office, it usually pops up organically like Kelly one of the high just might say oh I know Linda I see her three days a week in yoga class. We’re buddies I’ll ask her it’s natural, it’s natural if it doesn’t come up naturally then that is possible determine one team member in your office that becomes the default if you don’t have somebody down there’s usually one of your team members that has more of an outgoing social gregarious personality they everyone’s an instant friend who those are right there and you’re like everyone’s our new best friend yeah they just emanate positive energy that’s the person that will ask and then step five print out a little card it could be about three by five size five by seven slightly larger than a business card and simply print out the instructions of how to write a google review, how to write a google review, and here’s how… let’s say Kelly decides she’s going to ask Linda the patient. Here’s how Kelly would do that Linda I love seeing you on my schedule I know when I see you on my schedule I’m going to have a good day and I sure appreciate you as a patient hey as much as we love our existing patients we also love seeing new patients here at life smiles I have a favor to ask of you would you be kind enough to write a google review about our practice when you get a chance and here and now she hands her the card and said I went ahead and printed out instructions as a cheat sheet for you and I want to take a minute and thank you in advance thanks for your help and there’s the ask 

Naren: Yeah

Gary: Now that process has worked so incredibly, we’re going to build on this, Naren, I’m going to put you to work here while I’m talking would you look up how many google reviews, we have at life smiles and tell me what the average five stars are and I’m doing that just to show you what’s possible now as Naren, doing that I want to go

Naren: Found it, Gary, you have you have, 641 reviews five-star reviews and their average is five stars 641. 

Gary: 641 and I’m not saying that I’m not I didn’t ask you to pull that number up to boast by the way I didn’t know what it was I haven’t checked it since last week but 641 wow okay now there’s no potential new patient on the planet that’s going to read 641 reviews but they see that in the maps in the google three-pack in the maps and when mom sees go ahead and pull up near and I’m putting you to work on this pull up the maps and tell me the three will likely be one of the three that is in maps and you tell me don’t name the other practices but tell me how many googles reviews the other two in the three-pack have okay 

Naren: Right

Gary: So, we’ll be in it I’m sure because we are the office that has the highest number of google reviews and that’s one of the very important credits]

Naren: I’ll tell you so you are there you have 641. 

Gary: Okay 

Naren: The next one has 146. 

Gary: not bad I mean 146 by itself isn’t shabby right, right, but next time compared to 641 

Naren: 641 you do have competition there are two others one has 530 51, and then 141 and 141, yeah and the other one has 49 so yeah like I mean 

Gary: So why were there four listed in the three-pack? 

Naren: Yeah, I mean I’m looking at google maps so it’s showing me more than four when I keep scrolling down and down and down but you are number one

Gary: you’re not really looking in the 

Naren: Yeah, so okay in the three-pack it’s 146 641 and 551. So those are the three

Gary: So certainly, the office that has 541 is theoretically, is impressive but again it doesn’t we have more than 100 more 

Naren: yeah exactly 

Gary: so when mom looks at that, she’s going to qualitatively think we’ll look at this one this one’s the best because they have the highest number of reviews so let me go to another tactic and this is something that’s a very important one of our 24 systems in, we teach the concept of having 24 business systems in the practice so your practice runs like a finely tuned swiss watch one of those systems is how to consistently get more google reviews because you not only want to have a high number of them but there are two other factors that are important to Google when it comes to your reviews and the second factor is the velocity of your reviews, in other words, do you keep getting more reviews or does your office go dormant and go to sleep and go through periods of times where you’re not getting new ones. I had I attended a google conference before COVID and all of the speakers were from google and of course, they wouldn’t tell us the ranking algorithm but they gave us clues throughout the conference and one of the speakers talked about from google, google, execs said velocity of your reviews are important to let me give an example and this was a business audience, not a dental audience so he said if you have a business that says has a hundred reviews and the most recent one is yesterday versus an office that has 150 reviews, a business that has 150 reviews but the most recent one was four months ago, we will rank the office that has a hundred reviews higher than you because the most recent one was yesterday. So that has to do with velocity. So the third criteria so number velocity one and two and the third criteria are the character of your reviews and what they meant by that is you want these long-form narrative love letter, we call them to love letter reviews where the patient’s just effusive in their praise with all kinds of keywords like they’re gentle they’re caring they’re on time there, all those things and so the second tip that I’m going to share with you is going to help you master all three of those number velocity and character and that’s that I want you to designate a team member in your practice to be your google review champion, champion, and this person is going to be the quarterback of getting more reviews and your office. Now she doesn’t have to get all of them but she’s simply quarterbacking it. She is simply making sure that it stays top of mind in your office. She’s reporting in your morning huddle. She’s reading reviews especially when they call out names of team members of praise and she is keeping it front and center, so it doesn’t drop off. We’ve all experienced system backsliding system degradation where we had something in place and the next thing you know it’s you know we’re off chasing another squirrel and that system disappeared and so that person is going to be your google champion and that person is responsible to keep it front and center and now let me give you a third tactic and this is a great way to experiment with a starter bonus system and a way to kind of make this motivational for all of your team members and even if you have an existing bonus system this is a nice addition and here’s a suggestion. First of all, you have to kind of index what your goal is for more reviews every month and I’d want the bonus to be a little bit of a stretch. So, if you have historically gotten five new reviews a month I want to push us a little bit and I’m going to set the goal higher than five and the challenge of setting the goal is you want it to be a little bit of a stretch but you also want it to be realistic. Naren, back to my example if an office historically got five reviews a month, I wouldn’t set the goal at 50. Okay, we’ll give a little bonus if we get 50. Because that’s such a big stretch it’s all man it’s not realistic. So, if the office had historically gotten five, we might set the goal at 12 and we’re going to do something like hey if we as a practice get 12 or more reviews this month everyone gets a hundred dollars now a hundred dollars isn’t lottery money but everybody would like an extra hundred dollars in their pocket. Naren how would you feel if have you ever left cash in your pocket and your pants go through the wash and then the next time you put the pants on you reach into your pocket and you find a 20 bill 

Naren: Yeah, yeah, it feels good 

Gary: what if it was a 100 bill 

Naren: Yeah 

Gary: Yeah, it feels good. So, it’s not going to break the bank and think about that 12 I just picked 12 just an example your example might be maybe you’re getting 10 and you want to bonus it at 15. You get the idea you said it yourself. Hey in my example of 12 if this happened every month in the next year you had 44 new reviews next year and how would that be if you whatever you have now added 144 to it a whole different echelon whole different standard

Naren: let me put it another way right the other option is you write a 300 000 check to the insurance company where you don’t write any check to the insurance company instead you give your team members a few thousand dollars of like a hundred bucks a month and they are so appreciative. It’s just a totally different way to think about this yeah well hey let’s put a ribbon on this one Naren and I’ll let you summarize it but this has been a fun one lots of tactical stuff we’ve given you the context and I hope we’re inspiring you to become the dental office that has the highest number of reviews in your community.

Naren: Thank you Gary and I also want to take a minute to wish everyone and so that they all we all have the best year yet and I think after 29 we all ready to make 2020 I mean after 2020 we all ready to make 2021 the best year yet and what Gary’s absolutely right make this your-goal you want to be the office that has the most number of google reviews. Follow the five tips we’ll include that- in the show notes, so you don’t have to kind of go and hunt for it. We’ll make it easy for you and in the process appreciate your team and I think that’s a good thing that Gary always talks about gratitude and appreciation this is a great way for you to make the team who without them you want to have a practice that’s thriving, so I think it’s a win-win-win in all three counts and finally, you know our name is less insurance dependent so it’s one more way you can become less insurance dependence the more 

Gary: You are making it a big step 

Naren: Big step, take a big step forward in achieving that goal 

Naren: I want to take a moment to thank every one of you we continue to have some of our best months ever. So, I appreciate what you do for us you can subscribe to us on iTunes on google play even many of you are sharing it on social media like specific episodes. So, if this is an episode you think is of value share it and one last tip Gary talks about a buddy so maybe have a google review buddy so pick a practice who’s not in your city but maybe somebody you went to school with and say guys hey john let’s team up on this let’s see you know how many reviews I get and you’d see how many reviews you get and we’ll keep score and 

Gary: Maybe put a maybe put a dinner on it 

Naren: Exactly

Gary: This month you and your colleague and whoever gets the highest number of views gets a dinner next time you get together at your favorite restaurant how about that little challenge

Naren: Brilliant

Gary: the loser pays 

Naren: the loser pays exactly a friendly challenge so it keeps you motivated. 

Gary: Yeah

Naren: And thank you everyone and thank you for everything you do