It’s not every day that we get to see the great Dr. Agim Hymer from Melbourne, Australia, so it was our pleasure to catch up with him during his recent visit to POS Headquarters. Watch his interview to learn his secrets for getting new orthodontic patients and setting your practice up for success.
Video Transcript
DR. DAVID DANA: Hi everyone. I'm here at Progressive Orthodontic Seminars' home office in Southern California with a very dear and old friend of mine, one of the smartest dentists I've met. He's actually one of the most, if not the most successful dentist, that I have ever met, a dear friend of mine and phenomenal dentist Dr. Agim Hymer from Melbourne, Australia. How are you doing, Agim?
DR. AGIM HYMER: I'm good!
DR. DANA: It is so good to have you here in Southern California. You're teaching a seminar today and this weekend and I can just tell you the students are so lucky to have you. Just sitting in class with you listening to your lecture, these guys are lucky to have you here. Thank you for coming across the Pacific to come see us.
DR. HYMER: Thank you, it's my pleasure and your words are very kind.
DR. DANA: One of the reasons I wanted to have this chat with you, you're actually impressively successful. When I met you 25 years ago, we were kind of young, immature, and you already had a plan to move forward. As the years have gone by I've seen the tremendous success that you have developed in your practice. I know a lot of it has to do with the way you have set up your practice, the way you have put strategies in place, marketing in place. Can you share with us a little bit of how did you set up your ortho practice within your general practice for success? I know you've worked on this very hard and we can go all night with that, so just give us a few tips.
DR. HYMER: I always wanted to be a business person. That's what I wanted. Then I went looking at different areas and I realized that I can actually be a business person with dentistry. The number one thing is that if you're going to do that you actually have to commit to the career of dentistry. Just like any business person. If you're in property you've got to commit to property. If you're into the stock market, you've got to commit to the stock market. So why not commit to dentistry? Then I went looking as to what do I need to do to start increasing what I do and the number one thing is clinical skills. So you've got to increase your clinical skills. If I want to do a lot of perio, well I've got to increase my periodontal knowledge. If I want to do more porcelain work, I've got to increase my porcelain knowledge. And then if I want to do orthodontics well I've got to increase my orthodontic knowledge. I think orthodontics probably does take up more time from an educational point of view.
DR. DANA: Yes it does, actually. We can learn how to do pretty decent implant work in maybe 20 days of training, 30 days of training. Orthodontics requires a lot more than that.
DR. HYMER: Yeah and more continuing education too because things change and there's so many different options available to you. So setting up an orthodontic clinic well the first thing was, I became committed to that's what I was going to do. From a business point of view, you'd be ridiculous not to be doing orthodontics as a general dentist because it's probably one of the most successful things you can do as a general dentist. We worked out our sums and composites still form a major part of the practice even though they're boring, but orthodontics would be probably one of the next major things that you do in your practice. And then you've got your implants and other things.
DR. DANA: While I was working full time, 15-20 days a month, orthodontics would take a good 50% of my practice. On many occasions because of the way I used to work with it, it would bring more than 50% of the income. Because you know the restorative part, which I used to do a lot of it, has a tremendous amount of expenses. And if something has to go back to the lab and you have to see the patient another time, you don't make money. You're actually breaking even and with ortho this really doesn't happen.
DR. HYMER: That's right. Because porcelain you've got to try in the porcelain you've got to take off the temporaries, which means breaking the temporaries, which means remaking the temporaries and that just takes a lot of time. Yeah so ortho became a very big part of the business strategy.
DR. DANA: Any marketing ideas that you generated in your practice in order to, if not attract new orthodontic patients, to keep or to convert your existing patients into orthodontics? And what I mean is for a lot of general dentists, patients go there they get good hygiene, good perio, good restorative and patients walk in and out, even after whitening with crooked teeth. Like you said maybe they need to have a little more training, but these patients need to be treated with ortho. Any strategies that you set up in place in the practice for everybody in the office, staff, doctors, so the patient could have a smooth conversion or transition from the general practice into the ortho practice?
DR.HYMER: It's all about just conversations. We always talk about comprehensive treatment. When we have a conversation with somebody we ask them what they want, what they want to achieve. You never want to sell to a patient because they don't like that. So when I sit down with a new patient I want to make sure they know what we do. I say to them, look we want to plan your mouth out forever and we've got to make sure that you've got no problems, you've got no pain. We've just got to do the general stuff, and they're pretty fine with that. Then I say to them, after we've got your mouth nice and healthy, some people are happy to just stop there, but there's other people who want more. They want whitening, they want straightening, they want replacement teeth, and because we do everything in our practice, I can talk about orthodontics and implants and whitening and porcelain veneers. That's how I would probably say the line to every single new patient that comes in the practice so the patient doesn't feel like they're being sold to, because I'm asking them what they want, but I've also told them that we do everything.
DR. DANA: You're telling them these are the services that we provide and if you're interested in correcting whatever problem you're seeing, changing that bridge for an implant restoration, or getting your teeth straight or your bite corrected, we provide that service here. That incises the patient to ask you what will it take to get the correction done.
DR. HYMER: So after I've said that line, my next question to the patient is, so is there anything about your smile that you would like to change? Then I stop talking. So they'll go yes I've thought about whitening, yes I've thought about straightening the teeth. And I go, okay then, so we'll talk about that by the time you leave today. And then when they're in hygiene, we're always talking about things and mentioning it, but you can never do it as a sale. You've just got to mention, oh your teeth are a bit crooked, they're collecting a lot of bacteria, we talked about straightening them, is that something that you want to talk about or not? 80% of our new patients comes from referrals.
DR. DANA: That's fantastic.
DR. HYMER: So the other 20% come from Google, from Facebook, and from the external marketing that we do. We work on the patients we have at the moment. We'll send them a newsletter every now and again.
DR. DANA: Yeah I get it once in a while. I've never been your patient but I get them. I love them.
DR. HYMER: The major patients you work towards are your own patients. They're actually your best source of marketing. But you've still got to spend money externally because if we get 100 new patients, 20 will be from external. Now that costs us money, so the 80 that we get are referrals from patients already in the practice, they don't cost as much to get. Yeah so it's your own patients you've got to work on.
DR. DANA: You're actually treating the patients with respect. You're just presenting what their needs are and telling them, I provide that service to you if you're interested. After I take care of your emergency, after I get your mouth in a much better or healthier place, we can go into all these other aspects if you'd like to consider them. Rather than pushing, you need to get this, you need to get that, and that is what makes the patients happy. That's what makes them trust you more and come back to you.
DR. HYMER: Yes, so if they come in for fillings and crowns, I'll make sure at those visits to ask, are you still happy with the plan that we talked about, because were about to finish your general work so the next stage is going to work on your smile and you had concerns about straightening or whitening or whatever. Then I stop talking again and they'll say, yes I want to continue on, or they'll say oh yes but I've still got a few more questions. And I go okay well why don't we next time allocate some time so we can answer your questions.
DR. DANA: That way you don't leave your other patients waiting for you while you're answering questions and it allows you to prepare for a better second consultation or new consultation.
DR. HYMER: Yes, and another thing I like doing is I say to them so what are your problems and they might say I have crooked teeth. And I go well I'll just give you some quick options now so when you go home you can think about what you might want. So there's braces, there's Invisalign, and so when they come in, in their mind they've already been thinking about it so it makes that conversation a lot quicker because I'm not giving them the options there, because then they'll have to go home and think about it. We have everything as pamphlets that we've created ourselves and so I'll go look I'll give you this information on these different things, go home, read it, think about it, so when you come next time, for me it makes it more efficient because you can't charge for talking.
DR. DANA: And really the only thing that we have of value in the practice is the time we have available to work. And if you spend it talking, you're not treating people.
DR. HYMER: That's right, which isn't what you want. So the more you give them to talk at home, talk to their parents, or talk to their partners, talk to everybody you need to, so when you come to me you've already spoken to everybody. You've had the home conversations.
DR. DANA: So to wrap it up, couple of tips that you would give somebody that is either starting getting into ortho, or thinking to start an ortho practice within their general practice.
DR. HYMER: Well you've got to decide are you committed or not. And if you're committed then you've got to get your staff committed and on board too.
DR. DANA: That's super important.
DR. HYMER: Because if they're not on board, then they're the ones who speak to the patients on the telephone so it's not just training yourself, you've got to train your staff on how they're going to answer the phone. What are they going to say to patients? How are they going to talk about everything? And another thing is ortho does take time because you need to diagnose. So you got to get your family on board as well, that you may be spending certain times not at home, because you've got to do that extra work of diagnosis.
DR. DANA: And the treatment planning.
And the second consultation, all of that. And you can't do that during clinic hours, it's got to be after hours. Yeah so you can sit there and spend time. So it's sort of like you've got to get everyone on board. And if you do it, it's definitely worthwhile. And it's great. It keeps you excited doing ortho.
DR. DANA: It does. It keeps practicing dentistry fun.
DR. HYMER: It really does. It keeps us going.
DR. DANA: Well Agim, it's been a pleasure having these few moments chatting with you and I've just enjoyed watching you lecture the last 2 days. I really hope you come back to LA soon, so we can hangout again and I know you and I have an upcoming trip at the end of the year. I'm so looking forward to it. So everyone this is my very dear friend, one of our top instructors here at POS, Dr. Agim Hymer visiting us here in Orange County. You guys have a good night.
