Dentaltown November 2017 - 12

howard speaks
column

Are You Doc Hollywood or Doc Holliday?
I've been a dentist for 30 years. I've lectured a
thousand times and I've been on Dentaltown four hours
a day, minimum, since 1998. Which is to say, I know
my dental peeps.
We couldn't become dentists-physicians, scientists-if at college we were the extroverts who were
out drinking and partying all the time. Most of us who
made it through dental school, we were the geeks in the
library. Which isn't bad, unless we now let that define
ourselves in business. You can't believe that because
your natural inclination is to be introverted and shy,
you'll never be able to schmooze, or to ask patients for
referrals: "Oh, I'm not Doc Hollywood."
There's a whole list of incredible actors who have
the same personality as your stereotypical dentist or
scientist-they're quiet, relatively reserved. But when they
get onstage, they turn into "Hollywood." For example,
in real life Mike Myers is nothing like Austin Powers.

Develop an affinity for sales
After I got out of school, I moved to the Ahwatukee
area of Phoenix, which has about 80,000 people living in
about 25,000 homes. Every weekend morning, as soon
as it was light and there were people walking around,
I'd put on my backpack, pull out a box of gloves and
my appointment book, and walk around knocking on
doors to introduce myself. I had a map of the entire
ZIP code and crossed out every street I finished.
Two out of three doors were rejections: "You're
soliciting as a dentist? That's weird." But you can't let
that bother you in sales. People who sell cars know you
need 25 "no" answers to get one "yes." If a person says
"no," that's still progress because that was their 13th
"no," and they need only 12 more
now before they get a "yes."
Similarly, it didn't bother me
when two out of three people said

no way, because every third door would be opened
by people who'd say, "Actually, I have this tooth. ..."
I'd put down my backpack, put on some gloves, get out
my mirror and flashlight, have a look and give them
my opinion. If they agreed to come in to the office, I'd
pull out my appointment book to schedule them for
a 1.5-hour appointment and say, "I have an opening
24 hours a day, seven days a week, until the end of time.
Does any of that work for you?" I'd book an hour and a
half for each new patient, and I didn't quit on Sunday
until the following Monday through Thursday was
completely filled up with appointments.
You might say, "But that's not my personality. I'm
not Doc Hollywood." Like I said, though, that's not
Mike Myers' personality, either-but he's great when
he's Austin Powers.
(Look at it the other way: You're not Doc Holliday,
either. When was the last time that after work, you had
a couple of belts of whiskey and shot five cowboys? It
will be a lot easier for you to be Doc Hollywood, and
transfer yourself from an introvert scientist into an
outgoing salesperson, than it would be to transform
into Doc Holliday.)

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by Howard Farran, DDS, MBA, publisher, Dentaltown magazine

NOVEMBER 2017 // dentaltown.com

http://www.dentaltown.com http://www.dentaltown.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Dentaltown November 2017