Dr. Rich Post-Covid Week In Review
Week of July 20th
Managing Your Staff’s Time

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Dr. Rich: Hello everyone, Dr. Rich, Rich Castellano, The Smile Doctor here at Image Lift. And I'm with my weekend review for this video to talk to you about a really important concept of inventory. Now I use inventory in many different ways. I've talked about it in the past about my personal time and revenue generating time on the schedule. I'm going to talk about it for your staff's inventory.

Now this is really important because the number one tool you have to grow your business is your team. And the question is, how efficient and effective is your team? How do you know? And that's where the concept of inventory comes into play because when you know how to use inventory, it's a very basic concept. But when you can communicate about this, you can prevent wasted time, inefficient multitasking, and prevent low confidence from low results.

So what do I mean by inventory? It's the basic concept of there's eight hours in a day, what is your staff doing in those eight hours? Now to simplify, we have to designate, what are the tasks your staff are doing? So for example, I have someone who makes phone calls and answer social media messages. So their tasks are outbound calls, answering social media messages. They get interrupted with inbound calls.

They also get other interruptions if staff need help and other things. And so let's just say those four tasks, just for discussion sake. Now we want to set a certain amount of time for each one of those tasks. Now we just had this conversation in a team meeting. So this is exactly what we talked about. So for example, I said, let's take one hour time slot. In fact, let's take 30 minutes. And during those 30 minutes, your job is to do nothing at all but just make outbound phone calls.

Now we've already shown that if you're making a solid hour of outbound phone calls, you should be able to make eight to 10 calls with documentation in the computer, making notes, emails. Maybe you're gonna get someone on the phone. Maybe you'll just leave a message. So five calls in 30 minutes, all right, then you stop, no calls, and now we are 15 minutes to answer social media messages, ask for phone numbers, give information.

Say, I've got your number, put their information in the database, reach out to that patient and, you know, see if we can get them onto a phone call. And then take a 10 minute break. Now if they, that is an hour of inventory of activity. If they follow that by the end of the day, theoretically, they should be able to have eight hours. So that's 40 phone calls, and that's 15 minute increments. That's a lot of time.

That's a lot of extra buffer time to do that. And there can be some flexibility there, but you need to adhere to those general guidelines. And then the question is, what else is going on in their day? Now when they first start this inventory, are there other things that say, well, yeah, but I can't do that because, okay, great. Write that down. They say, because I got to go to the copier or the fax machine to get the, you know, to make a copy of the charter, send this over here, or handle this request.

Great, that becomes their inventory. You need to quantify these things. So once you introduce the concept of inventory and you need to set aside time with your team during a team meeting. Say, let's go through this and then say, okay, what are all of the things that are eating your inventory? And have them write that down? And everything is valid. They say, well, the person keeps coming through and it comes to my desk and starts talking to me and that takes time.

Or I get into a conversation with you over here or whatever the case may be, but write them all down. Now together, the next step in inventory is so important. It is team buy-in. You cannot just tell your team, here it is. Unless you really know and unless it's realistic, unless you've trained them correctly, to follow an inventory that you know. You've got to get their feedback. You've got to say, what's reasonable?

Now, whatever they're going to come back with, you need to, obviously, our job is to be a cheerleader and coach them and say, you can do it. And how about if we added two or three more? And come up with a number. You must have a number and a goal for their inventory. What is the goal number of tasks they're going to create and how long will it take for them to get through that?

Now, sounds simple. Usually it's not done. It's not discussed. They'll figure that out. They'll get to it. Or they're do they're working as hard as they can. Let me tell you something. If somebody tells me that they're working as hard as they can, that tells me nothing. Inside I'm like yeah. Don't tell me that cause it doesn't say anything. Say what's your task? How long is it gonna take? How many you did you get done? Do you need more support to get it done more quickly, more support to get it done with higher quality?

This isn't just about the numbers, you want to get it done with quality, right? So after you have had the inventory talk and have the discussion to get your team buy in, to find out what are their inventory tasks? How long do they take? What are the distractions and how can you mitigate? You're not going to get rid of the distractions 100%, but at least be aware of them. And now a distraction is a part of your inventory.

You know what? In my day, I've got 10, 20% inventory for distractions. I just have to deal with that or putting out fires or whatever it is. Now, as you get more sophisticated with this, and maybe you hire more staff, or you have better business processes, you will find you can narrow down that distraction category of inventory, which is not zero for anyone. There's always stuff that's gonna come up. It's not gonna be perfect.

Don't be a perfectionist like those perfectionistic patients that we love so much. And say, see this little dot right here on my face? And I'm like, no, I don't see it. Don't be a perfectionist. Now, once you've done that, talk about inventory. You're getting your team buy in and you have a plan and you've written it down. It must be in writing. It cannot be verbal. I thought you said this, well you said that, it's in writing, and then it's got to be visible.

Then you got to check in. Well does that mean I have to check in every hour? Well, I mean, once a day, is at least you got to check in once a day, but a couple of times a day, or maybe you do check in once a day. Hey, how did that hour ago? You are micromanaging me. You're oppressing me. It's too much. As long as you're lighthearted and you're doing this with the spirit of, hey, we want to make you more successful.

Everybody wants to be successful at their job. Here's how we're going to reach the bonus. And let them know, by the way, if we're hitting these numbers here, that's not sustainable. We can't do that. We need to get at least these amount of numbers. So let's see what we can do. And then what really helps this to work is as you set goals, as you make your inventory, you put it together, when you bring in new team members and you have two people doing the same task, there's always some person that's going to do a little better than the other.

And not that you're trying to put people down with competition, but you're trying to raise people with the cooperative competitive spirit. Coopertition right. And if someone's doing better, then the question is what are they doing the other person can learn from? Because there's always going to be one team member that is going to have more strengths than the other. So inventory, don't you love inventory? Who would have ever thought I love inventory so much?

Because I know in my office, for me personally, with inventory, if we want to hit a certain revenue number, I know what that inventory number needs to be. If my inventory is not set, if I'm at 50% of the inventory, what we expect to hit the revenue number, I know we're not going to hit the revenue number. I just know it's not going to happen. So now we focus on setting a revenue inventory number, managing it, cause it changes all the time.

Someone drops off the schedule, something gets moved, and then doing our best to fill the spots. And it's the same with personal inventory for your team. What is their inventory? Make sure that they know that their time is valuable. And if we show up to work and say, I'm here, it's not enough. We need to know exactly what we're supposed to do.

Because of the distractions come, we're human. And was like, well, do I have to do today? I don't know. Well now you know. Here's the inventory and you know what? I've spent up all my distractions, the 20% of the first part of the day, you gotta start hustling, got to get to work. So enjoy your inventory. More videos coming soon. I'm Dr. Rich, Castellano, The Smile Doctor. Remember, everything worthwhile starts with a smile. I'll see you in the next video.