Gene St. Louis walks dentists through buying a practice. He focuses on direct talks between buyer and seller, coaching staff on what to say to patients, and a transition plan that keeps changes minimal unless they help patients or save time.
Let's talk about a practice acquisition. So our practice acquisition program is for the dentist that either has purchased the practice a year ago or is going to purchase the practice in the next couple of months. And you'll probably have seen on social media and have read articles. When you buy a practice, don't change a thing. Well, if you don't change a thing, then why are you buying the practice? You're never going to buy a business to keep it the same. I am in agreement that you shouldn't turn the practice on top of itself, topsy tail, if you will, and change everything. Absolutely not. But the staff has most likely never been through a transition. They don't know the languaging skills to talk with a patient over the phone as to why this buyer is better than the seller that's been there 20, 30 years. So they need coaching, as do you, as does the seller. The seller's never been through a transition. So very often what I find happens in acquisitions is that the seller and the buyer are not communicating and they're going through the brokers and the attorneys, which is fine, but it's not the ideal in a communication. This is a relationship. Even if the seller wants to walk off tomorrow, you still need to have some sort of a relationship with this individual. And so my belief is that in an acquisition process, in a program, and we offer two of them, a six month and a 12 month, is that the buyer and the seller, we facilitate that communication. We also facilitate. How is that transition letter going to look? How is the staff going to respond to patients? What's going to happen after you take ownership? We like a buyer to be in the practice for at least a month or two to get, get a feel for what's going on, what they like, what they don't like, and then come in and begin our coaching. And again, if you looked at anything about our philosophy, our philosophy is we don't change things just for the sake of changing things. We change things because if they, number one, are in the best interest of the patient, and number two, if they're going to improve or enhance the efficiency of a system, that's it. So I hope you explore a little bit more SA.
