I’ve been asked this question a lot of times. Every time we onboard and train new dental practice this question comes up “How do I track my free goods?” My concern, they are not FREE!! There is no Santa Claus. There is no Easter Bunny. There is no such thing as FREE DENTAL PRODUCTS! Now here are my top 3 reasons why FREE goods are a bad idea to focus on: Reason 1: Cash is King and Cashflow is the vein system of your Practice! Buying more than you need is killing your cash flow. Can you imagine Starbucks or McDonalds saying “Let’s buy beans on special and we will use it in the next 6 month”? Let’s apply this example to a specific use case, most of the time and for most practices, you need one box of lidocaine (average cost $30/box). But there’s a special, buy three get one free (theoretically making a unit price of $22.50/box – paid for 3 and divide the total by 4 units). All of a sudden your attention is on buying three items because you’re going to get one box for free. See what happens here, you are buying three boxes versus one, therefore, you’re spending extra $60 on buying these two additional boxes. Therefore, you spent a lot more money than you should have. On one item it seems minor, only $60, however, this happens across 3-5 items per order, totaling $250-400 in extra spend per ORDER. 3 Problems arise from this reason: Expired Products: Typically these items are going to be sitting on the shelf and at some point will get expired. Cash should be used on marketing and other revenue producing activities. The business decision that you are making that extra cash flow is going to be sitting on the shelf (in the form of a product) versus producing you the money is terrifying. By the way, as of April 2019, investing an additional $250-$400 a month on Facebook/Instagram marketing can generate significant ROI. You are becoming a warehouse. Some offices are willing to turn an operatory room into storage!!!! Please avoid doing this. Most products can be shipped within 3-7 days. There is absolutely no need to stock items for more than 2-4 weeks. Don’t be in the warehouse/logistics business. Reason 2: Undersupply vs oversupply I remember being a kid. If I have a jar of cookies for the whole day and let’s just say they’re 10 of them, I’m going to eat the whole 10. But if I have a jar with just the one cookie, I’m probably going to get that one cookie carefully throughout the day. You get the idea! It’s the same mentality in a dental practice. If you’re going to put a stack of bibs, all of them at the same time in front of the team (where your daily stock is), most likely you’re going to use a lot more than if you just put 10 a day and you say this is all we’ve got. Or if we have 30 patients on the schedule, we’re going to put 35 on the shelf and that’s all we got. I visit practices weekly and it’s very common to see carpules, burrs, composite tips and all sorts of other things laying around on the floor, behind cabinets, and even in the garbage can. From day one, each practice should establish min use or develop a checklist for Lead Assistant to use when restocking the room with exact QTYs. Reason 3: Most Manufactures also don’t like free goods! During my meetings with manufacturers and distributors, everyone rolls their eyes on free goods. Then I ask “Why are you still doing it” and the answer is “Well, everyone else is doing it”. The point is it’s an old trick of getting people to buy more. At least at Zen, we are approaching it differently. Set a minimum price for the product and let the customer decide how many they need without forcing them into specials and free goods. Many times when you see a product on special or with a free good, you can purchase it at a lower cost per unit if you ask your rep (or ask your supply rep to get manufacture rep involved) or if you are part of the buying group. Conclusion: Above are just my very subjective reasons. However, after visiting 15-25 dental practices that consistently run dental supply budget under 4%, I realized the secret is in buying only what you need! End of Story. “If you look at how to get your practice to 5% overhead on dental supplies or below, it’s not that complicated. 80% of it is managing QTYs and only 20% looking for cheaper alternatives. With a proper inventory system and good discipline, you should be at 5% even using your favorite supplier” – Dr. Benjamin Johnson, AcreWood Dental P.S. If your budget above 6% it might be budget allocation issues. You can check my interview with Jake Conway where we discuss if Implants or Ortho should be in dental supplies or Laboratory. What are your thoughts? Let’s discuss this together!
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W1d0kHNAHA[/embedyt] Welcome to another webinar/interview with CEO of Studio Dental Lowell Caulder. We discuss how to match Physical space to their Virtual Space in Zen, How to get entire team compliance, and in case of turn around how to onboard new team members on Zen within minutes. Lowell explains their hiring process, books that helped him to become the Please Enjoy! Conversation Notes and Recommendations: 1. Image of the storage with E1/E2/E3/E4 Also an image of their Zen Setup with Storages 2. Book recomendation: -Be the Boss Everyone wants to work for -Mastering Rockefeler Habits - Dare to Lead 3. Software Recomendation: - https://bonus.ly/ - Slack
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ2Iw1HYmpc[/embedyt] Warning: uncensored interview A good friend of mine Dr. Bryan Stimmler and I seat down for a casual conversation at Bryan's home in Brooklyn NY. You can give it a listen or watch full length. We go in different directions, discuss dentistry, everything around dentistry and much more. Hope you enjoy it! Tiger
We are excited to bring you this new episode from the Zen & Work podcast archives! In this episode, Tiger Safarov, Founder of Zen Supplies, and Dr. Andy Tran (Apex Dental Studio) talk with Dr. Mohiuddin, an owner, and doctor at the Chicago based practice Dentologie. Listen along as they discuss User (ie. patient) Experience, dental school, and the importance of having a long-term vision for your practice. Thanks for tuning in! Check out the Dentologie page for a look at professional dental care re-imagined for the millennial generation.
We recently completed a Dental Inventory Makeover in Baltimore and wanted to share with you what does the process involves. It's a lot of fun for us and we hope you get excited so one day we meet you in person at your dental practice. Please enjoy! [embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tBCVE7ZxYA[/embedyt]
Lowering overhead on dental supplies is a process. At Zen we approach it based on 3 Phases: Phase 1 is building a reliable ordering process Phase 2 is negotiating better pricing Phase 3 details and measuring supplies on a daily basis and by procedures Every office has its own goal and not all offices are ready to go through all 3 phases. However, every office at the sign up should consider Advanced Setup. So let's review our entire Process Start to Finish! Let's start! Step 1: First step either you choose Advanced or DIM setup, you will need to send us pictures of your practice and a floor plan. In order to understand and see what is really happening, we will start with images. Most images we receive look something like this: [URIS id=2453] Step 2: Next step - Facetime call to have a walkthrough and get familiar with space. We use this call to get a feel of the office and truly understand the needs of the practice. We will also review some of the "Inspiration Images" of what we've done in the past with our practices. Some practices like the open feel, no doors, all products exposed. Some practices would like to have the main storage area to keep all supplies so the patients can't see it. [URIS id=2462] Step 3: Design of the custom solution just for your practice. We will take 3-5 days to review what we discussed and offer a solution that will meet your needs; will include all materials/storage bins you need to purchase, and installation instructions. [URIS id=2476] Step 4: Once storage units and containers arrive at the practice, you will need to install and go through all the products you currently have in the practice. You can either do it on the weekend or during the day and close for a day. We will guide you on what needs to be done during the day and will even be available for a facetime call if any questions arise during the day. Once you are done and completed it would look something like this: [URIS id=2488] Step 5: Once space is organized and we have lean inventory; we can now focus on connecting physical space to Zen virtual space. During the training, we will discuss how to set up Zen that matches storage areas, mobile carts and any other areas within an office that we need to track and control supplies (Ex: Implants; Bone/Membrane; etc). We will provide checklists and diagram on how to fill tip out bins with supplies. [URIS id=2496]
Recently we’ve been asked about buying groups and how to make your Zen Account work if you recently joined a buying group (Example: Synergy, DSN, DentalWhale, etc)? Let’s review the process together. Step 1: First of all, obtain a list of distributors that the buying group has negotiated prices with. Review distributors on the list and see who you already have accounts with and who you don’t. If you don’t, just create a new account with the vendor and connect it to Zen in Settings - Distributors - Plus Button. If you already have an account with the vendor you need to contact them and make sure they acknowledge that you are part of group “X” and it is reflected on your account (either online or when you email to the rep). Most distributors, for example, Darby Dental, when you join a buying group will usually make you switch to another rep. So just be aware and make sure your account is set up and in good standing according to the requirements of the buying group. Step 2: Once the pricing is changed with your distributor to the buying group pricing, bring it to Zen. If you have online login and in Zen, this distributor was connected as “Submit Online”, then you only need to make a change in step 2 - Pricing and change it to “Buying Group” (screenshot attached) then just let us know in chat to update your prices. If you have this distributor connect with “I use Rep” then we will need you to provide what that pricing would look like in a form of a spreadsheet or anything you can get from the distributor or the buying group. Step 3: If you can’t get pricing form the distributor or the buying group, this might be a red sign. Wouldn’t you want to be able to see the price before ordering? Well, we’ve seen many strange things so far, so if that’s the case, you can add just how it is and update prices from invoices at the verification. We hope this is helpful and if you need to schedule a consultation to review your account, please use this link to select the time that works best for you: ZenSupplies.com/Sales With Zen! ZenTeam
