By Luc Wade, Marketing Director at Hive Business.

I know you already have enough to worry about, but we have an alarming problem with cybercrime in this country and we can expect a spike in online fraud in the run up to Christmas as online purchases explode, especially with the 24 hour deal-fest on November 28, Cyber Monday. We’re all vulnerable, but small businesses including dental practices especially so.

That’s because there’s a culture of lax cyber security and a burgeoning class of hackers that are only too happy to graze on the low hanging fruit of easily duped employees. The danger is not only financial loss but reputational damage and legal proceedings if patient confidentiality is breached through negligence.
The National Crime Agency reported this summer that cybercrime accounts for the largest proportion of crime in the UK — 36 per cent. There were 2.1 million victims in 2015, that’s four per cent of the adult population. Looked at another way, you’ve got just under a one in 20 chance of being ripped off.

Forget the £2.5m stolen from Tesco customers earlier this month or the Yahoo! hack that revealed the confidential information of 500 million users, small businesses are taking the brunt of this scourge. Two thirds of small businesses have fallen victim in the past two years according to the Federation of Small Businesses, and the total cost has been put at £34bn a year by the Centre for Economic and Business Research.

Over recent weeks we have seen cyber attacks on two of our clients’ websites. One was a distributed denial of service attack which brought a site down for six hours by paralysing it with 42,000 visits at once. The other one was less pedestrian; a family practice website was transformed into a sexy webchat service for the weekend.

These attacks are not just an inconvenience. Damage to your reputation can happen very quickly and take a very long time to recover from, but reputational damage doesn’t just come courtesy of teen hackers up to mischief (which, presumably, is what happened in these cases). Rather, the broad spread of your online presence across a website, video content, search engine visibility and social media multiplies the risk of reputational risk and unnecessary embarrassment because each platform exposes to public mistakes. For example, a hastily written reply by one of your team members to a negative online review can undermine the perception of your brand. You can guard against off brand content by establishing communications protocols, which I’ll go into another time.

Most security breaches happen through phishing, where hackers target individuals rather than computer systems. Ironically, as cyber security software has become more sophisticated, employees in dental practices have become easier targets. A common method among hackers, for example, is to pose as a company boss in an email and persuade an employee to urgently wire company money to an account.

Meanwhile, the more traditional form of cybercrime, infecting company equipment with malware, is still a problem, accounting for 29 per cent of cyber attacks on small businesses. Dental practices, like all small businesses, rely on email, websites and computer software to operate, and all are entry points for hackers. At particular risk are your practice data files containing personal information about your patients and their treatment plans.

Most practices operate under the belief that their existing insurance policies are enough to cover any data security and privacy exposures but unfortunately that’s not always the case and I’d strongly recommend checking yours. The other thing you can do is take a look at your built-in resilience. Has your team been briefed about the threat from dodgy emails? If not, ask them to only respond to emails about things they know about, even if they look legitimate. This is really important because it’s easy to be tricked — I’ve been getting emails that look like they’re from Apple for ages and I still nearly open them every time.

The other piece here is to ensure your staff members vary their passwords if they are using your IT system, because if they don’t and they get personally hacked, your system will be wide open. A solution is to automate your system to request all users to set new passwords every quarter. With more and more dentists investing heavily in their digital assets it makes sense to me to also invest in protecting them. You don’t want to become the “porno practice” overnight and I am afraid the worst names stick. You could review your website performance package — there are some really good ones out there these days that are inexpensive and offer ways to improve site performance, improve security and defend visitors and yourself from all types of threats. Add on demand support to recover your site were it to go down and check your data is being backed up twice a day. We can arrange a health check for you if you don’t know where to start call By Luc Wade, Marketing Director at Hive Business.

One of the exquisite tensions of our job, being a company that specialises in helping dental practices grow, is the one between clinicians and sales. We know, it’s awkward mixing clinical integrity with the grubby world of revenues and profits. However, unless you fancy living in North Korea there’s no choice, it has to be done. And to that end we’re offering sales training days with Martin Crump, who’s helped leaders in John West foods, the NHS and Babcock Marine (who repair our nuclear submarines) sell their points of view in better ways. He’s also helping Rodda’s, a company close to our Cornish hearts, make some big changes (of which more below). We asked Martin some questions to give you a feel for his approach…

Why are dentists squeamish about the word sales?

They think of the double glazing salesmen sitting in your house and not leaving till you’ve signed, and feel really uncomfortable. Fair enough. But the interesting thing is that in reality we’re all selling all the time. Maybe not a product but an idea and a point of view. You might go home and sell the idea of a holiday to your partner.

In a dental practice anyone who answers the phone is selling. It’s better understood as influencing: you’re changing someone’s belief from, “I’m not buying that treatment plan,” to, “OK, yes, I do want that…” For this to happen everyone on the team needs to believe in what they’re selling.

How do you help dental teams change what they believe?

I work with the whole team for a day and we look at how each person sees the world differently.

People’s perceptions are different, and if they have a set of perceptions and beliefs around sales that say it doesn’t work, that means patients won’t believe them or buy off them because even when they try their best they won’t be congruent. That of course reinforces their belief that sales doesn’t work…

How do you know people will come round to the idea of sales?

I join people in their world and then lead them to where I want them to be, so they can see I’m not asking them to be untrustworthy. It’s influencing with integrity.

At the practices I’ve worked with all team members have loved what we’ve done because I pace and lead them through the process. We start by saying you do this anyway, the difference is you don’t do it consciously with an outcome in mind. They end up feeling strongly about what they must do differently – and then go away and do it.

How do you develop a sales culture in a dental practice?

One way is by introducing goals. We look at the ways in which you’re selling already and become aware of the opportunities to improve.

For instance, your receptionists will no doubt be trying to make a good impression each time they answer the phone, so they are already selling. But what if the goal was to finish with a booked appointment each time the phone rang?

Is there a process to hitting sales goals?

No. There’s no script that works because the customer has to feel your authenticity and there’s no script for being authentic.

If sales is a process it’s a process that you already do, all the time. Why would you be comfortable answering questions about your practice for a friend down the pub but not an enquirer who has called with the same questions?

Often there’s a dysfunction around the idea of sales that has to be tackled so team members can feel free to be themselves with customers. Bringing that dysfunction into your awareness means you can influence it. Then we introduce things like stories and case studies to help team members feel they have material to draw on that is authentic, so rather than saying, “Buy this treatment…” they’re saying, “We had someone last week who had your problem and they felt really happy about this treatment…”

What kind of feedback do you get on your sales training?

The only negative feedback I’ve ever had was someone who left halfway through and said: “I wouldn’t recommend this course to anyone because it changes the way you think.”

It’s true, it does. If you think differently you will behave differently, and that doesn’t matter whether it’s in sales, procurement or leadership.

I’m helping Rodda’s [the world’s largest producer of clotted cream, based in Cornwall] through a cultural change at the moment, from being a production focused business, where they bought milk to fulfil their orders, to, as of April 2017, a sales focused business, where they have to shift a minimum amount of product because of a new deal on their milk where they now buy directly from the farmers. It’s seven days a week now, focusing on sales and managing people differently, a real perception shift for a 125-year-old company. Getting the team to believe in this growth and buy into it themselves has been critical, and inspiring.

Are there any long term benefits of developing a sales culture?

Just like the work I do on negotiation skills and procurement training, this is all about thinking about the person on the other side. You’re selling a point of view, and if you do it with empathy and congruence the person on the other side will become an advocate.

In dentistry that means they start referring friends and family to your practice, which is the most cost effective way of revenue growth. Once you’ve got the referral, it’s a circle: they telephone the practice and you’ve got to convince them they’re doing the right thing, and every interaction they have when they come in must meet their expectations. Quite rightly the nurse and the dentist are going to be focusing on the clinical side, but the new patient doesn’t understand the clinical side, they just remember the experience, and how they feel as they walk out the door.

Is there a better way for dental clinicians to think about themselves?

You’re giving patients the opportunity to improve their lives, but you probably see your purpose as very clinical. Of course it is, but changing people’s lives makes you think differently about what you do, and changes your motivation and that of your team.

When you think differently you talk and behave differently; more empathic, more congruent. That feels better for the patient. All dentists know they change people’s lives, and they will admit as much in the end. It’s not the first thing they say but it should be.

If you would like more information about Martin’s sales training please get in touch on 01872 300232 or email us at hello@hivebusiness.co.uk.