"I was ready for a change," says Dr. Gladys Whitten, DMD, when asked why she looked into Sterling. "I had done all I knew how to do to make the practice go forward.
"Certainly there were staff problems. In fact, within five minutes of talking to me the first person I met from Sterling knew I let my staff push me around. There were little things that would eat at me. You know, you wanted to say, 'I don't want that,' but I wouldn't. It wasn't that I was a complete pushover, but pretty near.
"It wasn't really any big issues. It was that I was floundering around in my practice. The practice was running me, I wasn't running the practice, to put it in a nutshell.
"Then I saw the Sterling video, and there were things I could really identify with. In fact, there were places where I could say, 'That's me!' The video was very influential and I got the idea that I could perhaps use a little help and that there was hope for me.
"It's tough to remember, really," she says, "because the nightmare has faded.
"At Sterling I enjoyed most of the courses – such as the Financial Management course and the Formulas for Success. I enjoyed the fact that the information that was most important was simple – really common sense type things. There were would be things you were doing because you had common sense, but because you didn't have the whole puzzle, you couldn't use the parts effectively. In fact, one of the Sterling consultants said, 'You're going in the right direction; if you lived to be 95 you'd get it right, but why wait that long?' And this made a lot of sense. I wanted the missing pieces of the puzzle.
"I could see that Sterling had the pieces that I was missing, and if I got them all working I'd have a well-oiled machine.
"As an example," says Whitten, "we had tried bonus systems before, but rewarding everybody equally is not nearly as effective as rewarding people differently according to their production.
"Or, you would think it was obvious that communication was important, but communication was down, and we weren't realizing it. The little in-out baskets, that's one of the communication things we put in. And the secret was getting all the parts in at one time. Putting money away for the practice was something I had done before, but not systematically. Setting goals are vital!
"After my training, I went to the front desk and said, 'We want to see this many new patients.' And that translated into: 'I'm going to give you this much reward if you do this." And I watched the appointments blossom.
"I practically have to tie my front desk lady's hands now. I saw sixteen new patients between one and five one day. I said, 'You're going to kill me!'
"The point is, those weren't issues before, there's a whole different feel in the office.
"And production is up," says Whitten. "My attitude now is, I set the pace, and I need you to keep up with me.
"Production is on the average doubled from what it was, sometimes triple, and collections are very good.
"And I don't stand over my staff; I've written up job descriptions in great detail, and I expect them to do their jobs and they do. We have a great staff now!
"Sterling has been great for my practice.
"I would have still been stuck in the rut that I was in, if not for Sterling. It has certainly been well worth the investment. In fact, we made back the money we paid in 60 days. Now it's paying off exponentially, going into the second, third and fourth powers!"
