The Brian Wright Show

The Untold Story Missing from your Business - How this Common Restaurant Mistake is Crushing your Sales & Revenue

• Brian Wright • Season 8 • Episode 130

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Have you ever wondered why some businesses consistently outperform others despite similar marketing budgets and strategies? The answer often lies in what Brian Wright calls "the million-dollar leaky hole" – those critical blind spots that never show up on financial reports yet silently drain your business of potential revenue.

Through an eye-opening story about a dental practice wanting to sell more clear aligners while putting their own team members in traditional braces, Brian reveals a fundamental truth that applies across all industries: your team cannot effectively sell what they haven't personally experienced. This seemingly small oversight creates a credibility gap that no amount of traditional marketing can overcome.

Drawing parallels to the restaurant industry, where top-performing establishments ensure waitstaff taste every menu item to become passionate storytellers rather than mere order-takers, Brian demonstrates how personal experience transforms ordinary team members into powerful sales advocates. The most successful businesses don't just train their people on features and benefits – they invest in ensuring their team can speak authentically about their products from firsthand experience.

This episode challenges conventional thinking about what constitutes a worthwhile business investment. Rather than viewing employee training and product experience as expenses to be minimized, Brian reframes them as your most powerful marketing assets. He explains why businesses that appear to be "saving money" by cutting corners on team experience are actually losing fortunes in missed sales opportunities and diminished conversion rates.

Whether you're a healthcare provider, restaurant owner, retail entrepreneur, or service professional, this insight-packed episode will transform how you think about employee development and its direct connection to sales performance. Ready to discover and plug the silent leaks in your business? This episode provides the roadmap to turning your team into authentic storytellers who naturally drive revenue growth.

New Patient Group - The Employee & Patient Experience Co.

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- Pending Treatment FollowUp
- Handling and Overcoming Objections 
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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Brian Wright Show Audio Experience, a podcast dedicated to transforming lives, careers and businesses, and now your host. He's a husband, father of two, an international business and life coach, the founder and CEO of New Patient Group and Wright Chat, and a consultant and global speaker for some of the finest companies in the world, such as Invisalign and many others. Now here's your host, brian Wright.

Speaker 2:

I met this doctor one time and we sat down and we were having this long business conversation. It was after an event that I spoke at. He pulled me aside. We ended up having a cocktail, decided to have food, we spent hours together and one of his goals was hey, brian, I want to sell more clear liners. You know, I do Invisalign. I want to sell more Invisalign. How do I do it? Help me do it. Blah, blah, blah. We had this long conversation because obviously that's never a one answer. This is how you do it. There's a whole list of moving parts, as you all know. We teach so much on here and eventually he buys an onsite workshop.

Speaker 2:

I go in there, I spend some time with him and I noticed some things about the treatment coordinator and two of the assistants is they're wearing braces. I say to myself well, that's interesting. You know, here's a practice and of the things I've found out over the years, aboutmillion dollar leaky hole that you may never thought about and there's multiple in all of your businesses. But I'm going to relate it back to really three things. And it's a really big sales mistake so many of you make out there and for a while I didn't do that podcast because I didn't realize what an actual leaky hole it is. And recently I have and I realized that it is in so many different businesses big in our niche out there in orthodontics and dentistry, but also in all the other businesses that we help outside of it. It's a huge sales mistake that, when plugged, you really really can add a lot of revenue, a lot of new customers overnight. So I look forward to that.

Speaker 2:

But that's an example of this one too. As I looked around I'm thinking okay, here's a doctor that wants to start more clear aligners and I'm looking at his team and they're in braces. And if you're outside our niche out there, you don't know this. But every time you go and buy Invisalign from a practice, depending on how many case submissions to Invisalign, there's a lab fee that comes with that right. So a doctor could be paying $1,800 as a lab fee for your case. They might be paying $800, $900 or somewhere in between, but there's a lab fee fee. So when you look at assistant A and assistant B that are wearing braces and then you look at the treatment coordinator that's wearing braces, I start to think to myself wow, this is one of the most or one of the biggest lost opportunities on the planet to start more clear aligners. Here is a practice that wants to do more aligners, but they're putting their employees in braces. And why? And you all know the answer to this is the doctor wants to avoid the lab fee. So here's the doctor or business owner nickeling and diming, tripping over dollars to pick up pennies because he doesn't want to get hit with the lab fee. But now is missing out on one of the greatest marketing opportunities there is, and that's his own team telling the story of how great the experience is in aligners, how great the doctor is, how great the convenience that the aligners bring to the table that braces can't. And I'm sitting there talking to the doctor. He's like, yeah, you know, we were back at back talking in his office and like, yeah, that that's why I did it. And now that I hear you talking about this, you're right. It's just, it's an asinine mistake. I can't believe that. I can't believe that I did that. And this is so true.

Speaker 2:

One of our favorite Italian restaurants that we used to eat at is back in Houston and Beto the waiter there was one that we always would request and we would get in, became really good friends and we would get into some really good business discussions, and one of the things that Italian restaurant does is, every single day, they have several breaks for their waiters to go into this room and the room is glass so all the tables can see it. Part of the meeting is during non-business hours and they have the time block, like we teach all of you to have, and then there's some other meetings while the tables are being set and the waiters are seeing the tables and people are being served. Well, you would get into these conversations with Beto and they were really intriguing because you could tell this restaurant got it. The things I'm about to discuss are things that we bring and install into restaurants and, again, it's one of the reasons we rebranded this podcast into the Brian Wright Show, because, whether you want to start more aligners or whether you want to sell more food at the table, right, we want to sell more of our specials than the on-menu items.

Speaker 2:

We want to sell more of our wine than water. You know, whatever it is, it's all the same. It's just learning how to use your imagination and how it applies in different environments. So what the waiters would do is they would get in there with the chef and the chef would have them taste all the specials for that afternoon and then, for the waiters that were coming in in the evening, they would do it again and they would taste what are the specials for this evening if they were different or if it was a different waiter that came in and the chef would sit there and teach them. Okay, this is how we're going to sell this. They were educating the waitstaff on where the food was sourced, where it was shipped in, from the art of how it was cooked behind the scenes, why it was so exceptional.

Speaker 2:

And many of you have probably been to a restaurant where you ask the waiter you know, how are the oysters? There's an example the waiter's response is I don't know, I've never had them right. Or it's the special for the evening and the waiter. Matter of fact, I just got back as I shoot this podcast today. Dr Ross Russell shout out man, I just got back from their practice and we go out with his wife, who's the treatment coordinator.

Speaker 2:

We go out to this restaurant, this Italian place, and it's a really cute place. It's in a cool little downtown. The ambiance of the place is great, food was good and I had asked the waiter do you have any specials tonight? The waiter goes oh well, that's what that piece of paper is, right there, just sitting there, going. You know, ross, it never ends, man, I mean everywhere.

Speaker 2:

I look there's another example of a leaky hole, with people that are just losing millions that will never be able to put their finger on it, because nowhere are there statistics ever going to show it to be a problem. And a little bit later I asked him how. I think it was a filet or a T-bone, some kind of red meat that was on there. I asked the waiter how it was and he goes yeah, it's good, I'm sitting there again. You know we're talking at dinner. I look, this is. This is one of the hardest skillsets and the best skillset you'll ever learn for sales is edification, art of bragging, making sure that you can enlighten people on why a certain thing is better than other options. And and so many restaurants fall short of that.

Speaker 2:

So back to to Beto and this Italian restaurant is. They would go in there. They would all get on the same page on how to educate it. They would all taste it. So therefore, whenever they went to the tables, they could be a storyteller and stories everybody.

Speaker 2:

Features of a product are great, the details of a product are great. Nothing and this is not what today's about, but it very well could be nothing compares to a story and nothing compares to a story that your team can tell a prospective customer or one that already is a customer that you're trying to upsell, get a referral from, have them, whatever. Nothing compares to storytelling. It is what gets me invited back to speak all over the world is being able to get up on stage and being able to tell stories and relate it back to whatever we're talking about. It's what is growing. Our podcast is the storytelling and being able to take really any scenario and teach you how to apply it to any business that wants to improve experiences, improve sales, improve referrals, improve all the things we all want to improve about our businesses.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so, as I got to know Beto better, we went to this restaurant and I became really intrigued, actually sat in on a couple of these meetings, because it's such a beautiful thing when you come across a business that gets it, that understands most restaurants, and this is just like most of you out there in our niche, most restaurants, unfortunately, look at numbers the exact same way, meaning that most restaurants don't do what I just described this Italian restaurant doing with Beto and the other waiters, and they don't because their food costs go up. You know, if you have 25 waiters and you've got two concierge up front, as an example, and you're feeding everybody, right, that's a lot of extra plates of food. So on your data sheet it's going to say, hey, your food costs went up. Or it's going to say you had a lot of food go out the door, nobody paid for it, right, it's not going to show the increase in revenue. So a lot of finite thinkers that so many of you hear me talk about on here, so a lot of finite thinkers that so many of you hear me talk about on here, looking at the data, are like no way, I'm not going to give that food to the waiters. Meanwhile, what we teach restaurants and meanwhile what the very successful restaurants do, whether we're working with them or not, is what I just described Making sure their waiters are storytellers, making sure the waiters can go to the tables educated to be able to tell the story about the food. And therefore, what is the result is you're going to sell many more specials for the evening, and that far offsets letting your waiters try the food and see this is the exact same thing in our niche.

Speaker 2:

Going back to how I began the story and talking about just this doctor that wants to sell more Invisalign but is making the mistake that so many restaurants do looking at paper going well, I mean, if I'm going to put Timmy, susie and Nancy into this thing, then you know that that's $4,800 or $5,200 or $3,000, whatever the hell the number is. And unfortunately, that's how so many of you out there look at it. And it drives me crazy because it is not just you and our niche, it is every. And it drives me crazy because it is not just you and our niche, it is almost every business that we ever go in to help. And when we work with really successful restaurants and they bring us in to take them to a whole other level, a lot of those restaurants already do these things.

Speaker 2:

It's now how do you tweak it, how do you enhance it, how do you train the waiters to speak about it in a different way, and a lot of other things as well. But all of you, I hope you can understand that if you're wanting to do more clear aligners or, let's say you're a practice and you want to do more braces right, then that makes sense to put braces on your people. If you're a practice wanting to do more clear aligners, you have to put your people in clear aligners Like listen to how crazy it is that you want to try to convince your patient base or people that you want to become a patient. How crazy is it that you're putting your team in braces yet trying to tell your patients they should be an Invisalign or whatever clear aligner you want them in patients, they should be an Invisalign or whatever clear aligner you want them in. I mean, in many respects that's like the waiter sitting down at a table with a family of three that's sitting there and the waiter sits down with something on the menu to eat, meanwhile tries to convince the family to all buy the specials and spend $30 more a plate. Listen to how crazy that is. That would never work in the restaurant industry and it's not going to work inside your practice either.

Speaker 2:

Hey everybody, brian Wright here Hope you're enjoying today's episode. Let's step away for a second. Got a really cool announcement that I certainly am excited about and it's a bootcamp that I'm going to be delivering all around advanced sales skill sets using the greatest sales tool through experience ever created in our niche the iTero machine. This course is going to dive into some major advanced things, things that you most likely didn't even know the iTero could do. I'm going to teach you how to use all of those features, based on what type of exam you're sitting in front of. Look an important sales not about you know, this podcast is not about this today but all of you this rings true no matter what industry you're in in our niche or out is that people don't care what they need until you've convinced them. You're the place to buy what they want, and there is no better tool on the planet to do that with in the exam room than the iTero machine.

Speaker 2:

I'm going to be teaching all team members how to use the iTero machine via how their role applies in your office right yes, receptionist, clinical assistants, once people are in treatment at the refinement appointment. How we can reshape that, the start appointment. How we can transform that. Your doctor exam, your TC exam. It's going to be for everybody in the office and it is going to transform your conversion. It's going to be for everybody in the office and it is going to transform your conversion. It's going to transform your starts in revenue and, really most importantly, it's going to teach you how to engage when getting people engaged and focused is harder than ever before. So I'm going to put the link to subscribe or, excuse me, to register below. Hope to see you and your team there.

Speaker 2:

And now let's get back to today's episode. Guys, it's asinine, it makes absolutely no sense. And during the sales process and this goes for your receptionist, this goes for all of your people During the sales process how are your people going to walk up to the tables and really sell and edify how beautiful the specials are where the food was sourced? You've got to try this. The experience is so amazing. We've got the perfect bottle of wine to pair with it.

Speaker 2:

Let me talk to you about it. How can you train them to ever be great at these things when you don't let them taste the food? How can your team, how can your employees ever be great at telling stories about how much better Invisalign is in treatment than braces, how much more convenient it is, how much less painful it is, how much more streamlined it is, how much quicker as long as the doctor knows what they're doing how much quicker it can be than braces, how it didn't disrupt your lifestyle because you didn't have to come in as much. How in the world can you ever expect your team to become great sellers like that whenever you're putting them in braces, not Invisalign, and you wonder why your conversions down or the family that was there in your practice yesterday, walked out and didn't buy from you is. These are the leaky things, these silent saboteurs Like Joey's sitting there, little Joey, in the treatment exam watching your treatment coordinator in braces talk to him about how great Invisalign is and they should be comfortable doing it. They're already confused. They're shopping at multiple practices. They're shopping all over the place, they're calling all over the place and these things, I'm telling you, are conversion killers. Now, if you're a practice that doesn't really give a damn whether you do more braces or more aligners, if you're a practice, like I said earlier, that you just want to do more braces, is this going to kill you? No, but it's still something.

Speaker 2:

Again, today is not about Invisalign. Today is not about something singular. Something singular. It's about a whole broader perspective, if you will, on how you need to look at things, numbers, the leadership inside your office, why your people need to be trained.

Speaker 2:

This Italian restaurant that I've been referencing today would also have their waiters taste the desserts and throughout their journey there, they would taste everything on the menu, because what you never want is a waiter that can't say, yeah, I've tried that, it's awesome, or hey, look, I've tried that it's really good and I think it's an excellent option. I think this one over here, I think, is even better and will take your experience to another level and you'll be really glad you went with it, but you'll be happy with both. So they're not going to downplay something, they're going to upplay the other thing. So they're educated on the whole menu, they're taught how to sell it at the tables. I mean, how many I think I said this at the beginning how many times you've been to a restaurant and the waiter says I don't know, never had it. I got to go find out something like that. Right, there is a sign that the restaurant doesn't get it right.

Speaker 2:

It's the same thing in all of our niches world and all of these, all of you out there, you constantly are going back to what you hear me talk about here. All the time. You were constantly going back to more advertising, more advertising. Our problem is not enough calls. Our problem is not enough calls. Meanwhile, you have leaky holes all over the place, just like this practice, and obviously there were other. You know, during the workshop and I was taking notes you know there were several and and a lot of them. No matter what practice you go into, is the same leaky holes is is.

Speaker 2:

A lot of things are happening every single day and and and it's some. Some of it is. You don't know what you don't know. Others are other things, but the greatest sales people ever are storytellers. They are absolutely brilliant at telling stories and bringing their product, their service, whatever it may be, back into that story, relating it back to the story.

Speaker 2:

And whether you're a restaurant that really gets it, like this Italian place that has all their waiters taste the desserts and then the tray is brought out to the table, you can visually see them. And the waiters are so educated because not only do they describe the desserts and edify to the desserts they're made in-house and do they describe the desserts and edify to the desserts they're made in-house but they also can say, based on the meal you had tonight, let me narrow it down to two for you. You're not going to be disappointed. There is an art to all of this and if your waiters aren't educated and they're not role-played with and they're not trained how to do all of this stuff, your sales are going to suffer. The experience, really more importantly, is going to suffer for the table, because these are things that make great restaurants, not just the food, just like back to our niche. It's great experiences that make the orthodontic practice, the dental practice, it's not just the clinical, it's everything combined that creates the fan.

Speaker 2:

And if your people can't tell the story, how in the world do you think they're going to be able to sell more Invisalign? I mean, think about it. You're a mom, you have a couple kids. You have a patient in front of you in the exam. That's a mom has a couple kids and they're in between whether or not they want to do aligners or not, and you have a TC in braces, right. But if you have the TC in aligners, now we can tell a story. You know, mary, I'm a mom just like you and I've got a busy lifestyle just like you. You're driving your kids all over the place to practice. That's kind of my life outside of work here too, and I went the Invisalign route, I went the Clear Aligner route and it's a game changer, so much more convenient. And I got to tell you, if your kids were my kids, I'd be saying, hey, let's go with Invisalign. And there's more to that.

Speaker 2:

But you can see how, whether it's a restaurant, whether it's inside your practice, whether it's this, whether it's that, guys, the philosophies are the same. The mindset has to be in a way where you can see these things. You have to be a leader. How you can't see this. I mean, come on, of course, the second one I just said there is more powerful in being a storyteller, in being relatable. It's hard to be relatable when you're sitting there with brackets on your teeth trying to say, well, aligners weren't good enough for me, but I think you should go with Invisalign. I mean, come on.

Speaker 2:

So you're sitting there saying, eh, the $3,800 or the $5,000, I don't want to afford them, to slap them into braces. Now you've got a family sitting there with somebody that has braces on trying to tell them Invisalign's the thing for you. It makes absolutely no sense. You've got an assistant in the back with braces on trying to tell the patient hey, kiddo, when sister starts here, she should be able to go. She should go with clear aligners. It is crazy. Everybody All because you want to save a few bucks on the lab fee. It makes absolutely no sense. Your people, they need to taste the food inside your practice. You get the analogy. They've got to be educated about the options, Cross-trained, all the things that we talk about on here. But most importantly, relating to today's message, is that they've got to be able to tell their own story about being in treatment with the doctor they work for. They've got to be able to edify that clear aligner experience and I hope all of you this rings true and you make this adjustment.

Speaker 2:

And really there's a lot of embedded messages in today's podcast. It's not really just about it. It's also looking at your numbers differently. Like this is how so many of you out there just sabotage your success personally and professionally because of how you the problems right away and I sit there and I go okay, on one hand, you can look at data and you can look at production, collections, conversion, no-shows, the list goes on and on and, yeah, you can tell the leaky holes. But just like we talk about so much on here are the biggest leaky holes. Don't show up on any data sheet in the world.

Speaker 2:

The three missed new patients because Susie the receptionist wasn't able to answer it, because she's on the phone with something else or she's dealing with a patient. Your law firm out there, your restaurant, gets an incoming phone call with inquiry about should I schedule or not? We're shopping between two steakhouses and you don't answer the phone and hundreds others. And it's the same way here, where? Nowhere in your data sheet are you going to see that you're not growing your Invisalign business? Because you look at numbers all whacked out and you put Susie, timmy and Joanie or Joey in braces and then now they're sitting there trying to tell the family clear liners are for you, well, the clear liners are for me. Why are you wearing braces Right? Or you know Beto the waiter, so you haven't tasted the specials, so how do you know they're good? It is so similar in so many businesses out there and it's a leaky hole. Everybody.

Speaker 2:

It's these silent saboteurs that we talk about over and over and over and over again on here that can bring you down and you have to be investing. You've got to be investing in your waiter's knowledge. You have to be investing in training them. You have to be investing in making sure they're tasting all of your food, they're educated in a way that they know everything about the menu, that they can sell it through edification at the tables, just like all of our people out there in our niche. You've got to be able to educate your team. You have to invest in educating your team. You have to invest in getting your team trained on an ongoing, repetitive basis. You've got to invest in their knowledge. You've got to invest to make sure that they can sell your product and teach people why they should see more value in it and why you're better and more unique. Period Outside of culture, training your people is always the best marketing investment, more than anything you will ever do outside your doors.

Speaker 2:

And the great thing is, there's only a few percentage points of people that can ever get that about their business and that's why those businesses are called famous, because that's how they all do it. You're never going to go to a Michelin star restaurant and have their waiters not have it taste everything on the menu the dessert specials for that night, the food specials for that night, the drink specials for that night. You're never going to. But you go to 99.9% of all of the restaurants and they don't do it, never going to. But you go to 99.9% of all of the restaurants and they don't do it. And they don't do it because they think it costs more or their problem is advertising. It's the same way in our niche. Same way in our niche Very few times since I wasn't really something that I paid a lot of attention to, and this has been many, many years ago now, and ever since I've paid attention to it like crazy is how many practices all go in and they'll see the employees in braces, and it just blows me away when it's a practice that has aspirations to do more aligners and it's just a matter going back to everybody.

Speaker 2:

If you're constantly thinking experience and how that relates to sales, do you think it makes sense for your ultimate salesperson, your treatment coordinator, to be sitting there with brackets on their teeth trying to convince mom and daughter to go with Invisalign? It makes absolutely zero sense and I got one. Even better than that, with all the studies showing people are calling five or more practices. What if your receptionist answers a call and they say, hey, do you do Invisalign? Do you do clear liners? How much does it cost? Does my insurance cover it? All the inquiries that receptionists are getting more and more. Just like we say, your ultimate sales machine is the treatment coordinator and the receptionist. Now it is the same exact role All of you in any business out there should understand. Your phones play as big of a role, if not bigger role, in the sales process than any other position you have, even though they're not usually called salespeople or not. They're not in a sales role air quotes.

Speaker 2:

But if you're a receptionist, if you put Janice in braces to save a few bucks on the lab bill, now she can't sit there and say, hey, those are great questions. Let me talk to you about it. I'm actually in Invisalign myself and thank God I trusted this doctor. I mean, he is amazing. He has treated thousands of cases and it has gone so beautifully well for me and my family. I'm a busy person outside of work.

Speaker 2:

Go through the spiel as you're answering the questions. Can you imagine? Well, I'm actually in braces so I really can't answer that. But again, going back to the waiter analogy, well, I've never tasted it, but I've heard it's good, not even close to the same. You can relate it, no matter what type of entrepreneur, what type of business you are out there employees listening. This rings true personally and professionally in so many different ways.

Speaker 2:

The greatest marketing opportunity all of you have is teaching your people to become storytellers, and they can't do it when they know nothing about the food or they're not wearing the aligners. When you want them to tell aligner stories, you've got to reshape your mindset. As always, I appreciate your support. Hopefully this rings true. It's a lesson about so many things, so many different things, from how you're looking at numbers to your leadership skills, your mindset, your salesmanship, how you're training your people on down the list. Hope you enjoyed it.

Speaker 2:

If you're watching on YouTube, hey there, appreciate the following, as always give this a thumbs up, make some comments, get some dialogue going. Remember, if you have a question, plenty of other people do too, and they may just be afraid to ask it, so make sure to ask it for us on there and get the dialogue started. Audio Experience Channels we keep growing like crazy. All major outlets out there make sure to give us a five-star review. Share this with friends, family, colleagues, anybody looking to transform their life, career and or business. Hope everybody enjoyed today and until next time we'll see you soon. Bye-bye.