Why Selling Your Dental Practice Alone is a Risk | Alabama Dental Practice Broker Fain Casey

I've had a lot of doctors actually say

that to me you know in my initial visit

with them to talk about doing the

transition on their practice and I've

had them Point Blank well why shouldn't

I do this myself and every one of those

has already told me one of the reasons

the main one of the main reasons why

they are interested in selling is time

you know they're like man I I'm swamp

between home and work and everything so

I come back to them first come back to

this well you can do it not sit here and

tell you you cannot do it but there's a

lot you don't know some of it you're

going to learn by error and that's going

to take time but it's like how that's

what I do that's what I do for a living

it takes a lot of time where are you

going to get the time you going to take

it from home or you going to take it

from work you're going to take it from

both so and then as you make mistakes

which I promise you

will and you've got a buy and then

mistakes are made and the deal falls

through you have to start

over so that's that's something you

should really consider another thing

is you know some

doctors you know they I guess they're

almost embarrassed to admit maybe they

don't know how to do something or feel

like they should know how to do

something when really it's smarter in my

opinion to just admit that you don't and

they do that in their

clinical they do they're not going to

try to do something clinically that

they're not real comfortable with and

have a mess as a result so why would you

apply that to the transition of your

practice another big point that I like

to make to him in that conversation too

is listen you know there are several

major decisions that you've made in your

life and the ones concerning your career

was to be a dentist to own a dental

practice and now you've reached the

point to sell your dental practice and

it needs to be done correctly and again

this is what we do between me and Matt

and Ryan and John

in the last seven years we've sold over

150 Dental practices so we're pretty

good at it and you know what we've

learned a lot because every deal we have

a saying every deal is the same but

every deal is different what makes them

different is the personalities and then

the emotions that come from those

personalities and our ability and

experience in that to help moderate and

control that and

take the emotions out of the deal and

stick to the facts and the protocol or

the processes we like to call it and

stick with it and you've just got such a

better chance of getting the end result

that everybody wants both the seller and

the

buyer the challenging part of the trust

factor

is your time limitation of spending it

with the seller cuz you're going to

start out with the seller and then the

buyer's going to come later and you've

got to gain trust through them but what

I've discovered is through the process

of getting the valuation done on the

practice and your communication of all

that and being honest upfront and laying

out what you

see as the professional involved in our

role what those ch challenges are and

being clear and that way once you get

the valuation done and they're happy

with the valuation and everything then

you don't start bumping into these

things that if you would have just told

them about it before then it wouldn't

have been a surprise then when it

happens they look at you and go you know

he told me that this could be a

challenge so doing those things is where

you're able to gain trust in a that

short period of time and develop a

relationship with them and that's that's

paramite and and one of my favorite

parts of the job is the initial visit

with a doctor that's thinking about

selling

because I am brutally honest about

things and I also tell the ones that are

better how proud they should be of what

they've accomplished in their career and

how I respect that and then the

responsibility that I take on to help

them transition that practice and how I

do not take that lightly because they're

only going to do this one time and it

needs to be done correctly and then the

same thing with with the buyers uh I've

gotten to where just here recently I

tell a lot of buyers depending on the

circumstances how much doubt they may

have or they're really digging in too

deep or trying to get too many different

opinions outside of mind and everything

and I'm like listen I I'm really not

here to try to sell you this dental

practice what I feel my role is is to

provide you with as much information as

I

can that would allow you to make a

comfortable decision but not just be

comfortable but you should be excited to

move forward

are you always going to have that little

nagging doubt over here yeah you

probably are but that comfort and

excitement should far outweigh that

where you want to move forward if you

cannot get there my advice is to don't

move forward and I think it kind of

catches some of them off guard because I

think they view our role is he's just

trying to get this done so he can get

paid another thing that validates trust

with buyers and and sellers too for that

matter is our valuation we take a lot of

pride in the accuracy of them so through

our network of dental specific lenders

when you've got a buyer and then we

share our file over and provide the

valuation and the banks run it through

their system they're like man they're

they're spot on I'd actually loan a

little more money on this practice

probably and then they tell the buyer

that and then the seller knows that that

even brings more trust into the whole

circle and so that helps and then you

get CPAs that validate numbers and once

you start digging deeper for more

people's opinion and everything then you

start getting vared little things

different that that causes problems and

sometimes it's people who are providing

bad advice doesn't happen very often but

it does

happen it's got to where now in my

initial meeting with somebody that's

thinking about transition their practice

I ask them about not only their patient

credits but their AR because those two

things are a line item together in in

most

cases and it it's surprising how many of

them don't know they're really not I

mean they know their a are more likely

than they do their patient credits but

I've seen some that were really bad and

so then they have to go through this

process to clean it up and they don't

want to do that I can't do it for them

and it's just another challenge that's

now into the deal but I tell them up

front hey what are your patient credits

like and if they can't answer that

question I demand that they you know

provide that information for me and if

it is out of whack then you know you

need to start cleaning this up this is

the the process I'm not an attorney so

you have to make sure you're doing this

the legal way there is a process for

that you need to get somebody on your

staff to handle this immediately and a

lot of times it's just stuff that's

super old that they're you know that

patient's moved far far away or has

passed on or whatever the case may be

and then the same thing with the AR it's

important to make sure

that your AR is is good and when I say

good it's collectible and it's within

that 30 to 60 day range because that's

going to impact the sell of the practice

how are we going to structure the AR are

we going to sell it at closing on top of

the sell price of the practice or are we

going to have it collected for the next

90 days post close I prefer to sell it

at closing it just makes everything

clean and simple but selling it post

cloes I mean collecting it post cloes

I'm sorry is it's very doable but they

need guidance and help on that and when

you see the AR real high there A lot of

times there's legitimate reasons for it

but that's a red flag for a buyer so

when as soon as you list them you make

sure you've had that discussion with

them so in the process of you finding

the buyer and going through the process

by the time you get there they've

cleaned it all up and gotten it to where

it should be so it's

nonissue