Turning ‘wants’ into realities: New patients come to your dental practice ready to be wowed, but can you deliver?

[drsnehamaheshwari]

 

The first thing you should realize is that most patients don’t make decisions about their dental treatment based on education. 

People will always find a way to do what they want, but not necessarily what they need. I’m sure you’ve had this happen 100 times. You educate your patient about some dental treatment he or she needs and you hear, "I need to talk to my husband first," or "I’ll check my schedule and get back with you." These statements really mean, "I may need it, but I don’t want it." The reason education kills case acceptance is because patients decide to do dental treatment based on emotion, not education or intellect. In fact, most buying decisions are emotionally based.

When you bought your last car, was it an emotional decision or an intellectual one? For most of us this was an emotional decision. We imagined how it was going to feel driving this new car down the road. We felt good as we envisioned others seeing us in this car. We fell in love with the color and the smell of the leather.

Why do women spend $1,000 on a designer purse? Why do men buy $10,000 watches? These are not intellectual decisions based on education and need. These are buying decisions based on emotion and want.

When you try to educate and teach patients dentistry, you are accessing the thinking and analytical part (left) of their brains. You should be accessing the emotional and feeling part (right) of their brains. This is also the part of the brain that changes behavior. When you look into a patient’s mouth and when you examine someone’s radiographs, you are analytically processing a lot of information to come up with the appropriate diagnosis and treatment plan. You’re thinking about occlusion, vertical dimension, perio, endo, ortho, onlays, crowns, implants, cosmetics, and more.

You then communicate these concepts to your patients in an analytical and educational way, because this is the part of your brain that you’re accessing to come up with the treatment plan. We dentists are very analytical people, so this is how we feel most comfortable communicating with patients.

Most dentists have a case acceptance rate of around 20% to 30%, which means that seven or eight out of 10 patients don’t follow through with treatment. If you and your team learn how to connect with patients on an emotional level, your case acceptance will go up to around 60% to 70%. This means you double your revenue with the same number of new patients! So, how do we present treatment in a way that impacts patients on an emotional level? Tell your patients what is going to happen if they don’t fix the problem. Anytime you tell them a particular treatment they need, follow that immediately by talking about how not fixing the problem will negatively impact their life – pain, more expense, inconvenience, more involved treatment, etc.

What dentists typically talk about is how they are going to fix the problem. They do this because fixing the problem is the part they like to do and talk about. But this is also the part that is usually boring, confusing, or scary to patients.

Explain to patients, how life will be pain free, eating all kind of foods will be fun, appearance will be youthful, good smile and looks etc etc

Helping your patients say "yes" to the treatment they need is important for their health, and important to your financial success. Learning how to improve your treatment acceptance is a win/win situation for everyone. When your practice is financially successful everyone wins – the patient, your team, you, and your family.