Yes, the power of words. Thank you for your great feedback from last week. I enjoy reading your thoughts, though I care more about what you do, how you apply, and ways you implement these strategies and concepts.
Hardly a day passes without us receiving a positive story from a Team Member or Doctor who has tried new verbiage or took control over their patient experience or completed more life changing dentistry – all as a result of taking action on what we talk about right here.
And because of your extra productive work last week, I’m going to reward you with a surprise… an early preview of my newest book. You’ll have a chance to grab a copy next week (so stay tuned). Today, you can read the entire first chapter right now…
Read Chapter One of My Upcoming Book >>>
It’s my most complete work yet. It takes what we are talking about right now to a whole new level.
It is my absolute definitive guide and game plan on the creation and engineering of a profitable dental practice that you actually enjoy. I’m quite proud of it, not because of what I say in it instead because of what it will do for you… elevate the way you play the game of dentistry as a business owner and a clinician to ensure you are
at the pinnacle of your career, no matter your age or where you are on your journey.
Preview “The Complete Guide To Creating A Highly Profitable Dental Practice” >>>
Now, if you dug into last week’s Report, you saw a lot more than just words. If you read between the lines, you understood the mentality, attitude, leadership, ownership, management, and influence of always transitioning things to the positive. The same goes with your own way of thinking.
One of my great friends says, “I’m not a pessimist, I’m just an optimist with experience.” I realize that not everything is going to work out perfectly and not everything is in fact positive – however – it’s far better for you to know that and to still encourage your patients towards the outcome that you know is in their best interest, without reluctance or hesitation.
Never forget: people buy confidence. I say this all the time and I go even more in-depth with my highest-level Private Clients during our Advanced Psychology Training.
This is leadership and influence at its core. From positive expectancy over outcomes to the way you manage your team (more on that in a couple weeks) to how you communicate with patients.
Last week, I promised to share some of the ways you can set patients up for success using the positive pre-framing psychology, so let’s just take a couple of the big ones.
First, everyone stumbles on insurance. I’ve already shared what words to never say because it gives the patient an easy excuse.
Instead, what if you shared the amazing advantage and reasons why you are independent from their insurance and why that should give them a great deal more confidence in being a patient at your practice…
“We provide personalized care and practice relationship-based dentistry. We knew we could either let the insurance dictate the type of care you receive or we could ensure the integrity between you and our doctor, which is where the decisions about your health belong.”
All too often we apologize for not being in insurance or we act nervous about it. It comes across as if we are running from that decision. Instead, it should be a positive. Tell them the benefits, advantages, and reasons why – confidently.
The greatest example of positive pre-framing and education of the patient is when you establish what optimal health is (by your definition) with patient before they are diagnosed and ideally before they are in the chair.
Having a conversation about ‘what health is’ in advance of them receiving a treatment plan and having their health assessed raises their own expectations and it puts everyone on the same page.
Until we have defined a common vision for why a patient is there, what people come to you for, what you are about, and how you determine success for your patients – it is impossible to compare and contrast where their state of health is at today versus where it deserves to be without it feeling overwhelming, a little pushy, and uncomfortable as it appears to be more your idea for them instead of your mutual ideal that you’ve arrived at together.
This is one of my most powerful principles that is often overlooked. Really, it deserves to be one of those principles that requires an entire course and takes a dedicated time to master. I call it self-diagnosis. That is when the patient, themselves, come up with their own pathway to health, with you being their guide.
Let’s do one more that brings this to life. Treatment as a whole – any time you have dentistry to do – be so excited about it and while you must balance this with being empathetic (incredibly important), you do not want to make things out to be negative in any way and undermine yourself by diminishing treatment.
If it is important enough to diagnose, it is important enough to proactively do something about it to make it better.
You want to celebrate opportunities to help your patients – and here’s the key – WITH THEM. We can avoid a root canal, celebration; or we save a tooth, celebration; or we can help them sleep better, or get rid of a denture, or be proud of their smile, or get disease out of their gums… celebration! Discovering ways to help people is a positive outcome.
I said this last week and it’s worth saying it again – I see way too many teams and even doctors who think they are doing patients a favor by “saving them money” instead of telling them about the full treatment or not expressing the value of doing “all the work” necessary to get them back to an ideal state of health.
“Doing what insurance covers” is a failure, it is not case acceptance – if there is more to be done. This is why the crutch of insurance is completely undermining the integrity of your clinical philosophy and quality of your care.
This doesn’t mean you don’t maximize their benefits or that you don’t help them if they can’t afford the state of ideal dentistry. It simply means that you don’t want anything to get in the way of what’s best for the patient by your standard and you want to celebrate the opportunity you AND your patient has to restore or improve their health.
That’s why they are there, at least that’s supposed to be the reason. But it’s up to your experience, your verbiage, your positioning, and your confidence. That is the key to all of this. The way you speak and convey the positive perspective of every thing ever said in any way.
The best thing for you to do this week is to play patient with every team member and go to work on making sure everyone knows what their ‘positive’ approach should be and assess how they are on expressing everything from a position of confidence.
Ultimately, the combination of confidence and positivity will literally change your ability to control outcomes with more patients. What more could you possibly want?
How about the confidence and positivity that leads to your own control and power over your life and practice – same as you do for patients. This is what my new book is all about.
Take a look and see for yourself. There’s plenty of thought provoking, idea challenging, status quo crushing, self-limiting belief destroying and most of all ambition expanding just in Chapter One…
