Any time I ask someone what their favorite part of dentistry is, they almost always answer with something similar to ‘seeing the patients when we finish, watching their expressions and listening to their stories of change that we all made possible.’
When you think about it, people wake up everyday and they live with their mouths in the state that it is in. Often not knowing what the long term consequences are of it remaining that way and most importantly never really understanding what their options are to improve it and what will be the real benefits they will experience.
This presents our two biggest challenges in dentistry (above and beyond insurance and money, which are trivial compared to these two issues).
1st – The lack of awareness about their own realities because they become blind to it. Even though they wake up every day and look in mirrors; or live with constant pain; or experience uncomfortableness as they chew; or any other list of issues and symptoms.
2nd – The very low expectations they have as to if, what, how that reality can be different and why they deserve it to be.
These are really the first secrets to motivating and compelling patients to experience life changing dentistry.
There is no money problem for something a patient doesn’t know, understand, truly want and is committed to.
The first challenge you must over come is making the patient a believer in their own problems. Then you have to get them to want to solve those problems. This is the battle you face every single day.
This is why rushing to diagnosing results in patients who don’t understand, are not fully committed and don’t even care.
Over the past several weeks, we have talked about the many ways teams sabotage themselves and suppress their case acceptance. Each of those items is critically important to securing the treatment and getting the investment.
Still nothing is more important than these two factors because they are going to dictate the amount of treatment that is on the table to be accepted.
Just like anything, if you start with a smaller number, you will end up with a smaller number still. If you want to start getting more bigger cases and the dentistry that really matters then you want to go to work to master this part of your patient engagement and experience…
Case Building
To be frank, diagnosing is a skill and it must be mastered. However, anyone who knows how to do it can put the treatment down on a piece of paper – that’s no the hard part – it’s getting the person who’s mouth you just put on paper to actually care about it coming off that paper and becoming treatment.
I see all the time doctors and team members alike getting into the habit of diagnosing just to diagnose. It’s great to see that number go up but you can’t deposit diagnosis in the bank – only on what actually gets done.
You want to be deliberate and conscientious about what happens before diagnosing and what happens after diagnosing.
If you don’t go to work on your patients’ awareness and expectations (developing believability and desire), then your diagnosis will stay right there on that paper, in that computer system, part of the chart but it won’t ever turn into money.
You may say your patients make excuses about money or insurance or any number of other things. Rest assured, it’s more about these two much bigger and important aspects that’s really driving their decision.
Good news… For the first time ever – I’m going to host an advanced and incredibly thorough training all about getting patients to want and to buy life changing, comprehensive, full mouth treatment plans.
Call it big (or bigger) cases or high fee (perceived as elective) specialties or whatever you want. I call it life-changing dentistry and getting acceptance on that is the key to putting yourselves in a position to create leverage and growth in a big way.
This is how you bust through any plateaus in your schedule and breakthrough production barriers.
For those of you taking this seriously and wanting to get more out of each patient which leads to you doing more to help them – this training is for you.
Get All of Details and Save Your Seat Now …
In the meantime, have a conversation about what you are doing to increase patient awareness and create expectations so your diagnosis is purposeful in the minds (and mouths) of your patients.
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