To Be Great You Must Embrace This Dirty Word…

Selling.

You have got to sell everyday all day with every person who walks in.  Though it’s not what you think and not in the way you think about it.  Actually, it’s much different…


You sell with your words

Also your actions

You sell with your experience

Also your teamwork

You sell with your environment

Also your philosophy

You must realize that all things are ‘selling’ and either you are doing it effectively or you are ruining everything else being done – undoing the good.  You get to choose to do this deliberately or do this accidentally.

Either way, you never stop selling… yourself, your value, the importance of what you do, the benefits of what you do and your relationship with your patients.

You heard me right.  I said it… Never. Stop. Selling.

You can’t afford to get lazy about reminding your patients just how special you are.  Of course, I don’t mean the term ‘sell’ in the way so many apathetic-minded people think about it.  I mean it in the way that’s best for your patients.  I have said it hundreds of times; to sell is to…

Influence

Educate

Compel

Care

Parents ‘sell’ their kids on going to school, doing homework and eating certain foods.

Spouses ‘sell’ their partner on doing chores, running errands and even going on vacation.  Those probably wouldn’t happen, certainly not as often, without a little selling being done.

To sell is to live, to be human, to be real, to take responsibility for creating positive outcomes.

Anyone on the team who doesn’t want to be responsible for their outcomes should be working for free – they show up just to go through the motions, pretending to contribute without actually owning what happens with their patients.

If you want paid, well you better be selling your value of why you matter and your involvement in the practice.  It’s plain and simple.  Truth is, we can get anyone to show up and go through the motions.  What we can’t get, what is really valuable, is the impact that can be made that helps us achieve goals and help more patients; which comes directly from you.  Your personality, your talents and your ability to engage patients all leads to getting them to believe in what you are doing, why they are there, how it matters and how it benefits them.

That’s the value.  That’s the test of real influence… do patients follow-through, comply, invest and return.

Anything short of those four things is failure.

And if you want bonus points, you gotta be so good that your patients can’t wait to tell someone else about you as they gather up all their friends and family and turn them into your patients too.

None of this happens on accident.

It happens because you made it happen by doing something.  By selling your value to them; by selling the importance of what you do for them; and by selling why it matters enough that they should listen, pay and stay with you.

The other reason this matters so much is because you aren’t the only office they could go to.  Believe it or not, there are a whole lot of forces out there working hard to deter your patients from coming in.  You have to have good offense and defense if you want to win this battle, day in and day out, with each and every patient.

And that’s where we will pick up next week.  In the meantime, let’s define all the ways we do a great job ‘selling’ patients on us and where we could do a whole lot better.

If anyone says ‘I don’t like to sell’ or ‘I don’t like to call it that’ – smack them.  Nothing in this message is about you ‘selling’ the fee of dentistry; it’s about something greater, much more important and significant.

The hardest part, as you see it, becomes the easiest part of everything you do, if you commit to mastering this.  That is, if you will be a true professional and embrace your responsibility with this concept.