This is it my friends; what separates the amateurs from the professionals.
This is the final step in the Art of Creating A-Patients.
Every single day, I get comments from dentists and even worse team members saying their patients don’t have any money and that they wish they could get some of these A-Patients.
They look to blame everything in their life including the lack of growth (whether they are fighting for their first or next million dollars) on their patients instead of taking responsibility.
I have painstakingly walked you through all 6 of the steps required to turn your patients into A-Patients. I’ve shown you how to condition and control every new patient coming into your practice to be one that you will look forward to seeing, one that will appreciate the care you provide, one that will respect your expertise and one that will gladly invest in the treatment plan you designed.
These people do not have to be new patients – they can already be your patients. However, as long as you fight that idea they will continue to disappoint you exactly the same way you are disappointing them as you rob them of the true life-changing dentistry and the impact you are capable of providing.
As long as you treat your patients as though they are C Patients who have no money, make insurance-based decisions and won’t accept anything they have to pay for, or the emergency patients that your practice culture and lack of structured protocols have allowed to proliferate – you will keep getting more of the same.
Let that sink in… you will multiply and get more of what you expect to get.
Fight against me or don’t believe me at your own peril, obviously it’s not going to have any impact on me whatsoever.
On the other hand, if you choose to step up to the challenge, then you will realize that A-patients are the every-patient.
The everyday patient, the next phone call, the random emergency, the referral from someone you haven’t seen for so long, the spouse in the waiting room or the kids who just moved back – every patient can become an a-patient if you give them an opportunity to do it.
Patients who don’t accept your treatment usually hinges on this one last and final step in the A-Patient cultivation process.
Every step is critical but this one is the most often neglected, forgotten and missed.
Before I bring this full circle let me remind you –
If your patients have jobs
If your patients have cars
If your patients live in houses
If your patients wear clothes
If your patients eat decent meals
If your patients have any hobbies
If your patients go on any vacations
… pretty much you can be darn certain if your patients are living in your community, then they have money – they just aren’t giving it to you. Simply because you have not made their oral health important enough for them to invest in it, in you, in themselves above and beyond all of the other things they spend money on.
You have not connected their personal goals and their health priorities to the outcome of the dentistry you are treatment planning.
Plain and simple: you bring treatment acceptance to a culminating point when you have convinced your patients that they deserve the benefits that they will receive from the completion of the treatment you have recommended.
You must move your patient all the way to the feeling of deserve, beyond need, past agreement and acknowledgement to deciding that they refuse to settle for the results of staying the way they are today versus achieving and enjoying the future they can have when they follow-through and invest in their care. That is when you will have their commitment and they will be so compelled to move forward with their treatment that money is not a deterrent. Money may be an obstacle perhaps, but not a deal breaker, as the patient will work hard to find a way to accomplish the goals the two of you have set and agreed upon.
The only way to fully secure treatment acceptance and turn a patient into an A-Patient is to be honest and upfront about the consequences of a bad decision, of delayed treatment, of neglect, of doing nothing, of not moving forward.
You have to convey that there will be more pain from their indecision than the pain of investing their money.
The secret to this is not a trick or a scheme or even selling and certainly not manipulation. Instead, it is what we have been talking about for the past 6 weeks until now. It is about trust, value, transparency, credibility and belief that you are looking out for their best interest. Once you achieve this, there is one thing left to do: clearly, confidently, unequivocally state the true consequences of not listening to you, their dentist.
By not being proactive with their treatment, they will live to regret it as it will never be ‘more affordable’ in the future than it is now.
Today – Now – is always the right decision for their health.
Why? Because that is what they deserve … every time, all the time, every day, in all ways. When patients see your conviction in doing what is best for them and you passionately transfer your enthusiasm and concern from you to them, you will compel them to realize that they deserve to receive the benefits and avoid the consequences by moving forward and investing in their health.
You can in fact create A-Patients, when you follow these 6 steps with deliberate action and structured systems you will be amazed at how many patients who you believe will never say yes and/or have no money will write checks, happily, willingly, and be so grateful that you didn’t give up on them. Like magic, you will see that they won’t give up on you as long as you give them a chance to make a great decision. You will soon see you are surrounded by A-Patients.
It is not your patients who need to change, instead it is your thinking, belief, approach and control over the process of educating patients. You need to help them help themselves so they can decide to do what is best for their health and future by showing them the path to becoming an A-Patient. They will be so thankful to you and you’ll never have to go through all of this again; that I can promise you.
