Dental Case Acceptance: One Tip to Compete on the Discretionary-Fund Battlefield

Think about all the things that are withdrawn from your bank account automatically each month: your cell phone payment, your cable and internet service, and so on. That money is gone before you even see it.

Then there are the “one-click” instant purchases: on-demand movies, iPhone apps, music downloads. You can even buy coffee now by waving your smartphone at a scanner at the counter. A good portion of discretionary income nowadays is gobbled up incrementally and electronically.

(Click here to see Imtiaz's article on how to reach dental patients in a hyper-connected world.)

Obviously, dentistry isn’t a player in this new paradigm of easy spending. Neither does it figure into the average person’s household budget alongside the mortgage payment or the groceries. And as much as we might wish differently, dentistry is seldom seen as a long-term investment on the scale of a home or car purchase.

Significant discretionary dentistry belongs in a different category of spending – the few-hundred to few-thousand category – and this is a very competitive battlefield on which to fight. People don’t make purchases at this level very often, and when they do it’s usually either something they absolutely must do (the water heater or washing machine needs replacing) or something they really want to do (the trip to Mexico or that iPad they’ve had their eye on).

In other words, if you want patients to invest their discretionary income, you and the team have to be ready to invest your discretionary energy. And doing that is not as hard as you might think. In fact, you can make a real difference by focusing on just two patients a day.

A special day for two

Select two patient visits a day during which you make a conscious, focused effort to shake up your routine and defy their expectations. Pick two patients for whom you develop a comprehensive, personalized game plan – one that makes you really stop and think about what it takes to reach them and makes them see your practice in a whole new light. That’s two patients each day who are going to experience something extraordinary. Identify these two patients at the morning meeting and have the dental team work together to gather intelligence, create a profile and develop a strategy. Ask yourselves:

What do we know about this patient? How long have they been with us? Have they had any significant changes in their lives recently, such as a change of employment, divorce or marriage? What are their value priorities?

What have we said to them in the past? What treatment did we present and how? How did they react? What were their reasons for not accepting?

What can we do differently? What is this patient more likely to respond to? What value-creation tools do we have (intra-oral camera, imaging, etc.) that we haven’t used?

They’re still not going to say yes every time, but no matter what the immediate result, you can be assured they will walk out with a renewed appreciation for what you do. They will realize that what they just experienced was no ordinary dental visit, and that you are no ordinary dentist.

That’s how the path to “yes” begins.

(Click here for Imtiaz Manji's set of free ebooks on dental practice management!)