Heather Nottingham emphasizes relationship-based, ethical “sales” in dentistry, focusing on trust, service, and long-term patient care.
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About Heather Nottingham
Heather is the VP of Training & Phone Skills Instructor at All-Star Dental Academy. She is a former retail sales trainer and manager for Bloomingdale’s, Kate Spade, and Theory, and a top new patient coordinator for a multi-million-dollar high-end dental practice where she personally increased revenue by over a million dollars in less than 18 months. She has over 24 years worth of customer service, training, and phone experience, and designed the All-Star Dental Academy Phone Success Course as well as the GREAT Call® Process.
About Alex Nottingham JD MBA
Alex is the CEO and Founder of All-Star Dental Academy®. He is a former Tony Robbins top coach and consultant, having worked with companies upwards of $100 million. His passion is to help others create personal wealth and make a positive impact on the people around them. Alex received his Juris Doctor (JD) and Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Florida International University.
Episode Transcript
Transcript performed by A.I. Please excuse the typos.
00:02
This is Dental All-Stars, where we bring you the best in dentistry on marketing, management, and training. Welcome to Dental All-Stars. I’m Alex Nottingham, founder and CEO of All-Stars Dental Academy. And with me is Heather Nottingham, co-founder and VP of Training. And we are talking about Sales Redefined. Please welcome Heather. Hi everybody. Hi Alex. Thanks for having me today. We are happy to have you. Yeah. Sales Redefined.
00:30
Over the last few months, you were playing with this model. You love acronyms and we at Ulster Dental Academy believe in service. We don’t believe in sales in the sense that the way it’s been defined, right. So redefining it in dentistry and just abroad sales has a negative connotation. So we prefer the word service. Now, yes, you need sales for revenue. Yes. There’s a process of selling.
00:56
but it’s a used cars manipulation. We want to avoid with respect to that’s what we choose service, but there is a way of redefining and you were working on this acronym. So tell me about, or actually maybe before we get to sales redefined, because then there it is. And the podcast is over before we get, let’s, let’s do the drum roll and, and do I have a drum roll here somewhere? I think I have a drum roll. Do I, I’m like, no, I don’t have a drum roll. Oh, whatever. I have an air horn.
01:24
I don’t even know. Yeah, yeah. It’s not working on my… It’s like Christmas vacation. I know it should happen. I should get that one. Okay. Anyways, my sound effects are not working at the moment, but we’re talking about… Let’s go back to the history. Why service over sales? Maybe a little bit of history about, for those of you who’ve heard a story about All-Star or where you came from in that perspective. So tell me. Yeah. Well, just going back to when we worked for your dad’s practice, my father-in-law.
01:51
There was a lot of training out there and we were exposed to different companies and different things. And one of the things that we saw that just really wasn’t the right fit for our practice in particular. And I know it’s not the right fit for a lot of practices that we talk with is just a very heavy sales based approach where it’s very much about closing and get them in and get them booked. And we don’t want to spend a lot of time.
02:19
focusing on the patient’s needs. We just wanna get the appointment booked. And then when we get them here, we’ll wow them with our treatment. And for us that just, I don’t know, for me at least, it didn’t feel like the right way to do things coming from the background in retail sales and management. And just when you’re dealing with, I mean, dentists are dealing with patients that potentially spending a lot of money. It was the same thing with our retail store. And I know with
02:49
luxury hotels and things like that. Most of the first impression makes the difference. And so everything is sales, as you pointed out, yes. And it’s really mostly about relationships, forging a relationship with the person that you’re talking to on the other end so that there’s innate trust and respect and they like you and they wanna do business with you. And I feel like if you do that and you have that rapport and that relationship,
03:18
You don’t really need to sell. Like, and when we say sell, we’re talking about like pushy, manipulative, salesy, where the person feels like icky about it. I feel like when you’re doing sales the right way or what’s what we call ethical based selling, there’s a win for both people. There should be a win for the practice. Like, look, we’re gaining this really great patient that I feel like we can help them.
03:45
And then there’s also a win for the patient that we’re giving them, we’re providing them a service and improving their life and making them better. And the goal of the sale or the connection, the relationship is not just to get them in for that one appointment. The goal is we really wanna make it, create a lifetime relationship. Dental practices are open for a long time and some dentists that we work with are third generation where they…
04:13
They see people and then their kids and their kids’ kids. So if you set up the relationship properly with that person, then they’re gonna keep coming back and that’s the goal. And that’s how we make money without having to like make it about the money. We make it about the person and about the care and about the service. And from that, the money is gonna come. But that’s when I’m talking about…
04:40
redefining sales is yes, everything is sales. I mean, our son trying to convince us he doesn’t have to do his homework and he should watch TV or be on his phone. That’s a sale. And us falling for it. That’s also a sale or not falling for it. So yeah, so that’s that was kind of the premise is seeing what was out there and what we didn’t like in dentistry. And it’s also
05:07
Team members quite often, they don’t appreciate having to be like manipulative salespeople either. They don’t want to deceive patients or feel like they’re doing something unethical. They want to provide good quality care and treatment. And so when team members are asked to take that approach, the very closing, like, you know, these different words that that companies use, there’s typically a pushback.
05:35
you know, then we wonder why they don’t want to do it. Now, if they’re closed off to any sort of training, that’s not, you know, that’s not good either. But if you’re being taught relationship-based, ethical-based, you know, techniques of verbiage, communication rapport, that’s the type of sales that any team member should be on board with, not get them in. Yeah, and like you mentioned, the words you want to look out for is closing. Let’s close them.
06:05
Let’s get them in. I mean, we have in our webinar, alls backslash webinar, our flagship, our flagship, our flagship webinar that we update every year pretty much. And if you haven’t seen it for a while, take a look again, alls backslash webinar. And we talk about the sales pyramid, which is mostly
06:31
It’s very little rapport. It’s mostly sales and closing. And then the VIP are very important patient pyramid. We look at mostly rapport, which is the ability to build trust and respect with somebody else. And then we get to know their needs. And then it’s you become the logical choice. You don’t have to sell. So that’s where we’re trying to transition and with respect to that word. So…
06:58
Always use, be careful where the word is coming from, how it’s being phrased with respect to that. And that’s really where we try to make, or make a difference in the industry. And that was where we started. And I think dentists too, it’s not just the team, like, cause I’ll hear, oh, my team, you know, we did this training or this other program and they were basically telling, telling team members to lie about if you take their insurance or things like that. Like
07:26
If they call and they ask, do you take this insurance? You say, oh sure, come on in. And I’ve even heard really, you know, popular trainers that’ll say, and I’ll ask them, what do you do if they come on in and they don’t have that insurance? And they’re like, oh, we just, either they get upset or we write it off. And I’m like, why don’t you just start the relationship off with integrity, ethically, you know, building rapport, connection, like if you do those things.
07:51
and you have a great practice, you shouldn’t have to trick somebody into coming in. And so naturally team doesn’t like that, the manipulation, but believe it or not, dentists don’t like it either because they don’t wanna have a bad reputation. You don’t wanna have a bad reputation for your practice. And so a lot of dentists that come to us that work with us, they say, I really appreciate your approach that you’re setting things up. You’re teaching my team to set things up properly.
08:19
with patients so that we know that they’re having a good relationship, that we’re going to get great reviews, we’re going to have these people come in and with trust already built, with a rapport already built, so that when you do go to present treatment, they’re excited and ready to accept it. So all of this on the front end makes case presentation and case acceptance so much easier. So it’s a great process. So Heather, tell me, sales redefined.
08:49
What is it? What does it stand for? How do we implement it? Well, it’s just something silly that when I was thinking about it the other day, and as you mentioned, Alex, I like to think in acronyms. We have our great call process at All-Star, which is our five-part process of answering the phone call with GREANT. You can watch other presentations and podcasts to learn more what that means and the Dental Practice Excellence webinar. But essentially, when I was thinking about
09:16
the word sales, S-A-L-E-S. It’s the first S I coined as service, then the A is appreciation, the L is listening, the E is empathy, and then the final S is support. So those are all the things that it’s kind of like the recipe for having a good sales process is you have all of those things.
09:43
Because quite often when we listen to calls from team members or we, you know, we talk to people, our coaches work with team members on their interactions, practicing for the phones. Sometimes just basic things like empathy are missing, right? Like I don’t know if it’s more common nowadays or if it’s not just, it’s not something that’s being taught, but people don’t innately, like if somebody calls up and they say, I broke my tooth. I’m in a lot of pain.
10:10
My mom, she just cracked a tooth the other day and she said she called up and it wasn’t like, oh my gosh, that’s so terrible. We can help you. I, you know, don’t worry. We’re going to take care of you. You’re a fear patient. They’re just like, okay, when did you want to schedule? Like all of those opportunities to make the person feel heard and special and important, that all goes into the sales process. And that’s why I feel like I was successful in retail
10:40
people that are successful whatever role that they have in various companies, there’s the element of relationship, of listening, of empathy, all of that. So, you know, we can definitely elaborate on the various aspects if you want, or we can just kind of leave it as, those are the words that we’ve outlined. Those are the words, light drop, that’s it. No, let’s look at each word. And I think what I like to do is,
11:09
Maybe you could even, we have a lot of members that listen and we put much of our content online, pieces of it. So maybe we can go to each one and maybe reference some of the things that you teach, ways to apply it. Maybe you can even connect it to the recall process and how it relates. So we’re gonna go through each one. So first- So service. Right. So service- And we just talked about it. I talked about, started with service that-
11:37
Theoretically that we’re using the VIP, which I talk about that in the webinar, the very important patient pyramid that we’re focusing mostly on rapport and you become the logical choice. So service is rapport. So kind of, I guess, maybe build on that. And if you take service and you think about the best companies that provide the best service, whatever the industry. Like
12:04
for hotels, I think of the Ritz Carlton, or in fast food, you think of Chick-fil-A over like McDonald’s or Burger King. And you think of these great companies that have really, really high levels of customer service that are constantly being studied. The defining factor and why they’re so successful is they do training. They intentionally practice, they know their vision, their values, their mission. They talk about what…
12:33
service means to them and how we do things. So like at Bloomingdale’s, for example, we didn’t just hand somebody the bag, you know, we didn’t just put the bag of merchandise. Like if you go to a store, they bag it up, here’s your stuff. Some places you’re lucky if you get a bag or you have to pay for a bag now, self-checkout. But at Bloomingdale’s, they not only wrap it and put it in a nice brown, you know, the big brown paper bag, they actually walk it around.
13:00
the counter and hand it to the person in their hand. If you go to the Ritz Carlton and you ask where the restroom is or where to find something, they don’t just point and say, oh, it’s down there to the right. They’ll say, I’ll walk you there. And they actually walk you there and they open the door for you and show you to the restroom or to wherever you’re going. They go above and beyond. They exceed expectations. So when it comes to service, it’s the same thing.
13:30
over the phone, in the office, whatever it is. If we’re presenting treatment, we just go the extra mile, right? No matter what it is. If it’s the phone call for our patients that used to travel to us for dentistry, I would print out all the different hotels in the area. I would offer to call and book them reservations. I mean, some dental offices arrange a car. It depends, and that’s up to your practice to talk about.
13:57
What is your standards and what is your level of service that you’re willing to provide? I think as a exercise, those that are listening, you can use this with your team. As we go through each of these letters and these words, ask yourself, how are you providing service for your practice? This could be something you can review every week. Can we be mindful of this?
14:24
Demir. Very sexy. Very mindful. So S, what’s the next one that? And just one last thing about service is in the All-Star Online Training Program, we have an entire course called Customer Service 101 that’s dedicated towards going over the service aspects of the first phone call up through the patient experience. What are we wearing? How does the office look? How does it smell? What are we saying and doing with patients to provide that extra level of service?
14:53
So if you’re a member, you can check that out. If you’re not, sign up for the. That’s a good, that’s a good course to remember and make sure we get to. There’s so many good courses at All Star. The system. I love that course. It was supposed to be an hour and I had so much. It was two hours. It has so much fun. There’s a lot of information. So the next letter, the A in sales is appreciation. So really just letting the person know whether they’re in person or over the phone.
15:21
that you appreciate the fact that they took the time to reach out, to get in contact with you, to research. When people call a business or they go to an office, they’ve taken time out of their day, they’ve taken time, money, they’ve spent money, time, effort to get there. They’ve done research typically, they’ve read reviews, not all, but a lot. They’ve looked at your social media.
15:46
So really just showing that appreciation that you’re grateful that they’ve reached out and that you’re there to help them. If they’re a current patient, continuing to show appreciation for the fact that we appreciate you are patient in the office. We’re really grateful to have you and remind them of that often. Whenever you see them, they’re overdue for an appointment. We appreciate you as a patient. We’re looking forward to seeing you. So I think, and even…
16:14
You know, you can do like we did in your dad’s practice. We did a patient appreciation party and things like that often where we would acknowledge patients and invite them into the office and have appetizers and, you know, do a little, have little fun swag bags. So there’s all sorts of different things. I know that our son’s dental office, the pediatric dental practice, they’re always doing like, you know, where they do a party and they have like the…
16:42
food trucks that come and the balloons and the magician and everything. So any type of appreciation goes a long way, the sales process, you know, thanking them for meeting with you, sending them a letter, sending them a follow-up, whatever you can. So that’s the A. All right, and make sure you’re asking your team, how do we appreciate, I’m making up these words today. How do we appreciate patients? So next we have the L.
17:11
in sales, which is listening. So listening, that’s what I had to do it that it goes without saying, but we do talk about it often in the online program, we talk about the fact of not just listening, but practicing active listening, right? So active listening is where we’re listening to the person, we’re nodding, we’re acknowledging, we’re hearing them. And then we’re reflecting back
17:41
heard them say, let me make sure I understand you correctly. Here’s what you told me. Here’s my understanding. Asking them more questions, being involved and engaged in the conversation. So, you know, let me make sure I understood you correctly. You, you know, you initially called because you had INC concerns about your smile, or you had this concern about pain in your upper right hand, you know, upper right tooth. So…
18:09
You know, tell me more about that. Tell me, you know, how long has this been going on for? Um, issues have you noticed? And just asking them questions and staying active in the conversation. And if they have an objection, let’s say, well, I really want to do this treatment, but it’s too expensive. You know, okay. I hear you saying that it’s too expensive. Tell me more about that. Like, have you been, have you gotten this evaluated by anybody else?
18:38
previously, or is this something that you are setting aside money for, whatever it is. So just really active listening and listening so that they feel like you’re hearing them, I think is the most important part and acknowledging what they’re saying. Continue So next would be empathy, the E. So empathy is where
19:02
we’re understanding where they’re coming from, right? Like we’re, and I always get confused, the difference between sympathy and empathy, right? Like- Well, sympathy is, hey, I feel bad for you. Where empathy is like you really, you’re there with them. You’re there with them, right? You’re like, I’m here with you. Like, let’s see what we can do to fix this and make it better.
19:23
So like, like sympathy is somebody’s in the hole and you just say, I feel like, right. Like they’re down in the hole and you’re up, you’re sorry about that. That doesn’t look like it stinks. And I think as you go down and sit there with them in the hole, exactly. You climb down there, you’re there with them and you’re like, listen, I get it. I’ve been there. Like when dentists tell me they’re stressed, they’re frustrated, they’re, you know, they’re having all these work life balance issues or, you know, things with their team that are going on.
19:52
I’m like, listen, understand and I get it. I’ve been there. You know, we run a business here too. Like we’ve run a dental practice before. So I completely understand and let’s figure out how we can get this resolved together and let’s talk about solutions. So listening, being part of the solution, offering suggestions, seeing what also helping them try and figure out how maybe they can come up with.
20:21
some things as well. So I think just listening in this day and age, a lot of times it’s like everybody’s busy. We’re not really listening with intention. We’re listening to respond to the person, but we’re not really listening to like see how we can best help them. So I think listening, empathy, all of those, those kind of are very similar. So we did empathy. Now we have support. So support is the final step and just
20:49
making them feel supported, making them feel like we’re there for them. I tell team members all the time that on the phones or in the office, the biggest thing that we can do with patients is make them feel important. And that’s why I think that it doesn’t matter when you’re talking about sales, it could be sales in dentistry, sales in retail, any area, any industry.
21:15
when the person feels supported in their decisions and they feel like they
21:23
trying to think of the words here. They feel like they’re, they’re supported, and we’re supportive of them, they’re more easily going to move forward with the decision versus like, if they’re if they’re not if they feel like they’re on their own. I always say that every single person is walking around with a sign over their head. That’s basically like make me feel important. Right. And so if we can offer that support to them and that
21:50
feeling of importance and we’re helping them, they’re gonna more so work with your office versus another office where they’re just like, like if you’re going the extra mile for them and another office isn’t willing to do that, or they’re just like, well, I don’t understand this insurance stuff, or that’s not my job, that’s not my problem. Like even calling somebody back, when an office like says they’re gonna call you back, or they take the time to do what they say they’re going to,
22:19
sooner than when they say they’re going to do. That’s an office that most people are going to want to do business with. Versus if you say, oh yeah, we, you know, we’re too busy or you’ll have to just text us or whatever. It doesn’t typically work and the person’s not going to move forward with whatever it is. So that’s kind of, you know, just the silly little. Never silly. You’re such a good teacher. The sales redefined. Certainly use the sales acronym to.
22:49
redefine sales to kind of spark your team. We talked about the resource alls backslash webinar for the dental practice excellence webinar, where we talk about phone skills, some great call process and others in there, as well as well as broken appointments, how to reduce turnover. Heather, tell me a little bit before we kind of adjourn. You’re the VP of training. You did the phone skills course, which is the.
23:14
cornerstone course on the program as well as customer service. And we do case acceptance, patient experience, everything that you need for team training and doctor training. Tell me about the program. I hear you talk to a lot of dentists, like, might as well ask you, well, I have you on here. Maybe a shameless plug here, but why, why be a member at All-Star? Why? And I guess the, the pinnacle of the All-Star membership is the online training program. Like why, why should a team do it?
23:43
We’re talking about sales versus service. Just tell me a little bit about it. You’re so passionate about the program. I think it’s just going back to what we talked about before where the businesses and the offices that do training typically are the most successful. I always tell doctors that we don’t have a lot of offices that are bad offices. Our offices that we work with are really, really good offices that are just always looking to get better.
24:08
Right? Like you see the best athletes, the best musicians, the best artists, whatever their, you know, their talent is, they’re constantly practicing and seeing how they can improve. So the online program is not like it’s, it’s great if you have a new team member. It’s great if you have an existing team member that needs some extra refinement. It doesn’t mean that they’re a bad team member. It’s just like, I’m always working on myself
24:39
learning and improving just the same as the best people in any industry are. Dentists, I know that you all often do a lot of CE and continuing education and it’s not you’re not doing that because you’re a bad dentist, right? Like you’re doing it because you’re a good dentist or great dentist and you always want to keep improving your clinical skills. So just the same as that, we’re always looking to upgrade and improve our practice management skills with the
25:08
that we can. The more we can learn, the more we can improve our verbiage, the better. So oftentimes, sometimes offices will say to me that they sign up for the online program because they have some new team members and they want everybody to be cohesive and on the same page and, you know, talk the same, sound the same. Some of our doctors too, they’ll say, you know, we have some new people here and some really seasoned people here.
25:36
but we’re inconsistent when it comes to our verbiage, our communication, our practice management. Maybe they’ve never done training before and they don’t know time management, pre-blocking of the schedule. They don’t know how to have a cohesive customer service process in the office or verbiage. And one of the biggest challenges that offices face is converting phone calls, new patient phone calls to appointments and actually getting them to show up.
26:03
That’s the biggest thing that a lot of our offices do. Call, convert, show up, and then. And accept treatment. First, so we always say. Call, show up, accept treatment, and refer. I will say, so I mentioned the webinar in the program. I would say take a listen to that, watch it. And then I’m gonna offer you, Heather, if you’d be willing, if you watch the webinar and you like what you have to see, schedule, reach out to us. Heather will make herself available. She’s the co-founder. You’re gonna meet with her. She.
26:33
She built the thing. She wrote the bill. She’s a VP of training. She’s the main, I mean, we have multiple instructors, but I think the cornerstone is phone skills. And so what’s nice is she will do sales on you. She will do sales redefined on you. She will go through the sales that we talked about today, the service base, right? Appreciation, listening, empathy, and support and really get to know you. And I’ll tell you, this is really interesting. The external problems. We certainly address that with you with All-Star.
27:02
phone skills, open time, broken appointments, case acceptance, the patient experience. But I’ll tell you, that’s just the surface. It’s the internal problem. That’s what we get to know you. That’s a rapport and empathy. When we see that it’s the confidence, confidence to lead your team. It’s your team cohesiveness that you want, the stagnation that you want to avoid. That’s the internal struggle. That is so…
27:29
when we love to speak to you and get to know you. You’re not just a number, not just an online program or DVD or seminar that you go do and you never touch it again. Our goal at All Star is to serve you from the external, the internal issue, and even the philosophical issue that you deserve better. That’s what it’s all about here at All Star.
27:50
Yeah, and we really, I mean, like you were saying, we talked to every new client, that’s really important to us is it’s very much like a family that likes each other here, each other. You know, all of our interactions, we’re always there for our dentists and teams, they feel they can always contact us if they have questions. It’s just good old fashioned, it’s not old, but it’s old fashioned quality customer service training.
28:20
that we’re really teaching the service, customer service, phone skills, scheduling in a way that is very recipe book. So it’s easy for team members to 20 minutes a week. It’s very easy to absorb and implement. We have all the role play examples in there of the most common challenges. There’s a full resource library.
28:45
We do a call grade each month with an actual call. Oh, you’re giving them the webinar. They have to watch the webinar. Sorry, sorry. Watch the webinar. Here’s the point. Watch the webinar, get all the details, and then talk to Heather. And a lot of you members are listening as well. Hey, we’ll talk to you as well again. We love talking to you. Come to our event All Star Live. Heather, thank you so much for being on the program. My pleasure. And remember to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, get all the episodes. Share with your friends.
29:15
And until next time, go out there and be an All Star. Woohoo!
29:23
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Dental All-Stars. Visit us online at allstardentalacademy.com
