Eric Vickery and Alex Nottingham JD MBA discuss the vital link between phone skills and case acceptance in dental practices. Eric emphasizes that the phone call is often the first touchpoint a patient has with a dental office and significantly influences their perception of the practice.
Resources:
About Eric Vickery
Eric holds a degree in business administration and brings a strong business and systems approach to his consulting. His initiation into the field of dentistry was in the area of office management. He managed dental practices for over ten years and has been consulting over 250 offices nationwide since 2001.
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-Star Dental Academy, and with me is Eric Vickery, the president of coaching at All-Star Dental Academy. We’re talking about phone calls and case acceptance. Please welcome Eric. Hey, Alex. So, phone calls, case acceptance, phone skills and case acceptance, that’s our thing.
00:32
And you’re the guru of case acceptance. And the premise of today’s discussion is how phone, the phone call. Uh, leads to case acceptance because I think sometimes we hear case acceptance and maybe it’s more sexy than phone skills because that’s where the money’s at or that’s where the excitement, uh, the cases, the, um, treatment, the planning, okay, that’s the fun stuff. But.
01:02
your you would say it starts with the phone or the phone so critical. So give me bringing this all together to me. Yeah. Eric, help me out here. I think this would be a good review. I think this would be good for those first time hearing it is to understand a couple of things. First, the word sell or sell. Let’s start with that. Let’s start with that. Because case acceptance is a nice camouflage for did they buy from you? And nobody likes to talk about selling in dentistry, me included. I don’t like pressure sales.
01:32
I don’t like that awkwardness of it. I want people to feel like they got good advice from somebody they trust. And the phone call is an extension of that. However, at the end of the day, the purpose is without converting the caller to scheduling, you got no case acceptance, right? So if my conversion rate is really low, obviously I’m not going to have patients saying yes to treatment. Is that fair? That’s true. All right. So we know the phone is the first point of contact directly with our office.
02:00
There’s marketing, there’s advertising, there’s referrals and relationship and things that are happening away from us that start to paint a picture for the patient as they call us. And…
02:14
Historically, they would say things like this. I would hear this educate the patient. They’ll do what’s in their best interest
02:21
Yes, and more, and some more. So if I’m answering the phone and Alex is calling in and my communication skill training is here and my doctor’s clinical level is here, when Alex has a phone call that experiences a five out of a 10, how do you perceive the doctor’s clinical level of skill? You’re gonna bring it down, yeah, you’re gonna bring it down to five. So your…
02:47
ability to communicate is a direct reflection of the credibility that you build with the caller. So we call this the Great Call Process. The Great Call Process is a nearly perfect system for how to flow through this conversation and do a couple things. One, if I’m really good at that, I’m helping you understand how good my dentist is. Two, I’m building relationship with you in a way that makes you want more.
03:17
I hate going to the dentist. I gotta call the dentist. But when you hang up the phone with me, you go, wow, maybe this is the place that finally changes my mind about that. Okay, now, we do that through a couple systems, that GREA, that flow. But in all of those, we’ve been trained to ask questions. We’re asking questions throughout this whole phone call to lead towards what? And I’ll…
03:45
say to team members, I’ll say, well, what’s the most important question? Get their name, get their phone number. You know, how did they hear about us? What’s their chief complaint? All of this. But ultimately, if I say what’s, but what’s the most important question we’re going to ask? So ask for the appointment. But I, but it’s not eager. It’s great. Right. Right. So I can’t ask for the appointment right after I engage with them. I can’t do that.
04:13
and build relationship and rapport with you, Alex the patient, to earn the right to ask for the appointment. So, case acceptance is going to be reflected and continued as this phone call goes. And just got on the phone with a client. They said to me, the administrative team member said to me, people just want answers and they want to get off the phone. Okay, if you succumb to their pressures of just yes or no, yes or no, yes or no, how much is this, blah, blah, blah, you’re
04:42
in the eager formula. And what’s going to happen is you’re going to get a no show for a patient, you’re going to have somebody who doesn’t understand how credible you are, and on and on. So you can use questions without it being annoying, without wasting people’s time, but maintaining engagement, building rapport, and also asking for the appointment. So without getting into role plays and all that kind of stuff, systematically using tools,
05:10
When you, when you, the first four lines, when you greet someone, Alex, you know, you just, you just be the patient. We won’t role play this the whole thing, but you just give me an example of what you think a new patient says when they call into a dental office. Anything what pops in your mind? What do you think somebody says? Well, if I’m calling the first thing is going to be, what are you charged for? Okay. I mean, there’ll be hello, I’m Eric and to be like, what are you charged for veneers? All right. Right to it. All right. I’d be happy to help you out that again. My name is Eric.
05:40
My name is Alex. There we go. And now I’m asking the questions. I’m the captain now. I’m in control of the conversation. That’s a transition statement. Heather does an amazing job at teaching the transition statement. It’s interesting, let’s unpack this a little bit because it’s so powerful. You made the point earlier that if you’re a five out of 10 on the phone, I mean you’re really not setting it up well for your reliever, the dentist.
06:06
Or the, the closer, you know, it’s sort of baseball. Okay. Yes. But not close like sales, but it’s, it’s interesting is, is you can start unpack different aspects of it. Even just a greeting. We’re not going to, Heather does programs all about that on terms of podcasts. And I’ll repeat it now. I’ll say it now. And I’ll say it again. A lot of stuff we’re covering here. We cover in our free webinar, all start dental economy.com backslash webinar. We can put a link as well in the show notes.
06:34
And we cover the great call and detail there. But it’s interesting. I was calling another office recently, just medical office. And actually I invited her to watch the webinar. She’s not even dental and she loved it. And she could see the difference between when you call and so it’s a nice, beautiful office, beautiful office, high end and you call and it’s just like, hi, hello. And they’re nice, really nice, but I don’t know where I called.
07:04
I don’t know your name.” And I said, is this Julie? Julie? Yeah, this is Julie. And so I have to guess who it is because my goal is I wanna speak to the person I spoke to before. So if it says this is Eric, I know I don’t want Eric, I want Julie, but it’d be nice. So these are all thought out. I wanna know who you are. And I wanna know, I also wanna get my name too. And so I wanna ask you a question. When that’s happening and you’re having to guess what her name is, some…
07:31
Consciously, subconsciously, how’s that affecting your confidence in their competence? Right? It actually, it’s not even them I’m upset about. It’s the dent, well, in this case, the doctor. The doctor. Because I was very impressed with the session. I mean, a little rushed a little bit, there’s some verbiage they can improve on, but very impressive, very knowledgeable, very helpful, very clear. But now, if I’m thinking about doing treatment for whatever I want to do in the future, I’m a second guessing.
08:00
If they, and here’s the other thing, they’re not following up. I asked for something, I’ll get it for you. No follow-up. And we talk about this in our customer service push of the program. And in terms of the phone call, and it’s interesting, I told her, this is the other thing that’s important as well, everybody listening, because we have a very large following, we have a very large membership and so on. And I think in anything we’re like, well,
08:29
Let me learn your scripts or your tools. And then I know it. No, you will go back to it. You will go back to your old way. Yes. Because even with this young lady, she was trying and she got it right. Then she, you got to continue to role play and work on, on getting that skillset, like building muscle. And if you stop, you’re going to start going back. So it’s repetition as a mother of skill and you got to continue to work on it. I know it sounds self-serving, but it’s just the way it is. Well,
09:01
Any profession has to get better at what they do consistently, any profession. So listen to yourself on the recording. I know that sounds painful, but go listen to your recordings. When you scheduled someone and you nailed a new patient phone call, go listen to that. What did you do? And also, when you didn’t get them scheduled, what did you do? I’m sure I’ve shared this story before, Alex. The 45 second new patient phone call. We have a client.
09:29
We have a client who emailed me and he sent the attachment. He just said, we have work to do. And it’s with a new team member. No fault of hers, there’s no blame here. But a 45 second new patient phone call. When you hear that Alex, is a good phone call or is that a bad new patient? Okay, all right. So the patient said, hey, I was on your website. I see that you do implant dentures. I have 20 year old dentures that flop around. I can’t eat anything. I hate these things. I want fixed dentures.
09:56
I have Blue Cross with Shield and I’m wondering where do I go from here? Now that’s probably in, I don’t know, $25,000, $50,000 case, upper and lower, all on four implant case. Okay? And it’s not about the money, but I’m just saying in the scope of this, it matters. And our team member said, I’m sorry, we don’t work with them, meaning Blue Cross with Shield. That was the end of the 45 seconds. And the patient said, okay, thanks, bye. What does that matter? This patient is looking for you to help them.
10:26
five minutes on the phone with them and it doesn’t lead to anything because of that. She may call five other offices and you still stand out to her and she calls you back and goes, you know what, I want to work with you guys because of how you handled this phone call. This is where- As you teach in your insurance freedom coaching at All-Star is in many cases you’re at a network it still can apply. It’s still, you know, it’s just a verbiage that you have to be able to rectify. And if it’s cosmetic-
10:55
nothing’s being covered. So they don’t know that we have to educate them. And here’s what the final point about this other office as well as we’re speaking. It’s not the team member’s fault. And dentists listening, it’s because she actually wants to do the training and the dentist won’t do it. They’re too busy to do to think about. So it’s really on the leader and we’re gonna do another podcast about leadership and integrity and so on.
11:25
in terms of being able to see this as an issue, address it and stick with it. It’s sad, it’s really heartbreaking when a team wants training and is willing to train and then their leader doesn’t provide it, that’s heartbreaking. And that’s more rare, but the 80% or well, I’ll say, I mean, we have to assess, but there’s also situations where the doctor wants to train and the team is resistant. But we know at the end of the day,
11:54
that the vision of all dentists and medical doctors and someone that we serve, that they wanna have high level of customer service and not sales. And you don’t get that, it’s like the same thing like a gym. I wanna have a beautiful body, strong, right? Well, if you eat pizza all day, you don’t work out, it ain’t gonna happen. You gotta be consistent with it. So what we say we want, and then what are we doing to get it done is very important. So I think as much as the content,
12:21
that we teach and proponent, you talked about the great call process and about eager. We got to be able to take what you’re learning, put it into place and stick with it. That’s right. And full circle, that training with that office was simply this. I’d be happy to help you out with that. Again, my name is Eric who the pleasure of speaking with. Beautiful. You could just remember this. What a difference. Just remember this and then you just engage and you go, oh, we have a lot of patients who have Blue Cross Blue Shield who come here.
12:51
Just start with that because they do and they pay cash because they wanna see you. They see you as an out of network dentist, that’s true. And then you say, tell me more about what you’re looking for because here’s the deal, at the end of the day, what does a $1,500 annual maximum got to do with a $50,000 case? Dental insurance should not be prohibited on the phone. We need to help our patients understand this without bait and switch, without pressure sales. So in that scenario, it was build relationship rapport, don’t make it transactional.
13:18
It has to be a relational conversation, not a transactional conversation. That’s why Great Call works so beautifully. Greet them, build the rapport, engage in that so that you can ask for the appointment. And maybe they don’t say yes now, but they’re gonna remember you. And your level of handling that phone call is a direct reflection of our credibility. So they’re looking for credibility. What is credibility? Confidence in your competence, plus character consistently.
13:44
My character on the phone consistently matches what you experience as a patient when you come in and see the office. There’s no bait and switch. So I’m building confidence in you in how I handle the phone call. All right, so, and then ultimately, I’m your patient advocate now. I want you to hang up the phone and feel like you have somebody you can trust on my end that when you come in the office, we’re gonna take great care of you. That rapport is gonna be so important so when I do ask for the appointment,
14:13
I’m not trying to pressure you. I don’t say, Alex, do you see a good reason why you wouldn’t want to go ahead and schedule this new patient visit in our office? Like that is, I don’t, are you supposed to say yes? You’re supposed to say like, no pressure sales. I just say how. I just say how, Alex. Right, because there are some that we see, and again, we’ll talk about this in another episode, is they manipulate outright. Some will say, well, we take your insurance, come on in or whatever, we take everything and we don’t. Or, you know, lie.
14:43
cheat, steal, whatever it is and get them in. That’s terrible. And don’t do that. I would even address that. I would come back to it later. I’d come back to it and say, earlier Alex, you were talking to me about Blue Cross with Shield. Here’s how that’ll work in our office when you’re here. And let’s say they do pay you something as an ad and network provider. All’s I’m gonna say is we’re gonna bill your insurance for you. They’re gonna pay us directly. All’s that we ask is that you pay your copay when you’re here. Would you like to know about what that estimate would look like? Okay, that’s a $250 charge.
15:13
$125 will be your copay for that. How does that sound to you? I don’t say, why don’t we get the scheduled or whatever. I say, how, how does that sound to you? And we’ll navigate that together. Well, you know, also what’s interesting, and again, we’re kind of, one of your other favorite topics is leadership, is I’m gonna use the analogy of baseball. I’m not a huge baseball fan, and maybe you aren’t, but in baseball, you have the starting pitcher, which is, and if the starting pitcher doesn’t do very well,
15:42
Your others don’t, but then you later have the final pictures that come in. But your starting picture is your front office is those that are answering the phone, they got to carry the weight. And if, if, if you start with 10 runs down and now you, and you can still do it, dental offices still come back because they’re great dentists and great when you see them, but on the phone, they’re terrible. But why not make the investment and, and look, the investment is not this. A script.
16:12
a manipulation, a hack. I’m saying if you’re going to do it, do it well and stick with it, provide the support and coaching, whether you work with a company like ours or an online system or feedback or whether you’re doing it yourself, we give you so much of the material here, but it’s the consistency over intensity. I know we love that mantra that you’re really putting that effort in. It’s not a lot of time. It’s just putting the…
16:41
putting it in the schedule, doing it over and over, making it a priority, but you’ll see the difference. Like you just heard some of the verbiage, the 45 second call, the manipulation call, the indifferent call, whatever, versus a well, not scripted, a well orchestrated call that where it’s intentional. And unfortunately, those who are listening, a script is not gonna cover it.
17:07
because people don’t respond to scripts, they do it different ways, and you’re gonna have to, it’s like this, like studying for an exam. And dentists love that because been in school for a while. You can’t just know the material. You have to know how to apply the material, right? We’re not giving you a multiple choice test here. This is an essay, this is an application. We have to show you know what you’re doing. But once you know the information now, we role play, it becomes second nature. And once you achieve that,
17:38
Uh, it’s a lot easier to just maintain it. And what an amazing gift. You’re making it so much easier on yourself by setting it up the way. That’s why we’re starting this whole conversation about how phone skills is case acceptance is a huge part of it. Right. That’s right. Well, you’re going to set yourself up for success or you’re going to set yourself up for maybe. Yeah. You know, you’re, you’re creating that, that law of the lid, you’re creating that ceiling, so there’s so many good things that you said in there, but
18:08
You gotta know that it’s, it’s just, you can just hear, would you do business with you? If you heard yourself like I would, like, yeah, listen to yourself on the phone. I like what I have to say. You laugh at me when I answer my phone every time I go, hello, this is Eric. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because, because I got burned once. Yeah. Right.
18:32
I said something silly when you answered the phone and you were on another call with another potential client. You’re like, Eric, okay, president of coaching, you know, I have a client here and I’m like, I need to make sure I answer the phone every single time everyone calls me as if someone of course calls me. It’s being impeccable. Consistently. Let me ask you this, two questions for you before we adjourn. Yeah. One, give me a quick coaching hack. As a president of coaching, I have to ask you, give me a coaching hack in 15 seconds late into this. For phone skills?
19:02
whatever you want to give me. You’ve got 15, 20 seconds. I’ll say phone skills just because that’s the topic. I’ll say the word how. I’ll say the word how is going to be the most important thing you’re going to say in leading someone towards scheduling your appointment. How do you feel about how much sense would it make? How does this sound to you? That’s the phrasing you want to use to not come across as pressure but be relational and say, Alex, how do you feel about going ahead and getting your first visit scheduled here in our office?
19:30
because what I’m doing is I’m avoiding yes or no questions. And when you go, yeah, sounds good. And then I block two hours of time with you and you no show. But if I say, Alex, how do you feel about scheduling this appointment? You go, well, I’m not really sure. I’d rather have that to be the conversation than just a yes or no. So that’s what I would say is probably the number one hack to scheduling people that you know are gonna commit to their new patient visit. Thank you. And my last question is president of coaching, Eric Vickrey.
19:58
What is new at All-Star Dental Academy? What’s going on? What are some things we have going on here? Gosh, new. I mean, we have, obviously, our team is growing all the time with highly trained master, uh, mastery coaches on all of this. We have growing and hiring division and we have a leadership event in January for doctors and spouses. Tell me about, tell me about the leadership of that. So leadership event in January, January 24th and 25th in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
20:27
It is specifically designed for leaders. And the saying that we use is when the leader is getting better, it creates space for your team to improve as well. And so this is for dentists and dentists and practice owners, dentists and practice owners, spouses, if they’re managing or in the practice as well, and we cover the six pillars of business to make sure that every year at the beginning of the year, you’re setting yourself up for success and we’re training you to be better leaders. Okay. And then also we’ll throw through. We have this.
20:55
program we rebranded a bit. It’s called the All Star Live event. And that’s gonna be, where are we having that over there? Look that up. Austin, Texas. That’s Austin, Texas. May 15th, 16th, 17th. May 16th, 17th will be the live event. Yes, that’s gonna be awesome. That is, to use the proper term, that is always a hoot. It’s a hoot. Yeah, and what’s exciting about that event is it’s…
21:23
It’s a way to energize your team. I mean, the content is amazing, of course, always. That’s the price of admission. But we have you leading the show as MC. We have competitions and games and learning. And so people come back just enthused, excited to apply the material and part of something. They’re immersed in something great, a value we all share. And that’s why we love doing All-Star Live and the dentists and teams love coming back.
21:52
It’s the epitome of if you’re not growing, you’re declining. And the only people who are declining are coasting. It is an opportunity to get back into it and say, okay, we need to grow. We need ways to grow. And we always have to be scratching and clawing in business as entrepreneurs to figure out how we growing next. And everybody on your team is an entrepreneur. They think they’re employees, but they’re their owners. They’re on. Yeah. So I’ll give you the link. So for all those events, it’s alls And then I mentioned earlier about the webinar, alls backslash webinar.
22:22
for the free training on phone skills, scheduling, and reducing turnover. So check out the webinar, check out the events, we’d love to have you. Eric Vickery, president of coaching, thank you for being on. And I just remind everybody to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, get episodes as they are released, share with your friends. And until next time, go out there and be an All-Star.
22:49
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Dental All-Stars. Visit us online at allstardentalacademy.com
