Weekly Motivational Moments: Master case acceptance with Eric Vickery’s 95/5 Rule which prioritizes condition and consequences in case presentations over treatment discussions.
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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.
Episode Transcript
Transcript performed by A.I. Please excuse the typos.
00:04
Hi friends, welcome to your weekly motivational moments with Eric Vickery, president of coaching at All-Star Dental Academy. Today and this week, I want our focus to be the 95-5 rule. Now some of you, when I say 95-5, you go, oh, I love that, I do that, I’m on top of it. Others of you go, 95-5, I thought it was 80-20. So the 95-5 rule is simply an exaggerated ratio that I created to help us emphasize our focus on what?
00:32
What are we selling, condition or treatment? And if we all remember that S word sell, we don’t like that, so we don’t like pressure sales. We don’t wanna be in a push sales tactic. We wanna be in a pull purchase process. And that means finding out what the patient wants are, which we’re gonna get to soon, especially talking about their why, the reason why. But in the meantime, instead of telling people what they need,
00:59
We’re gonna help them understand what’s going on conditionally and diagnostically so they can move forward. So the 95-5 rule is saying, hey, if we’re gonna be accused of selling something, let’s be accused and guilty of selling the condition, the diagnosis, really emphasizing what’s going on with their mouth. So 95% of the time, your focus, your energy, your communication is built around the condition and the consequences of that condition, which I’ll come back to.
01:29
and then only 5% of the time is it treatment. Now remember, if you don’t like pressure cells, you wanna listen and pay attention for the 5% when it shows up. Oftentimes it sounds like this, you need a crown. We don’t like living there, we don’t wanna be pressure cells people, so avoid using sentences like that. Instead, when we use the 95-5, we get the patient to understand the condition and the consequence of that.
01:57
We do that through, we mentioned questions earlier, and we do that through Overhear Psychology, which we’re gonna talk about next week. And we do that through getting the patient to co-diagnose with you, enter all photos. Now we’ve got AI technology that can be the second opinion right in the office. You’ve got digital scans, the technology is there. The verbiage has to accompany it. So when I use the 95-5 rule, I’m gonna make sure the patient…
02:23
understands, we eliminate the killer words like we talked about a few weeks back, and we make sure the patient understands what I’m vividly describing to them. So as you call out information or as you point out information on the on the on the internal photos or the scan or what the AI is showing you, make sure that they’re deciphering what it is you mean. And they also understand what’s coming, the consequence of that. There’s only two consequences we deal with in dentistry.
02:53
So infection or gum disease, that leads to what? Tooth loss and decay, cavities, that leads to what? Some of you said root canals, that’s a treatment. The decay leads to toothache. So our two consequences are toothache or tooth loss. So as we use the 95-5 rule, that line in between there, we’re gonna say, here’s the condition, right? This is…
03:22
Infection your gums, it’s leading to tooth loss, that line. How concerned are you with this? Asking a question, how, like we worked on last week, how concerned are you with this? Really concerned. Would it make sense then for us to review a plan and how we can help you take care of this? Yes, two yeses, moves the line out of the way, and now we’re allowed to talk about the 5%. Now the key here on the 5% is then don’t just go, great, we’re gonna do four quads of scaling root planning. They don’t understand what that means. You need to patiently.
03:51
and carefully describe what the treatment is and then label it. Don’t label it and then try to describe the treatment. For example, don’t say, all right, well, we’re gonna do four crowns on the right side. You would say, so what we’re gonna do on each one of those teeth is we’re gonna make sure you’re numb and comfortable. We’re gonna remove all decay. We’re gonna make sure we remove all of the fracture lines. We’re gonna make sure we remove all the old metal filling. And then instead of having a wedged puzzle piece, metal filling in there, we’re now gonna have interlocked like a Lego.
04:20
fiber to fiber between tooth and filling material, right? White filling material now interlocked with your tooth and it’s like a Lego, not a puzzle piece. We’re gonna connect all the pieces inside of the tooth and then we’re gonna put a protective covering on the outside of it so nothing can break apart. You ever see a Lego fall apart after you put it all together? We’re gonna make sure it stays solid. That’s called a crown buildup and a crown. That’s what we’re gonna do to save your tooth. And then you ask the question, how? How do you feel about moving forward with this plan? So.
04:50
This is your verbal skill for the week. We’re habit stacking every single week. If you’ve lost track on some things in the past, go back and work on those things. If you want more of this, you want more coaching, just email us, eric at alls Be happy to give you a Zoom meeting to review all of these things. Get one of our coaches who are amazing at this to work with you and help you figure out how to implement this in your practice. All right guys, make it a great week.
05:17
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Dental All-Stars. Visit us online at allstardentalacademy.com
