Weekly Motivational Moments with Eric Vickery emphasizes the power of asking questions to control conversations and enhance communication skills.
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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, I want to talk to you about asking. So we know that you dominate a conversation by telling you control a conversation by asking any good lawyer would tell you this. They are asking questions to lead the conversation down a path. The interesting thing is oftentimes the person we’re in communication with, whether it’s a patient,
00:33
another team member, a family member asks you a question. There’s a reason behind that question. So you’ve been taught for years and years and years to answer a question with a question. And so if you can learn to process your sentence structure with a beginning and an end or either one question, it gives you an advantage. So at the beginning of a sentence, you might say, if there were a way we could figure that out together.
01:03
Would that be something you’re interested in? Okay, the trailer at the end, that thing you tack on the end, would that be something you’re interested in? Does that work for you? Does that sound fair? You guys hear me say this all the time. Does that make sense? Am I on track here? Does that sound fair to you? Right? Question mark. So by using those skillset of, that verbal skillset of asking, you give yourself an advantage in the conversation. Here’s what I mean. When you’re taught to answer a question with a question,
01:31
your patient asks you a question. And I love to use phone calls as the example. And we listen to phone calls. I had a patient call into a client’s office and just say, hey, I’m looking for this major service. I have this insurance, where do I go from here? Question, right? And our job is to respond with a question. Oh, I’d be happy to help you out with that. Tell me more about X. Tell me more about that. Just follow with a question.
02:00
I’d be happy to help you out with that. Tell me more about it. Instead, this team member went with, oh, unfortunately we don’t work with that insurance, and then the conversation was over. And I use that story because we tell someone an answer. We give someone an answer by telling, I want you to think about one level deeper. If they say, do you bill insurance? Well, tell me more about your insurance plan. Do you see kids? Well, tell me more about your family. Now they may or may not have insurance. They may or may not have kids, right?
02:29
clinical team, if they say, is this going to hurt? You guys know what I’m gonna say, right? Would you like it to? That’s a great question to respond to, no, don’t do that. But you wanna follow the question, there’s a reason why they asked you, is this going to hurt? And you can say, tell me more about your past experiences that makes you think about that. I never say, oh, is that a concern for you? Because now you’re planting the seed of concern. So.
02:55
You always find out what’s beneath the question, just one level beneath that, and then take the path that they’re setting. So for example, if they say, do you see kids? Well, I’d be happy to review that with you. Tell me about your family. Oh, I don’t have kids. I’m looking for a quiet dental office. Oh, great, well, we have quiet hours where we don’t see kids between here and here. That’s how you can take it to the next level with questions. Now I’m gonna plant a seed for another verbal skill here with this, which is called implication questions.
03:24
Remember, the most universal implication question is, are you gonna eat that? And then you’re telling someone by asking, hey, if you don’t eat all that, I like to have some of it. Well, same thing here. If you’re implying something when you ask a question, has this tooth started to hurt you yet? Now, in a couple episodes, we’re gonna get into focusing on condition during the exam and what the patient’s hearing. And in that series, we’ll talk more about implication questions as well. So questions are your tool this week.
03:53
challenge each other, really get focused in on asking questions. And as team members give each other permission to catch one another, if you’re not answering a question with a question, if you want to push pause at your meeting this week and say, all right, let’s play this game, answer questions back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And the first one to just answer loses. That’s creating new skills, new neurons are firing saying, Hey, I want to be in the habit of asking questions. Have some fun with you guys.
04:22
Have a great week. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Dental All-Stars. Visit us online at Allstardentalacademy.com
