Motivational Moments with Eric Vickery: Keys to effective case presentation, Part 2 – using open-ended questions, getting three ‘yeses’ and avoiding pressure sales.
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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.
00:02
Hello friends, welcome to your weekly motivational moments with Eric Vickery, president of coaching at All-Star Dental Academy. This week, I want to talk to you about the second half of the case presentation formula. So if you want, go back and watch last week’s and then watch this one, or you can put them all together. Or if you’ve really got it down from last week, let’s continue on. So
00:31
This week, it’s about getting the three yeses part of the case presentation formula. We’re gonna use open-ended questions using the word how. That becomes a really important part of this. So if you remember, we said, you said it was important for your why, I’m concerned about condition, it leads to toothache or tooth loss. We’ve gotten to that point. At that moment, right there at the end of part one, you’ll say, how concerned are you with that? Yes, number one.
00:59
That’s what we’re looking for, yes number one. Now, they don’t say yes to that, then you can back up or give up one of the other. Now, if you notice the way I’m asking the question, it’s really impossible for them to say the word yes. They’ll have to say some form of a positive response, but it won’t be the words yes. For example, if I said, Ricky Bobby, how concerned are you with stopping this infection from causing you to lose your teeth? Yes.
01:28
It doesn’t make any sense. Now he might say shake and bake. So when you say, are you concerned with this infection? And he says, yes, you run the risk of someone fibbing or lying to you in one word. And you’ve all had those patients where they say, yeah, oh yeah, sure, yes, mm-hmm, yeah, 6000, yeah, yeah. Next week, sure, yeah. And they walk out the door and you feel like we’re never gonna see them again. So.
01:57
Don’t use yes or no questions. Use open-ended questions. Use the word how. So to get yes number one, we say, how concerned are you with stopping this infection? Yeah, I’m really concerned about it. Great, wouldn’t it make sense then for us to talk about a way to help you take care of that? Great, how about we talk about a plan and how we can take care of this? Yeah, sounds good. Sure, whatever they say. That’s a confirmation. So you’re getting two yeses.
02:24
If you remember that 95-5 rule, we’re moving the line out of the, now we’re moving into the five. We’re talking about treatment, okay? Now I’m gonna skip over treatment, talk about the last and final question. After you talk about treatment, scaling root planning, you would then say, how do you feel about moving forward with this plan? Again, we’re using the word how to create an open-ended question. When you say, does this sound like a good plan to you? Sure, you run the risk of someone fibbing to you, again.
02:54
It’s really important to use open-ended questions. You might also say, how much sense does this plan make to you? Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. They can’t simply just say yes. How do you feel about moving forward with this plan? Yes. It is not cool to say things like, do you see any good reason why you wouldn’t wanna go ahead and get started with this today? That is a pressure sales technique that we’re not comfortable with. We wanna get commitment. We wanna get mutual agreement, not.
03:24
pressure sales, which we’re gonna talk to about in a few weeks. So I wanna make sure you understand these three yeses. How concerned are you with this? Yeah, I’m really concerned. Wouldn’t it make sense then for us to talk about a plan and how we can take care of it? Yes, discuss the plan. How do you feel about moving forward with this plan? That sounds great. All right, so then you would move into your transfer, you’d move into your next step. Okay, now in that little treatment window there, there’s a lot of words in there, just do me a favor.
03:53
We can work on that together in coaching, but make sure that you’re not saying in the plan, all right, well we do four quads of scaling root planning. Because again, that doesn’t make sense to them. Talk about what the treatment is and then label it. Don’t say, okay, well you do eight crowns across your mouth. No, talk about what you would do to the twos, define what that is, paint the picture for them, and then give the term crown. All right guys, put these two weeks together, go out.
04:22
get some case acceptance, get some patients healthier. If you need more help, just email heather at allstar. She’s great at helping people out with all this sort of stuff and figuring out how best to meet your needs. All right, guys, take care. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Dental All-Stars. Visit us online at allstardentalacademy.com
