Patients avoid dental treatment acceptance or step aside, cancel just flat out don’t schedule because they’re not really connected to the plan from an emotional state. People buy with emotion justified with logic. Not understanding this leads to diminished dental treatment acceptance. Eric Vickery, President of Coaching, builds on his prior podcast where he discussed the 95-5 rule to dental treatment acceptance. In this podcast, you will learn how to connect emotionally with your patient. You will discover their why, and thereby become the logical choice.
HIGHLIGHTS – Dental Treatment Acceptance
- [01:27] Why do you think patients don’t move forward with treatment or they often cancel their appointments for necessary treatment? What would be an example of why they were looking to discover?
- [06:09] How do you connect treatment to someone’s emotional desires with dentistry? By finding their “Why”.
- [08:49] How can we navigate the word “sell” in dentistry without it being a bad word?
- [16:29] So how do you find the patients “Why”?
- [20:31] How does this help large case acceptance?
QUOTES – Dental Treatment Acceptance
- Patients cancel because they don’t really, truly understand the problem.
- You and I know that people buy with emotion justified with logic. We say this all the time and what I’m saying is that reason that they buy emotionally can be discovered.
- You’re looking to diagnose the entire person, not just their mouth. In a sense, you become a practical psychologist.
- No one goes into dentistry loving sales, but yet, at the same time, we recognize there are no professions exist without sales.
- With dentistry, it’s more like, you’re a problem solver. You’re here to help them. So, by getting to know their needs, they’re going to choose you.
- And when you care, they feel that you can solve their issue. You are ethically, emotionally, obligated to provide them your services.
- Patients buy for their reasons, not your reasons. That’s the bottom line.
RESOURCES – Improve Case Acceptance
About Eric Vickery
Eric is the President of Coaching at All-Star Dental Academy. He speaks all over North America on Practice Management and Case Acceptance. Since 2001 Eric has coached over 300 offices on all Practice Management topics including how to resign from restrictive insurance plans.
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 – Dental Treatment Acceptance
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA
Hi everyone. I’m Alex Nottingham, CEO of All Star Dental Academy and welcome to Dental All Stars. Our topic is Discover the Patients Why Dental Treatment Acceptance. Our guest is Eric Vickery. Eric is the President of Coaching at All-Star Dental Academy. He speaks all over North America on Practice Management and Case Acceptance. Since 2001 Eric has coached over 300 offices on all Practice Management topics including how to resign from restrictive insurance plans.
Please welcome Eric.
Eric Vickery
Alex Thanks for having me again.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA
Well, good to have you back. And we are continuing our discussion on case acceptance. We talked about acceptance last time.
So why do you think patients don’t move forward with treatment and then subsequently they cancel their appointments?
Eric Vickery
Yeah, I think the analogy is and I’ll talk to clients or their admin team members about this and they’ll have this feeling in their stomach, you know, this patients in front of them. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll do that. Yeah. Oh, $5,000. Yeah. I’ll pay you when I get here that day. Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah. We call them the yessers.
They just say yes to everything, and they never ask how much they don’t have any hesitation at all. And I’ll ask the admin team members about this. So, you see this patient walking out the door and you in your mind you’re thinking, I’m never going to see that patient again, am I? They just want to get out of there.
There’s no connection to it. And so not only do we want to get patients healthy, but we want to get them healthier faster. We don’t really want to do one tooth at a time and take years and years and years to try to get them healthy. It’s going to create more problems. So how do we get, you know, whether it’s quadrant, side of mouth, arch for mouth dentistry completed in a short amount of time as possible.
And you’re right, continuing from last conversation where we talked about the 95-5 rule is the first thing is I think people cancel because they don’t really, truly understand the problem. Therefore there’s no urgency. And so we focus on that last time. 95 five rule focus on the condition and the consequences, not so much on the treatment. Avoid things like you need a crown, you need four quads of scaling.
And the second reason I think that people avoid or step aside, cancel just flat out don’t schedule. So I’m going to go home and think about it is they’re not really connected to the plan from an emotional state. You and I know that people buy with emotion justified with logic. We say this all the time and what I’m saying is that reason that they buy emotionally can be discovered.
And I call that finding the why. And so we just take a conversation before we ever look clinically and just really sit and talk with the patient, find out not only what they want, but why they want that. And so when you can connect to that patient on an emotional level, you’re building trust and rapport. When you discover their why now, they’re not just being told what to do, they’re actually connecting to it from an emotional reason.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA
So what would be an example of why they were looking to discover?
Eric Vickery
So I’ll tell you my example of why. So if you were to if you were to go to this conversation with me, what you’d find out is I want to look good and feel good. Most people, pretty simple. I want to keep my teeth. I want to look nice. I don’t you know, I don’t want them all over the place.
Most people fall in that category. And so the mistake would be to stop there and say, all right, we know Eric wants to look and feel good done. Well, that’s a what, not a why. If you were to ask me, you know, why is having that important to you, Eric, what you would hear me tell you is about my grandfather, my grandpa Bill.
He had dentures. At least I know he had an upper denture because he would stick his tongue up in the roof of his mouth, unlock his denture, and then rattle his teeth at the, you know, four-year-old version of me, five year old, six year old, you know, that was how he would greet me. It was terrifying.
And then I would see, you know, his denture and maybe his back of denture or something in a glass on his nightstand. And I just as a kid thought, well, that is scary. And so for me, I never want to lose a teeth in any any tooth, a tooth. I don’t want to lose any of my teeth. People have nightmares about, you know, going to class with, you know, without pants on and stuff.
I have nightmares about breaking teeth or losing teeth. I don’t know why if I’m the only one that does that or not. But you would find, okay, Eric, now you now have a why. You now know why it’s important for me to look good. To feel good. There’s an emotional reason. Attach that behind. It’s peace of mind. Right.
And there’s a story attached to it. When you let’s say your Dr. Nottingham. Right. And you’re doing the exam and you find any sort of recession, you find any sort of bleeding in my gums, you find large fractures or anything, anything you diagnose that I was unaware of when I walked in the door. You get to connect those two things together and say, Hey, you know, Grandpa Bill versus where you are now, it’s preventable.
And now there’s an emotional tie to what you’re discovering in the 95 five role. So now you have condition, logic, right? Here’s the condition, what’s going on? And now you have emotional reasoning for me to say, oh, that’s important for me to buy. And I think I think the problem with most of us is we grew up in the because I said so world.
I don’t know if your parents said that to you, Alex, but my parents would often say because I said so. Because I would say why? Why is this important for me to do? Why do I clean my room? Because I said so. And when you don’t know that, why? For your patients, you’re falling in that same category, because that patient’s thinking, why do I why do I really want to do this?
Why is this important for me to do? And because you don’t have a connection as a dentist, the practice, you’re saying? Because I said so. And that’s what we don’t want to live. Makes sense.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA
That makes sense. Yeah. So like you said, the, we get the logical part we have to discover the why the emotional part. Yes. For that patient and yes. So that’s you gave me an example of a why for you to keep your teeth healthy. Mm hmm. And then what do we do with those whys when we are discovering it?
Or are there questions that we can utilize, or how do we discover it?
Eric Vickery
Yeah. So the pre clinical conversation before you ever look in their mouth, you would just introduce it to the patient. You know, if you’re my patient, I say, Alex, I want to take a few minutes and not only get to know you, but know what it is you want for the health and appearance of your smile. Because that way, well, the same page.
I’m not telling you what I think is important. You’re going to you’re going to tell me first and then we’re going to give you exactly what you’re looking for. So I want to ask you a few important questions before we get started so that we’re on the same page. That sound okay to you?
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA
And so I see what you’re doing. You’re you’re basically setting up your conversation. Yes, right. Like you say, discover the why. It’s not just because typically, as as practitioners, dentists are looking for the clinical issue and then providing a clinical diagnosis. And here’s what you’re looking to do. That’s right. You’re looking to diagnose the entire person, their brain.
They’re your neurosurgeon, in a sense, or a psychologist.
Eric Vickery
And the psychology of it.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA
Exactly right. You’re looking to understand what motivates them, because that’s what why they’re looking to get fixed. And yes, it’s the external is looking to help them with the internal. I see what you’re saying. So this is a little bit not a little bit. This is a much more nuanced approach to dental treatment acceptance and requires a subsequent or required skills to be able to do that.
Eric Vickery
Yeah, a lot of team members hold back in in regards to this conversation because they they are they’re worried. They’re not confident. They’re approval addicted, whatever it is. This is the practice that we see when we do KPIs. We look at our dental treatment acceptance tracker, we see a practice that goes from a lot of single tooth dentistry, maybe one or two teeth, to someone who now goes to getting the whole mouth healthy and in as quick a time possible.
And the reason for that is the connection that I’m making with you as the patient. Trust us up. Doesn’t feel like I’m selling you. That sell word in dentistry is a real challenge, and I now know why you want what you said you wanted instead of me just telling you what you need. So I go from adding 95 five plus the why.
Put those two things together and now you’ve got something is interesting.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA
You mention the word selling because an All-Star Dental Academy we’re not fans per say of the word selling. Yeah. Yeah. And I think over the last few years where we can have conversations about it because selling has become a bad word in dentistry for a lot of reasons, it’s not bad in reality. And so let’s have a discussion about selling.
Maybe we can use a different word for if we do use the word selling, how do we connote it properly? And so again, these are trigger words you hear selling go, oh no, what is that? And how do you define it?
Eric Vickery
Sure. So at our May event, when we talk about this, we will be saying, all right, who got into dentistry because they love selling. Nobody will raise their hand. But yet, at the same time, we recognize there are no professions that exist without sales. Even the pharmacist has to sell the pill. At the end of the day, even the artist has to sell the artwork.
At the end of the day, because this is part of life, it doesn’t exist the other way. Maybe it should. I don’t not going to get to that, but this is where we’re at. And so what we have to understand is there’s there’s two types of purchases that people make learn this years ago, push, purchase or pull purchase.
A push purchase is something that you’re told you need to do. Life thrusts that upon you. It’s I need new tires. I need to go to the grocery store. I need to pay my bills. I need a new hot water heater, I need a new AC unit, whatever it is, need, need, need, need in life. Residency, you. We typically don’t like spending money in these categories.
It’s not something that we choose to do. We’re not excited about that. We don’t want to. The other side is the pole purchase that’s just synonymous with want. I want to go on vacation. I want to go out to eat. I want to go to the movies. I want to go to the fish store, Alex. I want to go golfing.
I came up with the mastermind. Look at that. So what we have to understand is most people don’t wake up in the morning and say, what should I do today? You know what? You know what I really want to do today? I want to go see my dentist and get a crown done. I want a crown today. In fact, most patients sit down in the dental chair when the doctor walks in for the exam and they say they look up the doctor and say, Don’t find anything today, doc, nothing to see here.
Just move along. And they’re just hoping, praying. This doctor doesn’t tell them they need to do something, push, purchasing, being thrust upon them. And so if you recognize that the patient is trepidatious about sales, it reflects on us. So people in dentistry go, Oh, I hate selling, I don’t want to be selling. Alex, you and I have always joked about this.
I’m not a salesman. I don’t I’m not a salesperson. And I think I’m okay with that to an extent. I know that at some point I’ve got to make a sale. I get that just like every dental team member has to say at some point, I’ve got to make a sale. And I’ll side note this nobody ever wants to talk money until it’s time to talk about a raise.
And so I would just throw that out there and say, Hey, you know, I’m okay talking about a raise as long as you’re okay talking about, well, how do we keep your patient healthy?
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA
Here’s the thing. I like to to build on this a little bit with the sales stuff, because I think that there is things that we can learn from sales training, right, in general, especially if there’s ethics behind it. And when you’re in retail, it’s selling. It’s obvious, I think, when it comes to the dental experience, as you’re talking about becoming that practical psychologist, learning to get to there.
Why? Because if you’re not doing that, this is very interesting. If you’re not doing what Eric’s talking about, you really are a salesperson because you’re coming in your diagnosis and you’re selling them something. How is it different? Go into a dentist than it is. Go into a mechanic diagnosis and then, boom, here’s what you got to do. And isn’t it interesting, whenever you go to the mechanic, you’re like, Oh, they’re going to recommend something I don’t need.
With dentistry, it’s more like, you’re a problem solver. You’re here to help them. And if you build rapport, which is a big thing that we teach in our programs and our live events, if you focus on on in terms of building rapport, getting to know them, you become the logical choice. So by getting to know their needs, they’re going to choose you.
They’re going to want to buy. So you become that you don’t have to pressurize. That’s you don’t have to do the pressure sales so we can listen, we can make mince words and figure it out. You can call it whatever you like, but it really comes down to are you building report that patient, are you getting to understand them, their heart, their soul?
And then if you’re coming from that place of I care about them because first of all, getting to know them and finding their why is demonstrating you care about them. And when you care, they feel straight and they feel that you can solve their issue. You are obligated. You are ethically, emotionally, everything obligated to provide them the services.
And that’s where you come from. I am obligated to take great care of them and that’s what motivates me, no matter what you look to call it. And if you don’t sell or if you don’t provide them the solution, you are acting in their disinterest.
Eric Vickery
That’s right. That’s right. And couple of key words. Pressure, sales, motivation. I come from a school of thought of. You can’t really motivate someone else. Come on, Alex, you can do it, you know, cheer you on. But I can find out what motivates you. I can discover what you’re motivated by. And that’s where the WHY comes from. You know, whether it’s Simon Sinek, start with why it’s been around for a long time and we just have to make sure that we’re comfortable in our own skin, that we’re confident we’re not, you know, having this fear of rejection or conversation, that we care ourselves confidently to have this conversation and then we use it to help them be motivated. That the second thing you said is pressure sells. And that’s what goes back to to need or push purchase. You need a crown. We’ll see this in May. Hey, raise your hand if you love sales, okay? Nobody raises their hand. How many of you don’t like pressure sales? Everybody raises their hand. And then I say, All right, raise your hand.
If you’ve ever said you need a crown and everybody raises their hand, you need four quads. Is scaling group planning. Everybody raises their hand. That person does not like to be told what they need to do. Think about when you’re 15, 16, 17, 18 years old, your parents say you need to clean your room. You need to take out the trash and you do your homework.
The rebellion occurs, just happens. And so if we’re telling patients they need a crown, they need the 5%, they need treatment, they’re going to oppose that almost instinctively. So instead, you focus in on the condition here’s the problem. You said you don’t want to end up this way. Look at how those two things conflict. What do you want to do about it?
And now we get in a solution. So if people don’t like to be told what they need to do pressure sales, then we have to get away from this need word, this telling people what they need. It is a clinical need. It is a must. It is your recommendation. If they want to keep their teeth and you can make that point really come across vertically if you use the right verbiage.
So they buy for their reasons, not your reasons. That’s the bottom line.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA
You talked earlier about and I asked you this and we can kind of maybe go a little more in depth. Is how do patients find their why or how do we help patients find their why? You talked about the preclinical conversation. Do you care to expound on this a little bit?
Eric Vickery
Yeah, I think this is the big difference between basic dental treatment acceptance and large dental treatment acceptance. You know, with clients who are struggling with this, we start with the 95 five. If we can just get that under our belt and get away from need and get focused on condition and diagnosis and consequences, that’s a win.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA
By the way, just to make a note for the listener, 95-5that was a prior podcast we did. We’ll link to that as well. You can find that on the various platforms that we provide to access that as well as your mentioning, May, May 19th and 20th, we have a live event in South Florida where we go into great detail about dental treatment acceptance.
I’ll mention that at the end of the podcast. Go ahead.
Eric Vickery
Yeah. So we use a how do we find the patients, why we use a pre-clinical conversation could be team member, treatment coordinator, assistant hygienist, could be doctor as administrator of a practice, you know, business manager of the practice. I would love when they were running behind out back when they couldn’t see Ricky Bobby the new patient on time because I take Ricky Bobby in the concert room and I’d sit down and I would do this preclinical conversation and it seemed natural that we would have this conversation.
If you do it correctly, and if you’re a natural at it, it will be unnatural. So this is where practice comes into play. I was on site doing a practice evaluation with a client, long time client, and we’ll say Dr. Paul in case he listens and I give a shout out to him, he’s now retired, which is great, but I was standing in the hallway listening him to get ready to do this and he says, So, Ricky Bobby, I’ve got some really weird questions to ask you.
Just, just bear with me and we’ll get through this together. And how do you think the conversation went? It went weird and awkward and we barely got through it. And so, as we pointed out earlier, the setup for that conversation makes all the difference. So I would sit down with the patient. Anybody can do it and say, you know, Ricky, Bobby, before we look in your mouth, we just want to know what’s what you’re looking for and what’s important to you so that we have a good understanding and how to best take care of you.
And the only way to do that, just through to a conversation, ask you some really important questions. The more information you give me, the better job we’re going to take care of you. How does that sound? They go, Yeah, sure. And you know, we’re in rapport building, body language and we’re in conversation and we have a series of questions that we go through to analyze this that we teach.
And we get to the question, why is having that so important to you? And that’s where you hear confidence, peace of mind. I’m looking for a job interview. One of the largest cases we sold in our practice was MBNA executive, who kept getting overlooked for positions. And he felt like he we did this we did this preclinical conversation.
He was an existing patient, though, and we did it via email. He went home thinking about it. Our hygienist, Debbie, got him in this conversation with a mirror. He sent back a thing and said, You know, I’ve been taking care of my kids. I never smile at work and people think I’m a grumpy person. I think I’m not getting promoted because of that.
And we closed, wow, everything for the whole front mouth via email. There’s that word closed. We got his commitment through that. Right. That’s that’s a better word I think got his commitment to move forward with that just by having the conversation via email and going through. And we got to why is having this so important to you? And he said, I’m I’m not getting promoted because I don’t smile at work.
I know it. And so his why finally came out after he had known the dentist in high school. That’s how long they he’d been a patient. So if you do this, you’re going to find real reasons, real motivating factors, real emotional reasons behind why they want what they said they wanted.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA
Makes sense. Now, you mentioned large dental treatment acceptance.
Eric Vickery
Well, again, I think there’s phases to this, like we talked about before, just getting patients to say yes and committing to it, not canceling it means they have to understand. First thing is, people don’t aren’t going to buy your treatment plan if they don’t first buy into the condition the diagnosis. So that’s code diagnosis. And there’s a saying before you can prescribe, you must first diagnose.
That’s on our end on the patients. And they’re thinking, well, before I’m going to buy what you’re telling me, Doc, I got to first understand why, like you said, the mechanic. Oh, they’re going to try to sell me something. And we know this happens because they walk out the front desk and say, Oh, I’m a doctor, must need a new car, or you got to put doctors, kids through college or whatever, whatever the perception is.
We sold them something that’s not where we want to live. We want to live in mutual agreement. We want to live in a place where they feel like they’re getting good advice from somebody they trust and they want to do it themselves. They’re motivated themselves to do it because they have all of the information. Now, second part is people buy with emotion, justify with logic.
What’s that emotional reason people buy for emotional reasons, not your reasons. So if you’re telling me what I need to do now, it’s your reasoning. Because I said so. So large dental treatment acceptance is like this. You ever notice? Especially, I think. I don’t know. It’s. This is me, Alex. I can’t speak for you, but if I want something, I’m going to figure out a way to save the money.
I’m going to figure out a way to spend the money on that. And I’m going to be very excited to do this. So it’s a big deal for me when we do large case acceptance. These patients love it. They love now that they can eat. I mean, if you go on YouTube and just search dental patient biting into an apple, you’re going to get just a series of videos on YouTube of patients for the first time, biting into an apple because they have implants.
And the emotion that that’s suggesting, it’s not selling dentures. It’s selling quality of life. It’s selling here. You get something that you that really means something to you. So we get away from, you know, a crown, a your club, and we start doing what people really, really want and with with the level of clinicians that we have, it’s it’s a disservice to dentistry for us to be holding back.
Like you said earlier, we’re almost have an obligation to make sure we take care of these patients at a at a full mouth level.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA
Eric, tell me about the live event in May, because a lot of it’s going to be dental treatment acceptance. You’re so excited, you’re emceeing, you’re the keynote. We got a lot of great speakers as well. Tell us a little bit about that. That’s the 19th and 20th, correct?
Eric Vickery
Yes, May 19th, the 20th. Friday, Saturday, a beautiful Florida and beautiful place that we’re going to be and inviting the whole team. So all teams, entire team concept on how to get the patient to really move forward and keep the appointment and not just for single tooth but for as much dentistry as it makes sense to be doing.
And so we go from understanding ourselves and what’s preventing us from doing these things right. To get something you’ve never had before, you’ve got to be willing to do something you’ve never done before. And so what is going on there in the individual? We work on the team through desk personality profile system, and then we take you through great call process because dental treatment acceptance plays a role in the phone call.
How well you answer the phone reflects how good of a dentist this is. Are you building trust and rapport on the phone or you making it really difficult for a patient to want to come in and see this dentist? Then we take it through, patient shows up, how you do the preclinical conversation, how you do the clinical conversation.
So we go from finding the Y to the 95-5 rule. Then we go into case presentation formula how to handle. When a patient says no. At that point, how do you interact with the patient once they start throwing out things like, Was my insurance going to cover this? I can’t afford it. All those things we cover all that.
And then we’re going to also talk about how to cancel the cancelations. So it’s a power packed two days. It’s like drinking from a fire hydrant for sure.
Alex Nottingham, JD, MBA
Well, please, everybody listening. Remember to subscribe on YouTube and follow us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Thank you, Eric, as always for being on our podcast. And until next time, go out there and be an All-Star.
