Motivational Moments with Eric Vickery: Foster mutual agreement by avoiding the word “need” and focusing on patient’s wants.
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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.
00:01.272
Hello friends, welcome to your weekly motivational moments with Eric Vickery, president of coaching All -Star Dental Academy. This week, I wanna talk to you about pull purchase versus a push purchase. What do those things mean? I know we’ve said before that we don’t like the sell word, we don’t like the fact that we’re in sales, there aren’t any professions out there, I believe, that don’t involve sales. Even the preachers up there trying to sell you on a concept. The pharmacist is trying to sell you something that’ll save your life.
hopefully, and even the dental office is selling something to save your teeth. Now, our focus on that is to sell the condition, the 95 -5 rule, to sell it in a place where they understand what’s going on, to sell it for their reasons, not your reasons, right? Finding the why, so that they’re motivated and they have mutual agreement with you to move forward with it. But I want you to understand the difference between, in sales, between a push purchase and a pull purchase, okay?
So a push purchase would be synonymous with need. A pull purchase would be synonymous with want. So pull purchase. I want to go on vacation. I want a new dog. Some of you have met Tink, right? Our little puppy. And you know, I don’t need another dog. Right? Some of you have seen the fish tank. I don’t need to have a fish tank.
That is a want. That’s a pull purchase. Now push purchase and need. You need new tires for your car. You need to go to the grocery store. You need to pay the bills. These aren’t typically things that people enjoy spending their money on. You know I need to pay the mortgage. I need a new hot water heater. Trying to think of something recently I needed to buy but need to fix the furnace. Okay this is a perch. A push purchase life thrusts it on you.
It thrusts it into your life. Most patients don’t wake up in the morning and go, hmm, you know what I really wanna do today? I wanna go get our new crown. But what we don’t wanna do is have them feel like we’re really pushing the purchase on them. You need a crown. We hate sales and yet the number one most common sentence we hear in a dental office when it comes to sales is you need.
02:24.504
Fill in the blank, you need a crown, you need four quads of scaling root planning, you need an appointment, you need, you need, you need. You’ve gotta get away from pushing the purchase onto the patient and your words matter with this. So we wanna create a pull purchase environment. How do we do that? Well, if it’s want based, right, we find out what they want and why they want it. So go back to emotional exam videos one and two and understand that emotional exam’s important part. What do people want and why do they want it?
Well, I want peace of mind. I don’t wanna lose teeth like my grandfather did. That’s me. So anytime my dental office is talking to me about what’s going on in my mouth, I need them to relate it to that. So instead of saying you need treatment, you say, I understand it’s important for you to have peace of mind when it comes to longevity of saving your teeth. I’m concerned about recession. I’m concerned about fractures.
Go into the 95 -5 rule. Now you’re gonna move into a want category and you’re gonna follow that when you do your transfer of care. You’re gonna hear it in all of that. In your case presentation formula, you’re gonna say, how do you feel about moving forward with this? Yeah, it makes sense, right? How do you feel about moving forward with this plan? Yeah, it makes sense to do this. All right, Becky, let’s take Ricky Bobby out front to see Heidi and let her know that he wants to move forward with the plan we’re recommending.
that he wants to do this because it’s important for him to have peace of mind knowing he’s gonna save his teeth.
And now when Becky takes the patient out front to see Heidi, Becky will say, Heidi, Ricky Bobby and Dr. Smith are both concerned about the infection in his gums. He wants to move forward with the appointments with Virginia to get this taken care of. It’s really important for him to have peace of mind. So now that want purchase environment we’re creating is in all aspects of what we’re teaching.
04:26.424
We’re never getting into a place where we’re telling someone what they need to do. That would sound like this. Well, you have gum disease, you need four quadrants of scaling and root planning, let’s go up front and see Heidi and she’ll get you scheduled. I hope that doesn’t sound too familiar for you guys. I want you to switch that up. So this week, listen for the word need. It’s a limiting term, it’s a killer word. Use the word want. It’s the direction you wanna go. I wanna hear more from you guys. I want feedback.
comment on the YouTube videos, comment on the social media posts, go to All Star Dental Academy on all your social media places, put comments in there. What are you guys doing? Let’s support one another on this. All right guys, have a great week.
