Mastering Your Communication & Sales For Dentists & Teams So You Never Have to Sell Again !

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Good morning everyone.

My name is Dr. Allen. Thank you very much for joining me. It's an absolute honor and pleasure to to be with you today. I have people from all over the world on this call.

We have registrations from usa, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia.

Trinidad Tobago, Albania, Kuwait, Pakistan, India.

Uk, Romania, Nepal, South Africa, Taiwan, China, Korea, Malaysia. This is a confirmation that this type of information is so rarely available.

And from the registrations that I saw coming in and all of the questions that were being raised and all of the encouragement that I had to put up this webinar. This webinar is scheduled to go more than probably two and a half hours. I hope you will stay with me through the entire webinar. And really I'm going to share with you some very, very valuable information. Now some house rules I believe you have. If you move your mouse around, you certainly have area where you can raise your hand. So.

Go ahead if you can raise your hand. Let me see if you guys can hear me. Okay. Okay. Very good. Okay, excellent. So.

What we're going to do today is I'm going to go throughout the presentation. I'm going to cover with you an outline of what we're planning to do for today. Then probably halfway through the presentation, I will give you guys maybe a two, three minute bathroom break or something like that. If you want to grab some water, please feel free to.

Do the screenshots of.

Some of the slides. I will have a handout available for you. If you wish to.

Receive it, please send us an email and I will be happy to have our team send out a PDF of the handout for the presentation for you. So let's go ahead and let me go over with you what I will be covering during this presentation.

First, I'm going to tell you a little bit about my background. If you don't know who I am and how I have been involved with, you know, consulting and coaching and managing, you know, clients practices, I will discuss with you the buying psychology of our patients and review the communication sales cycle. Then I will put heavy emphasis and focus on the first two phases of the sales cycle, which is the contact and the discovery phase. And as we go through the presentation, you will understand.

If you can do a good job on the first two phases of the sales cycle, you will end up closing a large majority of the cases for your patients. This does not mean that you cannot learn about the other phases that follows the discovery phase, which I will go into detail with you, but it will help your process a lot faster. So I have had doctors who wish to basically try to skip through some of this area and shortcut it, and it just does not work. The cell cycle is an absolute must that has to be followed step by step. Otherwise you would not be able to.

Offer value to patients and close cases. I'm going to give you a sample communication script for some of the dental procedures. Discuss do's and don'ts during the presentation phase of a treatment. Identify some common patient objections and we will discuss how to handle some of them. Then I will discuss why it's necessary for all of our doctors or our team members or staff members to really ask a closing question and why some doctors or even staff, they fail to do it. Then toward the end of the presentation, I will discuss opportunities for you if you find the information I present for you of a value and you like to learn more how you and your team can get involved. And then finally, I will share with you a typical coaching workflow because many people are not familiar with what a coach actually does for their clients. And at the very end, I will reveal one key question that if you can ask starting immediately, that could lead to an immediate increase in your income. Now, you will notice that during my presentation, because we have people joining us from different countries with different languages. I have done this in a more of a caption text type of a slide presentation so people can read and understand me well through that process. So let's go ahead and let me tell you a little bit about my education and background. Well, I am a dentist. I graduated from dental school in 1990 almost 30 years ago from Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. I have an MBA in investment banking, private equity and Mergers and acquisitions from University of Bedfordshire in London. I have gone through various postgraduate trainings from the aesthetic residencies to implant residences, Mission Institute. I'm a fellow and a master at both.

At the International Congress of Implantology. And I have lots of exposures with different companies and training. And I have gone through the Ritz Carlton Leadership Center. I am a certified coach and a trainer with the John Maxwell as well as the Disney University.

I am based in in Las Vegas and Bangkok. The last five years I have had an active consulting practice here in Bangkok because of one of the larger groups that I was consulting here in Thailand. And I have expanded my consulting practice throughout Southeast Asia. And thanks to the technology, I'm able to have clients from all around the world, from Europe to Africa to Middle east, and we are able to help them to get to the next level. Now, this is a very unique webinar where you will have the opportunity to learn about the art of communication with your patients.

When you master the communication skills in your practice, you're able to increase your income, take more days off, spend more time with your loved ones, or hire the best management team, invest in the best technology and equipment, or give back to your community through charity work. Now the question is, can we talk about sales? And sales has been a forbidden subject for discussion among healthcare professionals. At least people don't like to talk about it openly.

However, we all know and agree that the sales is important to doctors as it is with other professionals. And without sales, really nothing can happen.

So what is sales? What's the definition of sales? Well, sales is the process of influencing, convincing, negotiating of others to engage in an activity. Basically, it means understanding on how to communicate more effectively.

Now, the point you must remember is that money is not always exchanged in sales. Actually, I remember an oncologist once contacted me from my Instagram channel and said, you know, you talk about sales and all that for doctors. How can an oncologist benefit from this? And my question to him was, do you have patients that they, you have to convince to go into chemotherapy or.

Surgery for their, you know, treatment? He said, yes. Well, I said, well, that is sales. That is about influencing and convincing and understanding how to communicate with patients better. You certainly can convince them to do what is right. Now. However, most people associate sales with money.

When we focus on money, though, we lose sight of our patients. We need to always be focused on helping our patients. Money is secondary. More problems you are able to solve for our patients, more money can come to us.

Now, in dental schools, they don't teach the subject of sales. They spend very little time and effort in training dentists to become successful in their businesses. Instead, they are merely focused on producing great dentists. And I know on this call there are many great dentists that I have looked up their names and I see with lots of good credentials and I'm humble and I want to express my gratitude for you guys to be on this call.

But emphasis on technical skills and developing great hands does not guarantee high income. I know more prosthodontists and oral surgeons that are highly skilled but cannot make the money they deserve. And many become resentful, hate their profession, and many times they begin backstepping other professionals as they're envious and jealous for their accomplishment. So even though dentists are among high income earners, as a comparison to other related professionals, when you compare the amount of time and money they have invested in their education, they're still way below their potential.

Most dentists also do not attend sales or communication training programs to learn and master this art. As this type of training that I'm offering to you is not readily available. One reason is that it's hardly recognized by various dental organizations as being credit worthy for continuing education. This is not something that normally is promoted in this profession.

Also, many dentists who understand the sales process and are very good at it, they don't want to speak about it publicly because they don't want to be alienated by their colleagues or simply they want to keep the secret to themselves.

However, people who know me well enough know that I am very independent of opinion of others and I always have reached out to help my colleagues, no matter where in the world they are. I have been attacked, criticized, but as long as I can help others, I am happy to do it. So dentists don't learn communication skills. And when they don't learn communication skills, the team is also affected.

This results in an entire team that have no idea, no clue on how to communicate properly with their patients, sell their ideas, products and services to them. So as soon as they hear a patient complaining about how expensive dentistry is, or how afraid they are because dentistry is painful, or other similar objections, the team has no idea how to handle these objections and they simply shut down and move on to another patient rather than being able to professionally handle these patients.

The lack of know how in communicating well with patients has resulted in practice models that are based on high volume of patient philosophies. Doctors think more patient, they can push through the door and treat as many patients as they can during a typical eight to ten hour a day is the key to success.

So you see, dentists spend great deal of time and money on their external marketing efforts to attract patients to their practices. However, because they don't know how to communicate with patients, they have revolving doors. Even patients who stay with a practice, they tend to do very little dentistry or they only want to treat one problem at a time.

So when I talk to dentists and dental teams across the globe, universally all dentists and their team, they want to work less, earn more, and have less stress in doing the work they enjoy.

So today's training will teach you exactly how to do this.

However, most people don't do it. They don't do it right away until some catastrophe, headstem I have learned from interacting and consulting with over 3,000 dentists in the last three decades. The following are some of the most common reasons why many dentists fail to implement this program.

1. Dentists are very close minded. They think their way is their best way. They never invest in their personal growth. Their team members, few like to learn but never apply the concepts. Some apply only parts of the program so they end up with partial results.

And some are just not focused. They have too many distractions beside their dental practice. They're not committed and they only do what is convenient for them.

I don't know which category you belong to, but the fact that you're here, the chance of your success with this program is 90% higher than other dentists that have never attended. If you're being made to watch this program, you're also extremely lucky.

This training is not about getting rich quick. It is not about selling your patients something that they don't need. It is not about cheating insurance companies by over billing. This course is also not a substitute for clinical skills. As a matter of fact, better you become at selling dentistry, better dentist you must become. And I remember when I became very good at mastering my communication sales. The first case that I sold was a full mouth Reconstruction back in 19, I think it was 1990, 1993. And I was very good at convincing the patient and the patient decided to have a full mouth reconstruction done. However, after a few months I had to give full refund to the patient because I just did not have the technical skills to do it correctly. That is when I decided to really commit to various continuing dental education and become the best best I can be. So this course is definitely not the substitute for clinical skills. As you get better at communication, your skills can get better as must get better as well.

So as I said, you don't want to give refunds to patients. And you know, if you have not the ability to sell, you also don't have the patience to practice on them. And you cannot, you know, get better at what you do. So it kind of goes hand to hand. So you have to have both of them at the same time. So the principles that I'm teaching you here is not some crazy theory or an idea that I have about improving the performance of your practice. All of these concepts, I have practiced them, perfected them. As a hands on clinician in the last 30 years, I also have taught the same principles to dentists all over the world. Small towns, big towns, rich countries, poor countries. It is simple and it works if you follow them if you only do parts, then you will get partial results and sometimes no results.

So this training is only for dentists and team members who want to excel in their career through ethical communication, selling and offer their patients exceptional level of care and service.

I generally have found that dentists who practice unethically, they do it because they don't know how to sell dentistry. The dentists who master their communication skills don't need to lie, they don't need to cheat their patients or the insurance companies. They know how to provide the best dentistry based on the patient wants and desires. So, let's begin.

Dental schools all over the world teach one way communication and treatment planning. A typical patient comes in, a mouth exam is performed and the list of treatments are made for the patient, except according to what dentist thinks is appropriate to get the patient's mouth healthy.

Patients are given a long list of recommended treatment, a total cost, and during the time of the clinical exam, patients are told how critical it is for them to have their work completed and if they don't do it, something bad will happen.

Some also go to the point of illustrating scary and horrible photos of teeth as a scare tactic.

Many dentists want to show they're good, caring and compassionate doctors and not salespeople. So they try to avoid telling the patient all of the problems that exist or even allow the patient to choose part of the treatment. They use words such as watch, observe, wait to indicate that some of the teeth do not require immediate treatment. This way, dentists are hoping to get some of the business from the patient than not at all. However, by doing this, they compromise their work as it results in patch of dentistry and also they earn less in the process.

On the other hand, patients don't seem to have immediate setbacks with most dental problems. Thus they leave the dental practices feeling as the dentist was trying to sell them something they did not need. They go out with their friends and they make a statement such as well, he told me I need two crowns two years ago, but I'm still chewing fine, I have no symptoms, or I just think he wanted to sell me more dentistry. This type of communication and treatment planning is the result of dental schools not teaching dentists about the sales process and has resulted in widespread problems of patients saying no to treatments and also becoming dental shoppers.

Since sales is about influence and the only way to influence someone is through communication, a new way of communicating is required than what schools are teaching. This is why I have committed my life to teach dentists on how to become a master in communication and in the process make them more successful and more prosperous. Understanding different types of treatment plans Fear versus Want Fear is when we put some sort of a fear or worry in the patient's mind. For example, patient comes in, they have a broken tooth. We start explaining to them that they have to have this broken tooth fixed. If they don't fix it, it will have. They'll end up with a root canal, possibly an extraction, possibly an implant and so forth. Another type of a treatment plan is based on the patient's wants. Patients who pay us based on what they want, they certainly make better patients.

So majority of dental procedures are elective. Nothing really happens to the patient when they don't do it. It is our job to explore their wants and design a treatment plan around their wants and not ours.

Because all customers buy based on their own personal reasons and justifications. Patients are no different. We need to first understand why patients buy and design our vocabulary and communication around their buying psychology.

Our job is to first understand why people buy. So a typical person, there are many reasons. They may buy a service or a product.

Maybe.

Because of the way they can look good to other people, the way it makes them feel good, maybe the way it can save them time, make them money, or they get a lot of value. So let's look at an example here. Let's look at. Let's say this particular patient is considering brand new set of new smile veneers.

So she may be thinking, well, you know, what, if I get this veneer, I can.

Look good in front of my boyfriend, my husband, I can, you know, look young, beautiful when I go out with my friends, my friends all have beautiful, nice teeth. So looking good to others is important to her.

Maybe it's about making her feel good. Maybe she thinks, well, you know, what, if I get the veneer, I have more confidence, I can smile bigger, happier, you know, makes me feel sexier.

Maybe it's about making money. A person who considers a brand new smile, they may be thinking, you know, what if I have a brand new smile? I can, you know, I have this promotion and job interview coming up next month and I know it's going to really have a big impact on the way I can impress the person who is going to interview me.

Maybe she was considering it to save time. Maybe the person who wants to have veneers, they want to have nice evenly shaped teeth so they don't spend the time trying to floss their teeth every time after they eat, you know, and so forth, or a combination of a lot of this stuff that Brings lots of value for the patient. So this is why we need to understand why people buy and design our communication around that.

Now I have developed this.

Diagram and if you're interested in downloading the actual.

PDF, I'll be happy to send it to you. Just send me an email. Be happy to send it to you. But this is basically what our sales cycle look like. The sales cycle has four major components. As you can see, it has the contact on the top and those are all the external and internal contacts which we'll be discussing. Then we have the.

Discovery phase where we are doing our clinical assessment and we're asking for our.

Patients about all of their work and different things that we need to do for them. Okay, and excuse me.

One second, I got to get rid of the screenshot that came up on me.

Okay, this here.

Okay.

So we're going to spend a lot of time on the first two phase because most people, if they don't get the first two phase correctly, then they will have a very difficult time to go into the presentation and close it. Okay. But from the discovery phase we'll discuss about how to go to presentation. We'll discuss about the incubation, why incubation is important, why patients have to be sometimes placed in an incubator. And then we'll discuss about closing. Okay. And then we'll discuss about the follow up that the patients will require to have. So if we get time, I will go into as much detail as possible for you guys through this webinar. So the contact is non physical or physical? Non physical. We're talking about, you know, like telephone, video, webinar, you know, social media, you know, email banners, different things. Physical is something they come in contact with like your print advertisements, your business cards, meet and greet.

Your, you know, the contact you have with them at different phases. Diagnosis and treatment planning, presentation, education, closing, follow up outside of work. That's also very important. When people are, you know, after hours, how you look, how you dress, how you present yourself is very important in the community. Now the key to increase case acceptance begins by making it easy for patients to do business with you. So one way to do that is to identify and remove all sales barrier that results in patients saying no to you. So we need to remember that humans are emotional in nature.

And we buy based on emotions and we use logic to support our decision.

So example, I like to have that new car. Well, the emotion says it looks nice, makes me feel good. But our logic says, well, I can use it to commute.

I like to have A beautiful smile. Well, the emotion says, makes me look younger, sexier, more beautiful. Our logic will say it will help me have better teeth and don't have to worry about continuing fixing them. So people make decisions based on emotions, but then they support it by some sort of a logic behind that.

If they like your office, for example, the emotion may say, they make me feel important. I like to go to this dentist, he makes me feel important and valued, but they're too far away. But you know what the logics to support it is? Well, even though they're far out of my way, I can do my shopping around their office. See again, emotions. Decisions are made based on emotions and logic is there to support it. What is important to realize is that when emotions are strong and they build desires within us as humans, we do anything to fulfill those desires. This means we always find a way to fulfill our emotional desires and we find the money to pay for things that can satisfy our desires and the time to pursue what turns us on.

So we have to introduce positive emotions at every encounter with our patients, whether it's a physical or a non physical contact.

Here I want to talk to you about quality of care versus quality of experience.

Quality of care is about dentists providing their patients with treatment outcome that is highly predictable and is at the same level or better than the accepted treatment standards by other dental professionals.

Quality experience is the overall experience of a patient from the time they contact our offices until after the treatment is completed. Now, it's crazy to think that you can compete on quality of care because from what, from the patient's point of view, they cannot measure whether you are a better dentist because you prepared that mod composite with the right cable, surface angulation.

Or you know, did a better job of tapering that, you know, implant before you placed it in and preserved more bone structure and so forth. All they can measure you on is based on the experience. That is why quality of experience for the patient is the most important aspect of your treatment and your practice. If we want to achieve sales mastery, we must focus on emotion experience. Now, in 2008, they ran an article on me for Dental Town. This is what my practice looked like. Now, I don't expect every one of you on the call to have a practice like this. It would be nice and I think if you follow what I'm teaching you, you certainly can afford doing that very soon. But it's all about bringing emotions to the practice. Now some of you may have fairly dull looking practices and I've seen practices all across the globe and so forth. But it doesn't mean you cannot grab a can of paint, put some, you know, nice flowers, put a couple of colorful pillows, bring some beautiful photos of people smiling, promote really nice dentistry in your practice. Well, this is how I ended up working on Bill gates back in 2011. And a lot of people ask me, how did you end up working on Bill Gates? And this is not to impress you, but impress upon you how mastering communication skills is so important.

And you know, once you master your communication skills, you can choose to work on whoever you want to do business with. And he was one of the wealthiest people that I worked on. I've worked on many wealthy families in the US but really the point of this is communication mastery is absolutely important as a doctor for your practice. Now if you bring positive emotions, you can experience, the patients can have positive experience with your practice. If you have negative emotions in the practice, then they have negative experience. So if a patient walks into your office and they see a picture of a tooth with the roots hanging there and explanation of what a root canal is with a little needle going through and so forth, you know, that is a negative experience. But if they walk into a practice where they see a beautiful picture of a, a man or a woman is smiling and you know, some before and after photos or a combination of a slideshow on your monitor obviously brings more of a positive experience. And if there is no emotions involved, there is indifference. And patients who are indifferent about the practice or product, they switch easily to a competitor.

So going back to this sales cycle, it is absolutely important that you bring emotion to all aspects, no matter which part it is.

So let's talk about identifying some emotional turnoffs.

Emotional turnoffs, by definitions are a collection of events, behaviors or sites that dissuades an individual to connect with us on an emotional level. They all can become basically sales barrier and more emotional turnoff. There's less chance of a patient say yes to their treatment.

So common turn off patients experience with dentists.

And their offices. So let's take a look for office.

Typically very outdated. The core, they're not inviting, they have like privacy window, they're not easy to find. People have to look for it. They don't have good signage, good parking. They're not, they don't have long hours. You know, they smell like eugenol oil or clove. They're unorganized piles of paper, plastic bins everywhere.

You know, there's no privacy for discussion. They're loud, hectic, takes a long time to answer the phone. The emails.

There are just too much advertising. They have banners and roll ons and, you know, bulletin boards everywhere trying to say, hey, I want your attention, I want your attention. They're overfilled with trash cans, the office is dirty, There is no relaxing music. If everything being equal, which practice would you be willing to spend your money with? A practice like this looks organized, but it's not very friendly. Okay. Or a practice like this that is more welcoming and is more open. You ask yourself that.

As far as the team is concerned, some of the emotional turnoffs are the negative attitude, very common in practices because people are stressed, busy and they just don't have a good attitude. They're indifferent. They lack energy, they're not listening. They spend too much time talking and gossiping. They're not compassionate. They don't interact or engage. It's just yes or no answer. They're demanding. They lecture the patients. They have a bad image. They come in no makeup for women and their.

Gowns or surgical gowns they're wearing is all wrinkled up. They have bad teeth. This is a huge part of bad thing I see in practices all over. You know, they're trying to sell, you know, nice whitening cosmetic dentistry, but teeth don't look good in themselves. You know, dentists need to spend time and money and invest in their staff. If they have a good staff, then you need to invest the time and money to make their teeth look good. Good as well. Bad odor, they're rushing. They make too many mistakes. You know, they keep saying I'm sorry and this and that. These are all emotional turnoffs for practice. Now, as far as the doctors, typically what I see is too much ego. They're not engaging, they rush people, they don't want to listen. They don't come across as caring. They have bad attitudes toward the team. They get angry at them, they throw instruments at them.

You know, and they criticize other doctors as well. You can make your own list, but these are some of the common observations that I have made in the last three decades, Visiting thousands of dental offices. Now, to become a master in sales, you must become intentional in paying attention to every detail, as Steve Jobs did with Apple. Very intentional, very fanatical.

Now you must impress your patients at every contact point. The first contact begins when a patient comes across some information about you or your practice. It could be a website, an advertisement, social media, whatever. It must impress and elicit a positive emotional response for your patients.

This is why writing ad copies were so important. Is your message focused on you, your practice? Or is it Focused on patients. I see many times advertisements that doctors have listed all of their accomplishments and awards and where they went to school and so forth. So really the advertisement is focused on them or their focus on the products or the machines and the laser machines and different types of machines they have in the office.

But the issue is that you have to focus on the patient. What are you willing to solve? This is an ad where I just picked up. It says it's going to work for my family. It's got to be convenient. Again, it's solving a problem for a patient. We have early morning, late evening and weekend appointments. Okay, that's good. Now this is where I want to talk to you about communicating benefits versus features. Understanding the difference between benefit of a treatment and the features can help us script our vocabulary around how we are able to help patients solve their problems. Features do not solve problems. Benefits do. The following table shows some examples. You could come up with more benefits. For example, if it's a teeth whitening, the feature you may be advertising is zoom laser. But the benefit that you should be advertising is whiter teeth look better. Beautiful white smile. And those keywords are important in writing your ads or communicating with patients in person. If you're talking about periodontal deep cleaning, feature would be scaling replaning ultrasonic cleaning hand instruments. Saving teeth. Eliminate bad teeth, bad breath. Dental implants. People love to advertise the brand Noble Biocare Titanium. But you got to focus on what benefit it has for the patient. Replaces the tooth, it fixes the tooth. It conserves the adjacent teeth. It stops the bone loss. Porcelain veneer, same thing. I see a lot of advertisements around Emax Lumineers. Well, we have to solve a problem by expressing the benefit. Beautiful smile, Sexy new smile. Look younger, more confident. Clear aligners. Same thing. Natural way of strengthening teeth. Easy to wear, no metal showing. All on four. Who cares? It's a Mallow Clinic, Nobel Biocare. They want to know what it does for them. It's a fixed bridge. It's a teeth. In one day they can get their teeth. Same day that they don't have to leave the office with no teeth and be embarrassed in front of family and friends. Requires no bone grafting. Snore guard.

You need to talk about it. You need to understand that it does save life. It does prevent acid reflux. It does prevent atrial fibrillation. Okay, root canal. Saves the tooth from extraction. So patients don't buy cosmetic surgery. They buy it because it can make them feel sexy and beautiful. And that is what we need to focus on. Remember that patients buy only when you solve a problem for them. So we always need to be communicating benefits of our services than the features. I recommend that we put this in our vocabulary anytime we meet a potential patient. And everyone is our potential patient. So you need to have a very specific script as what it is we do. Then we need to have a specific script for every service or procedures that we do. So these are what I like to refer as elevator pitches. Because in an elevator you have a short amount of time that you can go from one floor to the other. So you need to be able to precisely explain what it is. Well, this business card that I picked up on Google says endodontic Dr. David Beach. But how many people really know what endodontic treatment is? How many people really know what a root canal treatment is? I know as a dentist, many times I have to explain to patients what really a root canal treatment is.

Well, dentists love using jargon and they spend time to explain to patients what that all means. Instead of using dental jargon, I encourage you to consider easy to understand words that resonates with people. So instead of writing that I'm an endodontist specialist or root canal specialist, I would write, my name is Dr. David Beach, I save teeth and I get you out of pain quickly and comfortably.

My name is Dr. Allen and I help doctors grow their practices, make lots of money in their process and then sell it at high valuation to private equity or stock market. That is my.

Elevator pitch. Now, everyone on your team must have their own elevator pitch. Also every procedure then you must, you do, you must have an elevated pitch. This is the reason when you conversing with a patient, you want each team member sound absolutely precise. The way it is, the consistency in communication makes your practice stand out and come across as highly professionals.

Now, I don't have time to share with you the elevator pitches for every procedure. However, if you chose to sign up for the first time full version of this program, you will receive a complete list of elevator pitches for every procedure you can share with your team and have them memorize it. It is the only way to sound consistent and professional. I have used these to build very strong call centers for several large dental groups. Now let's fast forward to the contact phase. From the contact phase to the discovery assessment. So now we are on the second aspect of the sales cycle, which is the discovery and assessment. Because of our limited time, I will only cover some of the important parts in the phase two. Some of the important parts is the handoff is the process of transferring responsibility of the care of a patient to another team member. The handoff occurs many times during our interaction with a patient.

It is important that we know the points at which handoff could happen and create a specific plan as how this transition must happen. Let's look at handoff as why they're so important.

A handoff is used to increase patient safety, promote doctor practice and the team build confidence and trust with our patients. Look at each one of these.

In most practices, patients handoff cycle looks like something like this. You need to create your own workflow, but it's very typical of many offices. They go from front office assistant to dentist, X ray take back to the dentist or the hygienist.

Now I cover much more detail about handoff in other training sessions. I will give you specific scripts that you can use in each phase of the sales cycle. However, for now, for the sake of a short time we have I will give you an example as how a receptionist must do a prompt or handoff to an assistant or a doctor who the patient will meet for the first time.

Dr. John, this is Mr. Allen Smith and he is a new patient at our practice. He recently moved to this area and he found us on Facebook. He's concerned about a broken tooth and I told him that you are an expert in saving teeth and make them strong and beautiful. See, we're talking all about benefits in front of patients and promoting our doctor to the new patient.

The second phase is one of the most important steps of the sales cycle as it gives us the opportunity to think thoroughly understand our patients problems and help in resolving it for them. This step cannot be skipped and cannot be rushed. More complex treatments require more time to be spent with patients. We cannot offer a solution to a patient unless we thoroughly understand their concerns and problems.

Unfortunately, most dentists want to rush through this phase and they wonder why patients they have low conversion rates. Even those who convert. Typically they end up doing smaller treatments. However, highly experienced comprehensive dentists and master communicators know that they cannot rush through the major dental treatments and thus they invest time and energy in discovering the problems that the patient is facing before they begin formulating a treatment plan. Patients also respond positively to this as they know dentists are busy when someone is taking enough time to understand their situation is better. They see the dentist as caring and very thorough. This results in patients accepting dental treatments that are much higher in average cost. To become a master communicator, you must learn the art of questioning and listening. The questioning allows you to discover your patient's long term and short term plans as well as it helps your patients to discover how dentistry can benefit them. When you learn to ask good questions, patients will tell you what they have in mind. This will result in patients owning their dental problems before we offer them a solution. In majority of offices, dentist comes up with a solution without knowing if the patient actually owns a problem. This results in patients rejecting treatments and I will illustrate this more for you throughout this training so you will completely understand this concept. When you ask good questions, actively listen and allow to fully comprehend what your patient's wants and desires are. Then you can create a treatment plan that meets their wants and not yours. When you become highly skilled in both question listen it will allow you to build trust and confidence with your patients. This will help you achieve unprecedented level of income and production compared to your colleagues. No matter where in the world you practice.

However, just anything else in life. Mastery in any areas of life is not a single event, but it's a journey that requires practice and requires you invest time, money and patience. I have personally invested over $300,000 in my education after I graduated from my dental school and this does not include the loss of revenue on the days that I had to sit in a class and learn instead of producing dentistry. This is why by the end of this webinar today, if you find the information I'm presenting to you valuable, then I encourage you to get involved with one or more ways with my coaching program that I discuss later as it is absolutely essential to your next level of success. In my consulting practice, I coach and monitor my clients on a regular basis and make sure they're growing consistently and achieving their goals. So how do you discover your patient wants? Well, through asking good questions. What type of questions should you be asking? Well, I've learned over the years that there are four questions that give me all the information that I would need to make a treatment plan for patient. Now I try to learn the answer to these questions at all patient interviews and these are short term requirements, their long term plans, aesthetic desires and also their dental iq.

Short term requirement allows us to learn and address patients immediate concern. Addressing short term concerns are important as it will allow us to build relationship with our patients and solve their problems. Now, long term plans help us learn about their goals of our patients. In the future, it will help us to initiate a conversation that is more about comprehensive dentistry than single tooth dentistry. It will also help us connect the short term requirements of our patients to long term plans and inform them of if There is a conflict between the two plans from a technical standpoint. So let me illustrate this for you. Let's say patient has two broken upper first cuspids and it is in their short term plan to fix them. However, their long term plan is to make their front teeth look nicer, more beautiful and much whiter in shade. By understanding the long term plan you can suggest to your patient that how taking care of the front teeth now at the same time as the bicuspids can help her have much whiter teeth in her aesthetic smile zone and avoid having to redo the bicuspids again later because of her teeth shape requirements on the front teeth and how he can she can save on cost of her treatment long term when there is a benefit to connecting their long term plan to short term requirements of our patients. Patients want to hear our explanation and we owe it to our patients to inform them well how they can save on the cost of not having to redo a treatment. Again. This can only be accomplished if we ask good questions and try to really understand our patients concerns before prematurely coming up with a treatment solution. In my full program I teach you on how to use proper questioning to make your patients begin thinking that they should combine their long term plan with the short term plan. For now, I will not go into further detail. Understand Aesthetic desires helps us formulate a treatment plan that is based on the patient wants. Some patients may tell you they have no aesthetic desires and they're happy with the way their teeth are and that is totally fine. However, this question will plant the seed in their mind about making themselves look better. The dental IQ question varies among patients and everyone places a different sets of value on dentistry. Most dentists fall into the trap of thinking that someone who appears to be wealthy places a higher level of priority on their teeth than those who don't look wealthy. So understanding dental cue of your patient can also help you recommend treatment plans. For example, someone with a low dental cue who rarely visits a dentist only if there's an emergency will not be a good candidate for temporary or patch of work. More stronger, stable and permanent dentistry is certainly a better option. So example doing a 3:4 surface composite rather than doing a crown. In my full program I will teach about the type of questions you ask and how they need to be discussed with patients. So in summary, we need to find the answer to four categories of the question regarding the discovery phase. Short term, long term, aesthetic desires and dental iq. So what type of questions should you be asking? Well, there are two types of questions Open versus Closed Ended Open ended questions encourage patients to tell us more and give us more information. The close ended question results in short answers such as yes or no. So in English language, open ended questions usually begin with letters H or W. How have who? When? Why? Where?

When you ask good questions, you can expect to get good answers. So let's look at some sample questions Short Term Requirements what would you like me to accomplish for you today? What is your main concern? What treatment is a priority for you? What is your short term plan? Long term plans? What are your long term plans for your teeth? What do you want your teeth to be like in five to ten years from now? What sort of expectations do you have with your teeth ten years from now?

What are your goals as far as making your teeth look better? Have you thought about improving the looks of your teeth? What benefits do you see if you had more beautiful set of teeth? Dental IQ when was the last time you experienced a dental emergency? Have you ever had to interrupt your day because of a dental emergency? How did you feel when you had broken tooth abscess?

You need to practice these questions to a point that becomes natural to you and you can fit them into your regular conversation with patients. Nothing is worse than sounding like a script. The questions must be genuine and from your heart. You must be able to show that you care to know the answers to these questions. You must come across authentic. In my full program, I will teach you on how to come across as authentic as it shows that you genuinely care and build immediate trust and value for patients. Untrained professionals think that to be in sales you must become good at clocking. The more you talk, the better. This is a false thinking. I recommend that my clients to stick to the following.

75% of your time for consultation examination should be allocated to listening, 15% is questioning and 10% really to presenting.

The following table shows the recommended time based on my suggestion. If you have a consultation time of let's say 30 minutes, okay, your listening should be about 22 minutes, you're questioning about five and presenting about three and so on.

More complex problems require more time with patients and the consultation times can be divided into two appointments. I will cover more on this subject during the presentation training session. It is also important to remember that when patients are speaking not to interrupt them unless it is for clarification of the same subject. Patient must like you first, but to buy your services they must trust you. Have you ever bought anything from anyone who you did not trust? It's the same thing. The foundation of elective treatments are based on two factors, how likable you are as a professional and how much they can trust you. So more complex the treatment, more trust is necessary and this takes time. You cannot expect to build trust, for example, with a patient who is considering full mouth, set of dental implants or veneers in just 10 minutes. Once you understand this concept, you will invest the necessary time with your consultation.

Investing time is a necessity. If you're looking to do lots of single tooth dentistry and see many patients, you can shorten the amount of consultation time. However, if you want to magnify your production per hour, become focused on one patient, then 20 patients a day and remove the stress and the overhead expenses that comes along with running a high volume practice. You would want to invest quality time with each patient. The choice is yours. My frontline experience.

Having operated both models, a high volume and low volume model, I will tell you, and witnessing hundreds of dentists, I prefer to invest my time to help patients find their wants. This type of approach resulted in me achieving production records that were 12 to 15 times the average dentist for the given amount of time. However, the choice is yours and you can decide how to apply the communication mastery to your practice philosophy. But at one point, we all must wake up and begin looking for ways to earn more, work less with less stress. I hope I can wake everyone up before some major setback can happen for them. For me, it was landing on a hospital bed at age 32, having practice with more than 15,000 patients, 60 employees and eight dentists, all in one single location. For others, it could be a divorce, an addiction, a financial health or legal problem, etc. This is why I like to get these trainings out to as many dentists as possible so they can begin their careers on the right path. Now let's look at some of the question we posed previously to our patient and see what we can expect. The answers would be from our patient and how we can use these answers to recommend an ideal treatment plan for our patient. Remember the question we asked, what would you like us to accomplish for you today? So the answers could be, well, I like to fix this broken tooth and the treatment possibility is exactly what the patient asked you to do. And you can certainly do that. What are your long term dental plans? Well, I like to save my teeth. Well, when a patient tells you I like to save my teeth, basically they're telling you I want to have periodontal deep cleaning, I want to have crowns, veneers, whatever that I can do to save my teeth for A long time. What are your goals as far as the looks of your teeth are concerned? Maybe I want them to be wider. Maybe I want them to be more straight. Well, then the treatment possibilities are zoom, clear aligners, braces, porcelain veneers. What type of dental emergency have you experienced in the past? Well, they may tell you I've never experienced any. So that means they are just, they're good for regular care maintenance. I'm a dentist, I'm at dentist all the time. That means they always have some sort of a emergency coming up, so they'll be a good candidate for more comprehensive care. Or I had to go, you know.

I had to go to dentist, you know, so many times or months ago. Then again, it's more about comprehensive dentistry now. The way we must treatment plan our patient must be based on what our patient wants and not what we want. The way we find out what they want, we ask. At this point we're doing this, it's just gathering information and we're not presenting a treatment plan. When I say we need to treatment plan based on our patients state wants and desires. I always get a few dentists ask me, well, what if I cannot do something for my patient? Or it's not technically possible. So if you have the same question coming to your mind, my answer to you is that at this point we're only gathering information and we're not promising them anything. We still have not even had a chance to examine our patient and make the necessary records to be safe. And to confirm your understanding of patient one, this is how I recommend scripting every question from the previous table.

I like to fix my broken tooth. So if the patient says that, then you can say, or if your system is communicating with the patient, if I or the doctor can fix this broken tooth today, is that what you like to do? You need to ask them that. I like to save my teeth. Okay, if I can save your teeth for a long time, is that what you like to do? Maybe whiter, more straight. If I can make your teeth whiter, is that what you like to do? You got to get their confirmation. I'm at the dentist all the time. If I can help prevent emergencies. So you're not at the dentist all the time. Is that something you want to do?

The common word to use in all situations to confirm when you are still not technically sure is if. Now, to have a meaningful conversation with your patient, you must have a record of a patient in front of you. I typically recommend that my client clients to meet and greet all new patients for no more than three minutes and hand off the patient to assist them. For a good set of records. The records that I recommend for each patient is as full set of X rays pano full set of intraoral photos AACD series from American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry and for practices that are high volume and maybe they don't have the time to take full set of photos, I recommend a limited set of photos to be taken. But photos are absolutely important in communicating with your patients. As pictures is worth 1000 words.

You may ask what is a full set and what is a limited set? A full set is based on AACD guidelines. I have enclosed a copy of a PDF download to this presentation which I will send you. However, a limited set of photos ideally covers the minimum shots.

Some doctors who attend my seminars immediately raise the objection that they simply don't have the time to do photography and my answer to them is if you want to continue to work at the same level of care, diagnosis and income, then go ahead and follow with your own path. Otherwise start changing Taking photos has many advantages other than use for communications. Photos can help you see better, diagnose better, and protects you in case of a legal dispute. It also allows you to build a gallery of before and after photos. This brings us to the next essential requirement as a must have during a clinical assessment or discovery phase. Before and after photo galleries as well as display models is a must have. The photos allows you to materialize something that is intangible to something that is visual so your patients can relate and dream about. The display models can also help your patients feel.

What it is that they're getting. Many dentists use photos of other dentists, which is okay if you're just starting out, but you need to build your own before and after photo album. In building your album, become intentional in taking good photos and use various imaging tools such as cropping to make your photos look professional for the display models. Many dentists like to use extra leftover or unused pieces of dental prosthesis to show patients. If you become a master salesperson, you must have a professional looking set of nice cases to present to patients and if you need help in ordering it, I will be happy to order them for you. You need to visit my website and I think they're right on it to order. Now I have covered the essential components of the discovery phase with you. It is time to get into the actual scripting and the interview process.

So I have pulled only a few sample scripts out of the full program to share with you today. The full Program covers detailed scripts of every treatment. But because we are already running, you know, behind time or we are still on time, but I know we have a lot of slides to cover here and so forth, I'm going to share with you a few. So let's look at it. So before begin giving you the script, I want to discuss the subjects that come up all the time from Dennis and the team who should be asking these questions. My answer is every practice and the workflow is different. However, these questions must be learned, practiced and used by all team members at various points of your interaction with patient. If you remember we discussed about handoffs earlier, these can all make great conversation at each handoff. So use these scripts at any point that you seem it is appropriate. But please do not make it sound scripted. It has to also sound and feel natural. So these are some of the discovery scripts. But again I won't be able to go through all of these for you. Let's look at a few during examination. What can you tell me about these missing teeth? How did you end up losing teeth? How long have you been missing these teeth? What are your long term dental plans regarding your teeth? Have you experienced any bleeding, bad taste or smell from your gums? How long ago did you have these black fillings placed? What are your thoughts? Missing teeth? How did you lose this tooth? See, if you have a patient with a missing tooth, typically what happens is I see dentists, they go in there and they immediately treatment plan. Well, we have to do a bridge here, we have to do an implant. But what if you ask the patient first, how did you lose this tooth and let them tell you. Then ask them, how long have you been chewing without this tooth? If the patient tells you that they have been chewing without this tooth for the last 25 years, they're eating fine. It is going to be very difficult for you to convince them to have a bridge or a dental implant. As a matter of fact, I don't recommend doing it because you're going to come across as a heart salesman professional.

This is why it is important for you to ask questions before you offer a solution for treatment. If a patient tells you, well, I have been missing this tooth for 20 years, you can't follow up a question and say, have you thought about replacing it? Say, well, I haven't. Then you can ask them, well, would you like to think about it? Is this something you like me to give you the options for and see what they tell you and follow what they tell you rather than trying to sell them something that they don't need all. My point is you need to offer solution to a patient once they have a problem. If they don't have a problem.

You cannot convince them to buy something from you. Cosmetic dentistry what are your goals as far as improving the looks of your teeth? Have you considered making your teeth look better? Have you considered straightening your teeth in its fewest appointments? What benefits do you see if you had a beautiful smile?

See, many times we see patients with overcrowded teeth, yellow teeth, bad teeth. And I see dentists are shy about telling them what they need. So I think you should do some cosmetic dentistry. This is how they leave it. You need to ask question. Have you thought about making your smile more beautiful? Have you thought about straightening your teeth in as few as two appointments? See, these questions will lead to answers that you want that you can use for your treatment plan. Process for dental implants. Have you considered replacing your missing tooth with something that is more permanent? Maybe you have a patient that is wearing a partial. How comfortable are you eating with this removable retainer?

Has anyone discussed the benefits of replacing this tooth? This is how you can start the conversation with your patient. What are your thoughts if you could replace your tooth without grinding any of your adjacent teeth in the process? Maybe somebody has a bridge on this side and then you know they have an empty space on the other side. You ask them what are your thoughts if you could replace this without grading grinding your adjacent teeth in the process like the other side? What do you think? Oh, I didn't know we can do that, doc. Yes, absolutely we can. Then you can offer him the dental implant. Clear aligners and orthodontics. Have you considered having a straight teeth? Do you know how to floss? But I'm not going to go through these because of the time. But you guys can certainly welcome to send a request for the for the PDF and I'll be happy to send it to you there. This one question has helped me close more.

Fixed all on four, all on four cases, Fixed hybrids cases and so forth. When was the last time you were able to eat an apple? Ask this from a denture patient before you just tell them, hey, you need to have some implants. Nobody wants to buy some implants but if you ask them this question then they would want to buy it. When was the last time you were able to have apple? Oh doctor, I've never able to eat an apple with my dentures to bite into it. Would you like to?

Well, I didn't know it's possible. Absolutely it is. I certainly can fix those dentures for you. Really? I would love to do that doc. This is how you start the conversation and you do that. When patients participate in their treatment planning process, it is much higher probability for them to accept the recommended treatment and comply as a patient.

This type of diagnosis and treatment planning was first coined as co diagnosis by my own mentor and coach, Dr. Bill Blatchford. Over the years I have changed the terminology to cooperative decision making, but essentially is the same thing. 99% of dentists miss this question and it is probably one of the biggest reasons that our treatment plans are not accepted. Can you guess what that is? What is your budget?

Let's skip that. Not knowing what your patient budget is is like shooting in dark. You can ask all sorts of questions and get all type of answers, but if you don't know what your patient budget is, then you're simply guessing. So most doctors are embarrassed to ask about this question. So in order to avoid it they just keep giving multiple treatment plans. Sometimes I see an assistant is working five treatment plans all at the same time, taking 20, 30, 40 minutes to do it.

Now, this type of approach showed that you are not confident about your fees, your treatment, the value that you can offer. Basically it shows that you are not sold on you or what you can do for your patient. If you find yourself in situation where you like to avoid talking about fees, you really need serious help in changing your mindset or help in improving your skills. If it is your skill set, you should refrain from selling services that are not confident in doing and really work on mastering those clinical skills first. Whatever the reason, your lack of confidence in discussing feeds with your patient, it will come across as uncertainty. And patients will never buy our services if they feel uncertain about us or our practice. These are examples of scripts that you can use. Budget. What sort of budget are you considering to have this work completed? How much have you budgeted for this work? How much have you considered spending on your dental work? Now with this question, not everyone will share their budget with you. So if a patient does not share their budget with you, it is fine, but at least you have initiated the conversation. Someone who initiates the conversation will come across more professional and confident about their services.

Possible answers you may get from the budget questions and how to handle them.

I've not thought about a budget. I have no idea. I just want to know my options first. My budget is so much now we will not have time to get into details of how to handle each scenario and the follow up questions. That is all covered in the full program. Now let's change gear because lack of time and focus on the presentation phase of the sales cycle. Profound program. Let us review this. So we covered the contact, covered the discovery, and then now we go to the presentation phase.

Now let me see. I have one question coming up from someone here. Let's see what the question is. I can.

Okay, I think right now is the time. Let's go ahead and take a about a five minute break and we will come back in just five minutes. So if you guys want to go grab a drink, something, just come back in about five minutes. Okay. Thank you.

Okay, so back here.

Okay. Welcome back. So.

In this phase of a treatment, unlike the other first two parts of the sales cycle, you will have the opportunity to speak more and ask less. You still need to ask some questions, but now it is time for you to really do a good job in presenting how you can help your patient.

Even though you're spending only 10% of the time in presenting, it does not mean this part is less important. As a matter of fact, because dentists are not required to spend a great deal of time in this phase, unlike during the discovery or assessment phase, they must be highly prepared and organized at the time to present well is typically shorter than the discovery phase.

Nothing is worse than going into a presentation and not be prepared. You must know your patient's case inside out. You must have all of your notes, X rays, photos and any supporting materials or sales tools you need at your fingertips.

Now remember, not being organized is one of the emotional turn offs. Once you have begun your presentation, you must not be interrupted. You must not accept phone calls, small talks from your team. Leave the presentation room or go or leave the room to go someplace else looking for things. Any sort of interruption will disrupt the emotional flow and momentum that you have created so far and may kill your presentation. So let's look at some of the rules about presentation. When, where and how can impact your conversion.

When to present in relation to the discovery phase.

Ideally, we would like to present our patients with a solution to their problems as soon as possible and get their commitment to begin treatment with us quickly. However, as I mentioned to you before, trust plays a huge role in case acceptance. Larger and more complex treatment. Greater trust and confidence in us is required by our patients.

This is simple rule that I recommend to my clients as when it is the most ideal time to present a treatment.

For single tooth quadrant dentistry, I recommend the same day presentation. If it's a complex treatment with multiple quads of treatment, I like to typically Bring the patient back within 24 to 48 hours. If it's a complex treatment, multiple quads of treatment and they're there for second opinion, mean they already have seen another dentist and they're there just for the second opinion, maybe to get a price or just your opinion on something. Then same day presentation is fine. When patients are not aware of problems, patient must become interested in the new treatment, like example, smile makeover and so forth. Let's say they come in for a recall examination and your hygienist is talking to them about, you know, having more beautiful teeth and they say, yes, we're interested, and so forth. Again, I would recommend not presenting same day because the patient's thinking is only about spending money for that recall appointment to bring the patient back again within 24 to 48 hours. When a case is complex and the patient has very little information on the subject, providing a lot of information to the patient on the same day as when we are discovering and assessing can overwhelm our patients and paralyze them to take actions. Also, complex treatments require time for us to thoroughly evaluate various treatment options, study our notes from our discovery session and give our.

Team enough time to prepare a well organized written treatment plan. All of this which does take time. Nothing is worse than presenting too much information too quickly to a patient who was not expecting a complex dental treatment. This can become an emotional turn off and we must avoid it. However, when a patient has already presented with a complex issue and already we are aware of the type of treatment is required, perhaps even have seen another dentist previously and they are not at your office for a second opinion is perfectly fine. To present the treatment on the same day. As long as you still have the time to prepare everything properly and you're able to present the treatment in an organized and logical structure. Now, if we need to postpone our treatment presentation, we must refer to this. We must refer to this as incubation phase of the treatment. This period is ideally must not be longer than 48 hours as buying elective dental treatments are based on emotions. If the patient cannot do it in maximum 48 hours, then we need to bring them back for the next available time that both me and the patient are available. I will not have time to go into the sample scripts used for the patients to be placed in incubation phase during this program. But we will cover that if you decide to sign up for our full program. So when to present in relation to the time of the day? Well, there's a great book by Daniel Pink, the the Scientific secret of perfect timing and based on the research that Daniel has done about mood swings, people feel increasingly happy throughout the morning. As a matter of fact, their happiness starts like from 7am it keeps going up, up, up all the way to almost like 12 o', clock, 11:30, 12 o'. Clock. After lunch the level of happiness typically goes down almost to three and then it starts to pick up again by the time they're ready to go home. And in the evening it picks up again again. People feeling increasingly warm toward each other and throughout the morning, less warm in the afternoon and warmer again in the evening. Same pattern. People enjoy themselves more in the morning, unfolds as morning unfolds and enjoy themselves less in the afternoon, begin enjoying themselves again in the evening. So from this research, basically I would recommend the best time to present our patient it is in the morning, preferably between 9 to 11am or between 5 to 7pm from my own experience, the worst time to present a treatment plan is in the early afternoon. That also matches with mood swings. That was recorded by Daniel Pink. Part of this problem is that typically after lunchtime, our patient's energy level goes down and patients can be less receptive to new ideas or listening to our presentation. Part of this could be because it's right after lunch and brain activity becomes slower. However, if possible, we must avoid presenting near lunch or dinner times as this can affect the patient's tolerance and ability to sit down and listen to our presentation. Therefore, I recommend if our presentation time is near lunch or dinner time, to always have the snacks, food or even some small meals available for your patient and anyone accompanying them to the consultation appointment. Now, as I have mentioned before in previous segments, sales mastery is about becoming intentional and becoming aware of all situations that can affect your conversation. Now, our entire team must become aware of all factors that can affect sales. I remember when I practiced before every consultation, my team would always prepare a cup of hot tea and some snacks or dates so I can re energize before I see the next patient. We all are humans and when we're presenting we must be full of energy and enthusiasm.

So where to make the presentation?

The place you pick for your presentation can have a great impact on your case acceptance. These are some key factors that I recommend my clients to consider.

Is it the private room? Is it clean, free of clutter? Is it open so the patients don't feel so confined? Is there sufficient space for supporting educational material? Are there enough seats? Can everyone sit around the table at the same eye level? Is it equipped with a Monitor, large display or a tablet? Is there a telephone and an office intercom so you can ask other team members join if needed without you having to leave the room, Would your patient feel comfortable and relaxed? What if you don't have such a room and you need to present in dental room? Well, I will not have time to get into details of this again. In our full program we go through how to set this up if it is in a dental operatory so you can increase your case acceptance. Now, how do you make the presentation? For the sake of time, I will make this very short and give you one key point. Do not present line by line. This is very important as there are lots of dental softwares that they are good at generating treatment plans with insurance codes and different things. And typically most dental offices that I see, they present the patient with list of all of the items in front and let the patient know what it is and how it is done. Now I remember a story when I went furniture shopping once before with my wife and we had this brand new house and when we went to the furniture store, the guy who actually.

Was our salesperson or sales consultant was very, very professional. He looks at us and he says, well, how big is your house? And I can't remember, maybe I said, you know, it was like 600 meters or 6,000 square feet or something like this. He said, well, based on this amount, this is the budget you have to pay. So great, so let's just go ahead and walk around the store and you tell me what you like, what is your style and so forth. So we walked around and we pretty much had an idea of what the total number would be. So. So by the time we agreed to the furniture, he gave me the number, the total number actually was a little bit less than what I had in mind as far as the budget. Said great, so let's go and do it. And then once I paid for it and I got the itemized list, went inside the car looking at it, my wife, I said, wow, I can't believe that chair was that expensive. Or oh, I can't believe that table was so expensive. And we were just picking it apart. And the same situations with patients. So it's very important that we do not give itemized list of everything. You can certainly do that after the patient has emotionally committed to the treatment. But you need to talk just about the budget and the fee. That's the way it is. This type of a display of free creates many problems. One is that patients don't understand treatments and moves you away from being focused on the benefit and closer to being feature focused, creates more questions dialogue between you and your patient and moves you away from the closing. Patients think they can pick and choose from the menu. I recommend only to focus on the overall treatment than the menu style of presentation. Sample script this spin for us to save teeth, make them strong again with couple of crayons and also take care of some of the fillings that you need. Your total Investment will be $7,200. How would you like to pay for that? Would that be cash, check or credit card?

Once you present the fees and have asked your closing question, you must begin to become totally silent. Do not say a word. Just let your patient break the silence. Keep smiling and keep positive eye contact.

In the full program, I will cover in detail the potential reaction to your closing question how to handle each situation. But here's a new few possible answers from a patient. Well, I can put it on my credit card. I can start today. I can start next week. I have to check my calendar. Can I think about this? I did not realize it would be this much. I need to check with my wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, etc. How painful will this be? Well, when a patient treatises any form of objection, you must not stop talking. This is not the end of the world. In my full program, I will show you how to handle each objection scenario and how to handle them. To close, let's quickly cover some objections. As we are really pressed time today.

Let'S look at the objection. So what is an objection? An expression or feeling of disapproval or a position? A reason for disagreeing. The common objections in the dental practice are typically time. How long it takes? Can I fit into my schedule? Am I too old for this type of work or this type of investment? Pain. How painful is it? How can I make sure I'm pain free? Money? Is it expensive? How can I afford this?

However, first we must identify whether or not there is an objection or just complaint. So let me explain that to you. Grant Cardone, who is a sales master from Cardinal University. He says don't treat complaints as object. Let me explain to you what that is. Complaint is a statement that the situation is basically unsatisfactory. Now, common complaints that people make all the time, but they still do it is. Hey, it is raining today. I don't want to go to work, but people still go to work. It is expensive to buy gifts for my friend's wedding, but they still buy it. It's painful to go to a dentist, still get the teeth fixed. I'm really too busy to have a meeting. I still make make it into the meeting. So customers complain, but they still do it. That's why business people travel in business class. Ritz Carlton books, you know many rooms at Ritz Carlton people. Oh, it's expensive, but they still do it. In dentistry, in 2017, there was $130 billion money spent in US alone. But if you talk to every patient and say, oh, dentistry is expensive. I hate spending money at my dentist.

When patients complain about your fees, agree with them, then ask them when they like to get started. Don't confuse complaints with objections. Patients make complaints about prices, time and pain, but still go ahead and do it anyway. These are complaints and not objections. We must be good at recognizing them and acknowledging them and continue with our clothes. Rule of thumb, treat all objections merely as complaints and believe in closing each case. Sample scripts of handling complaints Time Patience. I have to take many days off to work on to do this. I'm not sure if I can do it. Yes, you're right. It does take some. Do you want to come before or after work? She treat it as a complaint and move on. Patient I cannot stay in the dental chair for four hours. It's impossible. Yes, it's a long time. Do you want us to give you a pill so you can sleep through that at that time? Patient oh, I'm not sure I can have all of this work done while I'm here. Only for a few days. It is not possible. You. It's definitely short time. How about if you go ahead and get you started today so we can finish it soon? Money. You know, this is too much money. It's all my savings. Yes, you're right. It's a lot of money. Let's get you started so you can start saving again. Patient, I have never spent this much money on myself. Yes, it's a lot of money, but don't you think you're worth it? Let's get you started right away and so on. I will go ahead and if you guys want to send me a request, I'll be happy to send you a PDF on this so you can read through them rather than spending time going through it.

However, we handle complaints as objections only if you are able to isolate them. So, are you confused? Let me tell you what we need to do. If you handle all objections as complaints, there is a high chance that you would close. However, if it is a real objection, then the patient will let you know as you are trying to close. So how do we isolate the objection? Let me Give you a quick outline. Otherwise it's definitely all in my full program. Listen. You always listen. You actively take notes. You acknowledge with the patient, always agree with them. You isolate it, find out if it's the only objection they have by asking something. Is there anything else that would stop you from making this decision today? Validate, reconfirm the objection. Say something like this. The pain is really not the only reason you don't want to begin the treatment, is it? Or the fact you're too busy to come in is not the only reason you're not starting at work today, is it? Identify the objection? Is it time, Money, pain, confusion, Too much information, certainly. And then handle it or close it. Either handle the objection or directly go to close again. I will go into detail detail of this in our full program if you're interested to sign up.

Now. I have no not told you yet about the biggest objections in dentistry. One that I see is the root of all problems. Can you guess what that is?

The dentist's own internal objection. See, dentists are their own worst enemy. Actually, some of even the team members you know have the same mindset. So they simply have all the objections in their own mind. And they wonder why patients do not accept their recommended treatments. Let's look at how many of these apply to you. When you're shopping.

Do you say, I really need to think about this. I have to shop around before making a decision. We never make a spot decision. I need to check with my wife, husband, father, boyfriend, mother, girlfriend, whatever. This is really more than my budget. I need to find out who can give me the best deal. Can you give me more discount? I need to wait until my insurance kicks in or after New year, tax season or whatever.

If we think this way as shoppers, then our mindset is programmed as everyone should be the same way. And we tell ourselves people never buy or close on the first try or appointment. This mindset is really sabotaging to our practice. Part of this reason is we are not sold on our offerings or the fees we charge. I see this often among doctors as they undervalue their abilities and what they are able to do for their patients.

I will not have time to get into details of price versus value during this webinar. But it's something very important that every team member must understand. I covered in detail in the full program. Value is what patient gets or expects from us when they pay us for services.

And price what patients pays us for our services. There's a big difference. When value exceeds the price, then our patients are willing to pay us whatever we decide to ask. Prices are made up and it's arbitrarily. Value, on the other hand, is based on our patient's perception about us and our practice. As we discussed in previous sessions, our main goal throughout the sales cycle has been to add value to our patients. If we have been successful in doing that, then the price is never the objection.

Price is never the objection. Value is always the reason for rejection.

However, if we have not paid attention in building value from the very beginning, it is almost impossible to build value for our patients only at the time of closing.

You must be ready to handle objections anytime in the sales cycle. You will often face objections, sometimes between the presentation and the closing phase. However, it may come early in the sales cycle as well. So the objection can come anytime. Typically it's between the presentation and the closing, but you should be able to handle anytime that that comes up. So I will try to cover as many scenarios for you so you and your team can become comfortable in handling various types of objections.

So let's look at some various that I can share with you today. So I'm just going to share a few because I'm time. So during the telephone, maybe your receptionist asking, can I go ahead and make an appointment for you today? And the objection from the patient would be, well, I need to review your prices first before making an appointment. Well, the first thing you need to do is listen. Do not interrupt. Listen so you can paraphrase.

Okay? And then you acknowledge I understand you like to receive our prices before making an appointment. I can send you that, then isolate it. Is not having the prices. The only reason you would not want to make the appointment today, then validate the fact that you don't have our prices would not stop you from taking advantage of our free consultation offer, would it? If they say yes, ask why. If they say no, proceed with setting up the appointment.

Let's say your dental assistant's with a new patient. And dental assistant asks the patient, what would you like our doctor to do for you today? Patient immediately raises objection and says, well, I need to receive your prices first before doing anything. Listen. Do not interrupt. Listen. To paraphrase, I understand that you like to receive our prices before doing anything. We will be sure to inform you before we perform. Is not knowing how much everything is the only reason that you are not sure you want to have something done today? If we can inform you of how much everything will be before we start, is there a reason that you would not want us to get your treatment started? Today, again, if they say yes, ask why. If no, proceed to a handoff. Let the doctor know about the conversation with the patient. And I have more of these, which again, I will be happy to send it to you as a handout.

Okay, so. And these are things you can practice with your team. You can come up with your own in your team meetings and so forth. And.

These are some posters I use throughout the offices. I recommend you know if the objection is time, your team needs to understand if the patient objection is time, the first thing is they need to think about can we offer earlier or later hours? Can we offer time on a day that the office is normally closed? Can we complete this treatment earlier than normal schedule? Can I speak to the dental lab to rush the case and pay a rush fee to my technician? Can I ask another provider specialist to do that? Again, these would be available. If you'd like to send a request, I'll be happy to send you guys this so you can share it with your staff. The objection is money. The objection is pain.

Now, some patients ask for discounts, so do not take it personally because in some culture discounts is part of a closing. But however, you do not commit to any discounts early in the sales cycle as you're still not sure what your patient wants. If a patient asks for a discount, do not automatically give a discount, but also don't say no to them. And I have a specific recommendation in Scripps to how to handle discounts, but I won't have time to cover that today. So let's say handling discounts, contact discovery, let's say, how much discount will you give me? Okay, you first have to establish authority that you are the person and you are be able to give them a discount. But then you need to qualify the patient. These are the type of answers.

You can give or.

You can use to qualify the patient. That is a good question. Do you see the price as a major barrier for you to have the teeth fixed or probe to learn why? Do you need a discount or exchange your upsell? I can certainly give you a discount if you decide to go with this option or if you or your husband can both do a treatment at the same time. So these are things again, we won't have time to get into it in much more detail. I'll be happy to send you some. And then if you'd like to sign up for the full program, you will get the full version of all this different objection handling. But always try to get something in return for the discount. These are some suggestions that I have. What can you get in return? Full up upfront payment getting video or social media testimonial Use of photos for publicity or publication or bundled packaging.

Use discounts as a way to close a deal if you need to. But remember, giving discounts too early can decrease the value of your service and move the patient from being value focused to becoming price focused.

The untrained professionals use discounts as a way to close deals and to encourage patients to begin their treatment. Now let's look quickly. Look at closing now. This is the last part of our sales cycle. Unless you're closing, you're only having a very expensive conversation with your patients. Nothing will happen without closing. So closing is where all your dreams and your patients dreams can come into reality. When you are able to close, you build your confidence up. When your confidence goes up, patients sense that about you and it translates to higher certainty to buy from you. This cycle will continue. The good news is that if you follow exactly what I have discussed with you during this training, it is guaranteed that you will build value for your patients. The closing can happen almost automatically.

Patients will close themselves on most occasions as they see the value they're getting far supersedes the money they're willing to part from.

Now they may ask you closing questions such as when can you see me? What do I need to do next? Can you make sure you can complete this for me by my birthday, my anniversary, my whatever? How much do you want me to pay today? Where do I sign?

These are not some visual thinking statements that I am including in this presentation. I have experienced this in my own practices thousands of times as everything that my team and I did for our patients were based on building value as well as bringing emotions and experience to every part of their interaction with our practice.

However, many times we need to initiate the closing and many patients expect us to do that.

Patients and customers always want to buy from people who are confident and those who can come across as confident get to close more cases.

However, your confidence must not come from your ego or should you behave like you don't care whether or not the patient accepts your treatment or not. Otherwise that becomes an emotional turn off for patients. So always stand tall and confident, but never arrogant with patients. If closing is so important, let's look at the why so many people do not ask a closing question why? Most doctors and team members, they avoid the closing question. Number one is fear of being rejected.

Afraid to come across as pushy. They're not confident about their products or services. They think they can push the patient away. They're not comfortable with the subject of money or basically they're simply lazy to ask it. The reality is that we need to ask for a close more often we ask and earlier we ask, the better it is.

Despite what we may think, patients expect us to be asking a closing question.

As consumers, we all have been in situations where we want to buy something, but the person who is trying to sell us is not asking us a closing question. How does this make you feel?

Or you may have been in a situation where you are ready to buy a product or even two or three similar products.

You keep wanting to get it done, but the person who is trying to sell you keep going back and discussing more about the item and explaining more about the features. Does any of this sound familiar to you?

Untrained sales professionals think they should not be closing for many of the reasons I explained to you earlier. But this is absolutely false way of thinking. See what we have patients. When we have patients come to us, they're there for one purpose and that is for us to solve their problems and pay us in exchange. They're there not to socialize or waste their time. They're there to simply give us their business. If we can show them the value we can offer them is greater than the money they're willing to exchange for it. So always begin to close as soon as possible. Confident sales masters walk into a meeting with one intention and that is to get the customer to say yes.

They express their intention to close the deal from very beginning. Here's an example.

My name is Dr. Allen. I'm intention of this consultation is to answer any questions you may have about a full mouth reconstruction. Get Sandy to schedule you an appointment as soon as possible. But if you don't have any questions we can skip right to the appointment. See you do have to have a good sense of humor as always is important in sales process. It takes attention off of everyone and people can warm up to you.

When we begin early, our patients feel our clients confidence and that plays a huge part in getting the patient say yes to us. Before I introduce you to the mechanics of closing, let me explain to you different types of closing techniques. I will give you some background information and then let you know what are the most popular techniques that are applied in dentistry and how we can apply them immediately.

Closing technique Assumptive Sales what is it? One of the best techniques that encourages positive mindset. Great. When you know the value exceeds the price. Where to apply in dentistry you can apply this anywhere at any phase of the sales cycle and then I'll give you some examples a little bit later on. Puppy Dog Clothes Let buyer take it home and try it hoping they will fall in love with it. This would work for cosmetic dentistry. Give your patients before and after photos, wax ups, etc. Reverse close ask a prospect if they know someone who will be interested in their product. So you don't ask directly. You ask in Reverse can be used in recall appointments to introduce a new product or service, but it lacks confidence. Hard Close is a technique used to push the customers to buy something. I would never recommend doing that with patients.

Closing technique now or never Close Offering the customer the last available price or product. Apply it with your over the counter products or limited offer on services. Summary Close Summarize a comparison chart showing different options and value attached. Various treatment options such as dentures, implant overdentures all on four composites versus inlays or onlays. Colombo Close Isolating the real objection when customer is ready to walk away everywhere in the sales cycle you can use this when an objection is introduced. Is it the price, time, money, me or the reason? So let's look at some samples Again, I don't have time to go into detail of every one of them. In our full program you have everything. Deceptive sales cycle I assume you want to get this done by your birthday or before going to school somewhere on your trip. Have you decided what you want your nude to look like? Have you picked a new smile for yourself? You can ask them, just assume they're going to say yes when you say something you want Whiter Is this the shade you have in mind? Pull your shade tabs out and show it to them. From our discussion it looks like this is what you have in mind. Am I correct? Show them a before and after photo Puppy Clothes Script sample I tell you what, I'm going to send these photos home with you so you can share it with your spouse, parents or your children as what your teeth could look like. Let me print a copy of this smile catalog and send it so you and your husband can get an idea what your teeth can look like. If you want I can send you home with this before and after gallery so you can share with your friends as what is possible. Go ahead and try this five whitening gel and if you like order more. Sani will get you so this is more of a puppy clothes example. Colombo Clothes Let me ask you one more thing before we finish our meeting. If I can get this work completed within your budget of $2,000, are you ready to do it today.

If I can find a way to get our lab agreed to this budget that you have in mind, can I get your commitment today? If there is one thing that I could do for you. So you say yes, what would that be? Okay. This is the Colombo close. Again. I won't have time to go into details of everything for the webinar this morning. We're almost coming to time here, so. Yeah. So let's recap what we have discussed in this session. We covered why closing is important, why it is expected from us to ask a closing question. We learned about the various closing techniques and how they can apply to dentistry. Now, one of the biggest problems that I see with my clients is that they go through all of the steps of the sales cycle and they get the patient to agree to do the treatment. They set up the appointment and then the patient cancels or never shows up for the appointment.

Never assume that the case is closed unless you're paid or the funds are cleared.

I will not have time to go into the details how to make sure your patients are committed so the patients show up for every appointment. You will find that again in our my full version program with specific scripts that you and your team can use. But let's look at a quick checklist of before we wrap up for today of do's and don'ts of our closing Closing checklist. Do.

Close when time is ready. Generally after your presentation. Don't rush to close early or be pushy. You have to build relationship with your patients.

Do use various techniques to use for a clothes. We talked about assumptive colombo many different styles of puppy clothes. Don't avoid asking a closing question. It's normal to ask a closing question. Do pause, use silence and listen actively when you ask a closing. Do not take phone calls or allow to be interrupted by staff members team members. If you're in the closing process.

Use humor and stay calm without emotions. Don't get upset patients or walk away in a dissatisfied manner. If somebody is trying to beat you up on the price or they're just not, you're not able to close them after a long consultation. Do take notes and review each sales. Do not blame others price economy for your own lack of success. Do always go back one more time to try to close. Ask more questions, more probing and so forth to try to give up. Do not. Don't give up on objections and don't confuse them with complaints. That's very important to know. Okay? And do have fun with it and celebrate it when it's closed. And don't beat yourself up if you're not able to close. There's always the next case that you can do. Okay So I think this will bring us to the end of the presentation, but I will tell you where you can go next if you have found value in the information I have shared with you. Today was a very rushed, lots of material. I know I may have overwhelmed a lot of you guys who have joined me on this seminar. Again, I want to thank everyone for joining me. But you have several options if you want to learn more. Number one, you can learn on your own for free. I will be happy to assist you in any way I can and I will tell you how you can learn that. You can also.

You can also invest in some of the training videos that I have put together available. You can also sign up for a three day boot camp that I have. My practices sign up on various programs. So let me go through them with you or you can ask for a personalized coaching from me. So on the, on the free training, you certainly welcome to join me on free webinars such as this one today. I will have other ones coming up. You're welcome to follow me on Instagram. We do many postings and I do answer some Q and A questions. You can watch my YouTube channel or follow me on the Facebook at Dr. Alan Naziri's Healthcare Consulting Advisory.

Or you can have. You can order my complete sales mastery training program. This is basically today was a very small sample of everything that I covered. It's a complete training program and this training program is for your entire team. It's our full program. You get one year free access. You have downloadable handouts. You have progress quizzes. You can actually track the progress of your team members. You can assess them to watch this program and we can progress and make sure they're watching it. The regular fee that is $1995. This is not what you will pay today. I will have a webinar special for you guys and this webinar special includes giving you extra bonuses, videos and so forth. So this is not the price you will be paying today. So let me explain to you what you will pay and what if you decide to do it. First of all, I have three bonus videos. One is about increasing the patient transactions. Okay? The patient transactions means teaching them about upselling, upgrading, cross referring, cross selling, especially.

In practices where there are various versions of a similar product which most dental offices have. So I will teach you and your team how to increase the transaction value for Each patient. Then I will have a program on cosmetic dentistry communication training. This is really meant to teach anyone on your team about how to communicate. So when they're sitting down with a patient and they are basically talking to them, they can identify what looks good and what doesn't look good and begin the conversations and talking and so forth. So it's all about scripting and teaching them how to start a conversation, how to offer solutions to patients and so forth. Then I also will include a complete list of my elevator pitches, which again, if you're running a call center or if you're thinking about opening a call center, it's absolutely important that everyone on the team has the same way of explaining things and be able to tell the patients exactly what it is that they have in mind. If you decide to sign up for this program. The five videos plus the three bonuses for today program. Again, the regular price for this is 1995 for today only. For webinar special I have priced this for $995. That's a saving of $1,000. And if you have it, if you have a team of 20 people in your company, then you know that's less than $50 a year for them. Now another option for you is a three day MBA boot camp where I go through the full program, either three full days or six half a days depending on your schedule per clinic. And this program covers subjects of leadership, team building and sales.

And it is a John Maxwell certificate that training from the US and this particular program, the price is $5,995. Again, as a webinar special I have it available for three days from the time you have completed this program for $3,995. Now if you do not have 20 people and you have a small office of maybe three or four people, five people, you might want to get somebody else join in with you, another office in your neighborhood or someone. But this is an absolute eye opener because we go through various areas of leadership, team building, sales, and if you have found some of this information of value, you will find more value in this. Another part of this is my personal coaching program. My personal coaching program depends on the type of practice, the size of practice. I have obviously small solo practices and also big corporations that they have lots of demands and major tasks that I have to accomplish for them. But our personal coaching programs are very affordable. They do start at about 9.95 per month. Be happy to offer you a 10% discount if you'd like to sign up for any of that. And send me an email regarding that. If you are from India and if you have attended this program, you might want to consider the membership program at the international dental centers of India where I and Dr. Sunny have been working together to bring this type of information to a lot of our Indian clients across India. So for that membership program you might want to talk to Dr. Sunny because a lot of these things are covered in that membership and it's absolutely great value for you. Now if you have not worked with a coach before and you are not familiar what a coach does for you.

I typically like to start the process of coaching with sales and communication training because with sales you certainly can generate the revenue and then from there you can grow the practice in many directions. So with sales and communication training that would include, we can cover areas of external marketing, customer experience, training. Then we can create.

Levels of complaints for you. How to handle different complaints, who handle it in the office for you. Create various loyalty programs or insurance programs within your office. How to work with medical tourism agencies like agency referrals. We work on leadership and then from leadership we create growth strategies. Then we look at organic growth versus non organic like mergers and acquisitions that hall you need to exit from that later on. And then from the exit we look at various forms of family succession, individual finding you individual buyer or institutional buyer like a private equity or ipo. From the management aspect, we look at various things such as job descriptions. Does everyone have a KPI of performance? Do we have your processes in place? Do we have all of the legal contracts, everything, employees, everything correctly in place? And do we have internal audits in place to make sure everything is done correctly? Now this is my contact information. You may reach me at via WhatsApp, my phone emails, you can follow me on Instagram, you can direct message me. We are very hands on. We do offer a very lots of good value. And I really like to thank all of you guys for being on here and I'd like to thank my team members as well for making this possible.

And.

I'm going to give you our $10,000 question that if you ask this question your next day.

You are almost guaranteed if you get, you know, if you have the skills to do it, you know that you can sell a major case for a patient. And this question is very simple. All you have to do is look patient in the eyes, smile and say would you like to go ahead and get started today? This is the most money making question that hardly is ever asked by dentists or salespeople. So you look them in the eyes and with a sponsor. Would you like to go ahead and get started today? So whatever treatment you're recommending, go ahead and try this and send me all your successes stories because I love to hear about your successes. Again, I'd like to thank every one of you for attending this program. I look forward in working with you on an individual basis or group basis, and I hope to see you guys in the future. Webinars thank you very much. I appreciate it. Take care. Bye. Bye.