Dr. Allen Nazeri breaks down why patients reject elective dental treatment and how to fix it. He identifies four conversion points from contact through closing, and argues that case acceptance depends on team training, emotional connection, and eliminating turn-offs like bad timing or appearance.
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Hi guys, this is Dr. Alan. Today I want to talk to you about case acceptance and things you need to pay attention to. This morning I had a call with one of my clients that I coach almost on a weekly basis, sometimes three times a week. And the question came about the case conversion because we look at all of these factors very, very closely to understand how the conversions are happening. The conversion. There are two points for conversion. One is when a patient actually contacts your office and we convert them to an appointment. And then the second conversion is when they actually have an appointment and at the chair side we convert them to actual patients because not all the patients come in, they will accept your treatment. So when we were looking at his cases today, the cases of case acceptance were going down and he was very concerned. So I told him, you know what, what we need to do, we need to go back to the very basic. I have shared before on the Instagram channel, the sales communication cycle that I have put together for elective type treatment. Now you may be dentist or plastic surgeon or someone who does elective type treatment for patients that you have tuned to this channel. So let me kind of review that with you. The sales communication cycle, there are four basic components to it. The first component is the contact. The contact can be either physical or non physical contact that the patient has with your practice one way or the other. Okay. The second part is the clinical assessment or discovery where we spend a great deal of time in teaching our practitioners and clinicians how to ask good questions so they can truly understand the patient's wants and desires before they can offer them a solution. The third obviously is presentation. How do we present when we present the time of the day we present. Those are very important factors. And finally is the closing, where we come into an agreement with a patient regarding their treatment, the fees, the payment schedule and so forth. Now what's important to remember is because we sell. Yes, I said the word sell. Whether you like it or not. We sell our professional services to patients. Inelective type treatment.
Everything is depends on the emotional level and experience of a patient. So emotional experience has to be introduced in the entire patient journey. This is why it is so important that not only the doctors but also the teams are truly involved in the training to. Because the communication cycle and the sales cycle, it is not just about the doctor, it's about everyone on the team who come into contact with the patient. Now we got to remember that the quality of care is totally different than quality of experience from patient's perspective. See, I cannot say I'm a better cosmetic surgeon or cosmetic dentist. Dan. Dr. So and so down the street. But I can confidently tell you that the patients who come to my practice have a much higher level of quality of experience in my practice than the guy down the street. How? Why? Because we measure all of that, okay? The quality of experience is what the patients are after. They don't know whether I can prepare that tooth with, you know, 0.1 millimeter, you know, precision, or whether I can, you know, do a flap on the patient's, you know, around the patient's nose with more precision than somebody else. But what they can feel and experience and also evaluate from our practices is the quality of experience that they have from the time they contact our offices all the way till the time that the treatment is finished and they go on and we follow up with them.
So we really need to evaluate how we are dealing with our patients. Okay? Are we having any sort of emotional turn offs? And emotional turnoffs are huge. It's basically, it's a collection of events, behaviors, sites that dissuades.
Patients from doing business with us. And that happens many times before even a patient has a chance to come and meet the doctor. It happens at the front desk. It happens right on the way to the operatory, and sometimes it happens with the doctor. So we study all of this very thoroughly for our clients to understand what it is that they can do to elevate that customer or patient experience. And this is what you're competing with, because when you're in elective treatment, you're basically competing with every other business that are competing for that discretionary spending of your patient. So when you're in your practice.
The patient is thinking, hey, should I do that breast implant or should I go ahead and go on a cruise first? Should I go ahead and get that beautiful smile makeover done first, or should I buy the Harley Davidson for my husband's birthday? So this is why all the companies in the world, every day they try to bring more and more creative ideas of building emotional experience into the various points of the sales cycle. Okay? Now, once you have mastered how to create the best ambience, best environment, best communication skills with the patients.
And, you know, doing everything from an emotional standpoint, then it comes time to really understand how to.
Present treatments, when to present it, the time of the day to present it, where you present it, are you presenting it in an office that everything is cluttered, or are you presenting an office is very well organized?
Are you a good presenter yourself? If you're selling cosmetic dentistry do you have nice teeth yourself?
I am just dumbfounded on the number of dentists that I see and that they complain they do not have enough cosmetic patients yet. You look at their own teeth and they have very yellow teeth or they have silver fillings showing through their teeth and they have basically outdated.
30, 40, 50 year old dentistry in their own mouth. They wonder why patients say no to them. So every little thing counts when it comes to case presentation, treatment planning and case acceptance. This is Dr. Allen. I welcome any questions. I provide regular coaching sessions for doctors across the globe and if I can help you in any way, please feel free to contact me or visit my website@www.drallen Nazeri.com. thank you very.
