With the uncertainty that looms in today's economic climate, patients are more perplexed than ever on how to pay for things. The dental and medical communities have taken a back seat to big business's exposure to learning curves when it comes to consumers’ spending priorities. Big businesses learned fast, while the dental and medical community’s willingness to follow was reluctant. As a result, the households of America have been taught to put medical and dental bills in the "low priority (if ever)" payment category. This month we take a close look at reclaiming a respectful spot in the financial priorities of your patient’s lives. There are only two ways to pay for dental care today: "You can pay in full" or "You can pay in full." Now, obviously you won't say these words to patients, but you do have to THINK it.

 

Here are the 5 keys for getting patients to PAY IN FULL:

 

 

 

Confidence is attractive; the lack of confidence is not. As consumers, we need streaming confidence from those that we give money to for services to be rendered. Any slight detection of fear makes the consumer flee.

 

The person who makes the financial arrangements in your office has to be streaming with confidence when it comes to making financial arrangements with your patients. If this person can't make eye contact or get patients excited about making a commitment to your practice, they have to be trained, reassigned, or replaced. Like Sandy Roth says, “Putting someone who is afraid of money at your front desk is like hiring a hygienist with no arms.” 

 

Well said.

 

Lack of confidence in this area is a practice killer. Stop reading here until you have someone up front who believes strongly in your practice vision and is NOT afraid of money.

 

 

 

Write this down...post it on your walls… Rehearse it. Live it. Love it. 

 

“We make dentistry affordable to everyone.”  

 

From now until the end of time you will have patients ask you, "Is this going to be expensive?" Let's face it, dentistry can be expensive. You and your team's response to this question has to come with high confidence. Your response has to be,

 

"Mrs. Jones, I understand that this could be a considerable investment for you. Fortunately, we make dentistry affordable for everyone."

 

Start believing this, and then get everyone in your practice to believe it. Eventually it will work magic for you.

 

I’ll explain more in a bit.

 

 

 

You have a business to run, a payroll to keep, taxes to be paid, retirement to be funded, rent and mortgage to be paid, kids to feed... These elements can’t be paired with your patient’s financial challenges. They are separate entities. Your patient’s financial challenges cannot be pulled into your business plan. Some of your patients are living their lives “upside down,” which means they owe more than they are worth. This is toxic stuff to the people it involves. ALL of your patient’s financial issues have to be quarantined from your practice.

 

Serving people with HIGH-QUALITY, ELECTIVE dentistry requires a mutually beneficial relationship. A very big key to this is making sure all commitments between parties are honored.

 

All people are inherently good.  It is important to understand that their lives change from week to week when it comes to money—I know mine does.  I get a bill for some new thing every week (especially since I have kids). It makes me crazy how these new bills keep coming. But I’ve learned to deal with it.

 

You’ve had it happen before, but the “well-intentioned patient with temps” might choose to blow off an appointment or avoid your phone calls if they have a financial setback in their lives. It happens to the best of people, and most of the time they have no control over when these things occur. 

 

The financial pressures in your patients’ lives can’t play a role in how they pay for dentistry in your practice. It is not that you can’t be empathetic, but you have to reduce or eliminate the propensity for patients’ financial setbacks to unduly affect your business plan and your schedule. Believe it or not, our patients’ financial woes will only get worse in the next decade. You have to be well-equipped to deal with this changing climate.

 

 

 

The “Elegant Pause” is one of the most important and underutilized tools in dentistry. When you present a fee to a patient it is very important to be with them and NOT TALK when they finally hear the fee. Our natural behavior is to fill that important empty space with a lot of talk and explanation about our options and how it works. It only confuses patients.

 

It is important to note that a successful benchmark in relationship building with patients is to determine whether they WANT THE DENTISTRY more than they NEED TO HAVE IT. If this is done well, the patient will need a few seconds to process the fee and the way they are going to pay for it.

 

Patients can come up with better answers than we can when it comes to how they are going to pay for things. It takes an emotionally competent person to NOT TALK at this crucial time when it comes to helping patients figure out how they are going to pay for dentistry.

 

Learn to use this “Elegant Pause,” and give patients the opportunity to envision the best solution for themselves instead of confusing them with your financial arrangement filibuster.

 

 

 

If patients can’t come up with a good solution for how to pay for dentistry, THEN you can present your financial arrangements…but try waiting for them to ask for it first.

 

Some treatment coordinators, before they even present the fee, take a patient right to the computer during the consult and get him or her pre-approved for third-party financing. This equips a patient with the right tools to knowledgeably navigate.

 

Don’t ever give patients a third-party-financing pamphlet to go home and follow up on themselves. Experience shows us that patients are dramatically less likely to use this option if they are left to do it on their own. The percentage of acceptance also drops!

 

What if you went to buy a car and were given a pamphlet on financing, and then the salesperson told you to go home and read it and “call us” when you had made a decision? How effective would that be? 

 

Not very.

 

Make it easy for your patients to do business with you. Figure out the monthly payments before you have this conversation.

 

Then say this:

 

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Elegant pause.

 

You have to believe this can be done, because it can be done.

 

Jeanie Windes (a fantastic treatment coordinator) says this: “Patients aren’t as concerned about the whole fee as they are the monthly payments.” She has a strong belief about having patients paying up front for treatment. So guess what happens?

 

They ALL pay up front.

 

Your belief in what is possible greatly determines what happens. How your patients behave and respect the financial principles that guide your practice is determined by YOU and ONLY YOU.  

 

If you do not believe patients should pay in full, then most of them won’t. This in turn won’t pay you very much and will not make you feel that good about the life that dentistry provides you.

 

If you do believe patients should pay in full, then chances are they will. Your collection percentages are then high, and you are greatly optimistic about the life that dentistry provides for you.

 

What you believe determines how you feel. My hope is that you feel good about who you are, where you are going, and how you are doing it.

 

My very best to you and your family,

 

Kirk Behrendt

ACT Dental Practice Coaching

800.851.8186

www.actdental.com