199 Treatment Plan Presentation Dos and Dont's

Hi guys, and welcome to another episode of The Delivering WOW dental podcast. Today, we're here talking all about treatment plans do's and don'ts and how can we increase our case acceptance rate? How can we present treatment plans in a more concise way. Things that we definitely need to consider. And things that we don't want to do with our treatment plans. And so, so excited to be sharing this episode with you. So as we start looking at treatment plans, some things that we want to start thinking about is number one, do we have a way to be able to communicate so that our patients are doing as much treatment in one visit? I'm not sure if you've ever thought about that but think about it. If you had to go to the dentists five times or seven times to be able to get your work done, would that be easy for you, or would that be hard for you?

I can tell you, for me as a business owner it would be really hard to be able to pull away from my business. If I were working for a company, it would be really difficult as well to have to keep saying, "I'm so sorry I have to go to the dentist. I have to go to the dentist." So, as we start thinking about treatment plans and presenting treatment plans, one thing that I want you to think about is how can we make it easy for our patients to actually complete treatment? And that has a lot to do with the verbal skills that we're actually saying so that our patients will understand that we can actually get all of their treatment done within one visit and how we're able to do that. 

And to share a little pearl one thing that we coach practices to do within our mastermind and what we're also doing inside of my practice is as we're presenting treatment plans, we're actually asking the patients, "Would you like to do this in many, many visits, maybe five or six visits, or would it be easier for you to actually get this done in one or two visits?"

We find that most of our patients either work for a company or they're self-employed, and it's a lot easier for them. So what we have actually done is we've created longer time blocks in our schedules, listening to what works better for our patients so that we're able to go ahead and book everything in one or two visits. Would that be easy for you, or would you prefer to do that? Now, as we're doing that we know that we do have patients who will ask a question, for example, "How much is that going to cost? I'm not sure if I can afford to do everything in one visit." So as we start having that conversation, we already know that that's going to come up and so we are prepared. So now we can say something like, "Most of our patients are just like you. They're not able to fit everything out of pocket in one visit. But here's how they're able to get everything done in one visit anyway."

Number one, they have a credit card. So they will use a zero-interest credit card or a credit card that they have so that they can go ahead and get their treatment done and they can pay it off over time. What other patients may do is that they may want to go ahead and get everything done in one visit and they can actually pay it off over time with low monthly payments. So that's another option that works extremely well for a lot of our patients. And number three, what a lot of our patients do is we can actually go ahead today and see all of what needs to be done. And we can actually go ahead and pre-book all of your appointments so that you now know your budget for every visit. And you can go ahead and block the time so that now you have a way to go ahead and get everything in place.

And now we have a way to hold you accountable for getting everything done. So, as we start having these conversations, one thing that we definitely want to do is we want to let people know the benefits of getting everything done in one day, they will say, "You know what? That really makes sense." And then by using the verbal skills of, "Here's how our patients just like you are able to fit it into one visit." Now they see what's possible. What's really interesting as I've studied communication and neuro-linguistic programming is that we want to make sure that we are letting people know that they're not alone. We want to be able to help people see that there are solutions and giving them multiple solutions that all work for them that now they can find a way to be able to get that done.

So again, [inaudible 00:04:58] my 100% does nothing. Okay? As we start looking at presenting treatment plans really important as well to also have different options in terms of payments. So we've just spoken about that before. And to be honest with you, a lot of patients have not thought about it. They do have a credit card, or they have a zero-interest credit card that they may be able to use to go ahead and finance treatment. And if not, then you want to make sure that you have multiple payment options that are available inside of your practice and also consider having options for prepayments. So definitely want to make sure that you're checking what is possible where you are located. But I can tell you where we're located we actually have prepayment courtesies. So if patients are prepaying for their dental visits, we're able to give them a courtesy where they're able to save 5%.

So we say, "You know what? We want to be able to help you. So we are going to actually reduce the costs by 5% if you pre-pay." Or sometimes we'll say, "Once you're financing, we will actually help you out a little bit with the interest because we want to make this easy for you. So we'll actually reduce the treatment plan by 5%. And from there now you'll have a lower cost. We'll pay some of that interest for you. And now you can go ahead and get that finance." And that is if the patient is paying the interest versus the practice. So that's another thing that you definitely want to consider. The other thing you want to consider when you are doing treatment plans, and what you don't want to do is you don't want to have the patient leave without a good follow-up system.

So one thing that we help practices do within our mastermind is actually utilize a tool such as Asana where any treatment plans, especially treatment plans over a specific dollar amount you're able to now track the patient, and track the conversation, track what's happening. So if they're going out to financing, what's the process? Have they been pre-approved or are they looking for someone to co-sign? What's the follow-up process? Are you supposed to reach out to them on a specific date? And if so, what's possible is going ahead and putting that specific date in so that now you can have a reminder when you're logging in that you have to contact that patient and what the conversation was about. And this is actually a really great software that you can use to be able to not only be able to follow up with unscheduled treatmentbut also to look at communicating about projects, marketing campaigns, being able to facilitate weekly meetings, lots of amazing things that you can use once you start utilizing these tools.

So hopefully that's been super helpful for you. Another thing that we want to look at as we are getting into improving our treatment plans is making sure doctors that you and your team have training on verbal skills and case acceptance. It's so interesting to see how many dental businesses do not focus on sales training, or case acceptance training, or verbal skills training. And if you look at restaurants, if you look at car dealerships, if you look at furniture stores, if you look at Bed Bath and Beyond, right in the mall, they're constantly learning and working on how can we communicate with our customers, in our case our patients, so that they can get to the point of saying, "Yes, I actually want to get started with engaging in that service," or in our case, our dental practice." So that's another thing that you want to 100% definitely want to make sure that you're focusing on as well.

And again, if you need help with that, feel free to reach out. We love helping practices with verbal skills, case acceptance, doing workshops, getting in there, and training you and your team. All right, guys. So pretty much that is it for today. Hopefully, this episode was super helpful and gave you some pearls and some things to think about.

I look forward to seeing you inside of our marketing and practice growth challenge. That's going to be coming up. To learn more and get access to that challenge and to get access for free as a listener of this podcast, you can enter in the code PODCAST and you can go to http:// deliveringwowchallenge.com. All right, guys, that is pretty much it. Chat soon. And I'll see you inside of the next episode.