204 The Truth About Why Patients Don't Schedule
Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of the Delivering Wow Dental podcast. So, excited to be here today. So, today we're going to be talking about the truth about why patients are not scheduling. Why are patients saying, "We will call you back. We will think about it," and how do we actually overcome that obstacle so that we can actually help our patients get the treatment that we're recommending for them. So, I remember back inside of my office when I would have so many patients say, "I will think about it. I want to talk to my husband." And as we started to look at why patients were not scheduling, I would ask my team "Guys, do you know what's going on?" And they would say, "Well, you know what, they don't have the money," or "The real thing is that right now, they just don't have a lot of time." Like, "They're really busy right now." And as I started to really think about it, I started to say, "There's actually probably something else." And so, I actually went on this journey a few years ago to really understand advanced psychology and understand why people actually make decisions and why people don't make decisions. And so, I actually invested in working with some psychologists and also working with coaches who actually teach sales and neuro-linguistic programming outside of the dental industry, interestingly to real estate agents. And I went there with this idea that I wanted to understand, how could framework be created for my dental clients so that they could increase case acceptance. And so, that within my own practice, we could do the same. And what was interesting is once we learned what was the real secret, then all of a sudden our case acceptance skyrocketed. And so, I want to talk a little bit about that process and why our patients oftentimes will not actually schedule and why they probably will never schedule. So, no matter how many times we're actually calling them and saying, "Hey, you remember doctor says that you have that bridge to do," or, "You have that implant to do." And so, the first thing that I want you to think about is the reason why a lot of people are not scheduling is that they are really confused about how they're actually going to fit it into their budget or how they're going to find the time. And so, what's has been really interesting is understanding this process, that once we are now providing the answer to that question that's actually confusing them and how it has actually worked for other people to solve that same problem. Then all of a sudden, that problem essentially goes away or that issue essentially goes away from them. And so, you might be saying, "Okay, Anissa, what are you talking about?" And so, as we start looking at case acceptance. So, one of the things that we teach in our different frameworks. We've got about five or six different frameworks that we teach for different aspects of case acceptance. But as we start looking at presenting treatment, one thing that I will always ask the doctors that we work with in the teams is, "If you had to go to the dentist seven times or five times, would that be hard for you or would that be easy for you?" And for many of them, they say, "You know what? That would be really hard for me because I have to see my patients. I'd have to find a time to come in and not have patients scheduled." Or if they work for the dental practice, they say, "It would be really hard because I work in a small business and I have to find somebody to cover for me and that would be really hard." And so, as we start looking at, why is it that patients are not scheduling? I started to really think about the time factor and think that, really, patients are just like us. They're a business owner. They work for a company. They're self-employed and it's really hard. And so, as we started looking at letting patients know that we recognize that this is hard and letting them know how patients are able to get their work done anyway, all of a sudden, a light bul
