SUCCESSFUL TREATMENT PLAN PRESENTATION: Getting Started

  Getting Started

A practice can present clinically perfect treatment plans to every patient who walks through the door.  But when patients decline or are hesitant, a clinician must convey more than the technical accuracy of the treatment to see an increase in treatment acceptance.  This presentation system was developed to assist doctors, office managers, treatment coordinators, and other key team members in increasing their ratio of treatment plan acceptances to treatment plan presentations.   

Remember that your approach to every presentation should be tied closely to your practice’s mission statement and to the objectives developed both for the overall practice and its specific departments.  There must be an awareness that the presentation and the entire relationship with your patient starts with the initial phone contact and continues throughout every interaction between the patient and the team members of the practice.

                        

Increasing Treatment Plan Acceptance

As a professional, you must develop a client-focused approach. What are their wants?  What are their needs?  How can our services (tangible or intangible) help?

Today, patients want to know you’re listening, especially after you ask them questions related to their wants and needs, their likes and dislikes.  Effective communication techniques are vital.  Clients want to work with practices that take time to know them.

As you would imagine, at the center of everything is the Golden Rule of Clients:

“Do unto others as they would have you do unto them.”

As professionals, you don’t sell.  You help qualified clients buy what they truly want or need…or both.  And, in doing so, you cement a long-term relationship of service and trust.

The most vital marketing strategy for today’s dental practice is for it to be exceptionally managed.  Success—steady growth from beginning to end—relies on the systems in place; and the system for treatment plan acceptance is no exception.

There is clearly a goldmine of dentistry to be performed on existing clients in the average dental office.  Your practice could potentially double its production just by concentrating on getting the dentistry done that is sitting in charts.  By nurturing and educating your existing clients, your production will dramatically increase.

You must have a clearly defined system for treatment planning and presentation.  Every team member will play an integral role in the process for in each client interaction there is the opportunity for a team member to help your client choose the dentistry or not.  Therefore, everyone on the team must fully understand the individual steps of the system.

The system for treatment plan acceptance has 3 goals:

1. Help the client define his/her own individual goal for his/her mouth.
2. Educate the client about the benefit of the recommended dental treatment that fits his/her needs.
3. Motivate the client to choose your recommendations—get them to “want” the dentistry.

As previously mentioned, if we are to get a client to accept our recommendations, we must first establish a relationship built on trust.  It is vital that trust begin to be established with the first contact.

In most cases, the first point of contact with a practice is via the telephone.  The potential client begins to formulate his/her opinion of your practice based on the initial call.  Whether or not they will come to you often is decided based on how they are handled by the person answering the telephone. The person handling new client telephone calls must be warm, friendly, upbeat and knowledgeable.  They must also be able to focus solely on the new client without interruption.  It is ideal if new client telephone calls can be handled somewhere other than the front office.

Trust can be further built by sending new clients a welcome packet.  In this packet will be a letter reiterating what to expect at the first visit and with thanks for choosing the office; an appointment card with the reserved date and time; a medical history to be completed and sent back in an enclosed self-addressed envelope; your practice brochure; and the most recent copy of your newsletter, allowing the client to read about things that interest him/her as well as learn about things the practice would like him/her to know.

When the new client comes to your office for the first time, have the greeter go out to the reception area, shake the client’s hand and call him/her by name.  The greeter will then introduce him or herself and help the client get comfortable until the doctor or assistant is ready to receive them.  The greeter must introduce the new patient to the team member receiving them.  The assistant or doctor reiterates to the new client, calling him/her by name, what will happen at the visit.  Trust continues to build with each interaction because the steps are clearly defined; and the attention paid to the new client makes him/her feel like he/she is the only one in the dental office.

We will now look at the actual system of successful presentation.  It has three distinct activities: Preparation; the Presentation itself; and Follow-Up. 

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