How to Present Extended Terms to Patients
As I cover in detail in my book No to Lost Cases, your profession is facing pressure on financing arrangements from two fronts: technology that is reducing the treatment time for patients, and competitors who are offering financing options that are more budget-friendly than yours are. For both of these reasons, one of your three financing offers, along […]
Are You Charging Enough for Treatment?
How do you know if you are charging the optimum price for the services you provide? Should you raise fees? Should you lower them? Let’s take a look at each of these from a business perspective. When it comes to the issue of whether or not your fees are at the right price point, or should […]
Is No Money Down a Good Financing Idea
Not long after I started my consulting business thirty years ago, I worked with a large, privately owned company in the industrial products business that was having a poor rate of success with closing sales with new accounts (what you would call a conversion rate). As part of my work with the company, I went into the […]
The Do’s and Don’ts of Presenting Fees Effectively
Several practices I work with have learned an approach to presenting fees that has the TC verbally ‘pitching’ a payment option, waiting for the patient’s reaction to it and, if the patient doesn’t like it, throwing out another number. If I understand correctly, the patient is being asked to (a) remember what you just said, […]
Presenting Fees and the Silo Principle
In my work with Treatment Coordinators, I stress the importance of having an effective structure – and sticking to it – when managing the patient-visitor consultation. It’s important to remember that most practice visitor(s) want and expect you to maintain a leadership role during this meeting. After all, you are the expert, this is your […]
Lowering Fees to Win Cases – Yes or No?
This past week, TCs at two different client practices of mine both encountered prospective patients that came in with a lower fee from another, previously visited practice – and attempted to use this as a bargaining chip to get a better “deal” from my client’s practice. These situations present some unique challenges, because you should […]
Presenting Fees to Multiple-Sibling Cases
The multiple-patient consultation, while a nice business opportunity for your practice, presents some unique challenges in the case acceptance process. The fact that you are evaluating and presenting treatment recommendations for multiple patients creates opportunities to make things complicated – quickly – for the visiting family. It’s worth mentioning that the more complicated a decision […]
What Matters to Your Visitor
When it comes to the issue of what to charge for orthodontic services, many doctors that I interact with are reluctant to raise their fees for fear of alienating potential patients. What many don’t realize is that the difference in cost for services is rarely the reason for a prospective patient choosing one practice over […]
Presenting Fees on Paper vs on the Computer
The process that practices follow for getting to ‘yes’ with new patients tends to be an office-culture product that develops largely on its own over time within each practice. For this reason I see a considerable amount of variation in the way in which TCs manage these steps from one practice to another. Today’s article […]
How to Present What Is Included in Your Fee
Because I travel two days per week in my line of work, I stay in many hotels, ranging from budget rooms in the middle of nowhere to five-star properties at world-class locations. At the risk of sounding like a cheapskate, one thing that has always mildly annoyed me about the “luxury” properties is the inverse […]