When the Question is Not Yes or No, but Which

A common occurrence in fee presentations has the visiting spouse making a decision to begin treatment at your practice and leaving the meeting with the only unresolved issue being which of your payment options the family will choose. So, in the eyes of the visiting parent, the question for the family is no longer yes or no, but which.

The concern that I have in these situations is the unpredictability of the non-attending spouse. Your visiting parent may have every intention of moving forward, but the other partner in the decision did not meet your doctor, did not see your office, and understands little of what you do besides your fee. For these reasons, anything that we can do to build commitment to start before the consultation is concluded is worth considering. In other words, we want the absentee parent, when presented with your treatment plan and costs, to provide rubber-stamp approval to the attending parent’s decision.

In Yes to Treatment I mention the ‘phone call save’ as one way to seal the deal here: “if you would like to call your husband, I would be happy to give you a few minutes of privacy to discuss it with him.” This is one way to get a commitment to start.

If calling the spouse is not an option, a second approach is to ask for a small, token deposit at the time that the consultation is ending. This approach recognizes the presence of “not yes or know, but which” in the decision process. It is applied to the payment option that is later selected and is asked for in return for reserving time on your patient schedule. As with the previous example, the intent here is to build commitment.

If your TC is following my training process, he or she is offering three ways to pay for treatment. All require different levels of up-front funding, ranging from payment-in-full at one end to a deposit in the neighborhood of $500 at the other. Here is the verbiage that I would suggest your TC adopt to address not yes-or-no, but which:

“We can reserve your child’s impressions appointment today with a deposit of just $100. Once you talk with your husband and decide which payment plan you prefer, let us know and we will apply your deposit to the plan you select.” (While the family can come to the next appointment with this information in hand, I would prefer that the TC follow up with the visiting parent to finalize that decision prior to the next visit).

Is this deposit refundable? Of course it is. The purpose of the small exchange of funds is not to force a family into treatment at your practice, but to gain additional commitment to the decision to start. If money, even a small amount, has changed hands, you are much less likely to have a “yes” decision scuttled by the non-attending spouse. Many other service-based businesses ask for deposits before proceeding further, this is a variation of your existing down-payment policy and there is nothing to prevent you from doing the same. I encourage you to experiment with it.