When to Hit the “Eject Button” With Fee Negotiators

One of the questions I addressed from the audience during a recent webinar last night dealt with the issue of “hagglers” ? people who try to use a lower quoted price from another practice as a negotiating tool to get you to drop your fees. I touch on the subject of hagglers in The Book of Pearls, but for the benefit of all of the talented TCs who deal with this issue, I will expand upon the topic for this week’s post.

First of all, you should never, ever lower your fees to win cases. You provide a high quality of care that is justified by your fee, and you have an obligation to your other patients to maintain fee integrity for your services. This point alone makes it unacceptable to be cutting “deals” with practice visitors. If your practice is getting an unusual amount of push-back on your fee structure, the problem is more likely to be a lack of perceived value in what you are presenting, not what you are charging for it. This means that improving your ability to communicate the value of treatment at your practice is the best way to have less resistance to the price of your services. That is a correctable skill issue, not a problem with what you charge for your services.

Second, there is an element of the marketplace, albeit a small one, that only cares about price, and does not care at all about quality. Unless you are the cheapest alternative in your market, these individuals are not going to become patients at your practice. That is a blessing, because these are also the same people that, once they become patients:

• Don’t cooperate with your instructions,
• Don’t show up for their appointments,
• Don’t maintain good hygiene,
• Don’t pay you on time, and
• Don’t appreciate the quality of your finished work, no matter how much effort you and your staff expend to please them.

The point is this: if you have a visitor to your practice that does not want to pay you your asking fee for the quality of care that you provide, thank them for visiting, and hit the “EJECT” button.  Send them down the street. Let them wrap themselves around your competitor’s axle, not yours. Not all business is good business, and I cannot think of a better way to identify a poor prospective patient for your practice than one who does not want to pay your practice a fair price for the value of what you do.