When Your Fee is Higher than the Competition

In your increasingly competitive business, more and more patients are shopping – as I’ve noted in earlier posts, in my estimation this is the case in most practices at least 50% of the time – and you need to know what to do when a potential patient confronts you with the lower price of a competitor.

First, what not to do: you should never lower your fee without a corresponding drop in value. This means that the only way to lower your fee is to  change the original recommendation for treatment at the same time. In most cases, that is not an option. So if you aren’t going to change the treatment plan to lower your fee, what should you do to win the case?

First of all, it’s important to remember that most of your practice visitors are much more concerned about monthly payments than they are about the fee difference. Second, because most of you offer interest-free financing, unless the family opts for payment-in-full, the difference in fees can be minimized as a practice-selection issue. Allow me to explain how.

Let’s take a fee difference of $1000, which for most of you would be a substantial difference in cost between you and another practice. At first glance, that looks significant to the patient, too. However, because of the way that you allow the patient to pay for treatment – over time, interest-free  – it really isn’t.

That is, if you present it properly, and reduce it to the irrelevant.

As follows:

“Ms. Smith, the cost difference between having your child treated here and at the other practice you are considering is only about $40 a month, interest free, when financed over 24 months.

So the decision that you need to make is whether you feel that having your child treated at our practice is worth an extra $40 a month, or if you would rather save $40 by having your child treated at the other practice you are considering.

We believe that the quality of care and final results that your child will receive here is worth the additional $40 a month. If you do decide to have your child treated here, we will do our very best to make sure that your family is happy with that extra investment for every month that your child is a patient.”

You probably noted that in the example, the financing term is 24 months. That may or may not be the length of treatment time. As I have noted in previous posts, because of competition, you have no leverage with patients when it comes to dictating terms for financing treatment, and if you are not flexible with your terms, you are going to lose a lot of good cases. For that reason alone, you should offer both an option to pay by the end of treatment and an option that reasonably extends it. (You can do this with confidence because your profession enjoys a very low bad debt rate).  

I will also note the obvious: if your practice cannot convince a patient that you are worth an additional $40 a month, you need help with your consultation skills. You should make arrangements to bring me in for training. Immediately. Enough said.