The idea that “selling” orthodontic treatment is some sort of trick of influence is incredibly misguided. The reality is that you can only sell what is true.

If you can’t deliver on your promises, people will know. If what you are offering your patients isn’t “true” for them, they will seek treatment with someone who better understands their needs. End of story.

Treatment goals are treatment goals, and as healthcare providers providing the highest level of care should not be a question, but the idea that your proposed “solution” is the best or only way to address your patient’s needs is merely your opinion. The patient may not find that to be true. The concerns, emotions, and beliefs that patients hold when they come to your practice and develop during treatment are real to them, and they should not be dismissed by an overly paternalistic, “Daddy knows best” approach to treatment.

Being a good “salesperson” is about delivering true patient-centered care and learning to listen so you can design a treatment approach and experience that is an optimal fit for the individual. 

A “groupie” for most of us is someone who is obsessed with a particular band and follows them on tour. Some of you reading this may relate to being obsessed with a particular band in your high school or college days!

However, if you look up the definition of groupie, you will find that Webster’s dictionary also defines a groupie as an ardent fan of a celebrity or of a particular activity.

Wouldn’t you love to have “Doctor X or Practice Y” groupies?

Of course you would!

I know you are thinking that it could be a bit “creepy” to have patients be that “obsessed about their dental health…or about your practice…but really would it be that bad to have say 20% of your practice be these “ardent fans?”

Of course not!

Several Christmases ago, we hosted a group of college students (friends of my daughter) on their way to Lake Tahoe for a 3-day concert called “Snow Globe.”

This event takes place outside in December in Lake Tahoe, so you can imagine it is quite cold and snowy.

I love outdoor concerts as long as it is balmy and I can wear jeans and a t-shirt. The idea of being outside in “freezing” weather and paying for it, just does not appeal to me.

However, my daughter and her friends are official groupies of several “Indy” bands and will travel and even endure less than ideal weather conditions to listen to these bands play for hours or even days.

The entire concert for 3 days is outside. Yes, outside at night when it gets even colder in Lake Tahoe. Typical temperatures will be in the single digits in the evening, just to give you an idea how cold it can get!

Of course this did not stop my daughter and her friends from standing outside to listen to their favorite bands play well into the evening.

Bundled up with as many clothes as possible and hand and feet warmers, they bared the elements because they are “ardent fans” of these bands and I believe they would endure sub –zero temps to listen to them play.

Another concert venue, last April, in Palm Desert California, my daughter and her friends attended what is known as Coachella. Again another 3 day concert, this time in a “hot zone” where temps during the day reach over 100 degrees and there is no shade, just dust and tacky vendors.

Of course the tickets for this event sell out in less than 1 minute at $400 a pop and will resell later for double to triple that price. All this value for the privilege of being in 100+ temperatures listening to music for 3 days in the desert.

There is a lot we all can learn from these “groupies.”

Obviously, they are ardent fans of the type of music that is played at these venues. But there is more to it than that…

They are a destination; an event, the place to be and those that attend have bragging rights to the fact that they were there at the concert enduring the freezing temperatures or the blazing heat.

How can we get our patients to be such fans?

Here are my proposals on how we can make “groupies” of our patients:

1. Provide outstanding service and exceptional results.

My daughter and her friends love these bands because of the great music they produce. They would not endure the weather, the crowds and pay the high-ticket prices to listen to music they were not in love with.

Likewise our patients want the same thing from us. They want to experience exceptional service and receive extraordinary results. They want their smile to be incredible, their bite to function perfectly and their dental pain to be eliminated.

2. Become a “celebrity” in your area.

There are many ways to enhance your celebrity status without having to be on Dr. Phil or the Oprah TV shows!

You can write articles, blogs or even an entire book and give it out to your patients as a new patient gift. Your staff can talk you up about your accomplishments, your training and your awards and recognition even before the patient sees you. You can get interviewed on TV or radio or even hire a PR firm to help you get some local media attention.

It is not that hard to be the “expert” or “celebrity” in your local area. It takes effort and some focus on doing the right things that will get you crowned the “King” or Queen” of orthodontics

3. Provide an unforgettable experience in your practice.

My daughter and her friends endure extreme hot and extreme cold. Unforgettable, no doubt. That’s the first thing they talk about when they get back home. The extreme weather conditions.

However, the conversation quickly reverts to how amazing the concert was and the music and the bands and the people and the……you get the point. The entire experience is what they are ultimately excited bout.

Unforgettable or memorable experiences are how the patient is treated once they are in your office. It is about getting back to the basics.

I know you have all heard this saying from Zig Ziglar, “People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care.” It is so true!

It is about the human interaction, the little things you and your team do to make your patients feel special, welcome, listened to and ultimately loved.

This is how you develop patients into “groupies” and have a practice that is extraordinary in every way possible that is ultimately providing you and your family an epic life and making a huge and memorable impact on your patients’ lives forever.

Who Rents Space in Your Brain?

I recently was listening to a podcast and the speaker was talking about stress and worry. He made this statement, which has stuck with me.

He told the listeners that he is careful who rents space in his brain.

He was speaking in the context of not allowing worry, stress and anxiety to take up residence in his brain and cause him to lose sleep, suffer health problems or waste valuable time on things that he felt would eventually take care of themselves.

For me the visual is a tenant who might be leasing an apartment or house I own.

The “good” tenant keeps the apartment clean and tidy and leaves it in good condition when they vacate and requires minimal investment to get the unit ready for the next tenant.

The “bad” tenant is messy, destructive and leaves the apartment needing major repairs or even totally inhabitable for the next tenant. In order to rent the unit again, you will need to invest in some major repairs and cleanup.

One type of tenant is good for your investment the other is toxic.

What type of tenant is in your “apartment” or “brain”?

Honestly, for me this is an area I consistently struggle with and have to stop and “think” about what am I worrying (or stressing) about and why. I have spent sleepless nights “worrying” and caused my stomach undue aches and pains, not to mention my attitude towards my family, staff and even patients.

Certainly living in today’s world it can be hard to eliminate stress from our everyday lives.

Many of us have our methods of “de-stressing” that may some healthy options like exercise, yoga, meditation, massage and my personal favorite vacations!

However, there are less healthy ways that many of us may manage our stress from time to time including excessive alcohol, too much caffeine and poor food choices. We all know that these options lead to more stress because our health fails, our relationships suffer and we tend to focus even more on the negative.

Mark Twain is famous for stating, “ I had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.”
For how many of us is this true?

And even if the “less than ideal” thing happened, was there any benefit to all your “worrying” in solving the situation? Most likely not.

I speak from experience of course and many sleepless nights and too many cups of coffee the next day have made me realize what Mark Twain said is very true. Most of what we worry about never happens.

So what do you do to prevent the “destructive” tenant from taking up space in your brain?

Here are 3 things that I have implemented as I “recover” from my worry syndrome and my “bad” brain tenants.

#1 Instead of holding in my “problem” or worry, I now find someone to talk to about it.

Usually the lucky person is my husband, who never seems to rent any of his brain space to any worry or anxiety. Often as I am telling him what I am “stressing” about, I realize how ridiculous it is and usually have the problem “kicked” out of my brain shortly afterwards. If it truly needs to be “aired out” he will often help me see the reality of the situation and before long I realize I need to let it go. It is either not a problem at all or will resolve itself.

#2 Take better care of you especially during times of increased stress and worry.

It is inevitable that you will face some stressful situations. Problems with your employees, patients who are unhappy or teens that are …well being teens! You cannot often avoid these situations, but you can change how you manage those seasons in your life.. I enjoy long walks listening to empowering messages or uplifting music. By the time I get back home, whatever I had started to focus on that was causing some anxiety is often lifted or totally eliminated.

#3 Unplug from your phone and all electronics at least one day a week for 24 hours.

This means no emails, Facebook, twitter, instagram, etc… This has been a challenge for me, as I know it can be for many of you to not check emails (or clinchecks) for 24 hours.
Some of you may have serious withdrawl symptoms!

The reality is that while we get physical mail on Saturdays, most of us are not running to our mailboxes to open up the physical mail on the weekends, why would do it with our emails?

My hope for those reading this post, that some of my ideas will help you kick out those “bad” tenants from your brain and you will find more room for the “good” tenants that bring you joy, peace and happiness.

A Live Chat Story

I am a huge technology nerd. I would argue that the integration of technology into our orthodontic offices was a huge differentiator in my early days of private practice. As time has progressed, a slew of companies and services have become available to the orthodontist. Furthermore, I would argue that certain technologies (e.g., iTero, Entertainment, etc.) are table stakes in today’s competitive landscape.

In our offices, as time has ensued, the technologies we use are less patient facing and more practice facing. However, they are just as valuable as they allow us to vastly increase efficiency. It is my intention to share some of these technologies in a series of upcoming posts. I would like to start with online chat on your website.

At last year’s MKS forum, I made the hasty decision to sign up with one of the 2 dominant Orthodontic Chat Services (OCS). I had hesitated for years to add chat to our website as it “wasn’t something that I would want.” However, I am of the opinion that it is imperative that we give the consumer what they want, as opposed to what we want. So I signed up to give it a go.

The installation was simple. I injected the block of javascript onto our site while waiting at the gate for my return flight. Just like that, we were off and running. Then, the first bill came. We were being charged by the lead (which was disclosed beforehand). The problem was, the chat company didn’t generate that lead. We did. It was our reviews, our doc locator status, etc. that brought that lead to our site. As much as I tried, I couldn’t rationalize why I was paying for that. But, we kept going with it as I didn’t have the time or inclination to look for another solution.

My other main concern was that there were many leads that were unable to schedule an exam. Meaning, the chat company obtained contact information but we were not able to schedule them via email or phone despite multiple attempts.  As an aside (although I highly doubt it), my wife, Dr. Alene Humphries, swears they hire people for an amount less than the lead fee to initiate a chat via a VPN (to get a unique IP) and go on to charge us a higher fee.

Knowing that the backend technologies are readily available, we began to consider handling patient chats in-house so that we weren’t being charged for our leads and so that our staff could schedule the leads as soon as the chat was initiated. The final push to make the switch came when I discovered inaccurate information about our practice in the canned responses used by our OCS.

During a 10 minute lull one spring morning, I started looking at companies that provide the backend chat technology. The orthodontic vendors use someone else’s software and provide the chat agents. On the recommendation of Scott Frey, I made an account with PureChat (free for up to 15 chats per month and paid for unlimited chats and more services). By the end of lunch we had the chat client up and running on the site and staff standing by. By the next day we had drafted our canned responses and we were ready to roll.

Initially, we ran our own chat agent during the day only. This allowed us to provide immediate assistance, by looking up next appointment information for a current patient, scheduling an exam for a prospective patient, etc. Then, at the end of the day, we would swap out the code base (by changing the PHP include) to switch back to OCS. The rationale was that there may be a benefit to having a live person there after hours. However, after trying a number of different iterations, we elected to leave our own email contact box after hours and discontinue the OCS all together.

A Few Lessons Learned

Our original chat box design prompted patients to enter a name, provide a phone number or email address, enter their question, and click a “Start Chatting” button to contact us.

Over the next month, we saw a sharp decline in chat volume. Although the chats we did receive were being handled much more adeptly than before, we were reaching far fewer patients.

Hoping to reverse this decline, we made several changes to the chat box design. First, we delayed the animation so the box would only “pop out” once a patient had stayed on our site for 30 seconds or more, rather than immediately when they arrived. Second, instead of requesting any information upfront (not even a name), our new chat box allowed patients to type in their question and begin chatting with us immediately.

Since making the change, we have seen over a 1000% increase in chat volume. We found that subtle changes in design acted to reduce barriers for patients, and give them better access to the information they need. In addition, our staff can handle a higher chat volume than phone and person to person volume, driving increased efficiencies. A piece of technology that I initially rebuffed because it wasn’t what I would use is quickly becoming a favorite means of patient communication. We are thrilled to have incorporated a chat service that we manage, and believe it has greatly improved the experiences of both current and prospective patients.

Don’t Assume that You’re Delighting Patients

Many orthodontists still fail to understand the impact that the patient’s treatment journey has on their practice’s reputation and overall practice health. In part, this is due to the fact that most practice metrics fail to examine the patient journey adequately, and without actionable information numerous assumptions are formed about the patient experience instead.

Here are the most common false assumptions that I see regarding customer experience:

1. If someone has accepted treatment, this is evidence that they had an ideal customer experience. 
   Don’t mistake a patient’s determination to receive care for customer satisfaction. Many patients’ perceptions about their need for treatment will motivate them to soldier their way through a frustrating treatment process to get what they want – but, they are far less likely to share their experience with their friends and their frustrations will dissuade potential patients from seeking treatment.
2. Sub-optimal patient experiences happen in isolation.
   It is rare that a patient will experience a singular sub-optimal event, all too often poor customer experiences happen in multiples. You may be aware of your average wait times, number of repair appointments, occasional patient reports of discomfort, etc. but how many of your patients are being frustrated with all of the above.
3. The best way to increase patient starts is to drive more new patient exams through external marketing.
   Without optimizing the treatment journey for your patients, practice growth becomes a frustrating process that requires a larger marketing budget and more effort to compensate for a less than ideal patient experience. This is not a sensible investment plan, but one that is commonplace.
4. The patient’s treatment journey happens in a vacuum
   While patient’s begin treatment without much perspective, their perceptions about your care will continue to develop over the course of each appointment and, perhaps even more importantly, from experiences during treatment outside of your practice. Throughout the process they are comparing their experience with that of their friends, and they are developing other opinions about orthodontics and the delivery of care in general from what they hear in the news and from advertising. If their treatment experience is significantly out of step with what they see around them, they may have started treatment, but they will not be as big of an advocate for your practice.
5. I survey my patients and that tells me all I need to know. 
   Surveys are definitely a critical piece of the jigsaw, but not all patients are as forthcoming with their frustrations for many reasons leaving you with only small sample to shape your decisions. When negative feedback is received, it is often something that a number of patients have experienced and have not taken the time to voice it.

Nobody wants to act on false assumptions, but these are very common misconceptions that are negatively affecting practices and the specialty as a whole. The good news is that all these can be addressed by digging deeper into our patients’ experiences so we can start to assume a little less, and earn a lot more.

Strategy #1 – Create an Invisalign Culture in Your Office

I talk to many doctors who are excited and ready to take Invisalign to the next level in their practice especially after having attended one of my courses. When I see them again 3 to 6 months later, and I ask them how the practice is doing with Invisalign and what level they have achieved, the majority tell me they could not get the momentum and commitment to achieve their initial goals for Invisalign.

So what happened?

More often than not, it was due to a lack of employee engagement, doctor fear and overall poor culture of the practice. The big word…CHANGE…is scary to team members and doctors alike. When a new type of system or appliance is being added, rather than being excited about the new offering to their patients, they dig in their heels and resist doing what it takes.

This includes both the administrative support staff as well as the clinical team.

However, the worst offender is the doctor him or herself, who is unwillingly to do what it takes to get the team onboard and generate excitement, provide training and education and overall make the huge commitment of both time and money to implement a new system of orthodontic delivery.

So strategy number #1 must be the very first goal towards your successful and profitable Invisalign Practice. You must be focused and determined and create that excitement in your staff. They will be the ones ultimately helping to lead this exciting change in your practice.

Strategy #2 – Make a Plan

This sounds so simple and it can be. However, it is important that you have a plan in place with clear goals you want to achieve with dates in place.

One of our initial goals was simply to start 1 Invisalign case a day and reach Elite within the year.
Put this is writing and make sure your team knows your goals. What gets measured, gets results.

The good news is that most likely you have an Invisalign Territory Manager already who would welcome the opportunity to help you get a plan on paper and set realistic goals for your practice.

They will help with the training and coaching of your team. They can inform you of upcoming Continuing Education events that would be best for you and your team. They can hold you accountable to your goals and find ways to get those cases started and completed in the right time frames to achieve those top tier statuses with Invisalign.

Their main goal is to help you succeed and they will provide a lot of the training and support for your team that will help you with Strategy #1.

I know that over a decade ago when we decided to pursue more Invisalign and make it a huge part of our practice, the support from Invisalign was very helpful in getting our staff trained as well as keeping me up on the latest courses and seminars that were being offered.

Strategy #3 – Announce to Your Current Patients that You Are Now Offering Invisalign

Again, a very simple strategy and one that many of you would say..”duh!”

However, I do know many offices jump right in offering Invisalign and spend loads of money on Adwords campaigns, postcard mailings and even billboards, without looking in their own backyard first.

If you have a traditional orthodontic practice, it is primarily kids and teens.
What about those parents? Especially the moms of all your patients and even the grandmas?

Many of these parents are either sitting chairside with their children or in your reception room. Make sure your reception area reflects the fact that you offer Invisalign for adults.

Have brochures, posters and a video playing—all about Invisalign, of course. You can obtain all this marketing material for free from Invisalign under your account.

Send out a letter or email to the parents and grandparents that you are having an Invisalign promotion for the month. Let them know that adult orthodontic insurance coverage will cover Invisalign and talk about their Flex Spending accounts and how they can be used for treatment.

These are simple, cost effective and extremely powerful in getting Invisalign patients started in your practice without a huge marketing spend.

Our initial focus was on these patients and we were surprised how many started when given the opportunity. They definitely were not interested in braces, but Invisalign was a totally acceptable and welcome treatment for them.

Strategy #4 – Open Your Office During Consumer Friendly Hours

With more Invisalign, come more adult patients. These patients want the convenience of Invisalign, but also do not want to miss work for orthodontic appointments. Many moms are so busy running kids to practice and other events after school that even those after school appointment can be hard for them.

You will see a tremendous growth in your Invisalign and in your practice in general by offering after work and dare I say..Saturday appointments.

While staff and even the doctor may not want to work on a Saturday, it is important to your successful practice that you offer these consumer hours.

Banks figured it out a long time ago that 9-5 hours did not help the consumer who also worked 9-5. Many banks are now open Saturdays, till 6 p.m. at night and some are in grocery stores with staff available even on Sundays!

Now I am not suggesting that you schedule every evening or every Saturday. Start out with 1 Saturday a month and maybe 1 evening a week. See what happens and the response from your patients.

Because you will be doing more invisalign , you can tailor the schedule to those aligner checks and maybe some activations of your fixed appliance cases. Those routine appointments can be the ones to fill those time slots and keep your practice growing and your patients happy.

Strategy #5 – Get Comfortable with Teen Invisalign

Most doctors tell me they are afraid of offering Invisalign to teen patients.

“They will lose them!”

“ They won’t wear them!”

These are two of the most common things I hear from doctors and even team members. The truth is that you will have a few patients that will not wear them, will lose them or will break them, but the vast majority of teens do a great job of wearing their aligners as prescribed.

A huge study done by Invisalign and Kelton Research Group in 2013 found that close to 50% of teens felt a boost in self confidence when they started their Invisalign. A similar group of teens with braces only had a 22% boost in their self-confidence when their braces were applied.

So clearly, teens want Invisalign and when given the chance to have Invisalign they will wear
them and do very well.

You should never make a decision about what not to do just because there is not 100% participation. I can tell you from experience, that our practice continues to grow because these teens and their parents are looking for a doctor who will treat their orthodontic case with Invisalign. Unless you are offering to teens with confidence, they will leave and get a second opinion.

Furthermore, make sure your Treatment Coordinators are able to discuss Teen Invisalign with enthusiasm and conviction and can handle the objections that invariably will occur from parents. You will need a clear communication strategy to help parents understand the pros and cons of braces versus Invisalign. This information is an important part of your overall success with Invisalign and the growth of your practice.

Strategy #6 – Price Invisalign the Same or Close to Braces

Doctors tell me all the time, “I offer Invisalign all the time to my patients, but they still choose braces.”

At first I was shocked by this because, in our experience, this is just not true.

However, some digging exposed the real truth….these doctors were charging anywhere from $1000 to $2000 more for Invisalign! No wonder patients and parents were choosing braces instead.

When we first started to get focused and achieve some big goals (1 Invisalign case a day), we offered it for $500 extra (the same price as ceramic braces).
This generally was not a problem and case acceptance was still quite high. However, we still had a few teen patients whose parents opted to save the $500 and go with metal braces.

Once we got to a certain advantage level with Invisalign, we started to offer Invisalign at the same price as braces and the rest is history.

Parents and patients readily accepted treatment and were actually more open to learning about Invisalign as they had assumed it would cost more money.

Strategy #7 – Have “Pig-Headed Determination”

This last strategy I think applies to anything you want to achieve in life.

I remember that a great marketer, Chet Holmes, once said, “You need pig-headed determination to succeed.”

I agree that this is so true whether you are transitioning your practice to do more Invisalign or you are training for the Ironman Triathlon. You need “pig-headed” determination and focus to succeed.

Learning a new technique is never easy.
Implementing new systems in your office is always met with some challenges and fine-tuning.

Changing your scheduling template and offering new and different hours may cause some stress among your team members.
All great things take effort, focus and discipline. In order to succeed, stay relevant and truly offer what patients want, you need to get efficient, confident and profitable with Invisalign.

Follow these 7 Strategies and you will be on your way to success and will achieve your goals.

I recently had an amazing experience while renting a car from Enterprise. An energetic, passionate young woman helped me with my rental and I was so impressed with her customer service skills, that I actually offered her a job in California working for us in our Orthodontic practice.

I honestly, did not expect her to take it (I was in Ohio renting the car and Cincinnati is her home town.) But what did happen helped me remember how important it is to recognize people in our everyday interactions.

Unfortunately in today’s world, we tend to remember all the negative outcomes or negative experiences. With review sites that promote negative reviews such as YELP, there is now more and more focus on what is “wrong” with a service provider or product than focusing on what is right.

Maybe I am naïve, but I believe most people get up each day and want to have a great day and help their customers, clients and patients. Of course, some people give up sooner, or just do not have the energy or focus to sustain a customer” centric attitude all day.

My proposal today, is to try to make a change in the collective atmosphere that focuses on all the “bad” and start handing out praises to people we encounter all day long.

Try it starting today.

I have to admit, at first it takes some effort, but once you get going, you will love the rewards. People will smile more, you will smile more, you will get better service and even some special perks and best of you will be making the world a better place, a “millimeter” at a time of course!

Back to my Enterprise story. I told her how impressed I was with her customer service skills and ability to make me feel like I was the only customer in that day getting a car. She actually teared up a bit and said to me that was the nicest thing anyone had said to her all day and in fact she had been having a “bad” day (although she did not show it).

She thanked me profusely, blushed at my job offer, but declined and I thought I saw her gleefully skip (like a schoolgirl) back into the Enterprise Rental store as I pulled out of the parking lot. Remember folks, “its all about millimeters.”

Try this today and please share your stories….