Dental Practice Heroes
Where dentists learn how to cut clinical days while increasing profits - without sacrificing patient care, cutting corners, or cranking volume. We teach you how to grow a scalable practice through communication, leadership, and effective management.
Hosted by Dr. Paul Etchison, author of two books on dental practice management, dental coach, and owner of a $6M collections group practice in the south suburbs of Chicago, we provide actionable advice for practice owners who want to intentionally create more time to enjoy their families, wealth, and deep personal fulfillment.
If you want to build a scalable practice framework that no longer stresses, drains, or relies on you for every little thing, we will teach you how and share stories of other dentists who have done it!
Dental Practice Heroes
No Regrets: Preventing Buyer's Remorse in Patients
Feeling uncertain after a big dental purchase? You're not alone. This episode unpacks the phenomenon of buyer's remorse, especially regarding dental treatments. We delve into why patients harbor doubts about the necessity of their treatments, the high costs commonly associated with dental procedures, and how these factors can lead to feelings of regret.
Throughout the episode, you'll find practical tips that can be easily implemented in your practice to enhance patient trust and satisfaction. Ultimately, addressing and mitigating buyer's remorse not only benefits your patients but also cultivates long-term relationships and encourages referrals. Don't miss this opportunity to improve your practice! Be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with colleagues who may benefit from these insights.
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Take Control of Your Practice and Your Life
I help dentists take more time off while making more money through systematization, team empowerment, and creating leadership teams.
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At some point in your life. I know you've experienced the ill feelings that come after purchasing something that cost you a lot of money or that you had to stretch a little bit, for it's the inevitable buyer's remorse that comes from making that very large purchase. Now your patients they can feel the same way about the dentistry that you provide for them. And often when a patient returns to the office unhappy about their treatment or after experiencing some buyer's remorse, maybe some post-op sensitivity, you can really get yourself into a sticky situation that is sometimes nearly impossible to get out of. So today we are going to talk about what causes this phenomenon, how to prevent it from happening and how to address it when it does. Now you are listening to the Dental Practice Heroes podcast, where we teach you how to run your practice like a business, make more money and take an insane amount of time off. I'm your host, dr Paul Edgison. I'm the author of two books on dental practice management and the owner of a large group practice in the south suburbs of Chicago. I want you to be able to experience an amazing life because you own a dental practice, all right, so I just got back from a weekend out of town with my wife for her birthday and we were supposed to go to Savannah, georgia and there's just been so much stuff happening with like the airplanes like lately, and it's just scaring the hell out of her. Okay, I'm saying her because I was like, oh, it's going to be fine, relax, relax. And then the night before the Toronto thing happened and I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm like I'm feeling uneasy about it. You know, you just get that intuition Like this is a bad idea. We ended up canceling our flights and we're just going to use them sometime in the future. But we still had like a sitter for the weekend. So her and I drove about two and a half hours up to Kohler Wisconsin. You know Kohler like the people that make the faucets and stuff and they have like a spa up there. They got a showroom. That's really cool. It's kind of like close to Milwaukee. But man, it was a great experience. I got to talk about that in a different episode. And then on our way back we stayed one night in Milwaukee. We stayed at this really cool vibey hotel called St Kate and we ended up eating dinner with one of our longtime babysitters named Kira, who is a third-year dental student at Marquette and it was cool just to talk to her. She's seeing patients. Amazing how a dental student's dress hasn't changed much in the 16 years since I was a dental student man 16 years. It's crazy, but we had a great time. It was good to get away with the wife and we had planned it for a long time and, honestly, every time I do one of these with my wife just her and I say, why don't we plan more of these? You know, all it takes is just to sit down with a calendar and plan it ahead of time. That's what you gotta do. Today I wanna talk about buyer's remorse and how it applies to our dental offices.
Speaker 1:Now I'll share a story about six years ago when I bought my first investment apartment building. If apartment building, if you are a listener of the podcast, you know I do a lot of real estate. I invest in some bigger syndications, but I also own smaller buildings around my local area. I had been wanting to buy an apartment building for a really long time. I was looking at them five, maybe six, seven months and I just really couldn't find anything that would pencil out on paper because I didn't know what I was getting into. Right, I would. I would do the calculations. I'm like, oh, this is risky, this is risky. Or the ones, if they were like priced reasonably, where we possibly could make it work. We would go see the building and there would be something that was huge, that was wrong with it.
Speaker 1:Eventually, I found this six unit that was maybe like 15 minutes from my house. It was 40 years old and it looks great. I loved it. I love the area. We ended up getting it under contract. I was so excited. I'm like, dude, I got it. This is awesome. I got my first building.
Speaker 1:So since this was my first building, I thought it would be really valuable if I went with the inspector, because that's what you do after you get it under contract you got to go get an inspection, make sure there's nothing wrong with it. I really wanted to be there for the inspection because I wanted to learn, like, what Are we checking when we're looking at apartment buildings? And I remember sitting there with the inspector just feeling so naive, just like kind of embarrassed, that I didn't know anything about this. But dude, he was, his name was Russ, he was so cool, he was so cool and he spent so much time with me.
Speaker 1:We walked through all six of the units, went up in the attic, went down in the crawl space, which I can't even believe, thinking back that I even went down in the crawl space with them because, dude, I hate spiders and even more than I hate spiders is spider webs and the way that spiders walk is just. It just looks gross, not cool. I am the one who kills the spiders in this house. I don't enjoy it, hate spiders. We get in the crawl space and he's showing me the joists. Now these are like the big, like floor things that are holding the whole building up. He's showing me all these ones that are cracked and like rotted out and there's like you could tell there's a ton of moisture in there. There's, I mean, there's water on the floor in the crawl, it's like it's, it's musty, it's mildewy. And he's telling me I'm like man, it could be anywhere, like 20, maybe $30,000 to fix. I'm just like, dang it. I really wanted this building.
Speaker 1:So what we do is we go back to the seller and we say, hey, this is what we found. Here's our inspection report. We would like you to discount the property further $20,000 or give like a $20,000 credit. And this seller said hey, why don't you just go F yourself and I'll find someone else to buy it? Said, hey, why don't you just go F yourself and I'll find someone else to buy it? So now it was torn between okay, I really want this building. I found something out that was wrong with it. It's going to cost a lot to fix, but I still want the building. So, even after knowing all that, I still proceeded with the purchase. And wouldn't you know it, man, did I feel horrible about it? After we signed the papers, I felt, like you know, I wanted to be excited. I wanted to pop the champagne. I was now an owner of a six-unit apartment building. I should have been so excited, but in reality I wasn't. I was having buyer's remorse, and that's what happens when we make unsure purchases and when we make large purchases. So I'm going to tell you what eventually happened with this apartment building and this real estate deal.
Speaker 1:But first let's talk about how buyer's remorse applies to our patients. Now, when our patients purchase dental treatment from us that they feel is quote expensive or quote a lot of money, they're often going to have questions like did I really need this Because it doesn't hurt? Like did I really need that? Or did I make the right choice because they feel like maybe they should have gotten a second opinion? Or did I just get sold on something so this guy could pay for his boat? You know, like the usual stuff, that patients think about us dentists. And the reason that this one creeps in is because of, you know, the monetary value. It's large. But it also can happen when someone's uncertain about the value that they're getting because they can't really assess the quality. So they have to rely on the trust and, essentially, the patient experience around the procedures. And sometimes in that patient experience or in our interaction with the patient, we don't develop that trust. So if we're going to have happy patients, we need to try to battle buyer's remorse.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about where we can do this in the patient process. First, we're going to talk about how do we do it before the treatment. The first thing we can do before the treatment is co-discovery. And what I mean by co-discovery is we're taking our patient, we're sitting them up and we're showing them pictures. We're looking at the x-rays, we're telling them what this is on the x-ray, what that is, and we're explaining why things are needed, showing them visually what we see, because seeing is believing. So involving the patient in the discovery so that they can see it and in their heart, they trust us with it. Now the second thing is we really got to build that trust Before you start talking about dental stuff.
Speaker 1:You got to get to know your patient. You have got to get to know your patient. You have got to get to know your patient. And I can't tell you how many associates I see that when they walk in to introduce themselves, they shoot themselves in the foot right at the beginning, like they don't sound confident in their introduction, they don't shake the hand confidently or they don't square up and get right in front of that patient. These are things you need to practice because this stuff matters. This is how the patient's going to view you and how they're going to view if you're competent or not.
Speaker 1:We want to make sure that when we're presenting what's needed, we present very confident recommendations, and what I mean by this is not being wish-washy. You can't be saying like, well, you could do this or you could do this, or you don't want to look at an x-ray and go like, well, what should we do, doc? Well, don't do that, bam. Just say it. Say what you would do. I would do this. If this were my tooth, I'd do this. You know what I mean. You've got to have that confidence.
Speaker 1:If we want our patients to feel good about the treatment they get from us, we have to portray that confidence. That is part of the way they'll feel about the treatment. They're not going to go home and look at the bite wing and be like, wow, those margins are great, doc. You know. They're just saying how did this person make me feel when I was in the office? How did it all feel?
Speaker 1:And we really want to avoid the sticker shock, because that happens before treatment as well. People are like how much is going to be, holy cow. So I often like to remind patients that it might be a big investment now, but it's going to be less longer term. Okay, if you don't handle this, this is what's going to happen. And I like to remind them that they're going to smile like 10,000 times a year.
Speaker 1:If it's a front tooth, so you're going to use that front tooth. Or if it's a front tooth, so you're going to use that front tooth. Or if it's a back tooth, I mean you're going to eat about 1100 meals a year. So I mean that's a lot of use. Remind the patient that keeping their mouth healthy is part of their overall health. It's not just a tooth let's talk about during treatment, and during treatment we want to reinforce that they made the right decision. So I find it helpful to reaffirm the benefits of the procedure, like saying things like man, mr Jones, I'm really glad that we got to that crack when we did. It was pretty deep, but I think we got to it in time. I'm glad we fixed that decay when we did, because, man, it was a lot bigger than I thought it was from looking at the x-ray. You want to, like affirm their decision. They did the right thing and we want to talk about future benefits as well. We're showing them what the value is. So it's like so now that we got that tooth filled and that cavity all taken care of, that decay is gone, it's not going to erode anymore your tooth and that bad bacteria is not as populated in your mouth anymore. Or now that that tooth we got it protected by that crown, it's much less likely to break. Or now that we did that root canal, you're going to get to continue to keep this natural tooth in your mouth without that infection from the bad nerve. You know something like that. Let them know what the value is that they got from that procedure.
Speaker 1:Last, let's talk about post-treatment. When we're done. These are those little touches after the procedure. I think it's good to like celebrate with our patients. We sometimes just take for granted what we do. This crown may be their first crown and they're going to remember it. Now we do crowns all the time. It's pretty insignificant to us, but it might be significant to the patient, right? So celebrate their decision. You're just giving them the post-op instructions and you let them know man, I'm really glad we got this done. I'm glad we got to it when we did. I wish all my patients took as great a care of their teeth as you do. Things like that compliment their decision to do it.
Speaker 1:And when you give the post-op instructions, make sure you're sharing with them to like expect the worst. Now that sounds horrible, but listen to what I mean by this. Tell them hey, we did a filling. You know it was on the deeper end. You're going to have some cold sensitivity. It might not be today or tomorrow, it might be in a few weeks, but just know when that cold sensitivity happens. Give it time, it will settle down. That's totally normal. So I like to say things like this, because if they start having pain, they're like, oh, that's normal. If they start having cold sensitivity, oh, that's normal. And if you don't share that with your patients, you're going to get a lot of calls that, hey, this feeling is sensitive to cold. Watch how much less you get those kinds of calls when you start giving your post-op instructions like that, all right.
Speaker 1:And the last thing is doing the post-op calls. It's such a simple touch to do. I have my assistant. Do them just to say, hey, hope you're doing well. Thank you so much. We appreciate you. Please call us if you have any questions. These are the kinds of things that we teach in our online training on dentalpracticeheroescom. So if you're wanting to know how to run your practice like a business and provide the proper systems to your team, check out all the online training and join the DPH Hero Collective. You can go check that out on the website.
Speaker 1:So that is how we prevent it from happening. But even when we do all that, it can still happen. What do we do when it happens? Well, first of all, we listen and we acknowledge their feelings. We do not say anything that makes it seem like you don't agree with them or that what they're feeling is wrong. It is their feeling and they have the right to have it and it needs to be validated. So it's hey, mr Jones, I get it. Man, this tooth didn't hurt before we crowned it and now it does. I'd be frustrated if I were you too Immediately validating that the patient's not overreacting. That is the first step. It is the most important.
Speaker 1:Then you just have to ease their concerns that it's going to get better. Or, as a last resort, if nothing can be done to make it right, just ask the patient what would make them happy. What can I do for you to make you feel better about this? What do you think is fair, mr Jones? And then just do it, and you have a happy patient that will continue to come to your office and will continue to refer people to you. Because you addressed the issue and I have found very few situations where that kind of empathetic statement acknowledging their feelings, followed by the discussion of how we make it right, had the patient still leaving upset. I mean, it always works. Don't defend yourself. That's not what the patient wants to hear. They want to hear that someone is listening to them. So try to see it from their perspective. So buyer's remorse is something that we can handle and be proactive about. At our offices we talked about the things we can do before the procedure, like co-discovery, building the trust, being confident in our recommendations and also avoiding the sticker shock. Now, during the treatment, we talked about reaffirming the benefits and talking about future benefits, and then in post-treatment, we talked about celebrating their decision and giving them post-op instructions in the correct way, as well as making that post-op call.
Speaker 1:Now you might be wondering what happened with that apartment building building with all those problems in the crawl space. Well, I went through with it. We closed on it. It was a half a million dollars. I had to put about $50,000 into it.
Speaker 1:I did all the repairs, we refinished most of the units and we raised the rents by about $400 per unit. We split the garage into like three different things that they could rent out and it increased the income of the apartment by about 30K. You know was about a 50% increase in rents. So it took like two years to get it all done, but I ended up selling that property for like almost $750,000 for very little work that I had to do personally. First one turned out pretty damn good and it was that one that I needed to get my feet wet so I could keep doing it and keep buying buildings. So, all right, thank you so much for listening today. Come back on Wednesday and we're going to be talking about the power of visuals in your case presentation and how you can utilize these simple hacks for better case acceptance, especially with larger cases. Thank you so much. We'll talk to you next time.
