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
Show, Don't Tell: Communicating Intentionally
This episode delves into the vital role of visual aids in enhancing patient understanding and acceptance in dental practices. We explore various methods and strategies that allow dental professionals to effectively communicate treatment options, ensuring clarity and confidence in patient decisions.
• Discussing the cognitive advantages of visual aids in patient care
• Sharing creative techniques for using visual aids in the office
• Exploring the positive impact of visual aids on patient engagement and trust
• Offering insights into common pitfalls of verbal communication
• Challenging listeners to create customized visual tools for their practices
Create visual aids for better patient understanding and watch your acceptance rates soar!
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I help dentists take more time off while making more money through systematization, team empowerment, and creating leadership teams.
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Some studies say that people remember 65% of visual information and only 10% of what they hear, so you need to be maximizing the amount of concepts you can use visual aids for when explaining things to patients. Today, I'm going to share everywhere in my office currently that I created additional visual aids to help explain complex topics, do more elective treatment and get more patients saying yes to my recommendations. I know that a few of these you're probably already doing, but I guarantee you that you're not doing all of them. You are listening to the Dental Practice Heroes podcast, where we teach you how to work three, two, one or even zero clinical days a week, take more time off and make more money than ever. I'm your host, dr Paul Etchison, author of two books on dental practice management, dental coach and owner of a large group practice in the south suburbs of Chicago. I want practice owners like you to experience all the greatness that can come from a systematized and team-managed office. So let me know if you can relate to this. This is probably within the first year out of school.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to explain what a bridge is to a patient and it goes like this, and I found myself doing this a lot when I got out of school. You have a very simple concept. It is a bridge, it is a porcelain piece that contains three teeth and it extends from one tooth across an edentulous space to the other space. You're probably listening to me saying yeah, that's pretty simple. Everybody knows what a bridge is, but how do you explain it? This is how I used to explain it. Ok, I would get my two fists up like this and I have them up in front of me. So here's the one tooth, the space is in between, and here's the other tooth. And what we're going to make is we're going to make one piece of porcelain that's going to go from one side to the other side. And now I don't have three arms, so, like when I'm holding my two teeth in the air, I can't show where the bridge is going.
Speaker 1:And I had a patient ask me like, I don't get it, like is that the top of the tooth? And I said what do you mean? Like the gum line top, or do you mean like the, the biting surface, top, dude, I mean the top. And so he goes no, the, the biting surface. We say the biting surface. I go oh, he's like I don't get this. Like what? What is it the bottom or the top teeth? And I'm like dude, it's. I guess it's well, I'm talking about your top teeth, but I'm holding it in the way like it's a bottom tooth and he's like, okay, so where are the roots? And I'm just like dude bro. And then finally he said to me he's like dude, I'm so sorry, I'm lost. I know you're trying to show me with your hands, but I feel like you're just doing the YMCA over here. And that's when it hit me what the hell am I doing, like?
Speaker 1:And I have so many patients that I do this with and they don't say anything and they probably don't understand. But they just don't wanna say like, they don't wanna stop me and say, hey, I don't know what you're talking about. It is a complex topic. It's much easier just to show them a picture, show them a model, and that's the way I do it now. And there's so many places in our dental offices where we can utilize visual aids. It would make things so much easier.
Speaker 1:And think about it If the patient is confused, they're not going to say yes. So we want them to understand what they're getting into. And the last thing we want is when we do treatment on somebody and they're just like what the hell was that? I didn't know we were doing that. You ever prep somebody for a bridge? And they're like, why are you shaving my teeth down? And you're just like are you stupid? Like what the hell are you talking about? Are you being serious? This is the type of stuff that we're trying to avoid. I don't care how well you explain how a bridge, you have to destroy enamel and how an implant is independent of the adjacent teeth. It makes so much more sense just to show a picture and point at it. Let's go around the office, let's talk about how we use these. I hope I give you some great ideas for this.
Speaker 1:So around the office, in the waiting room, I have one TV that is playing. You know it's just like playing like HDTV. Whatever's on, you know we'll have the news on something like that. So it's just run that. But above our door, going into our clinical area, is another big screen that's playing a looped PowerPoint presentation and what's on there is pictures from team events.
Speaker 1:There are some slides that say nice stuff like your comfort is our priority, just little branding things. Because I find that if you plant that seed in the patient's brain. They'll be like man. They really care. So little statements like that. There is before and afters showing like smile makeovers. They're showing like Invisalign. We're advertising Botox. We're showing that we do oral cancer screenings. So there's so many things that we can show the patients, and as long as we mix in some fun pictures, like from team outings, or pictures of the doctor and their kids, things like that the patients will look at this, and so it's a way of letting them know the things that we do without having to verbally tell them what we do, and it's also a way of letting them know that we're different from other offices and this is who our brand is. So it's a very simple thing to do.
Speaker 1:I just bought an old laptop from like the refurb from eBay and it's just running a repeat PowerPoint. Now people are saying why do you have to put it on a PowerPoint? You don't. You can just put it on a flash drive and stick it in the side of the TV. I just find it's a lot easier to update if it's a PowerPoint file rather than just dragging pictures. So that's why All right the other things in the waiting room.
Speaker 1:How about some awards? You ever win one of those really prestigious awards where they say, hey, you won this award. If you send me $300, we'll send you an award. Man, I win those every year because, dude, our office is so freaking awesome, we always win it. Do you guys win that too? I buy those awards. I know that seems so cheesy, but I'm telling you, the patients see them and it makes a difference. I don't buy them every year, I buy them every other year. So it's always like we either won this year, the year before, or we're going to win next year because I don't want, I don't feel like I have to buy them every year, but I would buy one about every other year. And sometimes they're plaques and sometimes they're awards and they're just kind of set around all over the office. I think it makes a difference. So I remember going to a doctor when I was like 16 and being like, wow, chicago's best doctors. Whoa, that's a big deal, sweet, all right.
Speaker 1:Sponsorships. Do you sponsor teams and do they like send you like a picture? Do you have any plaques showing that? We have a section of our wall in our waiting room that has a bunch of? We sponsor softball and baseball teams, so we have a section that has that and baseball teams, so we have a section that has that. Anything you can show that you're active in your community. I think it makes a big difference in the brand. So put these visual reminders to your patients that you are a legit office that cares.
Speaker 1:All right, let's move on to what we can do in the operatory. First of all, the obvious one is using intraoral cameras and making sure that you have a way to show it to the patient so that they don't have to turn around. I think this day and age that's pretty common, so most people have that by now. But if you don't, that's the most basic one You've got. Seeing is believing. The patient has to see what we see. So get intraoral cameras in every single operatory. I don't get anything from mouthwatch. That's just what we use. We have a mouthwatch camera in every single op and when it breaks we throw it away and we buy a new one. But I think the image quality is really good in those and I like them All right.
Speaker 1:Digital x-rays this is kind of a no brainer, but I wanted to add a little caveat to it is that we've just started using, like the AI stuff and it colors on the x-rays man. It is really cool to visually show patients' bone loss and it's really cool to visually show the existing restorations one color and show decay in another color. So I just wanted to share that. We found that very helpful. We're still integrating this using the AI, x-rays and stuff like that, but so far, so good. It's been really helpful.
Speaker 1:All right, the wallpaper background. Now this is what I mean. When you walk into my operatories, we have the TV on the wall and we have it set up so that it's showing the computer Now on the computer. It'll eventually switch to a TV that they'll watch. When the patient walks into the operatory, I want it set on the computer because I don't want any sound and I want them to see that little wallpaper Okay, the desktop wallpaper that shows our logo and it has a little tagline underneath it. Experience the difference. I think that little touch point makes such a big deal. I know some people that have gone as far as they will set up the screensaver and it'll say welcome and it'll say the person's name. So I think that's a nice little touch too. You know, take advantage of every single opportunity. All right, in the operatories we have one poster.
Speaker 1:Now, I don't think you should clutter up your operatories. I don't like that. I don't like clutter, I like it clean. I like less things. Less is more. But in every single operatory we have something advertising Botox. Just, we have something advertising Botox, just like a little like two by three, you know, two foot by three, foot printed, nice graphic.
Speaker 1:Hey, we do the Botox here. This is what you can expect, very simple, and the reason we do that with Botox is Botox is a very difficult thing to look someone in the eye and say you ever thought about Botox? And they're like dude, I'm here for my teeth, don't talk about my wrinkles. It Botox and they're like dude, I'm here for my teeth, don't talk about my wrinkles. It's like you go get liposuction and someone's like you ever think about doing a facelift? It's like no, that's not what I'm here for. So we wanted to have let them know that we did Botox as a dental office. That's how we got it off the ground. A lot of people ask questions. It's a very it's an easy way of getting that off the ground.
Speaker 1:I would also do All right before and after photos. I think you should have these on one folder on your computers. We have it in a folder on our server so we can pull it up in any computer. But you know, I used to have it where they were all very organized very well, and sometimes I could go to like I could open up one folder and there would be, like you know, four pictures of this procedure. Maybe it was a diastema closure or something like that. And then maybe I had another folder of veneers. I had another full folder of like prepped, like full mouth cases, and what I found, just serendipitously and being unorganized, is that it makes a great impression if you have one giant folder with everything in there, so that when you go, oh, let me find this case, I will bring that folder right in front of the patient so they can see all the cases.
Speaker 1:Now, they're small, they're like thumbnail size and windows, but when I find the case I want to show them. I want them to see that I scrolled past so many other cases. Oh, where is it Gosh? We do so many of these. I really have to organize this folder. That's what I say every time. So put them in a folder, you know. Organize them so that you can find what you need, but also make sure that all these pictures are cropped nice. Make sure the white balance is correct. Make this look presentable, because this will make a difference and people need to see before and afters. It's like if you don't show them a before and after of big treatment. It's like buying a car without a test drive, like you just need to see it, see what's possible, and show them that look, I do cases like this. This is something I've done a number of and you want them to trust you. That's part of trust, so I want them to see that I'm scrolling through a huge folder of tons and tons and tons of cosmetic stuff that I've done. I find that that makes a huge difference.
Speaker 1:All right, models. Have you tried to explain the snap-on denture versus the fixed hybrid, versus like just a plain old denture? I used to do it on my hand all the time, like oh, and it snaps. You know, like that, what am I doing? Spend the money on Amazon. You can buy these little models. You can show you like a fixed hybrid, like an all-in-four, and it'll show you an implant like a snap denture, and you can get little models for very simple things to talk about. We've got one for a flipper. We've got one for our night guard, and these things are not like in a central location. We've got one in each of the operatories. Now, for the models with the fixed hybrid, we actually have one for the office, so they do have to go get it, but it makes it so much easier for you to explain what this is and you can hand it to the patient and you can say, hey, pull that off, pull that denture off, feel how those snaps feel good, how strong they are. What would it be like to eat with something like that? So don't hesitate to invest a little bit of money into some models, because it really helps.
Speaker 1:Like, another model I love to show is a expander, all right. And the last thing in the operatory is just finding pictures from the internet. It's so easy to find pictures of dental things on Google images and just save them in a folder. Like I've taken pictures for different concepts, like I have one for I have a bridge versus implant. It shows what a bridge versus implant is. Now I also have one of those models that has all the different dental procedures on it, where you can see bridge versus implant is. Now I also have one of those models that has all the different dental procedures on it where you can see bridge versus implant there. But I have one that's just a visual slide and I have it saved in a folder. It's got our brand on it and I just pull it up. There's a bridge, there's an implant, there's a cast metal partial versus a valplast, there's a sealant, there's an expander, there's a Herbst appliance. So a lot of different things.
Speaker 1:So anytime you're talking to a patient and you just feel like you want that visual aid, you think it would be easier to show them. Just sit down and create it. It takes a little bit of time. It's one of those things that's very easy to procrastinate on, but I assure you it's worth the time.
Speaker 1:All right, let's talk about the front desk Membership plans. We use visuals for a membership plan. We use visuals for a membership plan. We have a nice little brochure that we made and it shows, like what the benefits are. It shows why it's different than dental insurance, why it's not dental insurance, and then it also shows a table of what the savings would be A very easy way to convey value and show them what is possible. We also like to print out from CareCredit. I know you can do this with Sunbit as well. You can type in the value of the treatment plan and you can get a printout of what the different financing options are and what the payment could be, interest rate based on their credit.
Speaker 1:And I find that if somebody doesn't schedule, this is when our team does it. We always offer it to people like hey, is this something you'd be interested in? Do you want to talk more about this? But if they don't schedule, they always leave with a printout of that. They always get a printout of the financials because I want them to go home, I want them to sit in their car and go damn it, I can't afford it, I'm so poor. And then when they look at the thing we gave them, they go, oh my gosh, I can afford this payment. Yeah, I can get this treatment, all right, cool. So I like them to leave with that. I think it helps. You know we send them home with a treatment plan and we send them home with a little bit of financing information so that they know it's not about paying upfront. We can do financing. You know it's within your grasp. You can have this dental treatment.
Speaker 1:So what I really want you to think is that anytime we're moving through the office and anytime we're communicating anything with patients, we should always be thinking about is this making sense and can I communicate this a little bit better? And if there's a way to communicate it better with a visual aid, it's worth creating. These things are not already made where you can just grab them and take them and use them in your office. But in reality I think I went through maybe like 15, 20 things in this episode. It's not going to take you that long to get all those things together. But if you can use a visual aid, use it. It is so much easier to explain, it's going to save you time in the operatory and it's going to give you a great ROI because patients are going to say, yes, you're going to increase your case acceptance, you're going to reduce the confusion, you're going to build trust with your patients. That's what we want. So my challenge to you this week is to create a few visual aids and try them out on your patients and see if you get some different results. See if it feels different.
Speaker 1:All right, thank you so much for listening. Next week we've got Spencer Greer, the big time producer. He's coming back on the show and I'm going to interview him on how he runs his practice, how he created a team driven practice that he doesn't even practice in anymore. He's got multiple practices with associates and partners and he's just a really cool dude and I just love the way he explains things. So that's a great interview coming up. Come back on Monday to hear that Everybody have a fantastic week and we will talk to you next time.
