I am Sheela Roth, head of clinical education at Pearl, and really excited that you chose to spend your time with us.

Whether you're gonna be watching us live, hopefully, or those of you that might watch us later, we will be sending this out. Everybody who has registered will receive, this exact video in their email. So I wanna make sure you guys are aware of that. Today's session is packed with real world strategies you can take back to your practice immediately, and that's one of my favorite things about, Steven here is that you're gonna learn something new that you can start tomorrow morning if you're working on Friday, which hopefully you are.

Now let's be honest. How many times a day do we hear things like, oh, let me check with my spouse or let me think about it or I need to check my calendar. Right? And I'm thinking, but you have calendars on your phone, which those are just other ways for them to say, that's probably too expensive, and they need additional help in understanding how to move forward with their treatment.

Those moments can feel like the end of the conversation, but today, we're gonna learn how they can actually be the beginning of something much more productive. So I'm honored to welcome someone who has helped thousands of dental professionals rethink a lot of systems and processes in their practice, and today, how to communicate with our patients. So I welcome Steven Anderson. If you've heard his name, you already know, that he teaches, works, does everything, writes, creates. He is the founder of Total Patient Service Institute, better known as TOPS, where the focus is not just on growing practice, but on transforming them through leadership, communication, and service excellence. He has spoken to some of the biggest stages in dentistry and helped teams increase productivity by tapping into something so many of us overlook, which is how we talk to our patients when money comes up.

Before we dive into today's topic, that's too expensive, secrets to overcoming the toughest patient financial objections, I wanna start us off with a quick thought. See, if you work with so many teams across North America, What's the most common mistake you see dental professionals make when handling patients' financial hesitation? Is it what they say or what they don't say?

Yes. How's that? Answer.

Well, I'll turn it over to you, and we would be pretty good you.

I love that question. Thank you, Sheela. And thanks for being here today. This is going to be a very, very info packed five hours.

No. It's not five hours. But we're gonna cover a lot of ground. I'm gonna have some resources that will be available as we go along, so keep your phone handy.

As well as, I'm Sheela, as you know, I am hundred percent committed to implementation. So it's not just the information, but what are you gonna do with this? So I'll have a resource that you can, that we'll make available closer to the end that'll give you a a summary of what we've talked about today so you can take it back to your team. So if you're like most that go through what we're about to go through, you are going to say, my team needs to hear this because it's full team effort.

So with that, I'm gonna share my screen. And, Sheela, thank you for the generous introduction. That was exactly the way my mother wrote that. So you didn't know.

So okay. So let's get rolling. As as Sheela mentioned, Pearl is the sponsor of today's webinar. I love Pearl.

I'm gonna share a few pearls about Pearl as we go along.

And as she mentioned, I'm the founder of the Total Patient Service Institute. What we do, our whole team at TOPS specializes in one word, and that is the word yes.

How to hear yes more often from your patients. And we're gonna talk about that even in the face of financial objections. How do you hear yes from your patients even when they you think they have said no?

So that's what we do. We are all about that that word. Our community that has grown over the years of user practices is the Crown Council, which is a continent wide affiliation of practices that are committed to creating a culture of success in their practice. And that has everything to do with the team as well as how you interact with your patients and how you run your practice. So, I am not a dentist. I have been a student of human behavior my entire life, and so I'm your patient. I'm the guy who sits down in your chair every day, and I'm gonna share with you from a patient's perspective what works.

Not from a clinical perspective how to make it work, but when when it comes to us as a patient, what works for us? What do we say yes to when it's done correctly?

So when was the last time you heard the following? I need to think about it. That's more than I was expecting. Won't my insurance cover all this? That's way too much money.

I can't do that right now and on and on and on. It seems like objections to the fee or money objections are the most common thing that's heard from patients, the biggest obstacle to moving forward to treatment. And we're gonna deal with these specific objections and more here in just a minute of proven ways to hear yes more. I don't know that there's a hundred percent solution when it comes to people, and we're gonna up the averages today. When you have the right tools and the right training, then you're in a much better condition to be able to hear yes more often. Let's talk about cost because this is really what we think about when a patient says that's too much money or they have a financial objection.

It's easy to think that patients think dentistry is too expensive. Now here's the truth about cost. How do you determine whether something is expensive or not? If you're gonna go out and buy a new car, how do you figure out whether that car is expensive or not? Well, usually, it's by comparison. We compare two similar items to each other to determine what's expensive and what's a good deal.

So that's how we usually do things as a consumer. Well, what about dentistry? What do patients compare the investment in dentistry to? Well, unless you're gonna go out and shop from practice to practice, it's pretty challenging to get any kind of a of of a apples to apples comparison.

So if you can't compare, what's the only conclusion you're going to come up with? That it's expensive.

So bottom line is no matter what you charge, you will always be accused of being expensive by some patients. I don't think anybody in dentistry has ever had the experience of a patient saying, wow, that's so inexpensive. What a bargain. Doesn't happen.

Rarely does that ever happen. So you will more often than not be accused of being expensive. So be it. Right?

So it's not about the fee.

It's not about the fee whether it's too high or too it's not about the fee, and I'll talk about the fee in in a few, but it's it's not about the fee when it comes to the consumer.

It has to do with a whole other set of factors that we have to consider. So we're gonna first talk about two things. This is what we call your financial toolbox, and it has two aspects to it. Having the right tools to begin with in your financial arrangements and financial toolbox, and then having the right training.

So we're gonna talk about both of these. The tools, many of the tools have to do with being having the right setup, having the right things at your disposal to do really good financial arrangements. And I mentioned these because if we go straight to objections and you don't have the right prerequisites in place, then we're gonna come up with more and more obstacles. So we'll cover these two in the next few minutes, the right tools and then having the right training.

So your financial arrangements toolbox, here's what we recommend as being the right package, if you will, of the things you need in the financial arrangements toolbox if you're going to handle financial arrangements and financial objections effectively to hear yes from your patients. Quick list.

And I'll talk about each one of these. Internal financial guidelines, external financial guidelines, the right treatment plan, what we call an easy pay form, I'll explain that, the right insurance verification, protection plan information, at least three forms of third party financing, that's three, membership plan information, the schedule, a nice pen, a quiet place, and Tops verbal skills. So that's a lot of things in your toolbox. Let's get after it. Let's talk about each one of these quickly. First, internal financial guidelines. So this is a document that we recommend.

This is just a quick image of it, but this is a an internal document. Only the team sees this. This provides the guidelines within which you can provide financial arrangements or financial options to your patients.

Why this is important? Because when a patient says, can I get a discount? You know how to handle that if you have the proper financial guidelines in place that everybody on the team is familiar with. Here's what your internal financial guidelines include.

How you calculate your fees? What discounts are allowed? Do you have a prepaid discount? Do you do a senior discount?

What kind of discounts are allowed?

When is payment due? What payment, timing is when there's insurance involved? What are the payment options? And finally, what third party financing do you offer? So we recommend every practice have a a an internal financial guidelines document. The entire team is familiar with it so everyone knows what the boundaries are for offering financial arrangements and financial options to your patients.

Number two, external financial guidelines. This is what I call the financial relationship form. Now words matter. I'm going to talk about words here in just a minute. Most practices have a financial policy.

Now I any of you that follow me on Instagram, my Instagram handle is the Steven j Anderson.

I do a series called Steve's Peeves, and it is all the customer service and patient service peeves that I have, and I got a lot of them. One of them is the word policy.

When you look at the derivative of that word, it sounds a lot like police. Well, I don't think we need that in the dental office. So I'm not real big in calling anything a policy. I don't think it's very patient friendly, And so we've named this the financial relationship form because that's what we have. We have a financial relationship between the patient and the practice, how their what their relationship is with insurance if that's involved.

So this document just very clearly explains to the patient who plays what role, who has what responsibility, and how everything is handled. So I prefer to call it your financial relationship form, but it is the document that the patient then gets familiarized with how you do financial arrangements in your office.

Number three is a clear plan of recommended treatment. You cannot offer good financial arrangements or deal with patient objections about cost unless the patient clearly understands the treatment. Now here's our recommendation.

There are two places where it's critical to get a yes.

The first place is a yes to the treatment plan.

That ideally happens in the treatment room with the one who's recommended the treatment, the doctor, present.

So that's the first yes. A yes to the treatment plan, that the treatment plan that's been outlined meets what the patient said is what they want, and that we all agree it will accomplish the objective that they said they wanted. So I want a yes to the treatment plan. Well, that starts with having clear treatment recommendations.

This is one of the things I love about AI x rays. This is one that comes out of Pearl where it's a lot easier to explain to patients. The one on the left is the one we've all seen for decades.

As a patient, I have no clue what that means. The one on the right, the color coded one, enables the team to explain to me, in other words, the the verbal skills I love for this is, Steve, this enables you to see what I see when we look at an x-ray. Let's look at it together. So clear treatment recommendations.

Right? So so now I understand not only the what and, but is and the why. I understand both of those. Right?

So clear treatment recommendations, clear treatment plan so that I know what's been recommended and why, and I say yes. This, I understand, will get me what I want. That's the first yes.

The second yes is to the fee. So here's the next tool, which is what we call the easy pay form, and this is based on psychology that confused minds do not make decisions. Let me give you an example of a confused mind. This is confusing. So this is a treatment plan that comes out of a practice management software that shall remain nameless.

And if I'm a consumer and I'm looking at this, I'm going cross eyed trying to figure out what all the three columns are and then trying to interpret all the Greek in on the list of what they this is one hundred percent totally confusing and flies in the face of everything I know about easy decision making.

So let's simplify. Simplify simplification gets a yes. So what we call an easy pay form is basically it presents to the patient one fee.

Right? So here's your three options. Right? So if you look up at the top, here's your total fee for the the treatment above.

So here's what we've recommended. Quick summary. Here's the fee. Here's the estimate of your insurance savings, and then your estimated pay patient portion.

So it's easy. I got one number I gotta look at, which is really my estimated patient portion, and then three ways three options I have to pay. Right? So this to me, you look at this compared to this, which one would you prefer to use to present to your patients?

So this right here creates more objections. This right here eliminates a lot of the objections that we typically hear from patients. Make it easy for your patients to say yes, clear the clouds, clear the confusion, present one fee with some easy options for them to choose from.

Number four, insurance verification. So if you're gonna if you're gonna avoid or deal with financial objections, insurance, and we'll talk about these, insurance a lot of times is one of the objections. So you better be ready to deal with their insurance questions. So AI today will take care of almost all insurance verification, and I'll say this for myself again. I got no horse in this race. I'm just talking about efficiency and patient service.

With everything that AI can do today for insurance verification, I can't understand why every practice is not using insurance AI driven insurance verification. So, whether it's the Pearl PreCheck, add on to your software that takes care of this, for you so that you're prepped and ready to go with your patients when you do financial arrangements. All this is ready to go the day before or earlier, and you're well equipped to handle all of their insurance questions. Okay. So with that, I'm just gonna throw this in here.

If you are not familiar with what Pearl does in terms of X rays and diagnosis and insurance verification, I highly recommend you get a demo. You can scan this QR code, and the Pearl team will walk you through a whole demo of what AI can do clinically as well as financially, to really speed and make patient service a lot better in your practice and hear yes more often from your patients. So never done that. I highly recommend you take a test drive so that you can see how it works and how much more efficient it is.

Number six, protection plan information.

Let me show you this this fact. Consumer uncertainty today is at an all time high, greater than two the two thousand eight financial crisis, greater than during the pandemic, there is more uncertainty today than there has ever been. A lot of people who don't know about their jobs, about the economy, where things are going, there's a lot that is moving today.

So if you wanna hear yes more often from your patients, they want to know and have the peace of mind that they're making the right decision and that that decision is protected.

So here's another recommendation. This is the only nationwide program of its type, protection plan of its type, that covers all restorative dentistry for the patient for up to six years, no fault, and it is effective nationwide. So no matter where they are, this protection plan will cover any dental work they've had for the last six years.

It can be replaced or repaired up to the total cost of what they originally paid. So we're finding that it helps you hear yes more often from your patients, especially right now, where they have the peace of mind of knowing that their investment is protected. So here's another resource. You can scan that QR code for more information on how to put that plan in place in your office to give your patients more peace of mind for the investment that they're making in their practice. It is it is a program for our time right now.

This is the kind of assurance and peace of mind patients are looking for to know that the investment is is covered and that their investment will be protected.

Number seven, three forms of third party financing. This is our recommendation. These are just a few, but we recommend you have at least three forms of third party financing in place because different patients have different needs. There's, different opportunities based on the size of the treatment plan.

So there are a number of different options. I find most practices have at least one.

A few have two.

Every once in a while, we'll stumble across a practice that has three. So this is an area where you can you have an opportunity to up your game.

You're welcome to email us at answers at total patient service dot com, and you can request the third party financing resource sheet. And it gives you over a dozen different third party financing, programs and sources to choose from. It's a chart that shows you the different aspects of each one so that you can, make a more informed decision. So you're welcome to email us. Happy to send you that, that whole workup of third party financing sources so you can be better equipped to offer your patients, the kind of financing, the kind of payment plan that fits them.

Number eight, membership plan information. So all over the country, I will tell you in the many, many years that we have worked in dentistry, we're taking more and more practices out of network, not because we're pushing it just because the the economics are more and more of a challenge today. And so this is one of, from a financial standpoint, an important plan. Part of the whole financial arrangements mix is having some type of membership plan in place so that, the patients who think they need insurance, and there's a lot of patients who think they can't go to the dentist without one, that this is a great alternative, that also builds some great loyalty to your practice. So those are just a few that are out there, but if that's not something you have in place, we highly recommend it.

Number nine, gotta have the schedule. Right? So if you're gonna do financial arrangements, you gotta have the schedule in front of you so that you can take care of the financial arrangements and the schedule at the same time.

Number ten is a nice pen. Now this you may be rolling your eyes at this one, but here's the key is if you're doing financial arrangements and they're gonna sign off on whatever those arrangements are, for many patients, it's thousands of dollars, the instrument that they authorize that financial arrangement with should be reflective of the quality of the work that you do.

So, hopefully, whatever that pen is does not have, you know, a plastic flower tied on the end of it so nobody can walk off with it. Hopefully, it's not the pen from the local tire store that you you co opt. Hopefully, it's a nice pen that is, again, reflective of the quality of the work that you do. The little things matter.

Number eleven, a quiet place. So the ideal place in our book, we've tried everything, tested everything, the ideal place for financial arrangements is in the treatment room except in California. In California, is against the law to do financial arrangements chairside.

California is its own world. Everywhere else as far as I know, you can do it in the treatment room. Reason being is this is all about physiology.

Psychology follows physiology. In other words, how I hold myself impacts how I think. If I've been sitting in the chair for an hour and then I suddenly get out and put my feet on the ground, my brain automatically heads out the door in the car and on to the next fifty things I have to do.

So I want to keep the patient comfortable, go to the patient if it's at all possible. We've had much more success doing financial arrangements and scheduling chairside than moving the patient. It's a lot more difficult to keep their attention and keep them focused if we have to move them. So if at all possible, bam. Let's do a chairside. A lot more potential success there.

Finally, verbal skills. Here's the next tool, and and this is critical. We're gonna spend some time on this. We call them our total patient service ver verbal skills. Here's your first set of verbal skills. We're gonna do some word replacement here.

Words matter. Words create images in our mind, and those images trigger emotions, and emotions impact decisions. Words matter. So we're gonna do some some word replacement.

Financial policy. I've already talked about this. We're replacing that now with your financial relationship. Get rid of the policy. It is not imagine if you were single and you're going out on a date, and your date the first thing that they handed you was my dating policy.

Well, I think that would be a pretty short date. Right? Well, it's the same thing. If you're initiating a relationship with someone, a new patient, and the first thing you put in front of them is a policy document, Come on. It's not real patient friendly. So, again, financial relationship. Your insurance coverage coverage implies everything's taken care of.

Our preferred phrase is your insurance savings.

Right? Your insurance savings. Here's here's your insurance savings. So when you're presenting financial arrangements, it's your insurance savings.

How about this one? I've heard this a lot in dental practices. Your insurance will only cover. In other words, you got lousy insurance.

Right? So it doesn't position things properly. Again, we say your estimated insurance savings is Eliminate the word only. Here's the next one.

You're out of pocket. What kind of a word picture does that create? There's nothing left because everything got taken out of your pocket. I don't know who came up with that phrase, but it's a lousy one.

Instead, we say your portion or your estimated portion if insurance is involved, but it's your portion, not your out of pocket.

When collecting payments, whether this is in writing or whether when you're doing financial arrangements, I'm a real person. Use my name. Right? So always use your name.

Sweetest sound in any language Dale Carnegie taught us a hundred years ago is a person's name.

So with that, those are a few again, those are minor changes, and they make a major, major difference in the end result when we talk about money. So then now, let's talk with all those prerequisites. Let's talk about how do we deal with financial questions or objections. First point of differentiation. What's the difference between a condition and an objection? So let's define this. This is a really important piece of this entire equation because we confuse these two and they are not the same.

A condition is a reason for not moving ahead based on a currently existing fact. So if a patient says, I can't afford it, is that a condition or an objection?

You don't know until you ask. So for example, if they said if you asked and they said, look. I just filed bankruptcy. I have no cash. I have no credit. I got nothing. That would be a condition versus an objection is a reason for not moving ahead based on inadequate information.

And with more information, then they might be able to move ahead.

Most things that we hear from patients are objections, not conditions. There are very few things when it comes to the financial part of the equation that are true conditions that are insurmountable. So let's talk about the objection. We call it objections as opportunities.

In other words, if they weren't interested, they wouldn't object. Right? So in many times, the comments and the questions that we get back really are indications of interest. So one of my good friends, his name is Corey Helfman.

Corey is a haberdasher. Now if you don't know what a haberdasher is, a haberdasher is a professional men's clothing expert. Corey is a two generation second gen generation haberdasher. He is so good at what he does.

You can walk through the door and with one glance, he can tell you what your measurements are, what your neck size is, what your waist size is, how tall you are. He's that good. Now one of the things that Corey tells me is that when somebody comes in and tries on a suit, if they don't like the suit, they're just gonna take it off and put it back on the rack. But if they have some interest in it, the first thing they start doing is objecting.

Are the sleeves the right length? Does this look good on me? They start asking questions. Questions are signs of interest.

Let's say that again.

Questions and objections are signs of interest.

We mistakenly interpret them many times as rejection. It's not rejection at all. It's a sign of interest. So think of them as questions. All of these are patient questions where they're saying, please, please, please give me more information so I can make the right decision.

So anytime that we get pushed back, it usually follow falls in one of these five categories. Money, urgency, time, trust, or scared. Those are the basic treatment objection categories. We're going to focus right now on money objections and how you deal and address with those.

Alright. So here they are. Is everybody ready? Get out your pants. I am gonna give you a resource because this is gonna be rapid fire, and there is a methodology to this.

So if there is a common denominator that you will hear in the next few minutes that runs consistent with all of these, it is the questions that you ask.

Questions are the answer. You don't have to solve the objection with an answer. You solve the objection with a question. This might seem counterintuitive, but that's gonna be the theme.

So as we go through these, I want you to ask yourself, if you heard this from a patient, what would be the question that you would respond with to move forward. So here we go. Here's the first one. Do you take my insurance?

Now this is usually one right up front on the very first phone call. Patient asks, do you take my insurance?

Now what question would you respond with? That one's pretty easy. What insurance do you have? Alright?

So so with what company do you have your benefits? That would be the response. Right? You gotta know who they have their insurance with if you're going to if you're gonna respond with that.

So gotta know that first. Then let's say that they give you the name of an insurance or an insurance company that you're not in network with, that you're not contracted with. The biggest mistake we make in dentistry with this is we say, nope. We don't take that insurance.

We're not in network. We're not contracted. We're not. We're not. We're not. We're not. And what the patient hears is, I can't come I can't go to this office.

They don't accept me. If they don't accept my insurance, they don't accept me, and we lose the opportunity.

So here's the quick question.

How many of you have patients that have insurance benefits with a plan or a company with which you are not in network?

Almost every practice does.

Why? So why do they come to your practice? If you're not in network for their insurance, why should they come to your practice? Well, make the list.

This is a great team exercise. Why do patients that are out of network come to our practice? Well, our quality of care, our patient service, how we treat our patients, convenience. You make the list of all of the things, the reasons why they come to your practice.

That's critical to what I'm about to share.

So here's my recommended response.

They say, do you take my insurance? And I say, thanks again for calling. Again, my name is Steve, and yours is great. Sheela.

Sheela, can you share with me who you have your insurance with? She says x y z. Or not in in network with x y z. Here's what I'm gonna say.

So Sheela, good news. We have a lot of patients who have those same benefits. We have a lot of patients who have benefits with your same company, x y z company. Now you can only say if it's if it's true, but that would be if if it is true, we have a lot of patients just like you that have benefits with x y z company.

We don't happen to be contracted with XYZ because we're an unrestricted provider.

We're an unrestricted provider, which means we can work with all types of almost all types of insurance. And here's the key question. Would you like to know why are patients with XYZ insurance why they choose our practice? That's the critical question.

Would you like to know why are patients with your same insurance why they choose our practice? The patient will always, always, always say yes.

Then you can say to them, great. Well, what they tell us, what our patients with XYZ insurance, what they tell us is that when they look at all the other choices that they have available, they choose our practice because of our amazing customer service, patient service, the clinical expertise of our doctors.

And in addition, we will research all your benefits, file your claims for you so that you can do we can help you maximize your benefits. How does that sound? Right? So I've told the truth, and I've given them every reason why they should choose our practice.

So that one takes some skill and some work and some training. I put this up front because it's it is probably the the most the the objection that gets handled the most improper of any of the ones that we're gonna talk. It's an opportunity in every practice, and typically, we just say, well, we're not in network, and we lose the patient opportunity. So that one deserves front row seat in terms of training and working with the team on how to respond to that.

And you'll increase your new patient flow when you know how to deal with that objection.

The next one. Alright. Let's go to financial arrangements. That's too much money. That's way too much money. How do you how would you how do you respond to this today? Now I want you to think what would be the question because there's no way that you can talk somebody into treatment if this is what they've said.

So instead of saying, well, okay. Well, let us know when you wanna move ahead. No. What's the question you would ask to further the conversation? Here's what we recommend. They say that's too much money. I would say, Steve, let me ask you.

Is it the total amount or fitting it into your regular budget that's your biggest concern?

Is it the total amount or fitting it into your regular budget that is your biggest concern? Which is it? Right? I'm gonna give them a choice between those two things. Total amount, is that a problem, or fitting it into the budget? For most patients, it's a budget concern.

So if they say, well, it's really fitting it into my budget, say, great. So if we could look at some different budget options we have several different third party financing programs we work with. If we could find a budget option that works for you, is that something that you'd like to take a look at?

Right? So that furthers the conversation. Is it the total amount or fitting it into your budget that's your biggest concern?

Next.

That's more than I was expecting. Now let me differentiate something here real quick.

This one, that's way too much money. This is a different objection than this one. That's more than I was expecting. We may hear it and think it's the same thing. It is different. Why is it different? Because there's an element of emotion in this objection, the expectation.

Recommendation here is to respond with this question. You would say to me, Steve, it sounds like you got some surprises today.

Am I right?

And they'll say, yeah. Yeah. You're right. I came in to get my teeth cleaned. I had no idea all this stuff was going on.

I had no idea I was in this much trouble. I just I just wasn't prepared to hear all this today. That's a different objection than than that's too much money. We gotta deal with the emotion first, and then we can deal with the money.

This is not about the money. It's about the emotion. So deal with the emotion first.

So I would say you would say to me, so, Steve, which part of this surprised you the most? Of everything that was recommended, which part was really the most surprising to you? Deal with that. Deal with the surprise. Deal within what they didn't expect so then you can get back to, alright, of all those things were recommended, which part of it concerns you the most that, you know, if you're gonna move ahead, which part of this would be your top priority?

Right? So then we can start steering the the conversation back to what can we get started with, and how we how can we make this work. Deal with the emotion, then deal with the logic in that order. Right? That's psychologically how we process information. Gotta deal with the emotion first.

I can't afford it. Okay. So what does that even mean? We don't know.

Alright. So I'm gonna give you you don't know until you ask. So I'm gonna give you a PhD in the next thirty seconds. Everybody ready? Hold your arms. Everybody play along with me here. Hold your arms.

Now put your hand on your chin. If you have glasses, you can put them down on the end of your nose. Give me an all knowing, intelligent look, and repeat after me.

Tell me more.

Let's try that one more time. One, three. Tell me more. You are now a PhD. Isn't that all they do? You go in, they talk to you for an hour, and then they say, well, time's up.

We'll see you next week. Tell me more. Tell me more. Tell me more. Be a great psychologist.

So if all else fails and you don't know how to respond or what to say, just ask, can you tell me more about that? I can't afford it. Can you tell me more about that? Let them explain what the issue is.

So they might say, you know, I just put identical twins in college, and the tuition is just mind blowing.

Just don't know how I could fit this into my budget. Right? So now we can talk about budget. Or, you know, we're going on vacation at whatever the deal is.

Right? Can you tell me more about that so that you can understand what the situation is and then offer possible solutions. What if we did this? What if we did that?

Would it make it work? So we have an entire body of work that we call fifty ways to pay.

All the different ways that patients have paid for treatment in the past. It's about coming up with options for patients who want the treatment and want to move forward, then how do you look for a financial solution that will work for them? Explore the possibilities. They gotta wanna. They gotta want the treatment. That's the first part. But then how do you have them do you offer solutions?

Ah, will my insurance cover all of this?

One of the biggest misunderstandings in financial arrangements and in dentistry is insurance is gonna take care of it. Will my insurance cover all of it?

So here's one response. I would you would say to me, so, Steve, it sounds like maximizing your insurance savings, there it is again, is important to you. Am I right?

And for most patients, they'll say, yeah. That's right. I just wanna get the most out of my insurance. But if they say, no. I'm not gonna do it unless my insurance covers all of it, then you might say, so, Steve, in the event that there are things that you've said you wanted that your insurance does not take care of, does not cover, what would you like to do?

So there are things you said you wanted, insurance doesn't come. What do you want to do? Not do not what do you want us to do, but what do you wanna do? Right? So those two directions for those insurance situations.

How about this one, my insurance covers one hundred percent.

Well one hundred percent of what? Right? So I would start with that objection, I would start being a good psychologist and say, well, tell me about that. They might say, well, I've never had to pay for anything before. The office where I used to go, you know, I just my insurance took care of everything, meaning the previous office committed insurance fraud.

That's a whole other topic. So here's a keyword for this. So I would say, so, Steve, could I could we take a moment and provide you with the information provided by your insurance company to us, what we know now about what your benefits will cover. This is all information that's come from your insurance company. Would would that be helpful?

Right? So here's what we know now.

Could I share with it? So don't get into a lecture.

It's like based on what your insurance company again, insurance verification, what your insurance company has provided for us, would you be interested in taking a look at what we know now about your benefits?

Next one, can I pay this out? Meaning, will you be the bank? So, again, a question in response is, so, Steve, we have several different third party payment options for different budgets. Would you be interested in taking a look at what the different budget options are?

What would be a convenient monthly payment for you? Right? Question. Question. Question. And then we're gonna provide some suggestions on what the answer is.

This one's one of the toughest. I need to think about it.

It's like hugging air. There's just, like, nothing to talk about. So it's like, okay. Let us know.

Right? They don't ever think about it. When was the last time a patient called and said, you know, I've been thinking about this for three weeks, and I've decided to move ahead. They never do that.

So here is one attempt that I'd recommend. You would say to me, so Steve, thinking about it is a really decision that's important, it's important that you give it the proper amount of consideration. So what patients tell us, what patients tell us when they think about treatment like this, they tell us that they think about one or more of three things. One or more of three things.

Do I really need it?

Can I afford it?

Or is it gonna hurt?

Which one of those are you going to think about the most? In other words, I've given them the three most common objections. Do I need it? Can I afford it?

There's a financial one. Or is it gonna hurt? Let them choose, and when they choose, well, I'm probably gonna think about, you know, can I afford it? Ah, alright.

So is it the total amount or fitting it into your regular budget that's your biggest concern?

Let them choose so you can carry the conversation. But, well, probably fitting into into my budget. Great. So we have several different third party payment options with for different budgets.

Would you be interested in taking a look at what those options might be? So for you, what would be a comfortable monthly monthly investment? Right? So question, question, question, question, question to get to the yes.

It's all about the questions that we ask. Questions are the answer especially when it comes to objections.

I need to talk to my husband, my wife, my mother-in-law, my psychic about it.

Right? And so we're gonna say, okay. Well, let us know. Here's my favorite response to this. The question you would ask me is, well, Steve, what do you think they will say?

What do you think they will say? Well, they'll probably say go ahead and do it, but I just wanna make sure and give them the courtesy of checking in. So great. Would it make sense then?

Why don't we go ahead while you're here and it's convenient? Let's go ahead and schedule a time when it would work for you to come back to get started. We'll work out all the details. And then in the unlikely event you get home and it's a no instead of go ahead and do it, then you can call us back and we can rework the plan.

How does that sound? And that may not work for everybody, but it's certainly a lot better than walking out the door and there's no next step defined.

I can't do it right now. I don't know what that means. So again, be a good psychologist.

Tell me more about that. It's the vacation. It's other financial commitments. It's whatever it is. I need to know what it is. Ask more questions.

Let me think about it. We talked about that one. Again, give them three choices.

Again, do you need it? Can you afford it? Is it gonna hurt? Let them choose so that then you can you can help them down the road with whatever that particular objection is. So those are the biggest the biggest financial objections.

There are all kinds of other objections, but those that are money focused, those are some quick simple recommendations on how to get started. Alright. So patient commitment. This is how we define patient commitment at total patient service. Agreed upon treatment. That's the first yes. Get a yes to the treatment plan.

A yes to financial arrangements. Sign financial arrangements, a scheduled appointment, and a happy patient who's gonna repeat and refer and tell everyone about you. So that's the criteria. That's what I'm looking for with every patient, those four things.

Alright. So we have covered a lot of ground in the last few minutes.

Pull out your phone. This is an essential resource to implement what we've talked about today. So this is the financial arrangements hack sheet. So I can give you the highlights of the objections some of the objections that we've talked about today and some of the questions to consider when you respond to these objections. So you can do a quick drill with your team at least to get started on these objections. So you can scan this QR code.

You can download this financial objections hack sheet.

This is a critical piece of success if you wanna hear yes more often from your patients.

Let me give you a quick, quick overview update on what the best teams do, what the top teams do that hear a yes from their patients more often. There are three ways that teams engage with us at Total Patient Service. Let me give you the the the criteria. These are what the top teams do.

They have a patient service skill set that they use to train their team. So they have a skill set that every team member gets trained on so they can increase their average their their averages of success.

They spend at least fifteen minutes per week per team member training, reviewing, just like working out. Good verbal skills are just like good fitness, just like brushing your teeth, exercising, diet.

Regular practice makes a huge difference. Fifty minutes per month per for a whole team. Right? In other words, the team is gonna spend some time working on these as well.

So just real quick, there are several ways the teams engage with us at Total Patient Service. Virtual coaching. So we got an entire platform where these kind of verbal skills are available in your office to be trained in with your entire team. It's driven by a live coach that will train the skills in.

We also have in practice coaches that work with your team as well as events for team training. So those would be recommendations.

If you want a great trained team, you gotta work out. Right, Sheela? You gotta put the time in if you want the great results.

So thanks for sharing letting me share with you today the twelve different things in your toolbox, some recommendations on how you deal with the toughest financial objections, and always that you can hear yes more often from your patients.

Excellent. Thank you so much, Steven. I took about four pages of notes, but I did want to surface one quick question.

Yes.

One of them was, there are some that are joining from their phones, but they wanted to scan, or see if they could get a link to your hack sheet. So is there any way we could get the link?

We can always send it out to the registered Can we yeah.

Let's send it out in the follow-up email. Absolutely.

Yep. Great point. And we wanna open it up for questions. Looks like they're coming in right now.

Alex Alex would be at the top there.

Tell me you don't have to do the part. That's okay. You can just say tell me more. You don't have to do it.

I was thinking about starting with that.

There's the bottom line on all that, Sheela, is the trap.

When we hear an objection or a question, we mistakenly think we have to answer with an answer, and the answer is in the question. So the questions that we ask lead to the answer, and that's the shift in thinking is to think, okay. What question do I need to ask in order to further the conversation? Because more often than not, we need more information to be able to to point the patient in the right direction. Ask more questions.

Absolutely. And I think one of the things that I learned when I was consulting for practices, and I would go in and I would ask, what are the ways you can, offer finance plans if people can't finance? And I've never walked into one office where they actually understood what options they had.

And that that's a huge barrier because if you think about it, a lot of times, the office manager is the only one that has these these magical tools where they can do extra things to help get the patient over the edge. But I think that's really important, and I like that you gave different options. There's so many different financing options out there now, and it's just important that also something we learned early on was that us as coordinators don't think about our finances when we're presenting. Right? Like, we had one who was she's like, I can't I can't present Invisalign. That's, like, seven thousand dollars.

That would be When you're not paying for it, the patient is.

Yeah. And that is that's one of the bigger mistakes is thinking that if I can't afford it, they either. And everybody has a different situation. They value different things. So can I give a suggestion on this one, Sheela?

Yes, please.

Here here is the suggestion. If you're a financial coordinator and you've ever hesitated to present a big fee, rehearse. Go in the bathroom, stand in front of the mirror, and rehearse saying big numbers.

Yes.

Sheela, your your estimated portion is ten thousand dollars, and then shut up. Or your estimated portion is thirty thousand dollars, and you gotta say it without flinching, without stuttering, but say it with confidence. Right? Say it with confidence.

So true. So true.

And same exactly to your point, the power of that pause.

Right? We we jump quickly. We do it in the back like we do it in the front. We wanna overexplain them through things. But I really liked your your thought about let's get them scheduled for something else. Right?

Because Get scheduled for something. I'll take something rather than nothing at all. Hey. By the way, Sheela, Alex is the is the main man.

He's our champion in there.

Awesome. So Alex put in the chats in the chat area the the the URL for the down thank you, Alex, for, like, being there. You're awesome.

That's our Alex fan from Sage I was telling you about earlier.

Excellent. Love it. Thank you.

To hire him to do some There you go.

So, yes, excited to have you here. Again, please let us know if there's any other questions.

Happy to answer those for you or anything you wanna share in your team that you guys might be doing that works.

I know we're moving into end of the year insurance, so we wanna make sure that we are putting some of these tips and tricks into the practice.

And, also, like I always comment at the end here, if there's something you think that Seema can help with your team, which is almost anything, I think, it'd be good for you to just take a few minutes and meet with their team. We're all struggling with different things. And from what I've gathered, I don't think there's anything that this tops team can't solve. So and I like that they I do.

That's lot of information. And sometimes we just don't know who to ask, and this is why we keep bringing Steven back because he's our trusted resource. So we look forward to having you more and more. I keep asking Michelle.

She's We love we love working with teams that have incorporated Pearl because it is so much easier to get a yes to treatment and so much easier to hear yes to financial arrangements when you have accurate insurance information and you haven't burned up hours on the phone trying to get it. So, Raka, love those tools. Huge, huge just a huge contribution to the industry. So thank you.

Yes. Of course. Better Together. And if you are interested in joining us, hopefully, you can see my screen. Please feel free to scan that QR code. Can you see that?

Let's see. Your screen let me stop mine, and you can share yours. How's that?

Okay. Perfect. Yeah. I wanna make sure you guys are well aware that we're happy to meet with your teams individually as well, and we'd love to be able to have your team together.

Mhmm. Talk about you know, can we turn X rays into color so your patients accept the dentistry that you're recommending? Right? This is live real time.

ly buy back some time so you have the ability to answer the questions the patients have. And, also, we'll verify the insurance ten days ahead. So kinda makes your life a lot easier when you're trying to just navigate through each appointment.

So, again, thank you for joining us today. All of this information will be emailed out to everyone, and we look forward to seeing you in the future. You can visit all of our, webinars on hello pearl dot com, and we hopefully, you will have a wonderful day and wonderful weekend. And thanks again, Steven, for being here.

We look forward to seeing you Appreciate it.

Okay. Bye bye.

Bye now.

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