Why You Need To Exit the Implant Case Sales Game – Part 1
WARNING: This is a multi-part blog post, but if you are truly serious about treating far more implant cases than you do now (or if you have big dreams and aspirations to have a practice with an abundance of implant cases), you’ll take the time into read, digest, and act on what follows.
Part 1 of this series will cover why it’s well past time to fire yourself and your staff from as much of sales process as possible with your full-arch implant cases.
In a bit I’m going to reveal to you the dirtiest secret in dental implant advertising that
Ad agencies and marketers are terrified you’ll find out about and in fact don’t talk about publicly with anyone outside ‘the industry.’ And as a co-conspirator, we are ‘guilty as charged’ in that we rarely discuss the reason why we have always provided some level of sales training and oversight because we were all too aware of this dirty secret as it relates to our client success (or failure).
But before we get to that, it’s time to hand out ‘pink slips.’
You’re Fired!
Yes, it’s time to fire yourself from most steps in sales process for your full-arch implant cases.
….and it’s time to fire your in-house sales team from all but the most basic steps in sales that are easily taught and repeatable.
It’s DEFINITELY time to immediately fire those answering your sales calls from your implant advertising.
And, while you are at it, it could even be time to fire your treatment coordinators presenting your implant cases or fire all but one TPC IF that one’s mind isn’t warped, jaded, and biased beyond repair about patients by too many years of ‘experience.
Now that I have your attention, let’s talk about what I mean by “fire” you and your team.
The Proper Mindset
I’m one for cutting office overhead and without a doubt in some cases there are staff that deserve the chopping block. However, what I mean by ‘fire yourself and your team’ is that it’s time that you REMOVE yourself from most of the business of implant case sales, sales steps, sales calls, and sales process in your practice as it relates to $50,000 implant cases.
Sales for full arch implants (e.g. $50,000 cases) is too important to trust to unskilled amateurs and sales hacks. The cold hard truth is 85% of clinicians and teams, even after sales training over and over and over, are exactly that. They show up as sales hacks and they stay hacks. We are a profession of sales hacks… and that fact is more than okay!
Patients win and lose because the profession is terrible at selling its services.
In fact, the profession is terrible at sales means patients often get better treatment because the best clinicians stay on top of their clinical skills while failing at basic sales skills. However, on the downside, patients also lose severely because far fewer of them will enter treatment due to the lack of capabilities to move prospects from ads from the status of inquiring stranger to patients and friends in treatment. In other words, to ‘sell’ them on why to pursue replacing arches of teeth that are terminally hopeless with implant reconstructions is in their best interest versus a million other ways they could spend equivalent sums of money.
Even with dedication, mindset, study, mentoring, and years of work, you have a 15% chance of being great a selling your services.
With more than 30 years of being in the implant business both watching clinician to clinician behavior and then observing clinicians from the advertising agency owner and sales expert perch, I can attest that only 15% of clinicians and teams ever become real pros at having the ability to sell full arch services to strangers.
This proficiency in sales dictates success in the full arch fee-for-service implant game for anyone wishing to go beyond treating those random 3-4 arches that just show-up annually by luck or inside the existing patient base. The 15% who get proficient at this arrive at that state only after YEARS of training. Furthermore, they had drive and desire to master these soft skills. Past those factors, there are almost always innate abilities this small group has that most dentists do not have – literally it is in their DNA.
Dentists, and most of those working for dentists, are NOT hard-wired for sales of things that cost $50,000! It’s not part of any admission test to dental school or part of any professional curriculum. No dental or RDH degree or CDA certificate was dependent on this skillset. No license renewal is contingent on these soft skills.
Next time, we’ll continue with why this news about the profession and implant dentists isn’t necessarily ‘bad’ news.
How We Can Help
At Big Case Marketing, we’ve engineered most of the sales process out of the local office’s hands by providing a remote sales team that at the minimum does all initial prospect work such as answering calls from advertising, screening, qualifying and booking consults. Part of this engineering involves simplifying what steps to take and the most basic things to say in the office with the patient. By flipping sales and taking over most of the process, our advertising member clients can focus on just being great implant clinicians.
If you are ready to leave the old way of selling behind, let’s talk 1:1. The first call to discuss current realities of advertising for full arch cases and how the remote sales team can support your efforts and help close cases for you is FREE. To schedule, go to www.meetme.so/jamesmcanally
