Blog - Page 19 of 310 - The McAnally Selling System

Coaching Your Front Desk on Emotional Pain Questions

james2026-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

How do I coach my front desk to ask a patient about emotional pain instead of physical pain? Train them to understand the question is not about a toothache. The most important question on a new patient call is not where it hurts. It is what happened. What was the last event, the trigger, the moment a person decided I am done, I cannot take this anymore and picked up the phone. People do not want to call the dentist. By the time they do, they are at the end of their rope. So I teach a team member to ask [...]

Coaching Your Front Desk on Emotional Pain Questionsjames2026-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

Why Your Whole Dental Sales Team Mindset Matters

james2026-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

Why does my whole dental team need to think of themselves as part of the sales team? Because they are, whether they admit it or not. Every person who touches a phone call or greets a patient is on your sales team, your marketing team, and your advertising team at the same time. I know that word makes clinical people uncomfortable. Get over it. You are in a business that has to bring in revenue, and you are in the sales business exactly as much as you are in the dental business. When your front desk hears a nervous caller and [...]

Why Your Whole Dental Sales Team Mindset Mattersjames2026-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

Get Your Dental Team to Follow a Phone Script

james2026-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

How do I get my dental team to follow a phone script in the right order? Stop calling it a script and start treating it as a sequence your team has to master, in order, every single time. The reason I drill the steps in sequence is simple. If your team jumps around, they get off track, they forget a question, and it is brutal to back paddle once a caller has wandered somewhere else. My job as your coach is to teach them connection, interrupt, and control so they can redirect a chatty caller back into the steps without sounding [...]

Get Your Dental Team to Follow a Phone Scriptjames2026-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

Why You Must Control the Phone Conversation Early

james2026-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

Why does taking control of the conversation early matter? Whoever controls the first thirty seconds usually controls whether that patient ever schedules. Most callers open with a question, almost always about price. The instinct is to answer it, then pile on more questions, are you in pain, do you want an appointment, why implants. Resist that. The disciplined move is to acknowledge the question, take the lead, may I ask your name, and step into your sequence. You are not dodging them. You are steering toward a relationship and a visit instead of letting a price question run the call into [...]

Why You Must Control the Phone Conversation Earlyjames2026-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

How to Make a Memorable First Phone Call

james2026-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

How do I make my practice memorable on the first phone call? Treat the call as an experience, not a transaction, and say that word out loud until your team feels it. Your prospective patients are consumers. They will call a few other practices no matter how good you are, so the goal is not to stop their shopping. It is to make every other call feel flat by comparison. You want them so surprised at how your office handled them, the warmth, the control, the genuine care, that they could never imagine going anywhere else. That is the difference between [...]

How to Make a Memorable First Phone Calljames2026-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

Why Phone Calls Put Relationship Before Business

james2026-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

Why should the first phone steps be about relationship not business? Because patients buy from people they trust, and trust does not start with logistics. The first six steps of how I teach a call are deliberately about relationship and emotion, creating trust, intimacy, empathy, urgency, and genuine care. Only around step seven do you move into the business details you need, the marketing and sales information about how they found you and what they want. The order is not an accident. Patients calling about implants are consumers like you and me. They will still do their homework and call a [...]

Why Phone Calls Put Relationship Before Businessjames2026-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

How to Get Your Team to Use the Phone Slip

james2026-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

How do I make sure my team actually uses the phone slip? Make it impossible not to. The single most common excuse I hear when I ask why the slip was not used is, I did not have it with me. So remove that excuse entirely. Copy the slip onto colored paper, pick one color and keep it, pink if you like, just stay consistent. Print a stack. Then leave them out and visible next to every phone where someone could walk by and schedule an appointment. This is where doctors fight me, because they hate paper sitting out on the [...]

How to Get Your Team to Use the Phone Slipjames2026-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

Why Long Phone Calls Hurt Your Case Acceptance

james2026-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

Why are long phone calls with patients a bad sign? Because the longer you talk, the more you tend to unravel the consult before it ever happens. I know a thirty-minute phone call feels productive, like you really bonded with the patient. It is usually the opposite. The best thing you can do on that call is get the basics, reassure them they made the right decision reaching out, and get them scheduled. Beyond that, every extra minute is a chance to answer something badly, raise a doubt, or talk them out of coming in. That is the sales fundamental people [...]

Why Long Phone Calls Hurt Your Case Acceptancejames2026-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

What the Phone Slip Box at the Top Is For

james2026-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

What is the point of the box at the top of a phone slip? It is your record of exactly what happened with that patient, and it doubles as a team accountability tool. The box at the top captures the critical details, who they are, when they called, whether you set an appointment, and what you sent out to them. That last part matters because preparing a patient for the first consult means getting something into their hands before they ever arrive. It starts managing the process they will walk through, builds your credibility against other practices, and can even set [...]

What the Phone Slip Box at the Top Is Forjames2026-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

Should the Front Desk Handle Phone Calls Freely?

james2026-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

Should I make the front desk handle phone calls their own way? No, and letting them is one of the most expensive habits in dentistry. When ownership stays hands-off, the team makes up its own rules of engagement on the phone, and those improvised rules rarely convert implant patients. Everyone has a slightly different greeting, a different way of answering the price question, a different idea of follow-up. The result is chaos dressed up as personality. The phone is the front door of your practice, and a front door should not open differently depending on who is standing near it. I [...]

Should the Front Desk Handle Phone Calls Freely?james2026-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

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