Blog - Page 55 of 310 - The McAnally Selling System

Pricing and Positioning Lessons From a Handbag

james2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

How can two nearly identical products sell at wildly different prices? Look at handbags. You can buy a perfectly good purse at Walmart for about seventy three dollars, made of ostrich no less. Walk a few doors down and Coach sells you a bag that carries your keys no better for twelve hundred. Ralph Lauren will take you up toward twenty thousand. The bags all do the same job. The difference is not the leather, it is positioning, trust, promotion, and what happens during the sale. Walmart has almost no selling process because it does not need one. The luxury houses [...]

Pricing and Positioning Lessons From a Handbagjames2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

Why Decision-Making Science Is Missing in Dentistry

james2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

Why isn't decision-making science taught in dental school? Because it is not our discipline, plain and simple. There is a rich body of behavioral research built up over the last fifty years sitting in business and academic texts, and almost none of it shows up in our dental journals. That does not make it wrong or unimportant. It is extremely important, it just lives off to the side, off the radar of most of our colleagues. So it is on you to go get it. Either study how people actually make decisions and apply it yourself, or find someone who can [...]

Why Decision-Making Science Is Missing in Dentistryjames2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

Involving the Decision Makers in Dental Case Acceptance

james2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

Why do I keep losing cases when the patient leaves to think about it? Most of the time it is because the real decision maker was never in the room. Spouses, adult children, the person who controls the money. In a lot of industries it is amazing a sale ever closes given how many people have to agree. Dentistry is no different on a large case, and we are terrible about it. We present to one person, that person goes home to talk to someone who heard none of it, and the case quietly dies on the kitchen table. Fix this [...]

Involving the Decision Makers in Dental Case Acceptancejames2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

Emphasizing Loss in Dentistry to Drive Case Acceptance

james2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

Why does emphasizing loss work better than listing benefits? Because human beings are wired to avoid loss far more strongly than they are pulled toward gain. That is not my opinion, it is decades of behavioral research, and it is the single biggest motivator in your tool chest. In dentistry you have an honest abundance of loss to point at. What happens to the bone when teeth are gone. What happens to the other teeth, the bite, the face, the ability to eat the foods they love. When you frame options as what gets prevented rather than a glossy list of [...]

Emphasizing Loss in Dentistry to Drive Case Acceptancejames2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

How to Qualify Patients Within Reason for Big Cases

james2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

Should I qualify patients before presenting treatment? Yes, but within reason. You want to know who can actually say yes and who has the means, because pouring your whole presentation into someone who was never going to move forward wastes everyone's time. But here is the trap. If you bar the door too high, you eliminate patients who could and would have gone forward if you had given them a chance. We are a professional service, not a luxury boutique, and you cannot pre-judge the way a high-end store screens foot traffic. So I call this qualifying within reason. Give patients [...]

How to Qualify Patients Within Reason for Big Casesjames2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

Finding Patient Motivation for Treatment in Dentistry

james2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

How do I find a patient's real motivation for treatment? You have to dig for the pain that is driving them, because that is the thing that actually moves a case forward. Sometimes it is physical, a tooth that hurts or a denture that flops around. Sometimes it is aspirational or purely emotional, and sometimes it is just that their spouse or their neighbor did it. None of those reasons are wrong. Your job is to find the one that is true for this person, and then keep checking, because the reason often shifts as you move through the consultation. Fear [...]

Finding Patient Motivation for Treatment in Dentistryjames2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

Systems Bring a Dentist Real Happiness

james2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

Does being more systematic about selling really make dentists happier? It does, and that surprised me too until I kept seeing it. When practices get systematic about how they sell and start doing more of the cases they actually want to do, the doctors report being noticeably happier. It tracks with what the science of happiness shows, that a sense of competence and control over your work matters enormously. A dentist hoping each patient randomly says yes lives in low grade anxiety all day. A dentist running a process knows what comes next and hears yes more often, and that calm [...]

Systems Bring a Dentist Real Happinessjames2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

Selling Needs a Qualifying Step in Dentistry

james2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

What is a qualifying step in the dental sales process and why do I need one? A qualifying step is the part of your process that deals head on with the single biggest reason a given patient would not buy. Every product and service has one main hurdle, and yours is no exception. For some patients it is what they believe about implants or about dentistry itself. For others it is how much time treatment takes, because speed matters more than people admit. For many it is cost. There is a long list of these barriers, far more than I could [...]

Selling Needs a Qualifying Step in Dentistryjames2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

Get the Treatment Decision Makers in the Room

james2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

Who are the decision makers I need to involve before presenting big dental treatment? Whoever actually says yes to the money, and it is often not just the person in your chair. One of the rules that governs all selling is that the real decision makers have to be present and engaged. In some industries there are so many of them it is a wonder anything sells at all. In dentistry it is usually simpler, but a spouse who controls the household budget, or an adult child helping a parent, can quietly sink a case they were never part of. If [...]

Get the Treatment Decision Makers in the Roomjames2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

Honest Dental Pricing Closes More Cases

james2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

Does being honest about my fees actually help me close more cases? It does, and dentists who fudge pricing usually close less, not more. Honesty about what something costs is one of the global rules that govern selling anything, in any industry. When you are straight about the fee early, you do two things at once. You build the trust that makes a patient believe the rest of what you say, and you verify whether this person is actually qualified and able to make the purchase. Dodge the number or soften it, and you waste everyone's time presenting to someone who [...]

Honest Dental Pricing Closes More Casesjames2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

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