Blog - Page 58 of 310 - The McAnally Selling System

How Dental Productivity Gains Hid the Drop in Demand

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

Has dental productivity been hiding the decline in real demand? Yes, and that crutch is running out. Look at how practices stayed profitable through the early 2000s even as real income and the insurance pool shrank. The counterweight was raw productivity. If you have practiced since 1980 you have lived it. Dentists went from two-handed dentistry to four-handed, then six and even eight, with assistants stacked in a super operatory and high-speed protocols moving cases through fast. A modest operator gained maybe twenty percent. The gunners at the top doubled their output. That speed quietly offset every downward trend for a [...]

How Dental Productivity Gains Hid the Drop in Demandjames2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

How Macro Trends Are Sinking Average Dental Practices

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

Why are big economic trends quietly killing average dental practices? Because no single trend looks fatal, but together they sink the ship. Frozen insurance maximums losing value. Carriers fighting to pay less. Equipment and staffing costs climbing. Younger patients needing almost nothing. Real household income flat for decades. Real dental spending soft once you remove inflation. Any one of those is survivable. Stack all six on one practice at the same time and the dentist who refuses to address marketing and selling is standing on a sinking ship, wondering why the water keeps rising. You will not find these laid out [...]

How Macro Trends Are Sinking Average Dental Practicesjames2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

Why Case Acceptance Rates Collapse on Large Treatment

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

Why do so few patients accept large dental treatment plans? Because need alone never moved anyone, and the numbers prove it. If a patient needs $5,000 or more in treatment, fewer than one in five will go through with it in the year they talked to a practice. Push the plan toward $10,000 and acceptance drops below three percent. Most dentists look at that and conclude the patient can't afford it or doesn't care. Wrong diagnosis. The real problem is the patient was shown a need and never helped to build a desire to fix it. People do not buy from [...]

Why Case Acceptance Rates Collapse on Large Treatmentjames2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

How Many Patients Need Dental Treatment in the US?

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

How many people actually need dental treatment in the United States? Far more than your appointment book suggests. The last survey put roughly eighteen percent of adults, about forty-two million people, without teeth. Add another nine million missing a full arch and around fifty million with a whole quadrant of problems. Then layer on everyone with orthodontic issues, sleep apnea, and TMJ trouble. You are easily looking at a hundred and fifty million people who need some kind of dentistry. The need is enormous. The catch is that most of those people are either unaware of their problem or have never [...]

How Many Patients Need Dental Treatment in the US?james2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

How Advanced Training Raises Your Ethical Caring Obligation

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

Does more clinical training increase a dentist's duty to sell? Yes. I call it an ethical caring obligation, and it scales with what you know. The dentist who can place implants, restore a full arch, and rebuild a collapsed bite carries more responsibility than the dentist who only knows how to refer it all away. Think of it like a doctor on an airplane when someone collapses. The more medicine you know, the less you get to sit in your seat and pretend it isn't your problem. Same logic here. If you have invested years in advanced training, then the patient [...]

How Advanced Training Raises Your Ethical Caring Obligationjames2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

Do Dentists Have an Ethical Obligation to Sell?

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

Do dentists have an ethical obligation to sell, not just to sell ethically? I believe they do, and most dentists have this exactly half right. They worry about selling ethically, which is good, but they stop there. Ask yourself the honest question. Is the patient better off with the dentistry than without it? You give them back their teeth, their comfort, their ability to chew, their self-esteem. If the answer is yes, and it is, then failing to help them say yes is not neutral. It is a harm of omission. None of us lives on an island either. The patient's [...]

Do Dentists Have an Ethical Obligation to Sell?james2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

Are Dental Spending Trends Real Growth or an Illusion?

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

Is dental spending actually growing or just appearing to grow? It looks like growth and it mostly isn't. You will see headlines every year saying total dental spending went up. Strip out inflation and the picture flips, because for many years the real increase has been flat or negative. The raw dollar figure rises while the buying power behind it does not. That gap matters, because it means the demand for your services is not actually expanding the way the cheerful charts imply. You will not see the ADA or the academies lay all of these trends out side by side, [...]

Are Dental Spending Trends Real Growth or an Illusion?james2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

How Falling Household Income Hits Your Dentistry

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

How do falling household incomes affect a dental practice? More than most dentists admit. Most practices are fed by middle class patients, and on an inflation-adjusted basis the average household income is, at best, about where it sat in the early 1970s. By some measures it is lower. The only reason families kept pace at all is that two people are working now instead of one. So the patient sitting in your chair has less real discretionary money than their parents had at the same age, even with both spouses earning. Pile the shrinking insurance benefit on top of that and [...]

How Falling Household Income Hits Your Dentistryjames2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

Why Declining Dental Disease Is Reshaping Your Schedule

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

Why do younger patients need less dentistry than they used to? Because prevention actually worked. Fluoride works. Sonicares work. Modern oral rinses work when people use them, and floss works when people use it. The result is that the average patient under about forty-five or forty-seven walks in needing little more than bleachings and cleanings. That is a win for public health and a quiet problem for your schedule if your whole model assumes a steady river of fillings and crowns coming through the door. Yes, there are outliers and there are pockets of real disease, but the average, which is [...]

Why Declining Dental Disease Is Reshaping Your Schedulejames2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

Why Dental Technology Costs Keep Rising, Not Falling

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

Why does new dental technology keep getting more expensive instead of cheaper? Because you are buying it at the top of its price curve, not the bottom. Old technology gets cheap once it has been around long enough and everyone makes it. New technology is the opposite. The manufacturer is trying to recoup years of development cost, and they price it for a professional buyer who they know can charge for the results. Digital radiography will never cost what a film machine cost thirty years ago. The same goes for scanners, mills, and every breakthrough that follows. So every upgrade pushes [...]

Why Dental Technology Costs Keep Rising, Not Fallingjames2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

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