Achieving True Dental Mastership and Dental Case Acceptance
In dental case acceptance and the increase of such you must have the clinical skills for sure but you must also have a selling system in place that helps and guides you to close the case. Achieving True Dental Mastership is within every dentists reach but most won’t take the time to achieve greater dental case acceptance….The One Thing Keeping 95% of Those with Advanced Clinical Training from Doing the Cases They Want and Deserve is that they do not have a sales system in place to help the patient
qualify themselves based on behavioral science.
Our Elites Only Meeting in Dallas last month resulted in some astounding and unexpected results—even I was amazed at what’s happened in several of our Elite Alumni member’s practices—
exhibiting the traits of true “Master Dentists.”
While plenty of dental academies proclaim “Mastery” designations on their members (via Fellow, Master, and/or Diplomate designations), to be a true “Master Dentist” requires both a high level of clinical capabilities and a mastery by the doctor (or other key hired helpers) of the science of marketing and selling to increase dental case acceptance. Regardless of your academic credentials, you are no “Master” unless you embrace these non-clinical components—in fact, you will be guaranteed to not help nearly as many patients with your valuable skills as a result if you don’t have systems in place for better dental case acceptance.
The Elite meeting, attended by 20 offices, ranged from brand new members to alumni of our 20-Month Elite Marketing and Sales Program. It revealed how dental teams go through two distinct phases of development and true mastery of skills in sales (AKA “case acceptance”) and marketing specifically for elective, complex cases—truly become “Master Dentists.”
My big “a-ha” at the meeting was observation of what happens when the key program principles are mastered with extraordinary successes being experienced by the alumni members as compared to new initiates. It became evident, as the meeting progressed, that there is a distinct curve when learning and implementing the defined sales system taught—just as there is with when ANY new task is being mastered.
Think about yourself back in dental school, you, as much as I, remember sweating over that first cavity preparation, versus the way you approach the same task today as an expert.
Now, you just do it without having to think about the steps individually. Clearly, your brain is functioning differently about cavity preparation now than when you first were learning it. Practice and repetition has changed your brain’s functioning, a well-documented phenomenon in neuro-science.
The German psychological principle of “gestalt” perhaps best describes this process—when the resultant whole is much greater than the independent parts and in fact can no longer be described just by describing the individual parts. It is this same effect that is now clearly observable in our most “mature” members who’ve mastered the basics that create success with finding and selling these cases. [Maturity in this sense having no relation to age or years in practice—-just because you’ve been doing it for 30 years doesn’t mean you have any mastery of non-clinical capabilities.]
These “Master Dentists” are now capable of experimenting and producing “mutations” in the taught systems without fear of diminishing results in dental case acceptance and with a reasonable chance of improving on what was already, undoubtedly, the most sophisticated sales and marketing program in the profession.
This same process is occurring with “expert” dental teams as well when it comes to closing large cases. While novices struggle in the beginning to put the sales system into place, piece by piece, the experts can tweak and improve automatically as a result of repeated practice and mastery.
The McAnally Selling System is a complex one. It involves a large number of interdependent actions from placing appropriate problem-solution based ads (logos and image marketing is a waste of time and $$) in the right medium, building confidence and authority in the prospective patient’s mind, elimination of competitors through sound behavioral based principles, appropriate phone skills taught to willing staff, in-office patient sequences and effective follow-up all to increase dental case acceptance.
At the meeting it was clear that the basic tasks take practice and development by the doctor and team members over a period of varying time—be that time period 3, 6, 12 or the full 20 months. They are NOT skills that can be learned in a single day-long course. It simply is impossible and if it were true that one day course would cost you more than the tuition to go to dental school.
The results of this process are quite astounding! Coordinated sales teams have developed a high degree of skill that allows them to multiply their selling power—well beyond the ceilings set even from my personal private practice. While new members are challenged by the process of putting anything new into systematic use, the “experts” do it almost automatically and at warp speeds!
Most interesting is that these “Masters” understand the McAnally Selling System so well, that they are able to improvise and create shortcuts without sacrificing results while the new member team must follow recommended procedures to the letter every time to get the predicted and satisfactory result and ROI. What I specifically and successfully created which is a very formulaic approach, taught at the beginning of the 20-Month Program, ultimately ends at a point where an ingrained set of semi-automatic actions seems natural and unforced to the doctor and team members. In other words, true mastery.
When it comes to results, “expert” teams demonstrate repeated success with their marketing programs—ultimately meaning ROI’s ranging from 4:1 to 40:1 depending on location and local market conditions. They are constantly measuring results and tweaking the System as they go. Their co-ordination and sales mastery allow them to close a higher percentage of cases, even when having modest marketing budgets, while the majority in the profession, who are highly educated clinically BUT highly untrained in these principles struggle and fail at the same thing. The “Masters” are able to market profitably on a consistent basis and bring in all the big cases they want and whenever they want them. Over and over and over.
At this Elite Meeting, it was apparent that as new members progress towards sales and marketing mastery, their success increases in proportion to the effort and discipline expended. By the time they have been involved in the program for the full 20 months, they are pretty good at closing cases and increasing dental case acceptance – analogous to a newly graduated student from dental school doing routine restorative cases. From then on, however, those who remain in the Alumnus program, continue to gain confidence and expertise at an even more rapid rate.
Could you simply video this or record it and dispense it. Unfortunately, that answer is no. Merely observing expert teams will not help onlookers improve their sales skills just as watching pro golfers on TV will not allow you to drive the ball 300 yards. At one point in my career, before I set off on the journey of discovering the principles that went into the Program, I believed these things were learn-able by observation. I was very wrong then and that kind of thinking is even more wrong now, especially after watching dozens and dozens of colleagues come through the Program.
Instead, a team wishing to gain expert sales levels must do the following:
- Understand the fundamentals of marketing and case acceptance for large cases (32 to be exact)
- Practice the fundamentals via systems again and again
- Have a coach to help move the process along and keep you accountable
- Have contact and access to those more proficient in the sales arena through Mastermind sessions since being around others doing the same thing helps immensely (proven out again by behavioral science).
If by now, it seems to you that there are no shortcuts to “Master” status, be it in clinical skills or in the key ingredients that create predictable and routine large cases, then you are correct in that regard. I can’t count the number of even the biggest name clinicians who teach but don’t do anywhere near the number of cases they wish or that our members do simply because they refuse to acknowledge the same basic reality. Many of these individuals “lurk” in our e-mail lists thinking that they’ll pick-up the one “magic bullet” that makes it all happen. Attempting to sift and sort to no avail. Attempting this alone is akin to one person deciding they will go to the moon without involving the help of others. It’s just not possible and even the most advanced clinically skilled individuals will give up long before they achieve even modest gains towards what our alumni predictably get month in and month out.
If you want to develop “Master Dentist,” just as what I’ve described above, and, if you are willing to expend time and energy to make it happen, I promise that my team and I will help you on that journey to predictable success. It will be far less painful, time consuming, and costly versus all of the alternatives.
The Systems and Teacher are waiting for the right students ready to become true “Master Dentists.”
Why not check out my selling system here or take a look at my #1 top selling book on Amazon.
Dr. Irfan Atcha, just one of our Member’s who has achieved mastery of clinical AND non-clinical skill sets and who gets all the cases he wants month after month.
