Bart Knellinger: How y’all doing? Good, bad, good. Awesome. I know everyone’s muted. I’m just gonna give it a minute here. Let everyone kinda log in and then we’ll get to it. Hey, anyone have, anyone have any good consultations you wanna share? Anybody, anybody that you guys closed that was a, that was a good one. Or any questions or anything goofy that’s happened in the last couple weeks since we spoke? Anybody have anything to, uh, to share there? I’ve been hearing some comments about like interest rate and stuff, and I heard a couple people lost a couple deals over that, but anybody have anything good you wanna share with the group while we let everyone sign on?

Tracie Stone: I got something for you.

Bart: Hit me.

Tracie: Patient who says he is figured out the secret to life. He’s gonna live to be 130, so he wanted teeth that last him till he’s 130 or so. So he did full arches. We did them yesterday.

Bart: He wants his teeth to last to 130.

Tracie: Mm-Hmm.

Bart: How old is he?

Tracie: Uh, 40, 48.

Bart: 48. Wow. That’s a [crosstalk].

Tracie: He needed arches, but that’s how, that’s, that closed the[?] deal.

Bart: Oh, well there you go. I talked to, I talked to another, uh, another doctor, you know, and they were doing this like, uh, they were trying to figure out how long to do the warranty for on the, on the teeth. And he was like, I, I think they’re doing a five year on one type of material. And then they were doing a 10 year and I said, “Well, uh, yeah, unless they’re like, unless they’re over 80, over 80.” It’s lifetime warranty, you know.

Jeff Lowery: Lifetime warranty on anyone over 80 for the team.

Bart: Yeah. You know what’s crazy? I’ve got somebody, a doctor’s actually in the office today. He’s from Melbourne, Australia. And, um, they have this thing called the super fund that when people go to work, it’s like a, it’s like a forced 401k that everybody has. Um, and the employers mandated by law to put money into it for all of the employees. So everybody has that since the day they start working and they’re able to tap into it for medical necessity. And over there, all on four just got deemed like medical necessity. So they don’t need any financing or anything. The credit score doesn’t matter, the financing doesn’t matter, they can pull the money right out of the, what they call the super fund over there. And I was like, man, that should be pretty easy. How would you guys like that? Everybody’s just got a bunch of money sitting to the side and they can’t use it for anything else other than this.

Wouldn’t that be cool? We’d be closing some freaking arches. Am I wrong? We would be closing some arches. All right, look, I’m gonna get going here. Uh, there’s still some people logging on. Um, but guys, remember, you know, this is a, this is a mentorship call we’re not gonna be going through any videos or anything like that. We’re gonna go through some stuff that I saw on the video and also some other things that we’ve been hearing and noticing and just talk more in depth. So this one will[?] be a little bit more interactive than the, the call critique. So if you have anything you guys can unmute, um, speak up, ask questions, stuff like that. I’ll be asking you guys some questions too here, getting into it. Um, but one thing I wanted to address that seems to have been coming up a little bit more and more and more in the last maybe, I don’t know, five or six months, is just the, uh, the ability to actually get people to show up to their consultations and the conversion rate from the leads to the consultations. I’m seeing like, we’re basically seeing the same exact number of leads, but the leads to people where their butts are actually in the seat, that percentage seems to be going down. Have you guys noticed it being any more difficult to actually get in touch with the leads or get the leads in the, in the office this year?

Leslie Ramos: Yes.

Bart: So I’ve noticed that too. So I just wanted to, to cover this a little bit, um, and kind of get back to the basics. Really important that you guys are having your meetings with the, the patient advocate. That’s super important, right? So if your goal, remember, if your goal is to close, let’s say 10 arches a month, if that’s what your, your goal is and your compensation’s built off that if you need to close 10, you guys have to have a KPI in terms of number of consultations that you need as the treatment coordinator to where you feel like you can reasonably close 10 arches. Okay? So if your goal is to close 10, you’re gonna want a minimum of 25 to 30 consultations for the month. You know what I mean? You wouldn’t wanna have a goal of 10 arches and have 10 appointments or 15 appointments or five appointments.

’cause those, those percentages just aren’t going to, uh, prove out over the long run. So what you’re looking at is how many consultations do I have scheduled for the next four weeks? Okay? And you’re looking at that number going, you know, is, is this number on track or not? If you guys, if your KPIs 30, like, hey, you give me 30 opportunities, I’ll get you, I’ll get you real close to 10 arches. You know what I mean? I’m gonna be able to get them at somewhere between 30, 35% so I feel good about that. Um, you know, but if you look at the, your forecast, your two week and your four week forecast, and you guys see that you don’t have anywhere near 30 consults, what do you do? If you only have, let’s say, five consultations booked out in the next two weeks or six consultations, you should immediately be having a meeting with the patient advocate about that.

Because just like you guys, you guys, your goal is to close 10 arches, you need 30 consultations. Their goal should be what? 30 consultations. How many leads do they need to actually schedule 30 consultations? And I feel like sometimes there’s a little bit of a disconnect to where that’s not spoken about until the month is over and it’s like, oh, you know, we’ll hear from a client and they’ll say, well, I had a bad month. Or, you know, we didn’t close that many arches. And the first thing I always go to is, well, how many opportunities did you get to close an arch and say, “Well, we only had like six consultations.” And then I start thinking, well why didn’t you do something about that in real time? So guys, here’s the thing. Don’t look back at the month. Look at the month coming.

Okay? All of you guys have to have a forecast of production so that you know what you’ve sold so you know what the doctor’s production’s gonna be. You know, how many new patient consultations you have and you know how many new patient consultation spots are available. And you guys have to look at that in the future so that the things that you do today are changing the forecast. And I think that’s something that we’re missing. Everybody that I’m talking to right now, even the doctors, the treatment coordinators, everybody seems to be looking back at the previous month and then taking action based on the previous month. But that’s, that’s kind of counterintuitive. It’s, it is not a problem to look back, but it’s way more important to be looking at a forecast than it is to be looking at what happened last month. If you’re looking and you’re forecasting and you know, I need 30 consultations, and you look at the two week forecast, you should have somewhere around 15. If you don’t, then your number one priority is what? You go over, you have a meeting, hey, I need 20 minutes with you. Get with the treatment, get with the, uh, the patient advocate. And the first question outta your mouth to the patient advocate is, what? What would you ask? Anybody answer, unmute yourself. I hate these calls I have to talk to myself. I can look at you and see that you know the answer. I can see that you know the answer.

Jeff: Oh, hi, this is Jeff. Um, this my second day here, so I’m still learning a lot of stuff myself. But you need to have a good relationship with your patient, patient advocate and to a point where you guys are talking all the time, getting feedback from each other, how you can make their job easier, how they can make your job easier. So good communication’s critical, I would assume in this role, correct?

Bart: Absolutely. But good efficient communication. So if I’m looking at the forecast and I only have five consultations in the next two weeks, the first question I have for the patient advocate is, “Hey, um, did something happen with the leads?” Right? I wanna know, was there some type of precipitous drop in the leads? Um, if not, if the leads are staying the same, then I want to get their feedback in terms of why the consultations have dropped, why we’re not hitting our KPIs, and if there’s anything that I can do if there’s something they’re struggling with. ’cause sometimes they’re struggling with things and everybody’s so busy in the office, they don’t have a chance to ask questions. Um, and, and sometimes there’s, there’s situations where the patient advocate just doesn’t want to ask a question that they may think is, is silly or dumb or trivial, you know, but they can be having problems where, hey, yeah, we’re getting leads, but these people are bum rushing me with questions.

Like, hey, what do you guys charge? What do you charge? And I know I’m, I’m trying to bring in people that are qualified, so I’m trying to pre-qualify them and triage them, and then all of a sudden you’re like, oh, wow, okay, we’re, we’re, we’re doing way too much. You know what I mean? We’re actually over qualifying on the phone and you guys can, you can figure it out just like that. But the most important thing that you look for is, are there enough leads to hit the number of consultations? And are there enough consultations to hit the number of arches? Those ratios, if those ratios are on, then hey, you guys should be good to go. You know what I mean? It shouldn’t be any kind of crazy situation where it’s like, oh, we closed nothing. ’cause you’re not gonna close nothing out of 30 arches.

You know? And if you do, that’s super weird, you know what I mean? But you can close nothing out of six, six consultations. You can go, oh, for six, anybody can, you can have six people in a row that come in there and they’re out of their minds and they don’t, they don’t have, they don’t have two quarters to rub together, you know? But then you can have the next three or four that have cash that pay. So it’s a, it’s a numbers game. As long as you guys are setting your KPIs based off between 30 and 35% close ratio, you guys should be there to where you’re not seeing huge drop-offs. But the problem is that when you guys are low on consultations, I don’t see anything happening, like from your end to the patient advocate. And sometimes if patient advocate says, yeah, I’ve noticed a big time change in leads, right? There, there has been a big drop.

You know, I don’t know what changed, but there’s been a big drop, or, you know, the type of leads that we’re getting has changed. Something is different right now. That’s information that you pick up the phone, you guys call over here, you get ahold of your account manager and it’s like, “Hey, something’s happened. We typically are scheduling, you know, out of a hundred leads, we’re typically getting 25 of them or 20 of them in the door. And that’s gone from a hundred leads to 25 from a hundred leads to like 10. You know, it’s more than, it’s more than dropped in half. So I don’t know if we, you changed something on the marketing or if we need to look at something there or blah, blah, blah.” But guys, if you don’t have enough consultations to hit your, your goal to make your bonus and make your commission, then that becomes priority, priority number one for you.

And it’s either something changed with the marketing or it’s the way that we’re handling the leads or working in the system. Um, but, but some, something has to, uh, something has to give there. So what I want to tell you, make sure that everybody has a two week and a four week forecast and you know exactly what your goals are and you know exactly how many consultations you have scheduled. Okay? So, you know, you need 30 buts in the seats. What do you guys think is a no-show rate you should forecast? In order to get 30 people actually show up for consultations, how many consultations do you think you need to have in your forecast for the month? What do y’all think?

Tina Newville: 50.

Bart: 50.

Stephany Cardenas: 60.

Bart: Good bet.

Tina: 0, 60.

Bart: So 60 is you saying, okay, basically we’re, we’re anticipating that half of these people won’t show up. Okay? So, hey, if I’m making, if, if it’s my KPIs, if my numbers are on the line, I have to sell the arches, I want it to be as high as possible. So I’m gonna say, hey, I need 60 consultations scheduled and we’ll anticipate a 50% no-show rate. So what’s the, the patient advocate? What’s their KPI now it’s not 30, what is it? 60 on the schedule, 30 showing up. You know what I mean? If, if they just get to 30, there’s no way they’re gonna show up at a hundred percent. You already know that. So it has to be a buffer. What that ends up being is different from practice to practice. I’m gonna give you guys some ways to help the patient advocate reduce the no-show rate, uh, a little bit and, and, and help you guys with the connect rate.

Um, but really important that you guys have at least a meeting every single month to go through the forecast, go through your performance from last month, and then go through the forecast for this month, uh, and make sure that you and the patient advocate are completely on the same page with what your goals are, what the numbers need to be. And that way, if it’s not happening, you guys are changing and you’re making adjustments in real time and you don’t have, you know, you don’t have one of these disaster months, that’s what you wanna avoid, right? We wanna, we wanna be selling arches and you want the practice to go like this. You know, you don’t, you wanna avoid this kind of a thing, right? The, the, the, the big peaks and valleys where, hey, we closed 12 this month and, and then next month we close two, right?

That’s, that’s no good. We, we wanna make sure there’s a, there’s a certain baseline, certain level of consistency that we’re hitting. Um, but the main reason for you guys in closing that way that I’ve seen isn’t because your closing percentage varies from what I’ve seen. The treatment coordinators, your closing percentage is pretty steady. Doesn’t mean it’s always good, but it means whatever it is, it’s fairly consistent and it kind of consistently gets better over time where you have a, like one arch month or a no arch month or a two arch month. It’s simply because you didn’t get the consultations to sell. That’s what I’ve seen, right? And then, and then the conversation goes back to the leads. Okay? So I want you guys to take, take a couple notes here, and I’m gonna give you a couple different ways to help the patient advocate with these leads or for you guys to, to help get the leads in. Is it, does everyone, um, I just wanna make sure, does everyone feel like this is a, this is a, a pain point or this is a need in the practice help kind of managing the leads and getting their butts in the seats?

Donald: Yes, most definitely.

Bart: Okay, so let’s take a minute and let’s go, let’s go through this. Okay. So, uh, the first thing that’s really important is that you understand that there’s gonna be different types of leads, and those leads have to be handled differently, okay? So for the most part, and there, there’s some exceptions to this, but for the most part, there’s three different kinds of leads. Okay? There’s one type of lead that’s gonna come through that is the, the marketing campaign is geared more towards price shoppers, right? So it’s geared towards people that are looking for second opinions. They’ve got some type of price qualifier.

Um, and, and they’re typing in, you know, dental implants, price, or all on four price, something to that effect. They’re clicking on the ad, they’re going to a landing page and they’re filling out a dental implant evaluation to get pricing. That make sense? Okay? That’s one type of lead. Another type of lead is the lead that might see a video that you guys have on social media. They click through it, it goes to the website, they fill out a form to schedule a consultation. It’s another lead, is very different. The third type of lead is the patient’s actually calling, whether they have questions or, uh, or they want to just outright schedule an appointment. There’s a huge difference between the evaluation leads and the patients that come in as leads asking to schedule a consultation. Huge difference. You’re gonna get more evaluation leads than you’re gonna get leads to schedule an appointment.

But if they’re filling out the evaluation form, they’re filling it out because they’re, they’re typing in all on four price. They go to a landing page. What’s our strategy? Our strategy is all on four is not one thing. We don’t have a one size fits all approach. All on four can be done several, several different ways with several different price points. If you want information, right? In regards to that or pricing, fill this evaluation out. So they go on, they fill the evaluation out, the lead comes to you. Now, when they fill out the evaluation, are they saying that they want to talk to you guys on the phone? No. Are they saying I want to consultation?

Leslie: No.

Bart: No. Are they saying I wanna buy this? No. Are they saying I want to come in? They’re not saying any of that. It’s an information based lead. What it is, guys, it’s a foot in the door for you to generate a lead and get, and get the leads up, give you opportunities. So the first goal, if it’s a dental planning valuation lead, the first thing we wanna make sure is the information that they’re getting, when those emails go out to the leads, we wanna make sure they’re not getting too much information in regards to price. So we wanna stay away from giving them specific information, okay? So if we had to take all of your full arch implant options and reduce it down to the lowest calm denominator in which those full arch options start, right?

That would be, let’s say like an implant supported denture, okay? Or a low locator case, something like that. So here’s the idea, and it’s very important for you guys to understand this or, or you’re gonna, you’re gonna make crazy mistakes handling the leads, and it’s gonna be, it’s gonna be a problem. So what I’m trying, what we’re trying to do here is I’m trying to qualify them, okay? Somewhat, without giving them enough information to where they feel like they don’t need to talk to you. So if you guys send the email out and there’s too much information in there, and you say, oh, okay, for all on four, we’ve got these options, we’ve got acrylic, we got zirconia, we got hybrid, or we have, you know, zygomatic. If you’re actually like putting the prices in there, then why do they need to talk to you?

They’re either gonna look at the prices and they like them and they’re gonna schedule, or they’re gonna go, okay, I got the information, I don’t like the prices. But either way, you know, what do they need to talk to you if we give it to them? So the strategy is we don’t want people, we don’t want leads that think that Medicaid’s gonna cover it, right? And we don’t want people thinking that this is, you know, a, a thousand bucks or $2,000 either. But we also don’t wanna put 38, starting at $38,000. That’s craziness. So I, I saw that on some campaigns and I, I immediately went in and, and change that. Um, but what you wanna do with the emails, you wanna make sure you start with your removable price. So whatever that is, that’s 10, 11, 12, $13,000. It’s full arch implant options starting at this, then we educate them a little bit that we have several different options, but we don’t give them specifics.

In order to get specifics, we need to talk to you, right? So then we hit them with a, with a call, CTA. So two things happen. So if a person sees $12,000 or $10,000 and that’s the starting point, and they still want a consultation that tells you what, that they’re not completely unqualified. They don’t think it’s a government grant or something insane, you know what I mean? They don’t think it’s completely covered by Medicaid. They don’t think it’s $500 or a thousand dollars. They saw a real number and they still want, they still want to talk. Okay? So when we do that and the information goes out, the first goal is to engage with the patient. The easiest way to engage with patients that don’t call that send in forms is through text messaging.

So the text messages that go out, as you guys will see the automations, the whole point of them is, so they sound like a person and not a computer, right? They sound like a person, not a computer. When you text the, the language and the style in which you text is, is naturally gonna be more of a, um, more of a casual, abbreviated style, um, of communication than it would normally be in an email. And the only goal of it, we’re not trying to, I’m not trying to schedule through text. I’m trying to engage them and get a response. That’s it. That’s all it is. The second that they respond to you, right? “You respond back to them, oh, okay, awesome, no problem. Hey, I’ve got a second. I’m gonna give you a call. It’s coming from this number, blah, blah, blah, blah.” And then pick up the phone and call them immediately.

It’s the second they respond to your text, tell them “I’m gonna call you. It’s only gonna take a second. It’s coming from this number.”, And then call them. ’cause that’s the whole point is we have to be able to get them on the phone without giving them too much information. You’re gonna schedule so many more of them when you can have a little bit of dialogue with them over the phone. It’s too easy for them to ask a question, get an, get an answer from you through text, and then kind of ghost you, right? So it’s not a consultation lead, it’s a foot in the door. They want information about price, but nobody wants information about price for no reason. They’re obviously a candidate. They’re obviously shopping in it. So we don’t want to scare them off with a huge number. But I don’t want to not give them a number and risk somebody with absolutely no money.

It’s completely unqualified scheduling a consultation either. So the perfect middle ground is you start with a low price point that’s significant enough to weed out any of the riff raff stuff, okay? Which is like anything 10 grand or over, just like when you guys are price qualifying in person and we get a number out of the patient, what number are we looking for to continue with the consultation? $10,000. They give me a number that they have a budget of 10 grand or more, we’re moving forward with the consultation because that’s, that’s a material number. And if they say 10, it probably means at minimum 15, but probably 20 because no one’s ever gonna give you their, their bottom dollar. Okay? So that’s the strategy. But you can’t, it’s not like a sit and wait. If you guys get those evaluation leads, people that are requesting information and you expect them to just pick up their phone when you call you, you know you’re crazy.

They’re not gonna do that. You have to get them engaged with a text message and then you have to hit them immediately. You can’t wait on them. They’re not, it’s not that type of lead. These are, these are leads. They’re, they’re not cold leads ’cause they have a need and they’re coming to you, but they’re not hot leads like people saying, “Hey, I’d like to schedule a consultation.” It’s different. You guys get it. So, so they have to, you have to work them, you have to be on the ball. And when you respond back, don’t even bother calling them at first. Like, don’t waste your time. Tell the patient advocate don’t waste your time calling the people that are filling out dental implant evaluations. Send a text message and wait to call when you get a response. When you get that response, you don’t ask them, do you have a minute can I talk to you?

No, you get a response you say, “Hey, I’m gonna call you I got a couple minutes. It’s coming from this phone number.” And you don’t wait for them to say anything. You just pick up the phone and dial. Does that make sense? So those are leads that you’re going to get that a lot of other doctors are not going to get. And but, but you have to work them and you have to work them aggressively and you can’t wait on them to come to you. You guys have to go get them, right? So goal number one, get them to respond to something. I don’t care what you have to say with text message. Say something crazy. Get a response out of them. As soon as they respond, hit them with a phone call. Make sense? Try it, right? And if you’re, if the patient advocate’s struggling with it, get with the patient advocate.

Look in the system and let’s say, okay, let’s see, like, how are these text messages going? And the first place I would look at, what is the correspondence with the leads via text? And what you’ll probably see if they’re texting with the, with the leads, they’re probably texting too much. Patient asks a question and instead of saying, “Hey, I’m gonna call you, it’s coming from this number”, they’re answering all the questions. They ask a question, I answer with a text. They ask one, I answer. They ask one, I answer. They ask one, I answer, ghost. They feel like they got all the information, you never got them on the phone. So I don’t need to schedule with the text. I don’t need to sell with the text. The text is only there to engage the, the, the lead with you to give you an opportunity to pick up the phone.

Make sense? Okay, the next type of lead, these are patients coming over that says, you know, they’re, they’re filling out a consultation form, okay? Same principle applies. They want to schedule a consultation. When you call these PA patients, more of them will pick up than the dental, dental, uh, implant evaluation leads. It’s a much hotter lead because they’re not calling for information they’re calling to come in, right? They want to come in and see you. So, um, they’re hotter, they’re a little bit easier. Most of the time these leads are coming in from our social media campaigns that are pushing them directly to your website and they’re coming to you through a contact form on your website. Um, but when you get these, you can do it a couple different ways but for me, when the leads come in, I like the same approach with a text message first, right off the bat.

The second they respond to it, pick up the phone and call them. Um, we’re just seeing such a low, I don’t know if you guys are seeing the same thing, but if you have a hundred leads in a month and you guys just pick up the phone, you call all of them. How many out of a hundred are gonna pick up the first time you call? What are you guys seeing? Somebody throw, throw some numbers out there. How many out of a hundred leads that we get for you’re gonna pick up, pick up your call the very first time you reach out and call that lead.

Tracie: [crosstalk] a hundred.

Bart: Yeah, what’s that? Five. Who….

Lisa Heath: I said five.

Tracie: We get about 20 out of a hundred that will answer.

Bart: On the first call.

Tracie: Yeah.

Bart: Anybody get a higher percentage than 20? Okay. What do you guys think the percentage response would be if you didn’t call but everybody you sent an immediate text to? What do you think would be the percentage of people that would actually text you back versus answer the phone from a number in which they don’t have programmed into their phone? Do you think the percentage would be higher or lower?

Leslie: Higher.

Lisa: I usually get a higher response on the text message.

Bart: You’re always gonna get one and it’s not gonna be like a couple points higher. It’s gonna be like triple the response because it’s so easy to fire off a quick little text. But the second they fire it off and they text back. Once they’re texting with me and I say, “Hey, I got you. I’m gonna give you a call. I got a minute. Um, it’s coming from this number.” And then I call after I have a running dialogue with them through text, what do you think is gonna be the percentage of patients that actually answered that phone call now that they know who it is?

Leslie: They’re gonna answer.

Bart: If it was 20, it’s gonna be 40. At least, nobody answers the phone. Very few people, unless they’re old, really old answer the phone, right? Of numbers that are not programmed in. My dad and my mom they do it all the time. Like, do you actually answer the phone when it’s just a number? I’ve never done that. I’m like, they can freaking leave a message. I don’t know who they are. You know what I mean? I don’t know what kind of can of worms I’m opening up with this call. I don’t wanna deal with it. I send them a voicemail. So same type of thing applies. You guys want to make it, you wanna make sure the patient advocate is efficient because I don’t care who you are. Like if you’re dealing with percentages where you’re making a hundred phone calls and only five or 10 or 15 people out of a hundred are actually picking up the phone, that is mentally and emotionally freaking exhausting, is it not?

Leslie: Mm-hmm.

Bart: That sucks. That’s not fun. And, and it was not like we do it because it’s, we’re only gonna do stuff that’s fun, but like, let’s be, let’s be efficient here so we get a lead, all right, we gotta have creative ways of getting them to respond to us. Highest probability of getting response gonna be text. So let’s start using it. And I want you guys to get creative with the text messages and the language that you use with a text to get a response. Second, you get one. Hit them. That’s gonna work for people that are scheduling consultations. Also going to work for dental implant evaluation forms. The biggest difference is what you’re gonna have to say with a text message to get a response because they’re in two different places mentally, right? And the third, these are people actually calling you, which if they’re calling you, you guys should be smoking them.

You know? ’cause that’s a, that’s a hot, hot, hot lead. They’re actually taking time outta the day to pick up the phone and call you. You know, we should, we should get them. You know what I mean? We really, really, really should get them. And if you get a call and it’s a direct from public lead, the patient advocate has a call, everything stops and that phone’s picked up ’cause that now is the, it’s priority number one. Priority number one. ’cause you’re going to get that person into a consultation at the highest percentage if they actually call. Second highest if they fill out a form to actually schedule an appointment with you, right? Third highest, they fill out an evaluation form wanting information, they’re all leads. Can you guys see how they’re all a little bit different?

Yeah. Good. So you really need to be familiar with, hey, here’s the landing page they go to. Why are they seeing $12,000 on the email that we send back? Well, because an implant supported denture is a full arch implant option and we want a number high enough to triage out any riff-raff, but low enough to where we can still be in a competitive situation if we’re a second or third or fourth opinion, we’re not scaring them off, you know, with a $30,000 number when they got two more opinions at 22 or 23 or 24. Does that make sense? Patient advocate has to know it like the back of, uh, of their hand. And you guys have to know it like the, the back of your hand. ’cause you get a lot of those dental implant evaluation leads, you get a lot of them. Okay? Now, once we actually engage with the patient, what’s the difference between one practice that gets out of a, out of 50 consultations booked, they get 40 people showing up and one that gets 20, outta 50 showing up. What do you think is the biggest difference? They both got the patient on the phone. They both scheduled them, right? The patient’s committed same amount. One, 40 of them showed up, the other one 20 of them showed up. What do you think is the biggest difference? What do y’all think? Speak, speak, talk to me, talk to me or don’t.

Lisa: Maybe the way that they built the report[?] over the phone.

Bart: Yeah, that’s a big [crosstalk].

Jeff: Whether or not they’re able to establish urgency.

Bart: Yeah. The, the thing is, here’s what I hear sometimes, right? With the phone calls, you call, oh, you’d like to schedule an appointment. Okay, I can do that. Lemme check the schedule, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, I can fit you in here. It’s no plan consultation, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it’s just super, they literally just like schedule them. You know, there was no, no, um, there was no relationship built. The goal is that after you guys get off the phone with them, you, you wanted to create some sense of reciprocity, ideally with that patient, you want the patient to think that you went out of your way to help them. And that you’re genuinely interested in helping them. You can’t be genuinely interested in helping them if you got no information about why they’re calling, what they’re going through or anything like that, right?

So ideally the patient advocate is getting a little information on what the pain points are, what they’re going through. And then when it comes time to schedule, guys, you don’t wanna make it sound like you have, I don’t care if you look on your forecast and, and you’re open for the next week. I don’t you, I, I want you to make it sound like you’re booked for the next week and you have to move somebody to fit them in, in which you’re going to do, because you’re going to provide that level of service. You’re gonna take care of them. I’m gonna see what I can move around here to fit you in, right? I know what you’re going through, I understand I got it. I’m gonna see if I can get you in quickly, okay? Let me kind of take a look and see what I can do.

You want them to think that you’re going, if they feel like you did them a favor, they’re gonna feel bad about no call, no show. Doesn’t mean it, it won’t ever happen. It’ll still happen, but it’s gonna happen at a, you’re, you’re just playing percentages games here, right? I mean, guys like five 10% one way or the other is huge in terms of the production that you guys are gonna sell for the practice at the end of the month, quarter year. All these little things add up. So don’t just let them pick and just say, oh, this, this time’s available, okay, I can do that. No. Say, “Listen, we’re super, super busy in terms of consultations. Doctors typically booked out, you know, three to four weeks. But I understand the situation you’re in. I’m gonna do what I can do to get you in asap.

If you’re willing to work with me on the schedule, I’ll work with you. See what I can move around. Does that sound fair enough? Alright, let’s see what we, let’s see what we can do here.” Guys it’s like, it’s perception. You know what I’m saying? If they feel like you’ve got a million different appointment options and there’s no scarcity in regards to that appointment, then what’s the big deal If they reschedule? You understand?

Leslie: Mm-Hmm.

Bart: But if there’s scarcity, right? In regards to your, your ability to take appointments and they actually get one they don’t want, they’re, they’re gonna feel bad about rescheduling number one ’cause you, you move things around in number two because they don’t know when they’re going to get in if they do reschedule it. That’s why guys, you see like some of these super high-end restaurants, they go on OpenTable and they just make everything booked out even though they’re not, it’s super annoying, but they do it all the time. We’re booked, we’re booked, we’re booked, we’re booked. You know, even though they’re not booked out, they say that they are. Why do they say that they are? Right? Because it makes people want the reservation that much more. And when you do get a reservation at one of those, uh, like a new hot restaurant, you’re not gonna miss it ’cause you know, you’re, you, you know, like you have to be on time ’cause they’ll give the table away. You’re not even gonna be late for it. Does that make sense? You don’t wanna say it and you don’t wanna position it as like a, we’re we’re so good. We’re so busy.

We’re up here. You’re lucky to be working with. That’s not the tone. The tone is like, hey, I’m gonna help you with this. The doctor gets, you know, really booked out typically like three, four weeks. But I understand what you’re going through. I’m gonna see what I can do to like move some stuff around ’cause I know, I know that you need to get in quickly, but if you can work with me on, on your side, I’ll work with you over here and we’ll, we’ll figure it out and I’ll get you in as soon as I can. Does that sound fair? Like, you want it to sound like, you know, like you care and like it’s, it’s high-end service. Does that make sense? It doesn’t sound like that. Like when we hear the phone calls, it’s very matter of fact, get them scheduled, wham bam, thank you man, type of thing. And, and the consultation doesn’t have a whole lot of value. And guys, they need to be reminded that normally this consultation would be about $450 for a CT scan for some time with a doctor, for time with you to do a full mouth um, uh, consultation or full arch consultation. There’s a dollar amount that’s associated with that time and there’s value that they’re going to get outta that consultation that you are waving for them.

Does that make sense? Like if you guys just act like, ah, yeah, it’s free and there’s a hundred of them, no big deal, yeah, you’re gonna have a much higher no-show rate. Then I’m gonna have, if I’m, if I show that there’s some value there and I want them to think like, man, alright, they’re not charging me for this and this guy went out of his way to make sure I could get in, in the next three days. I’m gonna have a way higher show up rate than you are, way higher. Just, just by changing that a little bit. But I understand it gets very difficult when the patient advocate has to make 200, 300, 400, 500 calls. ’cause you’re even being told to call every lead two, three, four, five times. I don’t care if you don’t call the lead at all. I don’t care. As long as you’re texting the lead or we’ve got emails going, call them when they engage.

Just be efficient with your time and your energy. ’cause it is difficult to make hundreds and hundreds of phone calls and still bring that level of energy and, and, and level of influence to every phone call. Uh, because that is truly the key to getting patients to show up, is creating scarcity and reciprocity. They already have the urgency or you would not be on the phone with them. So that’s built in, right? But scarcity and reciprocity, those two things are not, and from what I’m seeing, everything that we’re doing is, is the exact opposite of creating scarcity and reciprocity. We’re actually creating abundance saying I can fit you in whenever you want. And we’re creating, we’re creating, um, uh, no reciprocity because of that and, and no scarcity and no value. So you need to let them know this is worth, typically this type of consultation would be about $480. You know, we spoke since, since this is gonna be a full arch implant consultation, we’re gonna go ahead, we’re still gonna do the CT scan, we’re still gonna do the consultation, but what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna waive the fee because it’s a full arch in implant consultation. How’s that sound? That’s good. Thank you. When they start thanking you, you’re on the right track. You guys have any questions about that?

Leslie: Um, someone asked in the, in the comments, but I also wanna know as well, how long typically should we be on the phone with these patients? Because sometimes, um, I, I just need kind of like a, a time that ideally these conversations have to take.

Bart: Hmm, you want to just like the 10, 10, 10 you want to be communicating with them in a straight line, okay? So we don’t want to waste time, but understand that every single full arch case is a really big case. So if they’re telling us about their situation, they’re telling us about their pain points, right? And it’s valuable information, let the patient talk. Just prompt them to like, move them through, you know? And for you guys taking an extra couple seconds and building value for the consultation, building some reciprocity, um, it’s a, it’s a very, very good use of your time because although you’re on the phone a little bit longer with the patients than if you were just to schedule them, get their information and schedule them, um, your no-show rate is gonna be so much lower, right? And when they don’t show up, what do you have to do?

Get back on the phone, call them again. Right? That’s two phone calls for what I, two short phone calls is longer than one moderate phone call, right? And it’s twice the energy for you guys. So there’s not a, there’s not a timeframe where I’m like, hey, this should take inside of five minutes. Some of them take inside of five minutes for the most part, getting them scheduled, doing it right, this whole thing it’s probably gonna be somewhere more closer to 10 minutes. Um, for, for these phone calls, if you’re, if you’re hedging against no-shows, right? I hear a lot of them, they’re done in three, four minutes. Information, name, phone number, this, that, the other, okay, when do you want to come in? All right, I can get you in, you’re in and you’ll get this, that, and the other click.

And that, that’s a lot of them. And for me, I think it’s way too fast. ’cause I have no confidence that this patient’s gonna show up. There’s no, it’s, they don’t have any relationship. I didn’t connect with them at all. They have no reciprocity. I built no scarcity. I built no value. You know, it’s just, I’m just playing a numbers game and it feels faster, but it’s actually slower because of the no show rate. And, and then the follow up calls you have to make to get them in. So it doesn’t matter. As, as long as it takes for you to be efficient and effective at communicating the value, creating the scarcity and reciprocity that takes five minutes, then it’s five. If it takes 10 or 15, 10 or 15. Um, but even 15 minutes, if they actually show up, they move forward with the arch, t’s, that’s time well spent.

Leslie: Mm-Hmm.

Bart: Any other? Was there any other questions on here?

Lisa: I have a question. What, what is a good dialogue after you guys send a text message to them that says, “Hey, I’d just like to give you a call if you’ve got a second”, text message and they don’t respond to that, and then I’m send out another text message, but a lot of times I don’t get a response either and I’m like, okay, what? I’m constantly changing up my dialogue to get some kind of, uh, uh, response back via text message so what’s something else I could say after the initial text message that you guys say to try to create dialogue?

Bart: So depends on the lead, right? So let’s just say it’s a dental implant evaluation lead.

Stephany: Right. That’s the majority of them that we get.

Bart : Okay. So that lead comes in, they don’t respond. We’ve gotta sense something that’s gonna pique their interest, right? So something like, hey, had a chance to look back at your evaluation. I’ve got a couple ideas for what you could do to save some money here. Don’t say anything else, just send it to them. Right? Because they’re shopping price, right? So you all, always think about where did, how do we get the lead? Where did the lead originate from and what are they looking for here? If you say, hey, I saw your valuation, or hey, I noticed when you said, hey, I’m only missing, or, or have a partial here, or I’m only missing one to three teeth or whatever. If you can look through the evaluation, you can find something, say, hey, I saw that this was the case, I’ve got an idea for how I may be able to save you some money here.
You know what I mean? Because it doesn’t matter how they respond, I just need the response.

Lisa: Right.

Bart: I just need the response. Once they respond, boom, hit them. But it’s got to be something. They’re not gonna respond a lot of times to like, um, to obvious questions. It has to be something positioned to where, um, there’s some mystery to it, right? Something that piques their interest and then they’ll say, oh, what was it? You know what I mean? And then you call them, I’m gonna call you number’s coming from this. Bam. Pick up the phone, dial them. So thing, things like that. And um, remember it does, you don’t have to have this guys, you don’t have to have it. This is just, this is like, you know, where you learn this stuff, you learn this stuff in outbound cold calling. This is where you really learn like what we’re talking about, the art of getting somebody to talk to you, right?

That’s not trying to talk to you and get them to want to talk to you. There has to be like, you have to know what they truly want and what they think. And you have to give them enough information to think that, to believe that you may have something that they don’t know about that they want. That’s the whole point. And it doesn’t matter what that thing is because the only purpose of the text is to engage them and get them on the phone. Once they’re on the phone, you got them on the phone, you can use your dialogue, you can pivot pace and lead, talk to them, and you know what to do at that point. You get them on the phone, it doesn’t matter what I got them on the phone, I’m gonna connect with them and I’m gonna start talking about what’s going on.

So I looked on your valuation and you said you were missing one to three teeth. Is that right? Or was it that you had a par… So are you in a partial right now or? And you just start going right into it about their current state and their pain points, building the relationship and, and, and you move forward with the sales. With, with sales call. Um, but that is not possible if they never engage with you. So, um, you can come up with some really creative ways of doing it. Just like with your follow-up. You have somebody in, they were hot, you’re like, man, this, this patient, I should have closed this patient. Don’t know what happened. And now they ghost you. Hey, had a second to talk to the doctor about your treatment plan. Doctor came up with a really interesting idea.

You got a second? Or I’ll, I’m gonna call you from this number if you have a second, boom, call them, you know what I mean? Something that they’re like, oh, really? What was it? It has to be something like that. It can’t be the whole operator thing. Like, hello, this is, um, this is Susie from Dr. Such and Such’s office following up with you in regards to your appointment. That ain’t gonna do it. That’s like, that’s just not gonna happen. You know what I mean? You don’t communicate, you don’t use like proper English language like you would in, in a letter or even an email. With text messaging you abbreviate it, you make it very casual and as short as possible. And if the, if the text is gonna be longer, break it up into two or three simultaneous texts so that it’s easy to read. Never, never one long text.

Lisa: I usually try to revert back to what they put on the evaluation. You know, hey, I see that you were really suffering with this or that or that is what I try to bring steer back to.

Bart: Okay, but why are they gonna talk to you? What’s the, where’s the hook? Where’s the hook? The hook is what they want.

Lisa: Definitely the appointment.

Bart: What, what do they want? They don’t want an appointment, they don’t want one. Right? What do they want? They filled out an implant evaluation for what.

Tina: To wear like a brand.

Lisa: They want a pricing.

Bart: They want what kind of pricing?

Lisa: Free [laugh]

Bart: Awesome pricing. They want a, they want an awesome deal. They want to feel like they’re getting the best deal in the world from you. Doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be the cheapest, but it’s gotta feel like it’s something different than what they hear from the other practices. Right? So you guys already know what they’re going to hear from the other practices because you were the other practices before you met me. So what are they gonna hear? They call them and ask how much you charge for dental implants. They’re gonna get a price or they’re gonna say, I can’t tell you I have to come in. That’s what they’re gonna hear. And even when they get a price, they’re probably gonna get their all on for price. They’re probably not gonna hear they can do it different ways. They’re not gonna hear all this stuff. So what do they want to hear? They want to hear that there’s a way for them to get everything they want for a way better deal. And you have a way to show them that, that’s what the text is about in so many words. But I’m not gonna tell you what it is you gotta talk to me. I’ve got an idea about how I can get you exactly what you want, but I might be able to save you a lot of time. I’m gonna call you number’s this.

So if there’s no hook, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re in the right spot though with what you’re thinking. Always start with any type of specific, any type of information that’s specific to that person, then they know it’s real.

Lisa: Right?

Bart: If it’s, the more generic it is, the more people are like, ah, this is like a machine texting me. You know what I mean? But the more specific it is to them, they know, hey, this is personalized they actually did look at the evaluation.

Lisa: Right that’s what I want them to know.

Bart: Exactly. So your head’s in the right spot. That’s out of the gate, but you have to have a hook. And they gotta be like, it’s, it’s gotta be something that stops them. Like, hmm, huh. And they probably won’t even respond, you know what I mean? They might not even respond. It might take another like little text, boom, boom, boom, boom and then you get them. The second you get them, hit them.

Leslie: Got it.

Bart: Hit them. Okay.

Lisa: Mm-Hmm.

Bart: You guys have any other questions in regards to that? The next power session’s actually all about this, isn’t it? Yeah.

Leslie: Yeah.

Bart: On the third it’s all about lead management. So we’ll be going through this kind of thing in depth, um, for the whole day. So it’s a big, big, big topic. And I wanna make sure, like, guys, you have to understand you’re the treatment coordinators. You guys are the quarterbacks here. You’re the quarterback of the sales process. So you have to, it’s your job to encourage and help and mentor the patient advocate. That’s your, that’s in your job description and it’s also in your financial wellbeing, right? Because if you don’t have any consultations, you can’t do your job. Right?

Leslie: Yeah.

Bart: So you have to help that person and you have to be in tune and understand what the numbers are gonna be and start looking to the future. And then all of these things that we’re talking about, you’ll know if it’s necessary, right? So if you look at, hey, you’re not getting consultations and they say, well, I’m not getting leads, then why go through any of this if the leads aren’t there and you’ve addressed the leads? Call your account manager. “Yo, what’s going on?”

Right? You need to make, you need to start making it rain. We need more leads, right? Leads come in still no consultations then you look at it. Okay, what kind of leads are we getting? Like you said, alright, most of them are the evaluation leads right now so with these type of leads, let me see how you’re responding in terms of text messages. Let’s see what we can do to help out the engagement. I guarantee you they’re gonna say, I call everyone and no one answers the phone. No kidding. ’cause it’s not a lead like that. They’re not asking to talk to you. They’re not supposed to answer the phone. They’re supposed to get information in regards to price. Now you have to get them to want to talk. Make sense? So most of the time with the leads, it’s a simple, it’s a, it’s a simple matter of not understanding what kind of lead it is and not having a clear strategy in terms of how to approach it.

But that’s what you do. Show them, get in there. You know what I mean? And it’s like, hey, they engage with you. Say, hey, pick up the phone. “Hey, I’m gonna call you. Here’s the number.” Boom. Pick up the phone, call them. Well God, but I just said I have an idea and I don’t have an idea. Don’t worry about the idea. The idea will come to me when I need the idea. First goal is I gotta get them on the phone. That’s[?] the best idea in the world, if they never pick up the phone, that idea doesn’t matter, right? So it’s like one step at a time here, get them engaged, and then you immediately connect. Build the relationship and go through the progression. Go through the progression, that’s pacing and leading. And then guys, the cool thing is the job actually gets fun. It’s fun. It’s not fun to make 200 phone calls, three people answer. It’s misery. Misery. You’re actually surprised when they do answer and when they do answer, you’re so surprised you screw up the call anyways, right?

Lisa: [laugh]

Bart: Oh, oh, oh my god, you answered, miserable. So if you guys do, do all of you have a two week or a four week forecast that you guys monitor? Do you guys have that?

Emma: No.

Bart: Oh crap. All right. I’m gonna send it out. I’m gonna send one out that you guys can use. And this needs to be like part of your morning huddle. The only thing that’s on that forecast, you’re forecasting production, right? That you’ve sold for that day. So, hey, if our goal 20 grand a day over the next four weeks, we got 20 grand a day, at least booked out two weeks. And you also have for those days the number of new patient consultations that are booked and the number of openings. You have that for every single day that you work, right? That way, as you’re working, if you guys sell a case and you’re looking at the next four weeks and the forecast’s looking pretty strong, but in four days you have a day where there’s only, let’s say $6,000 in production, you’re gonna try to push the patient to do it that day.

Makes sense? Because once the day’s gone, you can’t get the production back. It’s over. It’s over. Once a month’s gone, you can’t go backwards. So when doctors are on vacation stuff, they have short months you have to schedule and be super efficient with the schedule. And you have to know how many new patient openings you have. And we’ve gotta be on the same page with the patient advocate in terms of working with some urgency if we’re not where we need to be, right? If that forecast, if we’re not booked out, at least for the week, like this week, we need to be loaded. If we’re not loaded, like me and you are both getting to work here, you know what I’m saying? Like if I’m the treatment coordinator, okay, me and you are both doing this. ’cause if I don’t have anybody to see my, the very next thing that I can do that will help the practice more than anything is jump on the leads. Start text messaging, try to engage them and try to get butts in the seats to sell. There’s no sense in sitting there.

Leslie: Mm-Hmm.

Bart: So I’ll send out a template for the two week and a four week forecast for you. Okay? Fill that thing out. And that’s like your Bible. If you guys don’t have it, it’s like a salesperson not understanding their pipeline. No salesperson would ever not have a pipeline. I mean, no halfway decent one. The bombs don’t have a pipeline ’cause they can’t sell anything anyways. But anybody is halfway decent in sales, they’re gonna know what their pipeline is, how many they need to close to hit their goal. And if they have enough appointments, if they don’t have enough appointments to hit their quota, what are they gonna do? Immediately they start prospecting. Nothing else matters. I can’t hit it with what I have so I gotta hit the streets. So I’m prospect, prospect, prospect, prospect. Same thing with you guys, except it’s a two-[inaudible] team. You have somebody doing the prospecting. You guys are the closers but if you don’t talk and you don’t have the same numbers, if one person messes up, it messes up the other person.

Leslie: Yeah.

Bart: Cool.

Leslie: Cool.

Bart: Alright. Y’all have any other questions? Was that helpful?

Lisa: Yes.

Bart: Okay, cool. Get in, get into a meeting with a patient advocate. Make sure you understand those three different types of leads. And, um, you know, hey, if you don’t have your, the, the right number of consultations, address it before the month’s over. Please look, look in the future and then jump all over it with a, with a lot of urgency. You need help from us, call in, talk to TCI trainer, your account manager, um, and let’s, let’s make sure that you guys are in a position, you know, to hit the, to hit the goals that you have for the office. Okay? And I hope that if you guys haven’t signed up yet for the course in December in Miami, it’s gonna be crazy. Cora’s like renting out [inaudible] He is trying to get Shaquille O’Neal there for a dj. He’s lost his mind guys. Cora has completely lost his mind.

Leslie: [laugh]

Bart: Completely. No, but we’ve got some really, really, really good speakers. Um, and we still, I save like the, the first maybe 15 rows just specifically for TCI members. So it’s the annual meeting and it’s for you guys. And some of you guys I’m gonna be bringing up on stage. Those of you that have been certified through level two, I’m gonna be bringing you guys up on stage and, and recognizing you. It’s gonna be a really, really awesome event. So if your doctor’s like, “Oh, well I can’t come”, be like, “I don’t care if you go or not, dude, you can send me, I’m going Miami fountain Blue, I’m in.” Right? Make them send you guys, but jump on it if you don’t have your tickets, get them. Um, and let me know if there’s anything else we can do for you guys. Okay.

Leslie: Alrighty.

Stephany: I have a question.

Leslie: Thank you.

Bart: I have a question, hit me.

Stephany: Yes. So we’re just, now, we just launched the marketing. We would just went live on our marketing last week and we already started getting all of our leads. So right now we have like 20, but since we’re just starting, what do you recommend for us to put our consults? Like should our treatment coordinator have her own column? Should we be putting these consults with like, working it into the doctor’s schedule? ’cause he still has a lot of restorative on the books. So we’re trying to figure out what’s the best way to get these leads scheduled ’cause we don’t wanna put them out three to four weeks ’cause that’s kind of where we’re at.

Bart: You gotta block it, right? So you, you have to block the schedule. So you might say, all right, look, what are we gonna go with? Let’s go with, for the direct to public full arch leads, we’re gonna do consults on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Okay? We’re gonna do them from two to 4:30. Two to 4:30, and we’re blocking 10 minute doctor time and we’re gonna double book everybody. And that’s just how we’re gonna start out. We’re gonna try to open up only two days for it. Super efficient, 90 minute, right? Or, two hour blocks, but it’s every, every 10 minutes and jam them in there. That way you don’t have, like if the doctor has, let’s say a, a comprehensive exam that somebody’s coming in and they’re paying for, it’s a big restorative case, you don’t wanna like line those up to where they’re running around like a chicken with their head cut off.

Ideally you have all these blocked, just like you block their surgery times, they would prefer to do the surgeries in the morning so you have those surgical times blocked so that you, you’re not, their schedule isn’t full with crowns and you guys can’t fit in a full arch, so you block the surgeries. Um, I recommend doing the same thing with these, figure out at least two days a week or three days a week where you can block an hour to two hours and it’s 10 minute blocks for the doctor. 20 minutes for you guys. Make sense?

Stephany: Yeah. Makes sense. Thank you.

Bart: All right. Okay guys, go get them and I’ll see y’all at the, at the next power session or the next call or hopefully in, uh, in December. Okay?

Leslie: All right. Bye.

Bart: All right, bye-bye.

Veronica Makowski: Thank you. Bye.

Bart: Thank you. Bye-Bye.

Gretel: Thank you.

Bart: Thank you.

Speaker 12: Thank you.

[END]