Increasing Treatment Acceptance!

Gary Takacs: Welcome to another episode of The Thriving Dentist Show. I’m Gary Takacs, your podcast founder and co-host. We have a great episode for you today. The title of this episode is “Increasing Treatment Acceptance!” This is something that we’ve had many emails from our listeners, requesting more information on things they can do to increase treatment acceptance. So we thought it’d be useful to turn this into a podcast episode today.

Hey, before we get into that podcast episode, two quick announcements to make. If you’re a regular listener to The Thriving Dentist Show, that periodically we do thriving dentist events, virtual events, we do those, throughout the year. Some of them are webinars, some of them are panel discussions. Sometimes we just bring on guests, to have a conversation with that we think you might benefit from.

Gary Takacs: Those all fall under our category of thriving dentist events, and those are all virtual events. If you’d like to find out when the next one is, simply go to thrivingdentists.com/events . When you go to that link, what you will find is our next event. Those are all offered at no tuition for you. We do that as a courtesy for you in appreciation for your listenership. So if you wanna get more information to help you develop a thriving practice, those events are a great place to start. And they certainly are budget friendly. Whenever possible, we offer CE credits for you. For example, if we do a three hour panel discussion, you’ll get three hours of CE, at no cost. So, again, go visit thrivingdentists.com/events , and be sure to register. You do have to register, although there’s no tuition, you do need to register. So, visit that page frequently and come join us. 

Gary Takacs: The second announcement that I have is I have a returning guest, of course, who you’ll recognize, my co-host, Naren Arulrajah. And he’s gonna give you a Thriving Dentist marketing tip today. And the title of this tip is “From Clicks to Calls: How to Turn Website Visitors Into Real Patients”, lots of cool actionable information here from that marketing tip from Naren Arulrajah.

Naren Arulrajah: From clicks to calls, how to turn website visitors into real patients. That’s a question that I get a lot of from many of you who ride into the Thriving Dentist Show. 

Hello, everyone. I’m Naren the founder of Ekwa Marketing and the co-host of the Thriving Dentist Podcast. And my marketing tip is all about how to convert clicks to calls. This is a really important question because I think of marketing as a funnel. What is marketing helping you? Ideal patients find you, like you goes, call you and then choose you? So, in that funnel, finding you means they show up. You show up on Google search for a hundred plus keywords and phrases near the top of search results. And we all know those who dominate Google search have an unfair advantage. They are getting 95% of the pre-traffic if you are in the, if you are ranking for a hundred or more keywords versus everybody else, they’re left with PPO plans or a lot more expensive Google ads, which can be 10 times as expensive in some cases.

Naren Arulrajah: So, people are finding you great, and some of them end up on your website. Now, when they go to your website, are you making it easy for them to do business with you? For example, is your website optimized for mobile? Does it load fast enough? Is it easy to read? And notice what I want to notice when I’m looking for, let’s say implants. I type in implants and I don’t go to the implants page and I don’t see cases, and I don’t see a, click here to, call now button. I’m going to lose you. like, you make me work hard and it doesn’t have the right information. So two things happen. One is Google notices that a lot of the people it’s sending to your website are not calling you or not doing anything else. So they will stop sending you people.

Naren Arulrajah: So that means you will stop showing up on Google search results. The second thing that’ll happen is even if you do show up, many of these people are not calling. So I’ll give you some tips, may take some notes. 

One is to make sure your website is optimized for mobile. It’s fast, it works on different devices. The user interface changes depending on the device. Make sure it’s, mobile optimization is done. 

Two, make sure the people can easily contact you. I know one of the mistakes a lot of practice owners are doing is to add a book now button. And the challenge is unlike, in our hair salon appointment, where you don’t need to ask a lot of information as a dental practice, you have to get a lot of information. They don’t know you like you or trust you.

Naren Arulrajah: When you ask them to kind of send, share so much private information before they can book, you are going to lose a lot of people. And we are noticing even like 70, 80% of the people are turned off by these forms. So don’t make that mistake. Use your book now button with existing patients, but don’t let Google Maps directly. Send them to this book now button that anybody would take 10, 15, 20 minutes to fill when they don’t have a relationship with you. And then the next piece, that doesn’t work. As the phone infrastructure itself, a lot of practices are not doing call tracking, so they have no idea how well they’re booking or not booking appointments. I know sometimes the thinking is ignorance is bliss. But if you want your practice to grow, if you want to get more ideal new patients, you can’t do that.

Naren Arulrajah: So we, as part of our service, without charging anything extra, make sure every call is tracked and we provide insights. How many calls are being missed? How many calls are being booked? So you wanna make sure every part of this is tight. And also even things like having before and after pictures. Like if I go to your implants page, gimme reasons to call your office. Like, gimme some examples of work you have done. Have a video that welcomes me to your implant page. Talk about in 30 seconds to 60 seconds why I should be calling your office versus somebody else. The more down to earth you are, the most simple language you use, the better off you’re gonna be. And these are some of the other things that we help our clients with. So my question to you is, are you doing everything to turn clicks to calls? If you are not, what are your gaps? If you want to know, book a marketing strategy meeting ekwa.com/td , and we will do deep research and tell you some of the things you can improve. And it’s our gift to you at ekwa.com/td .

Naren Arulrajah: Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Thriving Dentist Show. This is Naren. Hope you enjoyed that tip that I shared with you from clicks to calls, how to turn website visitors into real patients. Like anything else in life, this is more of a science than an art. So there is a method to the madness. Hopefully you learn something from the tip. If you have further questions or if you want us to look at your website and see if you are doing a good job in converting visitors into patients, book a marketing strategy meeting, the link is ekwa.com/td  For Thriving Dentist ekwa.com/td . You will have our team spend six hours researching your practice, your competition. They’ll give you a report card, how are you doing versus your competition when it comes to attracting the right patients, including high value patients. How are you doing in terms of convincing them?

Naren Arulrajah: So we’ll give you the report card and we’ll give you an action plan depending on what your strengths and weaknesses are, so that way where you stand and what to do. ekwa.com/td . 

Gary, today’s episode is a really important episode, and the title is “Increasing Treatment Acceptance”. And it’s one of the most important questions that our mutual clients bring up. And I’ll tell you where the frustration comes from. They present ideal dentistry, and if they don’t know exactly how to do it the right way, they end up with 10%, 15% of them booking, right? And they give up. They’re like, okay, this is not working for me. So they stop even trying to present ideal dentistry. Part of this problem is exacerbated, I know we’ll touch on some of this, Gary as we go along, if your practice is insurance dependent.

Naren Arulrajah: What by that is a lot of insurance patients, the first question from their mouth is it covered? If it’s not covered, they don’t even listen. So doctors stop presenting ideal dentistry, and they start just, keeping people patched up, so to speak. And they don’t really love the work they do. They don’t really enjoy it. The team kind of gets resigned and creates this zombie practice. I know that’s not our listeners. So today’s topic about increasing treatment acceptance is to hit, go after that and really transform your practice to do dentistry. You love to do the kind of thing that makes you want to jump out of bed and come to work, do the kind of things that makes you want to continue learning and continue getting better. And of course, this means you are also making more money, right? Of course, an implantation pays you a lot more than a patient who has a toothache and he’s only there just to get the toothache fixed. So it’s a totally different ballgame. So now you have more money to invest in technology to pay you people, even a track, better people. So creates a cascading effect when you master treatment acceptance. Gary, any initial remarks? You have been doing this for 46 years. I have been helping dentists for 19 years. So what have you seen?

Gary Takacs: Well, Naren, this is one of the most common questions I get, when I’m doing in-person courses. When I’m doing courses today, I’ll, I’ll, I usually open it up at some point for q and a, and the most common question I get are, give me some tips that I can use to increase case acceptance. So it’s somewhat of a universal challenge, and it’s something that all dentists struggle with until they sort of learn some ways that will set yourself up for success. So this will be a fun episode to sort of unpack and help our listeners on a day-to-day basis, improve case acceptance, help our patients achieve great oral health, and allow you to do more of the kind of dentistry you like to do. so I’m excited about this episode for sure.

Naren Arulrajah: Awesome. I agree. I think this is perhaps the number one question that dentists are, I don’t know if it is the number one, perhaps the number one is how do I get more new patients, but perhaps the number two, anyways, let’s jump in. Gary, why do most dentists struggle with treatment plan conversion?

Gary Takacs: Well, Naren, you gave a sneak preview in your opening remarks. And let me frame it. The data says that, approximately 90% of practicing dentists in the US have insurance-based practices one way or another. insurance based practices of only less than 10%. And the number’s a little bit elusive. It’s not, it’s not well published, but something less than 10%, are insurance independent, meaning that they’re a fee from service practice. And as you indicated in the opening remarks, the truth is, you can get a good patient from Delta Dental, from United Concordia, through Blue Cross Blue Shield. You could get a good patient. And I believe that every one of our listeners will nod their head and say, yeah, they can think of a particular patient who’s a good patient that came in, but many of ’em arrive with baggage.

Gary Takacs: And the baggage that they arrive with is an insurance mindset. Think that’s how they found you. They found you because you’re on their insurance, you take their insurance. And when you present dentistry, then the first question as you indicated in your opening remarks is this covered by my insurance? and when it’s something that isn’t covered, and we say, no, unfortunately, your insurance was only meant to cover the most basic things, this is not basic, then they shut down. They’re, they’re only interested in what’s covered for example, Naren, we’ve talked a lot. You and I have talked a lot about helping practices, really developing a world class al therapy department in their, in their hygiene department, really helping patients. They have an infection in their gums, take care of that infection, and improve their overall health.

Gary Takacs: But so often when a dentist or hygienist will do an IPE, an initial para exam, and they’ll do a probing, and measuring bleeding points and pocket depths, that’s what they’re doing in an IPE. They’re, they’re measuring, on six points of each tooth. They’re, they’re measuring the probing depths and they’re measuring the number of times that they see bleeding points. And when their results show that the patient has an infection, and the doctor and the hygienist recommend conservative peritol therapy, their question from the patient is that it is covered by my insurance? And when we say, no, unfortunately, it’s, it’s not covered by your insurance, then oftentimes the patient will say, oh, I only want the regular cleaning, not that fancy cleaning. Those are their words and not our words. We don’t use those words, but those are the words that they would use.

Gary Takacs: And so I believe that the reason why most dentists struggle with treatment plan, acceptance, case acceptance, is because of the mindset of the patient that is there. Because all they want is what’s covered by their insurance. And as soon as you step away from that, as soon as you reduce your insurance dependence, there becomes a lot more interest in health rather than whether a service is covered by their insurance or not. I’m not saying that’s an easy transition, but it sure does change the conversation right from the beginning. Imagine there, if you’re attracting a patient that is interested in correcting, say, crowded teeth or spaces in their teeth, and they’re interested in Invisalign or aligner therapy, maybe they’re an adult and they don’t wanna have braces in the traditional sense. Now that patient might ask, is that covered by my insurance? Can you imagine a patient asking, Hey, is that Invisalign thing covered by my insurance?

Naren Arulrajah: Absolutely, Gary, they absolutely do that. 

Gary Takacs: That’s a question. But when we say oftentimes, by the way, there’s a lifetime, a single lifetime, ortho benefit, and oftentimes with Invisalign, that’s a benefit that’s already been met earlier in their life, when they, when they wore braces. and so when we tell ’em, no, unfortunately, that’s not gonna be covered by your, by your insurance, they still want it. they still want what it is that you have. and very often we can talk to ’em about the benefits of that treatment, and all of a sudden the conversation goes to the benefits of treatment instead of whether it’s covered or not by their insurance.

Naren Arulrajah: It’s just, yeah,

Gary Takacs: I think transformational.

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah. I think mindset is everything, right? So, you have to, like, I know one of the mindsets I learn from you, Gary, watching you coach some of our mutual clients, is, think of the patient as your family member and talk to them as if you would talk to your family member. In other words, with your family member, you’re not gonna provide the second or the third best choice. You’re gonna provide ideal dentistry every single time, because that’s what you went to school for. That’s what you committed to, right? Doing your very best every single day. But in an insurance environment, sometimes people just say, oh, why am I wasting my breath? So, I know we, I want you to kind of touch on like, how do you maintain that carry? Like, how do you maintain that? This is who I am, this is how I think about dentistry, and this is how I talk about dentistry.

Gary Takacs: Well, you stay on point, , you literally stay on point. And for example, I love your analogy of, hey, if it was my family member, and of course that can be customized. Let’s say it’s a younger dentist, maybe in their early thirties, right? your patient is, in their late fifties or 60, you could use the example, let’s say the patient’s, a female patient, you could say, if my mother had the same condition that you have, this is what I do for her. Mm-hmm . And again, you can adapt to that. If the patient’s younger, you might say, if my sister had the same condition that you have, right? This is what I would do for her. Right? And I’d like to do the same for you. And I believe that statement just tho those simple statements, this is what I do for my sister, and I’d like to do the same for you. That starts to change the nature of the conversation instead of it being a commodity, right? It ends up being, wow. so you would treat me like you would treat a family member, and that’s not often said by the patient, but that’s what’s going through their head. And I believe that when the patient starts to think that way, all of a sudden, it really does shift instead of, what does my insurance pay? How can you help me be as healthy as possible?

Naren Arulrajah: Right? Right.

Gary Takacs: And it changes the whole nature of the, of case acceptance and how our patients interact with us. and you just, you just speak the truth. If my father had the same condition that you have in your mouth, this is what I do for my dad. Right? I’d like to do the same for you. I’d like to, I know it sounds kind of corny, but we think of our patients as our patient family, right? You’re a partner, welcome to our patient family, right? By the way, you better be able to back that up.

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah. You have to really believe it. You can’t just pick it. You have to really believe that you will do for that patient what you would do for your mom or your sister, or your, and

Gary Takacs: Our team members need to demonstrate that level of interaction with patients. Mm-hmm . If we’re interacting like it’s a transaction, then it’s an inconsistent message that we’re delivering. Exactly. We wanna, we wanna back that up. And I believe that will be a resonant cord with any of our listeners, in terms of being relationship driven. and that when you show that, then it, the message rings true, to the patient. And so how do you change that? You change that by staying on point. You keep using these types of conversations, until it becomes second nature for you.

Naren Arulrajah: Thank you, Gary. I appreciate it. Let me go to my next question. Can you provide some benchmarks for treatment plan acceptance for our listeners? And I know in my introductory remarks, I said this one particular doctor that I was thinking about, was getting around 10 to 15%, and he gave up, he stopped presenting ideal dentistry. So what is a, what is the percentage where you’re like, oh, what, he’s performing at an A level?

Gary Takacs: Yeah. So our listeners will know that this is my 46th year in dentistry. I’ve had the privilege of, actually coaching, over 1800 practices over that time period. And one of the things I started doing, earlier in my career was trying to benchmark, treatment, success treatment, acceptance, success. because doctors started asking me, Hey, what’s good? and honestly, early on my question was, I don’t know , I don’t know what’s good. More treatment acceptances are good, right? But they wanted better answers than that. So I started to study it. And it does depend on what category of treatment plan we’re presenting. Let me break it down into three categories for emergency dentistry. When someone’s in pain and they’re in your office, I’m gonna be bold on this one. I wouldn’t accept anything less than a hundred percent case acceptance.

Gary Takacs: And you can simply say, Naren, I’m really sorry you’re experiencing that toothache on the upper left. we, I’m, I’m sorry you’re coming in today for that condition. However, the great news is we’re gonna get you out of pain. Are you interested in getting out of pain? What’s a patient gonna say 100% of the time? Yes. Here’s what we would do to get you out of pain. And if you can do that today, whenever possible, and I know that’s not always possible, sometimes we have to do palliative treatment because of your schedule. Maybe you worked in an emergency and you, but you can get them out of pain through some palliative care whenever possible. If we could do definitive treatment, then our case acceptance should be a hundred percent on that. Can we agree on that, Naren?

Naren Arulrajah: I agree, Gary. if I’m in pain and you really can’t convince me to continue with whatever I came there for, you need to, that’s not a good, you know, anything less. It’s not acceptable.

Gary Takacs: Yeah. We need to work on that. Yeah. Yeah. So then, so the second level would be for asymptomatic general dentistry. So these would be all the things that we think of as general dentistry, and there’s a whole variety of treatments that would fall under the category of general dentistry. But I’m adding a qualifier. I’m calling it asymptomatic. It doesn’t hurt because it hurts, it’s then an emergency. Mm-hmm . it’s urgent. But if it doesn’t, or I, and the, maybe the most common things that we still see, this is changing over time because of materials, but even today, one of the most common things we say are, see are old amalgam fillings that were placed many years ago that are long past their expiration date. They’re, you can see they’re failing by visual inspection, by radiographic inspection, by photographic inspection, by looking at scans. They’re clearly failing. But guess what, Naren? They don’t hurt. Right? If it hurt,

Naren Arulrajah: What about early gum disease?

Gary Takacs: Well, I would call that also asymptomatic as well.

Naren Arulrajah: ’cause the patients don’t really feel it. They don’t know, they aren’t measuring the pocket depth and stuff. So

Gary Takacs: We’re looking at 70% of treatment exempt is for say, 70% or above, and it certainly could be above that 70% or above. Right? Now let’s go to, what I’m gonna call a variety of different topics for the third level. Some would call it comprehensive care. Some would call it ideal care. Some would call it elective. I don’t like to use the word elective when we’re talking to patients, because elective means I don’t need it. Yeah. So I would use terms like ideal, comprehensive care, thorough, complete care, full health, full health dentistry, those kinds of terms. Right? And initially, right away, when you’re presenting comprehensive care, I’m gonna use a benchmark that is somewhere between 30 and 40%, 30 initially. Now, over time, I would like that to be more like 70% over time, but not every patient is initially ready to hear the message.

Gary Takacs: But 30, 40% of the time, I believe if we present it properly, they are ready. And by the way, I have a method of tracking that. Part of it was from statistics. I studied with really exceptional practices, world class practices, and a Thriving Dentist by every definition. And I looked at their case acceptance initially, when you present a comprehensive treatment plan, and these world class practices were typically in the 30, 40, 30 to 40% right away. But I use another analogy. Some of you will know that I grew up in a baseball family, and appreciate baseball and still appreciate baseball today. And if you follow major league baseball, if a baseball player, major league baseball player has a lifetime batting average in the three hundreds, say somewhere between 300 and 400, and that was their lifetime batting average.

Gary Takacs: the sport actually has a name for that type of player. What do they call ’em there? What would they call someone that has a batting average, between 300 and 400%. Hall of Famer. Hall of Famer. Yes. Well, Naren, I’d like to think that our listeners are all Hall of Famers. I’d like to think that, and so I’d like your case acceptance to be at that 30 to 40% rate. By the way, if you have a banning average between 300 and 400, it means you’ve got a hit between 30 and 40% of the time. There. There you go. So those are the three benchmarks. Again, I’ll recap urgent dentistry, necessary dentistry, I’d like it to be a hundred percent. Secondly, I would say asymptomatic general dentistry, 70% or above. And it certainly could be above that, above 70%.

Gary Takacs: And then for ideal care, comprehensive care, whole health dentistry, helping you become as healthy as possible, all those kinds of terms. Initially 30 to 40%, but over time, if they’re not ready to accept treatment right now, let’s make sure we have them scheduled in hygiene, because hygiene can end up being your holding pattern for these patients until they’re ready. Because an element of case acceptance in ideal dentistry is timing, and you don’t have control over time. But an element of timing is outside of our control. For example, maybe you have a female patient in her mid forties, mid to late forties that would love to improve her smile, but she’s got two kids in college right now and or their tuition is poor, paying for those college tuition. So now we wanna make sure we see her in hygiene, partly to keep her teeth as healthy as possible, but then to allow us to periodically check in with her and see if she’s ready to have that smile done.

Gary Takacs: And so that timing aspect is something that is outside of our control, but we can frame it by keeping it involved in hygiene so that we have a chance to revisit that periodically in our client base. nein, and this will relate to a marketing question that comes in a little bit later in this episode, but in the thriving client base, we track this facing symptoms, and we found that for what we call high value dentistry. things like placing, restoring implants, cosmetic dentistry, adult orthodontics, diagnosing, obstructive sleep apnea and treating it with a dental solution complex full mouth restorative dentistry in our client base 60, this goes in immediately from 2025. So in the most recent year, we have history, going back to 2025, 60% of that high value dentistry came out of hygiene when the doctor came in to do a hygiene exam. And now they have been in practice, and now the timing is right to do this. 60%, 40% of it came from new patients that were seeking out that type of service because of the marketing to let them know that the practice does this. We’re gonna talk more about that later. 40% came from new patients seeking you out because you’d offered Invisalign, because you offered cosmetic dentistry. Right? And then 60% came out of hygiene because now we were ready. Now they were ready, and we were there for them.

Naren Arulrajah: Absolutely. Gary, I love those numbers and thank you for sharing that with us. What is the single biggest mistake you see in how dentists present cases? I mean, I’m referring primarily to ideal dentistry. not necessarily an emergency, but Right. You know, in this case, ideal. So, what are the mistakes people are making?

Gary Takacs: Well, and I’m glad, I’m glad you changed that word to plural mistakes, right? So I’m gonna cover the biggest mistakes that I see, and I’ll number ’em, but they’re not numbered importance. but one of the mistakes that dentists make is they present dentistry like they learned in dental school. Every single dental school, there are 82 dental SC schools now in the United States as of the time we’re recording this. And by the way, there’s more that are coming along. Every single dental school teaches it this way to identify a problem, present a solution, and I’m not sure that there is a more effective way to handle that. For dental students, identify a problem, present a solution, identify a problem presented solution. However, as you expand your skillset, and you are able to provide a lot more than just urgent dentistry, the problem with staying with that method, identifying a problem, presenting a solution, there’s a gap in the middle that you have to bridge. And that’s that the patient understands the problem. Hmm. If you’re presenting a solution to a problem, they don’t perceive they have Naren, that’s a, that’s laying an egg. , .

Gary Takacs: If you’re presenting a solution to a problem that they have no awareness that they have, then, imagine your acceptance in that. So you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta become much more skilled at how to present dentistry, especially move into asymptomatic general dentistry and ideal treatment. So that’s one of them. Another problem is we’re not using the tools that are available. Mm-hmm. Naren, if this was live, I’d ask the audience, I’d start a sentence, and then I’d ask them to complete it. Since you’re the only live audience I have, as we’re recording this, I’m gonna make you my audience. Is that okay? Absolutely. I’m gonna start a sentence and you need to complete it. Fair enough, fair enough. I have a hundred percent confidence in you Naren. Here’s the sentence. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Gary Takacs: A thousand words. I knew you’d get it.. Let’s start taking photos, right? and showing patients don’t see their teeth the way we see ’em, right? If they did, your case acceptance would go up radically, right? How do people see their teeth? They see in a foamy reflection in the mirror. Yes. Hopefully twice a day in the evening, in the morning, but they’re not really seeing their teeth. Or maybe in vacation photos, right? That a family member took from 30 feet away in front of the giant Sequoia or whatever. they don’t see it like this. So let’s borrow a chapter from Dr. Frank Spear and take six photos for patient education. those six photos are, a head and shoulder shot with a natural smile. The second one is a closeup retracted view where the patient holds the retractor, and we’re resuming in.

Gary Takacs: So it’s middle of nose to middle of chin on the vertical axis, and on the horizontal axis, it’s middle of cheeks, and it’s a closeup. Ask the patient to say E and open their mouth. So there’s about three quarters of an inch between the incisal edges of their upper and lower teeth. Then the third and fourth photos we borrow from our frenzy orthodontist, we take an upper occlusal view and a lower occlusal view using the hourglass shaped mouth mirror. And then the fifth and sixth photos are a right buccal corridor photo and a left buccal corridor where the patient holds the retractor, and you simply point the camera down of the buccal corridor, and we’re gonna do those with digital photos. and we’re now gonna show those on a tablet and let the patient look through those photos, and all of a sudden they’re gonna see their teeth in a way they’ve never seen before.

Gary Takacs: I also am a fan of using intraoral cameras. Most offices have intraoral cameras, but what’s happened there with scanners and everything else these days, intraoral photos are just gathering dust in most dental, intraoral cameras, or mostly gathering dust and dental offices. They’re not usable, right? So dust them off and start using those final photos. Your hygienist can take any area that looks like a concern, have your hi, grab a quick photo, and then when you come in to do the hygiene exam, you can have that photo up on the screen and speak to it. Another example is that you haven’t visually credentialed yourself. Now, what does that mean, Naren? You, so, the another reason that, mistakes that the dentists make, they haven’t visually credentialed. They have the credentials, right? Their names, but it isn’t, it’s not, it’s not on their website.

Gary Takacs: they don’t, they don’t have the credentials on their website. They don’t speak to the cred. maybe you are accredited member of the American Academy of Cosmic District, or maybe more commonly, although it’s still kind of rarefied air. Maybe you have a fellowship in the Academy of General Dentistry. Maybe you have a mastership in the Academy of General Dentistry. And another way you can credential yourself is with wonderful after photos of your patients in your office, large format photos. I’m not talking about the, just having ’em in a digital photo album, but large format, two foot by three foot after photos, full face after photos. And one of the things we can say to your patients is, Hey, all of the photos we have, usually that goes in the back area of the office, not necessarily in the reception area.

Gary Takacs: You don’t wanna, beat ’em over the head with smiles. But we do want to let them know what you can do. And imagine you have all these wonderful photos, in the hallways and in treatment rooms, and one of your team members can say, Hey, Linda, all of the photos you see in the back area of our office, all of the photos are actual patients. We’ve helped have the smile of their dreams with things like dental implants, cosmetic dentistry, adult orthodontics, and other services. And now it goes on their radar screen. Now they know what you do. So start credentialing yourself visually. Naren, how many times has Equi looked at a website and there hasn’t been any visual credentialing of what the doctor does?

Naren Arulrajah: I agree, Gary. I think, one of the things we noticed is, one way to go even above credentialing is to highlight any awards you won. So we ran an experiment where, same practice, amazing as CEO ranking for a hundred plus keywords. We just, they won an award and we just highlighted that award on the key pages, like the homepage, the above the Dr. Page, and the conversion rate, meaning the number of patients booking appointments went up by like 70%. and I think we trust people who are credentialed. We trust people who are seen as experts and awards are one way to show them that you are above the rest of them. Of course, you’re not directly saying it, but the award is saying it. And it doesn’t matter what the award is, it’s just the fact that you want something, you are organized by somebody, I think goes a long way.

Naren Arulrajah: So I think this, these are all subconscious things, like one of the things we do is Doctors’ Choice Awards, where doctors review other doctors. And if you get the most number of reviews in your city from other doctors, you get the Doctors’ Choice Award. So, like highlighting that sometimes I’ve seen people have, these pluck PL cards where they show some of these awards that the doctors have won. And when people are sitting there and thinking about stuff, and they are making a decision, these things make an influence them in wanting to go say yes to the doctor. Because if somebody who’s an expert is saying, I need this, more than likely I need it. And I know you also talk about, the hygienist plays a key role, right? So doctors recommend something and the patient waits for their doctor to leave the room, and they ask the hygienist, what do you think? And the way the hygienist responds to that question, you know, with conviction, but sincerity either tips the balance or not, because Doctor, it’s kind of like, here,

Gary Takacs: Here’s a great way for your hygienist to respond to that. Yeah. Again, I’m gonna assume this is true. So if it’s not working on it, , but, I’m gonna assume this is true, I’d like your hygienist to say, one of the things I love about working here is our doctor would never recommend anything to you that wasn’t in your best interest. Mm-hmm . And what does that say to the patient?

Naren Arulrajah: Complete confidence. The trust.

Gary Takacs: Yeah. yeah. and, a very strong recommendation from the highest, right? Yeah.

Naren Arulrajah: Thank you, Gary. you gave a lot of tips, Gary, on the mistakes people make. and I think giving up is another mistake, right? I know we have seen this, right? People just like you said, they’re not using the right tools. They’re not using pictures and, internal cameras and things like that, and they

Gary Takacs: Become transactional because they give up,

Naren Arulrajah: Right? Right. And then they become transactional.

Gary Takacs: You might as well then just sign up for every plan on the planet, right. And accept the consequences. Right?

Naren Arulrajah: Right.

Gary Takacs: But that’s not our listeners.

Naren Arulrajah: Right. Let’s kind of switch gears a little bit. And my next question, Gary, is what are some of the other factors that you think people can do to increase case acceptance? Again, I’m talking about ideal dentistry.

Gary Takacs: Well, let me add to some of the things I’ve said earlier. I’ll add some new things. Many offices do not have a consultation. a dedicated space where you can sit down away from the clinical area and close the door and have a private discussion with patients about treatment. They don’t have a consultation room. and I know some of you have limitations. You don’t have room for one, but I’m gonna tell you that having a consultation room will increase your case acceptance. Because if you’re not in the consultation room, there’s only two options. You’re having the discussion in a treatment room. And the problem with having the con conversation in a treatment room is you’re surrounded by everything that’s comfortable for you, but is that treatment room comfortable for your patient? All the armamentarium? And the answer is no.

Gary Takacs: Many people subconsciously feel fear in the tribe. Plus, we need to be breaking down that room, getting ready for the next patient. So it’s inefficient in your office. The other place, if you’re not having, if you don’t have a consult room and you’re not having the conversation, you’re having the conversation in the treatment room, where’s the other option? The front desk, right? And I have not seen any front desks that are appropriate to have financial discussions. You’re in violation of hipaa if you’re having that conversation. If there’s people in your reception room, you’re having that conversation right there. Are we HIPAA compliant?

Naren Arulrajah: No. Get it because everybody else can hear it, right? And

Gary Takacs: Do we wanna air the, is the patient gonna say, I can’t afford it in front of other people?

Naren Arulrajah: No. Puts them in a really awkward position.

Gary Takacs: Yeah. So I would strongly recommend that you have a consultation. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but a dedicated space where we can close the door and you and your financial coordinator can have private conversations with patients to show you how much this can make a difference. Recently, a client of ours, a thriving dentist, is a practice that’s growing. and, had the ability to expand their practice, they needed more operatories. They added a third dentist that had been traditionally a two doctor practice, and they had the opportunity to add a third dentist that really fit this practice really well. And they had the opportunity to expand. And when they expanded, they involved me in helping them design the space. And one of the suggestions I made was, to, not just have two consultation rooms, so not just one, not just two, but I said, there’s a way we could reorganize this so you could actually have three consultation rooms in your practice.

Gary Takacs: And the doctors looked at me and they said, you’re absolutely right. Mm-hmm . We’ve practiced for years without enough. Let’s make sure we don’t make that mistake as we expand mm-hmm . And these are not big rooms. imagine something there in that say, 10 foot by 10 foot, so we’re not talking about a lot of square footage. However, they had interior windows that allowed light to come in and very pleasant spaces, and that’s how straw, and now it’s been a little while since they’ve completed that remodel. And they say one of the best things we did besides having the right number of operatories, was having the right number of consult rooms, right? So there’s something else that we hadn’t talked about earlier that will increase, case acceptance. And if you have one, and I’m not using it, which we’ve seen many, I’ve seen paper towels and toilet paper stored in consult rooms. There’s a better use for those. And that’s to use that space to talk to our patients. Alright, Naren, I’m gonna switch gears and ask you a question. Is that all right? Yes.

Gary Takacs: Naren, marketing plays a role in treatment plan acceptance. Absolutely. You know, by the time the patient’s sitting in the chair, what should already be in place to set up the conversation for success? So how does marketing fit in? Maybe a better way to ask that question. How does marketing fit in to increase case acceptance?

Naren Arulrajah: Thank you, Gary, you may, you shared a statistic with regards to the thriving dentist clients, and many of them are mutual clients, and you said 60% of case acceptance came from existing patients, especially at the time of the hygiene visit. So in other words, the patient knows about something they need, and they are conscious of it. And then at the right moment at a hygiene visit, they said, yep, let’s do it. Right? And then that’s how they got the

Gary Takacs: But the way, a lot of times the doctor will come in to do the hygiene exam and the patient will turn to the doctor and say, Hey, I’m ready, . and , I’ve seen, I, when I was an in-office consultant, I saw the look of some doctor’s face, it was like they weren’t quite sure what they were ready for , but by the way, that should be gone over in the morning huddle. Yes. I just can say, by the way, Carol, you’re, you’re 10 o’clock, she’s one that we’ve been, had talked to in the past about smile design. Right? And then when you come in and Carol says, I’m ready, what she’s ready for. Exactly.

Naren Arulrajah: So 60% can come from your existing patients if you do it right, following all of Gary’s steps. Now the other 40%, especially for successful practices, do come from new patients. So new patients, they don’t, they don’t have a relationship with you yet. They just came in for that particular need. So let’s say, I’m interested in Invis and I’ve been thinking about fixing those, the crooked teeth. And I’ve been doing some research online, and you keep showing up on Google, and I keep seeing you again and again for anything to do with braces, Invisalign, and go to your website. I see some of the cases. I like what you have done. I saw your video talking about Invisalign. I feel like I can talk to you. You use simple language. You see, you seem to be someone who’s approachable. And then of course, I also check out your reviews and all of these things. And the chances of that patient becoming a new Invisalign patient goes through the roof. Of course, remember I didn’t talk about ads at all, because the minute you use ads, they think you’re not good. That’s why you’re using ads. So it is difficult, it immediately diminishes the credibility and the trust they have in you. 

Gary Takacs: A skepticism. you, go back to, remember when we used to have magazines, Naren, I think there’s some very few niche magazines still left, right? Most of that’s been replaced by digital media. But remember we have magazines and you see an ad you just immediately flip until you get to an article.

Naren Arulrajah: Exactly.

Gary Takacs: And that’s the difference between, organic SEO organic SEO is an article.

Naren Arulrajah: Yes.

Gary Takacs: And a paid ad is the ad. And so when they see, and it says either paid ad or sponsored, it says something, Google, they use different language on it. What is the language you’ve seen used? Yeah,

Naren Arulrajah: I think sponsored paid, like, again, depending on the platform, depending on where you see it, they will have clear language to say that this is paid for. I think that’s partly by law, I think legally you have to disclose it. You can’t just, yeah. So I think, they’re complying, but

Gary Takacs: Legally, you’re, you’re, skeptical. That’s why they only spend if, someone they found you by a paid ad, according to Google, only spends 15 seconds on your web. ’cause they’re immediately looking for a reason to bounce.

Naren Arulrajah: Exactly.

Gary Takacs: Where if they found you organically, you get 90 seconds. Still not a lot of time, but that’s six times the amount of time that an ad gets.

Naren Arulrajah: Exactly. So let’s take an example. So the smile design, right? implants, veneers, Invisalign. So every one of these high value services, and I know Gary talks about not doing everything, but rather the things you are passionate about. Let’s say you are passionate about four of those things you want to research using Google. What are the 30, 40 keywords that people are typing in? Again, you can use Google Analytics to find a dentist who can help them with Invisalign to find a dentist who can do veneer. So when those keywords come, are being typed, are you showing up at the top of Google search results? And I think you wanna show up ideally in the top three spots, but no less than page one, which means the top 10 spots. And the reason is I’ll,

Gary Takacs: I’ll brag on, I’ll brag on you near Ekwa. Cause we have a lot of common clients. I’m very happy to recommend Ekwa as a marketing partner for our clients. And many times on these high value services, even in tough, big urban markets, suburban markets, they’re number one.

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah, absolutely. Get it. Thank you.

Gary Takacs: They’re in the number one position. and that changes a lot of things. exactly. That’s in places like Southern California where it’s very competi Phoenix. My goodness. Phoenix is a very competitive Houston, New York, Chicago. How hard is it to get to be number one for Invisalign in Chicago? , you live there, and you remember Yes.

Naren Arulrajah: There are like 10,000 dentists in Chicago, so it’s not easy. Yeah. so the goal is to show up again and again for all the keywords related to that particular service organically at the very top. That’s number one. Number two, take them to the landing page. So when I click on that link, let’s say Invisalign, Chicago, I click on it and go to the main page, Invisalign page on your website. And that page should have a welcome video, should have before and after anything to give me confidence that I can talk to you and will listen to me like I like you at the same time. Give me confidence. You’re good at what you do. So that’s where the full phase after pictures come in. So that’s the secret, Gary. And unfortunately, 95% of the practices don’t show up at the top of Google.

Naren Arulrajah: They rely on ads, and ads are a lot more expensive. And because of the trust factor, they don’t convert. So it’s like an uphill battle. But organically, if you can make it, if you can show up for 20, 30 keywords, we do that consistently for our clients. I think you will have an unfair advantage. So that’s how you get 40% of the clients from new 40% of your case acceptance from new patients who are just brand new to your practice, but are accepting those high value treatments. If anyone is interested, again, go back to ekwa.com/td  book that marketing strategy meeting. We would love to help.

Gary Takacs: I’ll, if you were interested in improving your treatment plan acceptance, it’s something that is built into our coaching. I would love to help you with this. I do a lot of one-on-one coaching with our doctors, on specific ways to improve their treatment plan acceptance. and imagine that difference that’ll make, in your practice if you start to, increase your case acceptance. And I’ll bring it back full circle. Remember the very beginning I said, one of the biggest mistakes offices make, they bring in people that are only interested in having things that are covered by their insurance. Recently Naren, one of our thriving dentist clients, did some research, within her practice. And this is an office now that has become completely fee for service. When we started, we weren’t sure how far she wanted to go, but she said, I know I wanna reduce insurance, but I’m not sure if I’m gonna go all the way.

Gary Takacs: But we had so much success in terms of, patient retention that she made the decision to go all the way, to fee for service. And again, you don’t have to go all the way, every time you resign from PPO plan successfully, you improve your practice. but she went all the way and she said, Gary, I did some research, to when we were in network, what was our case acceptance. And then now that we’re out of network, what happened to our case acceptance? And their case acceptance went up dramatically. They were always close to a hundred percent in the urgent dentistry. But when it came to asymptomatic general dentistry, and when it came to ideal care, comprehensive care, they wanted to improve. And now that their auto network that’s improved. And she said, furthermore, Gary, I dug into it, and this is a client that’s very analytical, very much into math.

Gary Takacs: And she said, here’s what we found with our insurance patients, that the vast majority were only interested in their free cleanings, their free clean, mm-hmm . where the clinic is usually covered at a hundred percent as long as there’s a six month interval between their last I, she said, we found this is a very sophisticated practice. She said, we found that less than 6% of their insurance patients were accepting things that weren’t urgent. They only wanted to come in for the free example. Right now, that’s one practice and one data set. So it’s not scientific enough to extrapolate that further. But I wonder what it’s like in our listeners’ practices, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s very similar. Well, Naren, this has been a fun episode. Appreciate your marketing contributions here, that it plays a very important role in this.

Gary Takacs: Attract the right people in the first place, for sure. If you’d like help, you know, to develop your practice optimally, we are accepting new thriving coaching clients. We don’t always accept the clients. Sometimes we have a wait list, but right now we are, we’ve had, earlier this year, we’ve had a number of clients successfully hit the finish line, by design, and it’s opened up some new spots. go to thrivingdentist.com/csm . If you’re interested. That’ll open up my schedule. We’ll do a one hour zoom meeting where I’ll share with you, I’ll learn more about your practice, learn more about what your goals and ambitions are, and, share a little bit of our coaching to see if it might be a good fit. I love the opportunity to work with you if that was your wish. On that note, Naren, I wanna thank our listeners for the privilege of their time, and we look forward to connecting with you on the next Thriving Dentist Show.