Jeff Palmer, founder of the Case Acceptance Academy.
What I want to talk to you today is about how to use logic and emotion during the case presentation.
When people buy something particularly of high dollar value, they make the decision to purchase it based on an emotional attachment to the product or service. Dentistry is very emotional.
A person’s health, the appearance of their teeth, trusting someone to go into their mouth to work on their teeth and using drills and needles and all kinds of scary stuff is a very emotional decision. However, people make the decision to get dentistry done for emotional reasons but they justify the purchase based on logic.
Let me give you an example not related to dentistry, when it comes to automobiles there’s hundreds of different styles of automobiles. We need basic transportation. Basic transportation consists of four wheels, a steering wheel, some seats, a seatbelt, windows, nothing fancy. You can get that for fifteen thousand dollars ($15,000) you can buy a very nice new car now a days. Well as you know, people buy cars that are a lot more expensive than fifteen thousand. You can buy cars that got air conditioned seats, and hated seats, and five hundred horse power, and you can spend sixty, seventy, eighty thousand dollars on a car. Nobody needs a car, people want the car for emotional reasons, but they justify the expense based on logic such as, “I deserve that. I can afford that monthly payment.” Alright they emotionally want to get it because of the way it’s going to make them feel, the way it’s going to make them look, they enjoy driving it, and they justify making that large purchase.
Dental patients and you and I are no different.
When a patient is looking at getting a large, high out of pocket dental procedure, the reason why they’re going to get that procedure has to do with something emotional for them. It’s the way it’s going to make them feel, it’s the way that other people are going to look at them, it’s going to make them healthier, it’s going to make them more up tone. But when it comes time for paying for it, now they need to justify the expense. And now you need to use logic to help the patient make sense of why they need to get that large purchase that they already have emotionally committed to. That’s exactly what I cover in great detail during engineered case acceptance. But what I want you to do is observe this for yourself the next time you do a case presentation.
Look at the patient and observe what they’re going through, and it’s a very emotional experience. But if you use logic to help them justify the expense, your case acceptance will get much better.