Marketing Implant Dentistry

Attract and Influence Patients to Accept Your Dental Implant Treatment Plan

Marcus Hines

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781119114512
• eBook ISBN: 9781119114536
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Dentistry

A large percentage of skilled dental professionals lack the tools and comfort level required to market themselves and their dental implant practices effectively As a consequence, these dental professionals miss several opportunities to help patients and grow their business. Even those who recognize the need for marketing often don't have the experience or training to do so effectively. Marketing Implant Dentistry meets this need by giving dentists the tools to better market and promote their practices and to gain case acceptance. Marketing Implant Dentistry presents proven approaches for attracting dental implant patients and demonstrates the use of successful communication skills, including verbal and visual aids. This book details multiple examples of patient friendly and professional letters for use in targeting both new implant patients and professional referral sources. Readers will learn the benefits of adopting non-traditional approaches such as hosting patient education seminars, as well as cultivating professional relationships with the medical community (physicians) for the purposes of generating untapped referral relationships. Best practices in internet and social media marketing, specific to implant dentistry, are also demonstrated so practices can make the most out of these low-cost opportunities.

CHAPTER 1
Visual aids and verbal skills

Successfully explaining the true benefits of dental implants to the layman patient is no easy task. Using models, animations, and the proper verbal skills to get your point across is a very effective way to make an otherwise complicated process easy to understand by the masses.

Most people are unfamiliar with the true benefits of dental implants. And since we all are layman in some form or fashion, we benefit anytime uncharted territory is explained in a way that helps us to “get it.” News channels use models and animations all the time to make their more complicated stories easily digestible.

For instance, when the US Navy SEALS raided Bin Laden’s Pakistan compound, killed him, and captured his body, helmet cams were worn by the two-dozen members of SEAL Team Six to stream this undertaking back to the White House where President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and other dignitaries witnessed it in real time. The raid was reported to have taken somewhere around 40 minutes, but what you and I and the rest of the general public were privy to through the various news outlets, including a 60 Minutes interview of a SEAL Team Six member, was a tabletop-sized replica of Bin Laden’s massive compound structure and a very short, dumbed-down reenactment of this event through animated video. Using a model of Bin Laden’s compound, this Navy SEAL member walked us through the process they had experienced in taking out the world’s most wanted individual. And by the end of this short interview, you felt like you had a pretty good understanding of exactly how this complicated mission was executed.

Physicians make great use of visual aids

Physicians who are routinely required to treat their patients by incorporating surgery tend to use visual aids to explain the clinical rationale, far more frequently than dental professionals do. CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon, uses skull and brain models coupled with animations all the time to describe how different areas of the brain function, the effects of traumatic brain injuries, and the rationale of various brain surgeries. The host of The Dr. Oz Show, Dr. Mehmet Oz, a cardiothoracic surgeon, uses animations, models, and props routinely to help communicate various medical conditions and the rationale for the required surgical treatment to his television viewers.

Developing illustrations, models, and animations to describe a sophisticated event or process like implant dentistry requires training and creativity. So imagine what it would cost to produce lifelike jaw and dental implant models for only your office. Now, add this cost to the expense of producing animated videos for use in only your office, say, to demonstrate how a sinus expands following tooth loss or to describe the process of bone resorption, bone grafting with the aid of tenting screws, and dental implant placements and restorations.

Any idea of the required time and resources necessary to get it just right for these and 200 plus other clinical scenarios to be turned into animated videos? Fortunately, since video animations have already been produced and are sold on a massive scale for a relatively small fee, you don’t have to go through this effort to dramatically enhance communications between your office and your prospective dental implant patients. Relative to the value of these tools the investment is miniscule. good visual aids is one of the best internal marketing investments any dental implant provider can make.

Better to show empathy, not sympathy

Like good use of visual aids, making the best use of your verbal skills when presenting your implant treatment plans will pay dividends in case acceptance. Numerous leaders in case presentation technique have suggested that you must first listen to the patient and develop a good understanding of what their desires are before attempting to present your recommendations. In other words, empathize. I could not agree more with this notion. In any sales situation, the empathetic listener will come out on top far more frequently than the individual who is only concerned with getting their point across about their product or service.

Where I differ is when some of the same authorities suggest, for example, that if the otherwise healthy 70-year-old, partial-denture wearer wants to replace her removable prosthesis because it no longer looks good or functions well, it does little good to broach the subject of dental implants when her primary financial goal is to maximize her insurance benefits and pay as little out of pocket as possible. I disagree wholeheartedly with this view when it comes to dental implants. And in its truest sense, because dental implants may be such a patient’s only hope of having her desired functionality restored, this approach does not necessarily show empathy. If anything, this is sympathy, and being sympathetic should be left to family and friends.

If it is safe to assume you chose to read this book because you believe that more patients will benefit when you perform more dental implant procedures, then you must become comfortable with exploring all viable solutions with such patients, finances notwithstanding. Showing empathy requires more effort than sympathy. When you are compassionately empathetic, your strong desire to help the patient forces you to express the best solutions to their problems. Sympathy allows you to merely feel bad for the patient and does not necessarily require offering a viable solution for whatever reason.

Replacing an ill-fitting partial denture with implants for the 70-year-old lady is not the same as proposing a $20,000 laminate veneer case for a 60-year-old woman who has shown no interest in esthetics or a $5,000 orthodontic case for a 35-year-old male who presents with a diastema between his maxillary central incisors but has otherwise healthy and well-functioning teeth. The same patient might have made it clear during the doctor’s discovery process that improved esthetics are of no concern to him and that he prefers this gap, as it represents his identity and family trait. Therefore, you proceed to present only what is necessary to keep this patient healthy and happy. This is empathy.

But to refuse to bring up dental implants to a healthy 70-year-old patient because you think she’s too old or you fear appearing as though you are taking advantage of a little old lady is an expression of sympathy not empathy. Moreover such patients are robbed of their right to understand dental implants as a viable option. In my opinion, this belongs in the same category of neglect with the dentist or hygienist who agrees to provide a routine prophylaxis to the advanced periodontally diseased patient without discussing the fact that the long-term solution may involve more costly surgical procedures.

Implants are worth more than replacing missing teeth

The literature proves time and again that implants help to prevent jawbone atrophy, positively affect muscle tone, and promote the patient’s ability to chew and grind all types of foods superiorly. Whether the patient accepts or refuses a certain treatment option is irrelevant. What is important is that the dental professional discloses the treatment options to the patient—including implants—in a way that the patient is best capable of sorting out their options. The onus is then placed on the patient to accept or deny the recommended treatment.

Dr. Roger P. Levin, president and CEO of the Levin Group, Inc. says, “Although not every patient needs implants right now, every single patient should be made aware of implants. Therefore, dentists have an obligation to educate all patients about this treatment option. Avoid screening patients based on your perception of their interest level or ability to pay” (Levin, 2011a).

Whether the ideal implant treatment plan will cost the 70-year-old patient $5,000 or $50,000, that patient deserves to understand her options for having missing teeth replaced with dental implants as much as any patient who is much younger. There are no two ways about it.

Everything begins with asking the right questions

In his New York Times Best Seller, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Dr. Stephen R. Covey’s fifth habit is “Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood.” The title of this habit says everything you need to know about it. Dr. Covey explains, “The essence of empathic listening is not that you agree with someone; it’s that you fully, deeply, understand that person, emotionally as well as intellectually” (Covey, 1989).

Before you begin to put together any dental implant treatment plan, you have to first understand what your patients’ present frustrations, dislikes, and limitations are with their current circumstances and also what their motives, desires, and expectations are for the replacement prostheses. For example, perhaps they can no longer chew their food on the right side, or their lower denture has begun to move when they smile, or the bridgework in the front of their mouth causes them to blow air bubbles when they talk. Understanding what the limiting functionality is will go a long way in helping to develop and present an implant treatment plan that resonates. These are all the reasons why patients develop a sense o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• CHAPTER 1: Visual aids and verbal skills
• CHAPTER 2: Patient education seminars
• CHAPTER 3: Partnering with physicians for dental implants
• CHAPTER 4: Marketing full-arch implant dentistry in your practice
• CHAPTER 5: Implant marketing for the surgical specialist
• CHAPTER 6: Database marketing
• CHAPTER 7: Internet presence
• Conclusion
• Works cited
• Index
• End User License Agreement