The 6 Confidence Gaps Killing Your Case Acceptance

Because I think dentistry has gone through three different eras trying to solve this.

Old school, no school, and what I would call new school.

And I've practiced all three, so there will be no finger pointing today.

Maybe a little self-incrimination, but zero finger pointing.

Old school case acceptance was pretty straightforward.

You build value, you create urgency, you overcome objections, you ask for the sale, and you close the case.

And underneath all of that was one basic assumption.

The patient is resisting, and my job is to move them through that resistance.

Now, some of that came from very good sales psychology, and some of it actually worked.

But dentistry started backing away from the harder closing stuff, which I think is really healthy.

And then we moved into what I'd call the no school case acceptance.

The idea here was very reasonable.

Educate the patient, raise their dental IQ, help them understand the dentistry.

Because if they understand more, surely they'll make better decisions.

Makes sense, right? Except somewhere along the way, patient education turned into, let me impress them with my big words.

Zirconia, titanium, ferrule, osteointegration, vertical root fracture, guided bone regeneration, sinus lift.

All perfectly legitimate words.

But none of them are why the patient is sitting in your chair.

We spent years learning a language that almost nobody else speaks.

And then we started using fluency in that language as evidence that we knew what we were doing.

I explained it.

Therefore, they understood it.

And when they didn't move forward, obviously, they needed more explaining.

So we pull the x-ray back up.

We zoom in.