Ep. 51: Listener Q&A about Case Acceptance
We have received a ton of great questions from listeners recently, and many are about universal topics that would be helpful for anyone. So in our first “listener Q&A” episode, Jeff answers questions about case acceptance.
Topics:
1:44 – What to do when the patient says “I want to think about it”?
11:42 – What if the patient only wants to do what the insurance covers?
18:53 – When and how should I bring up the fee?
28:38 – Should I present some now and some later?
36:40 – When should I bring in the Treatment Coordinator?
39:49 – What if the patient needs to talk to their spouse before making a decision?
Links:
The MGE New Patient Workshop - https://www.newpatients.net/
The MGE Communication & Sales Seminars - https://www.mgeonline.com/abc
MGE Power Program - https://www.mgeonline.com/power-program
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Questions From This Episode
What does it actually mean when a patient says they want to think about it?
It's almost always a polite, non-confrontational way of saying no, since nobody genuinely goes home and deliberates over a treatment plan at the kitchen table. It means either the patient hasn't fully understood why they need the treatment, or their attention is stuck on something else entirely, cost, fear of a needle, scheduling, that hasn't been addressed yet. The fix is calm, non-defensive follow up that asks what's actually on their mind, not backing off or getting frustrated.
How should a real objection be handled differently from ordinary sales resistance?
A real objection sounds specific and the patient sticks to it consistently, like a genuine financing timeline tied to a home refinance. Ordinary sales resistance tends to shift from excuse to excuse, I want to think about it, then I'm too busy, then it's a lot of money, without ever landing anywhere. Real objections need to be worked through concretely, ordinary resistance usually just needs the patient brought back to why they actually need the treatment in the first place.
How should a patient who says they only want what insurance covers be handled?
Dental insurance is a benefit, not true insurance, and it shouldn't have any bearing on the treatment plan itself, that decision belongs to the doctor based on clinical need. The better move is acknowledging the benefit exists, then explaining specifically why the full treatment is needed now rather than later. Phasing treatment purely to match a benefit maximum, when it isn't clinically necessary, also tends to create trust issues, since telling a patient they need six crowns and then only doing two quietly signals that the other four weren't actually that important after all.
Why does the doctor need to be the one to actually say the fee out loud?
At minimum, the doctor should personally tell the patient what the treatment plan costs before handing them off to a treatment coordinator or the front desk, since the doctor's job as salesperson isn't finished until the patient is paid up and scheduled to start, not just informed. If saying the number out loud feels uncomfortable, the fix is simply practicing it directly, out loud, until it stops feeling that way, since avoiding it quietly hurts case acceptance.
Should a full treatment plan be presented all at once, or introduced gradually across future visits?
Present the full picture up front. Whether a patient hears about everything they need today or only part of it, they still need all of it, so withholding information out of fear they'll be scared off doesn't serve the patient and tends to backfire into a trust problem down the line, when they eventually learn there was more going on than they were originally told. If there isn't enough time to properly explain everything in the current appointment, the better move is scheduling a dedicated consultation soon rather than presenting a deliberately incomplete picture.
Episode Transcript
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I get a considerable number of questions about the various subjects we've covered on prior episodes of Dental Business Rx, and while I normally try to answer these individually, I've noticed a lot of them are questions I get asked repeatedly, in one form or another, over the years, and they're genuinely good questions that apply pretty universally across a lot of different areas of practice management. So I wanted to do a Q&A show. I initially thought about doing one covering every listener question I'd received, but that would run far too long, so instead I broke the questions down by subject and decided to do individual shows around each topic. The first area I picked was the one I get the most questions about by far: treatment presentation, treatment acceptance, sales, whatever you want to call it. I took the questions I've received from you, our listeners, and in cases where I'd essentially gotten the same question asked five different ways, I combined them into one. So this week is a freeform listener Q&A on case acceptance and treatment acceptance. My name is Jeff Blumberg, and I'm your host. I've never done a Q&A show before, so I'm not entirely sure how you're supposed to intro one of these, I'll just jump right in. I narrowed it down to seven questions that came up most often and that I thought would fit within our usual episode length.
Question one: what would you do if you've explained a treatment plan to a patient, answered all their questions, and they say, I want to think about it, or I'll let you know? Let's look at how this typically plays out, since it doesn't always happen directly with the doctor. In a lot of offices, once the doctor explains the treatment plan and asks if there are any questions, the patient is sent off to the treatment coordinator or the front desk to sort out payment, and that's where the I want to think about it actually gets said. The same concept applies either way, though if it happens with a treatment coordinator, the doctor may need to get pulled back into the conversation, and I'll explain why.
So what does I want to think about it actually mean? Think about it for a second, nobody genuinely goes home and sits at the dining room table wrestling over a treatment plan. What it really means is, I'm not closed on doing this. It's simply a much less confrontational way of saying no. That tells you one of two things: either there's something about the treatment you haven't fully addressed, the patient doesn't fully understand why they need it, or their attention is fixed on something else entirely that hasn't been addressed yet.
Say it's a moderate treatment plan, six crowns at $1,400 each, roughly $8,400 total. You've explained it to the patient, and they say, thank you doctor, I'm going to think about this for a bit. The first thing I'd do with any objection, and this matters because there are genuinely different types of objections, is simply not get upset, not even internally, even if it doesn't show outwardly. This is a normal part of the sales process. You've probably felt this yourself, you think you've explained something well, you'd have said yes in the patient's position, and then they throw out something like I want to think about it, and your instinct is to wonder what's wrong with them. Don't go there. People can sense that shift even if they can't see it. The first rule is never let an objection change your demeanor. Every salesperson you've ever bought something from who got visibly irritated every time you raised a concern probably lost your business because of it. Objections are simply part of the process, and hearing one is not a big deal.
When someone says they want to think about it, the first thing I do is acknowledge it, totally understood, that's okay. From there I might go one of two directions depending on what I'm reading from the person in front of me. If it seems like they simply haven't grasped the importance of the treatment yet, I'll go right back into explaining it, here's one more thing about this treatment and why I want to do it now rather than wait. I wouldn't ask if they have any more questions first, since they'll almost certainly just say no. If instead their attention seems to be somewhere else entirely, maybe they're anxious about needles or drills, maybe they're worried about the price, I might say something like, listen, let me be straightforward with you, because what matters most to me is your health, and that's exactly why I'm recommending this treatment. I've been doing this a long time, and whenever a patient tells me they want to think about it, it's usually because their attention is actually on something specific, the cost, getting a shot, whatever it is. So what's really on your mind? It's completely fine to tell me. Whether you do this now, later, or never is entirely up to you, but what matters to me is restoring your health. The goal here is opening up real communication and finding out what's actually going on, maybe they're genuinely afraid of needles, in which case you can address that directly and get the conversation back on track.
It's worth drawing a real distinction between objections here. A real objection sounds specific and the person sticks to it consistently. Say I tell you, this sounds great, but I need to talk to my wife about it, and you ask what you think she'd say, and I say, honestly she'd probably say to do it, but we made an agreement years ago that neither of us spends over a thousand dollars without checking with the other first, and if I broke that agreement I'd be sleeping outside tonight. Notice how specific and consistent that is, it's plausible and I'm not changing my story. Compare that to, doc, I really do want to do this, but here's the actual issue, I'm in the middle of refinancing my house right now and I've been told I can't apply for any new credit until it closes in about three weeks, but I could put $500 down today and finance the rest once the refi is done. That's specific, communicative, and genuinely real, not evasive. Those are the objections you need to actually work through, in the refi case, you might simply wait, with a deposit down in the meantime, that's not a bad outcome at all.
Then there's ordinary sales resistance, which we all have and which isn't really a specific objection at all, I want to think about it, I don't really have time right now, I'm busy, that's a lot of money. Say I tell you I need to think about it, you acknowledge that it's a big decision, then point out one more thing about the case using the x-rays, and instead of repeating I want to think about it, I shift to, I'm really busy though, I don't know when I'd have time to come in for the appointment and then again for the final delivery. Notice I've changed my objection entirely, then a moment later I add, and it's a lot of money too. I'm essentially changing channels, staying vague each time. That's just ordinary resistance, not a specific concern. In those cases, keep communicating, gently probe for anything real you might have missed, but mostly just keep circling back to why the patient actually needs the treatment. If the money conversation starts going back and forth unproductively, set it aside for a moment, since the real issue is that the patient isn't yet excited about wanting the treatment. Once someone genuinely wants something, they tend to figure out how to pay for it, you've probably seen patients you assumed could never afford a treatment plan find a way, purely because they were excited about it. So if someone keeps throwing out one vague objection after another, keep talking with them until they genuinely understand why they need it and actually want it.
Question two: any tips on handling a patient who says they only want to do what insurance covers? This tends to come up with either the doctor or the treatment coordinator. Take that same $8,400, six crown case. Say the patient has $1,500 in dental coverage, paying roughly 50 percent toward crowns, which works out to full benefit on about two crowns and partial benefit on maybe a third. So the patient says, I'd rather not pay more than what my insurance covers, can't I just do the two? Part of the challenge here is that if you've set this precedent with a patient before, actually phasing treatment purely around benefit maximums for no clinical reason, it can be hard to walk back with that particular patient, though it's always possible with new patients going forward. It's not a good precedent long term, because what an insurance plan covers or doesn't cover has genuinely nothing to do with what treatment a patient actually needs or when they need it, that's a clinical question, and it belongs to the doctor. What benefits a patient happens to have is essentially immaterial to that clinical decision, this is one place where the profession has drifted a bit over the years, doing amalgams you personally dislike purely because that's what's covered slowly wears on you internally, and it's just not a sustainable way to practice.
So how would I handle it? I wouldn't launch into a whole speech about insurance companies, that's not productive. The first thing to know is what's clinically right for this patient, not what you could technically get away with. Most patients genuinely want what's actually best for them, so if your focus stays there, you're usually both on the same page. Lay out the treatment plan, and when the patient says they only want what insurance covers, acknowledge it, totally understand, but here's the issue, I need to do all six now, and here's specifically why I'm concerned about these four teeth, I'm worried we're looking at root canals on at least three of them if we wait, and this tooth right here already has a broken cusp. To be clear, only say this if it's genuinely your actual clinical concern, don't fabricate urgency. But if it is real, the point is: I understand the coverage situation, and it's unfortunate, but this is what you actually need, we'll figure out the payment side separately, that's a solvable problem, but it isn't the reason to change what treatment is being done.
Chasing the insurance conversation itself is like a dog chasing a squirrel, it pulls your attention onto how much you dislike insurance companies instead of onto the patient. Worth remembering: dental insurance isn't really insurance in the strict sense. Car insurance transfers real risk, if you total a car, your policy might cover $250,000 to $500,000 in liability. Medical insurance works the same way, covering a $150,000 hospital bill you'd otherwise owe outright. Dental insurance is a benefit, a nice one to have, but it should have essentially zero influence on the treatment plan itself, it's closer to a AAA membership perk or a credit card travel benefit than actual insurance. It shouldn't guide clinical decision making in any way.
If a patient raises it themselves, receive the objection calmly without changing your position, acknowledge the benefit, then explain specifically why you want to proceed now rather than wait, assuming that's genuinely your clinical view. If it truly doesn't matter clinically whether some of the work happens this year or next, then that's a legitimate call to make, use your own clinical judgment, that's your job, not mine. But there's one more real risk worth flagging with unnecessary phasing: it can quietly damage patient trust. If you present six crowns as needed, and the patient pushes back wanting only the two insurance covers, and you agree without much resistance to phase it two per year over three years, think about what that actually communicates. It tells the patient the other four crowns you just said were necessary apparently weren't that urgent after all, since you agreed to spread them out with barely any pushback. That's a mixed message, and it naturally makes a patient start doubting the rest of what you've told them too, including how necessary the two crowns being done right now actually are. If it's a genuine financial constraint and phasing really is the only workable path forward after a real conversation, that's fine. And if clinically you don't think all six genuinely need to happen immediately, then tell the patient specifically what does need to happen now, that's the key distinction, don't let an insurance benefit dictate the treatment plan on its own.
Question three: I've mentioned before that the doctor should personally discuss fees and finances, but what if a doctor isn't comfortable doing that, what should they actually say, and when should the fee come up? This plays out differently depending on the office. In a traditional setup, the doctor explains the treatment plan, sometimes mentions cost, sometimes doesn't, and then hands the patient off to a treatment coordinator or the front desk to work out financing. As the practice owner, you're wearing several different hats at different points, owner and executive, salesperson, and doctor. As the salesperson specifically, the actual expected outcome isn't just getting someone to agree to pay, it's getting them fully paid up and scheduled to actually start treatment, otherwise you'd just end up with a pile of refunds down the line. Part of that job is working through the financial arrangement, which doesn't necessarily mean personally running a credit card or setting up CareCredit yourself, but it does mean getting the patient to a genuine understanding of the cost and a real willingness to move forward.
At minimum, the doctor should be the one to tell the patient what the treatment plan costs directly, Jeff, this treatment is going to run $8,400, and we're expecting insurance to cover around $1,500. If you're genuinely uncomfortable saying that number out loud, the answer is simply practice it, sit down with your office manager or a dental assistant and say it out loud repeatedly, look them in the eye rather than the treatment plan sheet or the floor, until it stops feeling uncomfortable. When exactly you say it during the appointment is more of a personal preference, some doctors mention it early, some give a rough ballpark, some wait until the very end, there's no single right moment, but you do have to actually say it if you want to meaningfully improve your close rate, production, collections, and the number of patients actually completing needed treatment.
Here's roughly how I'd suggest framing it, something I've practiced live in seminars with real audience volunteers, and it works well. Jeff, this treatment plan comes to about $8,400, as you can see here on this sheet, and we're expecting your insurance to cover roughly $1,500 of that. From there, you could just sit in silence and see what happens, or ask directly, how would you normally take care of something like this? You don't have to lead with financing options immediately, you could just wait and see if the patient reacts first, something like, wow, that's expensive, and respond, I understand, but how would you normally handle an expense like this? The patient might say, could I do a payment plan, or put it on a credit card, or say they're not sure, in which case you simply ask again, gently, if this were something you had to figure out, what would you typically do? Eventually they'll land on an answer, maybe I'd probably apply for financing.
From there you can go a bit further. Say the patient mentions wanting to do a payment plan, ask specifically how much they could reasonably pay per month. Here's something worth noting, if a patient could realistically pay it off over three months at roughly $2,300 a month, why default them into a full year of financing that carries a 15 percent fee from an outside finance company? That's simply losing money unnecessarily on both sides. The whole goal here is getting the patient actively involved in solving the problem alongside you, rather than solving it entirely on their behalf. This is exactly where things tend to go sideways, a patient goes to the treatment coordinator, who immediately jumps in with, we have all these payment plan options, here's what we can do, essentially solving the problem before the patient has said anything, and then the patient applies for financing and gets declined, which is deflating for everyone involved.
So really it comes down to asking directly how the person wants to pay. Could you put it on a credit card, sure. Want to do a payment plan over a year, that's probably going to take me a few years to pay off something this size, which tells you something too, whether one year interest-free financing makes sense or whether a longer term plan through an outside finance company, which likely does carry interest, is more appropriate. Most people expect to pay some interest on a five or six year timeline. The core idea is getting the patient actively involved in the process. If saying the fee out loud is genuinely difficult for you, practice it, in the mirror, with staff, until you're comfortable, you'll get it a little wrong at first with real patients, and that's completely fine. If you want to take it further before handing off to the treatment coordinator, lay out the fee, the expected patient portion, and then ask directly how they'd normally take care of something like this, let them start solving it with you rather than immediately being handed a pre-packaged financing pitch. You'd be surprised how often the answer is simply, can I put it on a credit card, some cards even offer no-interest convenience checks for two years, that alone solves it.
One thing I like about this approach: with all the patient financing options available today, if you immediately hand someone a single financing path, your balance is $6,900 and we can finance it through this company, and that application gets declined, the patient is often genuinely deflated and loses momentum, telling you they'll think about it and call you later. It's much better to first understand how they'd naturally want to handle it. Sabri mentioned a great approach to this when she was on discussing financial options, laying out two or three different paths together, essentially a plan A and a plan B, so if the first financing option doesn't pan out, there's already a fallback ready to go rather than the whole conversation collapsing. Remember why we're doing any of this in the first place, delivering needed treatment to patients, not simply collecting money. Getting paid is just one step in that same process, alongside getting them scheduled and getting them to actually show up.
One more thing worth mentioning here: the sales process genuinely begins during the exam itself, not at the treatment plan presentation. During the exam you want to get a read on where the patient's head is at. Say a new patient just moved to the area, comes in for a cleaning, and during the initial exam mentions that their last dentist called them his star patient because they took such great care of their teeth, meanwhile you're finding significant issues throughout the exam. That's a mismatch between what they believe and what you're actually finding, and if you don't plant any signals during the exam itself, the eventual treatment plan presentation is going to land as a real shock. If you notice this happening mid-exam, start pointing things out as you go, do you notice this dark spot here, have you seen that before? No, I never really look back there. Yeah, we'll want to take a closer look at that. And do you see this tooth is actually missing part of a cusp? Oh, I actually noticed that, I just figured that's how it was shaped. Walking a patient through these observations in real time means the eventual treatment conversation doesn't land as a complete surprise.
Next question: when I do a new patient exam and find they need a lot of treatment, I'm hesitant to present it all at once, for instance I might present the periodontal treatment first and hold off on discussing restorative work until they come back for their scaling appointment. What would you recommend? I've heard versions of this question for years, usually in two specific situations. First, a doctor who's just taken over a practice and knows there's a lot of existing treatment need, which frankly should already be part of your due diligence before buying the practice, and doesn't want to overwhelm patients who weren't told any of this by the previous doctor. Second, a brand new patient the doctor doesn't have a relationship with yet, where the doctor doesn't want the very first interaction to carry a huge price tag.
Here's the core problem with holding information back either way: whether you tell a patient today that they need just the periodontal work, or you tell them everything they actually need, they still need all of it regardless of what you choose to say. So why not just tell them? If the hesitation comes from fear, of losing the patient, of creating bad word of mouth in the community, that's a decision driven by fear rather than by what's genuinely best for the patient, and that's the real issue with this approach. It creates the exact same kind of trust problem I mentioned with insurance-driven phasing. If a patient comes back for their periodontal appointment and only then learns about a significant amount of additional treatment they weren't told about initially, what does that suggest about what else they might not be hearing next time they're in the chair?
So tell a patient what they actually need, assuming you have adequate time to explain it properly. If new patients are seen in hygiene first and the doctor only has the final five minutes of that appointment for an initial exam, and it turns out the patient needs $8,400 of treatment, five minutes clearly isn't enough time to properly explain why, answer questions, and build real understanding. In that case, bring them back for a dedicated consultation instead, which I've covered in other episodes. My general philosophy is, if something can be done now, do it now, if it genuinely has to wait, then it waits, but don't start a treatment plan presentation you don't have time to properly finish, for either of you. If you can't finish it properly right now, don't start it, bring the patient back instead.
The biggest concern with scheduling a follow-up consultation is usually that the patient won't actually show up. That tells you two things: get them back on the schedule quickly, ideally the next day or the day after, and avoid telling them everything they need up front only to then ask them to come back to hear the explanation, since a brand new patient with zero brand loyalty to you yet might just go research crown pricing online in the meantime. Instead, something like, Jeff, I want to put together a complete picture of what's going on and walk you through it properly, I usually do that during a dedicated consultation appointment, about 20 to 30 minutes, I generally schedule those first thing in the morning or right after lunch, works well. I covered why I prefer that timing in last week's episode, so I won't repeat it here, but the key is having real sales time genuinely blocked out on the schedule. And to be clear, consultations aren't just for full mouth reconstructions or all-on-six cases, an $8,000 decision is a big one for most people, but so is a $4,000 decision, sales time needs to be built into the schedule regardless of case size.
When you're trying to bring a patient back for that consult, they might push back, can't you just tell me now, doctor? I'd generally recommend against caving to that, though obviously use your own judgment based on your specific legal and clinical obligations, I'm not familiar with every regulation everywhere. I'd rather say something like, honestly, I want to make sure I have real time to fully review everything here, this is a significant decision, and I want to study it properly and be able to walk you through exactly what's going on and answer every question you have. Most patients respect that. Then just get them on the schedule, I do consults in the mornings, when's my next opening? Nine o'clock, day after tomorrow, doctor. Could you make nine o'clock day after tomorrow, Jeff? Sure, sounds good. I'm genuinely not a fan of withholding what a patient actually needs, it tends to come from fear rather than sound judgment, and it just doesn't hold up as a successful long-term approach.
As a bit of a parallel example, when a client comes to us and we do a lot of different types of training here, we usually start with marketing training if new patients are the issue, then sales training to improve treatment acceptance, collections, and both patient and career satisfaction, and organizational training after that, generally only once there's actually enough scale to organize. We call that combined package the MGE Power Program, I'll link it along with our sales training and New Patient Workshop in the description. If someone's doing $250,000 a month with real staff and organizational problems and is leaving roughly $100,000 a month on the table, and asks how we can help, the honest answer is, they need the full Power Program, which runs 78 days and isn't inexpensive. I'll tell them exactly that, here's the program, here's the cost, here's the timeline, and here are the typical results, our average sustained increase after five years runs around 232 percent. If the price tag or time commitment genuinely isn't something they're ready for yet, and they'd rather start smaller to see if the sales training alone helps first, that's fine, I'm comfortable starting there, but I'm not going to let them believe sales training alone is going to fix organizational problems it was never meant to fix. I haven't misrepresented the situation to make it more palatable. The underlying principle is simple: level with people.
Here's the truth though, some people are going to give you a hard time no matter what you do, who you are, or how well you communicate, that's just the nature of dealing with people. A small percentage will find a way to make you the villain regardless of the situation, you could be personally feeding starving puppies and someone would still find fault. That's fine, focus your energy on the majority of patients who are genuinely appreciative, not on the handful who are determined to be difficult. Don't let that small group change how you operate.
A couple more questions before wrapping up. When should the treatment coordinator actually be in the room during a treatment presentation? Ideally, for the whole thing, since then they've directly heard how you handled whatever objections came up and can speak to them accurately if the patient raises them again afterward. For a smaller case with an existing patient of record, say $2,500 and a low-stakes decision, it's less critical, you can simply walk the patient over to the treatment coordinator. It really comes down to how well trained your treatment coordinator is and how strong your rapport with them is, along with making absolutely sure you fully brief them on everything discussed with the patient. Where this tends to go wrong is when you've left the room, the treatment coordinator wasn't present for the objections you already handled, the patient raises them again, and now you're in the middle of another procedure and have to be pulled out.
This is going to happen sometimes, and there's no way around it entirely. Take that six crown example again, the patient tells the treatment coordinator they only want the two crowns insurance covers, that's a clinical decision the treatment coordinator genuinely cannot make on their own, it has to come from the doctor. Ideally someone can pull you in for a couple of minutes, but if you're mid-root-canal and unavailable for 40 minutes, you likely need to either schedule the patient to come back or follow up by phone later. What this ultimately comes down to is accepting that you're not going to close every single patient. But if you're currently closing 20 to 30 percent of full treatment plans and you improve that to 50 percent, that's an enormous difference. It's similar to what I've said before about new patient phone conversion, the national average is only about 23 percent of incoming calls actually scheduling, meaning out of 100 calls, only 23 people show up. That's genuinely poor, but the right mindset isn't treating anything short of 100 percent as failure, it's recognizing that going from 23 to 50 percent, just by improving reception, effectively doubles your new patients from the exact same volume of calls. That's a real win worth celebrating, and if you can push it to 60 percent later, even better. Focus on the direction of improvement, not on an unrealistic ceiling. The same logic applies to treatment coordinator involvement, use experience and training to figure out where their presence matters most, keep working on the process, and accept that you won't close everyone. For patients you don't close in the moment, make sure they're on the recall schedule so you have another opportunity to revisit the conversation.
Last question: a patient says they need to talk to their spouse about a treatment plan, and it genuinely sounds real, similar to the earlier example about needing to check with a spouse before spending over a certain amount. What do you do? It largely depends on whether you can realistically get the spouse in soon. My concern here is that if a patient has to relay everything secondhand to a spouse who never sat through the actual explanation, a lot gets lost, especially around the fee, which tends to be the one detail that survives that retelling intact regardless of everything else discussed. I might ask directly, what do you think they'll say? If the answer is something like, oh, they'll be fine with it, I take care of financial stuff like this all the time, then it's probably fine to let the patient handle it solo. But if the answer is more like, honestly I have no idea, that's a lot of money, that's usually a sign it's worth bringing them back in together with their spouse, since the spouse didn't hear any of the actual clinical reasoning, only the price tag. As a nice side benefit, if the spouse isn't already a patient of record, this can turn into a new patient for the practice as well.
If the spouse is genuinely accessible and can come in relatively soon, I'd suggest framing it directly: you're going to go home and talk to your wife about this, Jeff, but she wasn't here for the last half hour while we went through everything, and she may end up fixating purely on the price without understanding why this matters. I'm happy to sit down and walk through all of this again with both of you together. Sometimes the patient is genuinely enthusiastic about that, other times they'll say it's fine, they just need to loop their spouse in as a courtesy before moving forward, which is a completely reasonable dynamic to respect, follow up accordingly either way. And sometimes the situation genuinely can't be resolved quickly, say the spouse is traveling internationally for three months, in which case this one might simply not close, you follow up, the spouse says no, and it doesn't happen. That's going to occur sometimes, and it's worth remembering, especially since a lot of dentists tend to be perfectionists about this, you're not going to close every single patient, and that's fine, the goal is consistent improvement, not perfection.
I think that covers everything I have time for today, and I've gone over our usual 30 minutes again. I hope this was helpful. If you've enjoyed this episode or the podcast generally, please take a moment to subscribe or follow us wherever you're listening. If you have questions for me directly, you can email jeffb@mgeonline.com, or use the contact form on the Dental Business Rx website. I've linked our New Patient Workshop and our sales and communication seminars, where we cover all of this in much greater depth, in the episode description, along with the Power Program I mentioned. Otherwise, have a great week, and I'll see you at the next episode.