Have you ever had a discussion about people you know or see from time to time, and made the observation about them:
“All they ever do is talk about themselves”
Or worse still:
“Nobody ever asked me about what I’d been up to”
My wife and I recently attended a “Meet Your Neighbour” evening down in our local community where our farm is.
These are great events held every second year or so to get people better acquainted in our village and neighbouring communities.
And with a community made up of a significant number of weekend residents, it’s a great way to find out who’s who in the zoo.
Funnily enough, at this meeting, we bumped in to a few people that we had known previously from elsewhere and enjoyed the reconnections with them.
But the next day it was interesting reviewing the evening and nutting down about how some of those conversations had gone.
The key point to come out of our reviews was that some people we spoke with enjoyed making balanced conversations while others just solely enjoyed talking about themselves.
Which just goes to show you that the art of conversation is indeed just that. It’s an art. And as an art there are degrees of skill associated with that art.
In a dental practice every employee needs to be skilled in the art of conversation.
Every dental employee must have the ability to be able to converse with each and every patient who visits your dental office.
On every level.
That’s what I call a “Non Negotiable”
So how do we achieve that?
That’s simple.
The real skill in being a great conversationalist is your ability in maintaining the interest and attention of the person you are conversing with.
At all times.
And that is very simple and easy to do.
All you need to do is just ask questions.
The person in control of the conversation is the person asking the questions.
In the dental office, we’re not really looking for a well-balanced conversation. All we are really looking for is engagement of the patient.
Because when we have them engaged, we have them more at ease.
And the best way to gain their engagement is to get them talking about themselves.
Everybody loves to talk about their favourite subject.
Which is themselves.
And the sooner we can have the patient talking about themselves, the sooner they will be at ease and the sooner we will have built rapport.
It’s not really a balanced conversation.
It is a conversation with purpose.
And that purpose is to relax and engage the patient.
And put them at ease.
And the easiest way to put them at ease is to get them talking about themselves.
And not about you.
It’s an art…
*****
My next public speaking presentation showing Dentists how to grow their Dental practices will be in London England on Saturday 4 August 2018 with Jayne Bandy.
.For more information and to secure your seat click this link here.
*****
Have you read my book , How To Build The Dental Practice of Your Dreams [Without Killing Yourself!] In Less Than Sixty Days.
*****
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
Email me at david@theupe.com
Did you like this blog article? If you did then hit the share buttons below and share it with your friends and colleagues. Share it via email, Facebook and twitter!!
Leave a Reply