The beauty of a price enquiry is in knowing exactly what it is.

Because if you don’t know *EXACTLY* what it is, you won’t value it….

Kind of like a truffle. If you don’t know exactly what a truffle is, you won’t value it.

And it’s the same, exactly the same, with a price enquiry phone call to your office.

I said it last week:

The people who call and ask for a price do so because they have no other point of reference.

The number one reason why people call any Dental Office and ask for a price is because they have no other point of reference.

We know that everyone calling our office with treatment related questions, such as price, is doing so because they actually need that treatment.

With that thought in mind, our job on the phone is to convince the caller that we are the Dental Office for them.

Last week I discussed the five opening questions you *MUST ALWAYS ASK* to divert the price enquirer back to their problem, and your solution, rather than be fixated on price.

Once we’ve gathered these five answers, we’ll know primarily that the enquirer is not an existing patient, we’ll know their recent dental history, and we’ll have captured their contact data.

Now we’re in a great position to take control of the conversation and win them over with our care and concern for their well being.

And part of that care and concern is our ability to create urgency if urgency is lacking.

By creating an urgency, we promote the sale, or close the sale.

Our role is to solve their problem.

Our role is to solve their problem.

If we purely just give them information, and don’t create an appointment, we have let the caller down.

Because now they will only get second best treatment at best, because they are not coming to *our* office to resolve their dental issue.

How soon can you be here?

“How soon can you be here?”

This simple question creates an urgency. It also creates an atmosphere of service.

It’s not that we’re sitting around waiting for the phone to ring so that we can pounce on the caller, but it is important to have an appointment book structure that allows us to accommodate same day requests, where appropriate.

[These same day schedule vacancies are also very important for any of our existing patients that need to see us urgently. Keeping slots like this available in the doctor’s schedule as well as in the hygiene schedule prove invaluable].

With the ability to place these enquiries, if needed, into a same day appointment *TIME*, rather than letting them know we can “squeeze them in”, or worse still, deferring them to another day, with that ability in mind, we are able to infer to the caller that their problem is important and we think so much of it and of them that we create times each day just to be of service for people like them in situations like this.

When we ask, “How soon can you be here?”, the response we receive from the caller tells us whether or not there is an urgency for treatment in the caller’s mind.

If the caller tells us it’s not urgent to them, then, as *we* enquire and visit with them, we can decide whether or not we will create an urgency, in their mind…

“Sounds to me Mrs. Smith that we need to get Doctor to see that tooth as soon as possible, just in case it blows up. And we wouldn’t want that, now, would we?”

Are you in any pain?

Most price enquiry calls relate to a single procedure.

Not all, but most.

And it’s usually about a tooth, be it a filling, a crown, or a root therapy.

[The other enquiry, which does not usually involve pain, is “How much is a clean?”]

And often, in those non-cleaning price enquiries, there is a reason for the call, other than price, and that reason is usually some level of pain or discomfort.

Again, our aim here is to create urgency, and we do that by showing concern for the caller’s well being, and their ongoing well being.

By showing this concern, we build trust.

Failing to show concern for the person, as opposed to only being concerned about the problem, is a big factor influencing whether the caller schedules with us or not.

Most Dental Offices out there will not show concern for the person.

They’ll keep the subject of the call only on the problem. The subject of the call must become the person calling, not about their problem.

Sure, we do need to collect information about the problem at hand. However, the skill and talent of a great Dental Receptionist is in her ability to gather that necessary information specific to that problem without deflecting from any of the legitimate concern she has for the caller’s well being.

And there’s your big chance to show that your Office is different.

And truly World Class.

Because there really isn’t that much competition out there.

Believe you me…

Answering the phone correctly, including how to handle the price enquiry is one of the many detailed components of The Ultimate Patient Experience, a simple easy to implement system that I developed that allowed me to build 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: david@theUPE.com

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