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10 steps to get an orthodontic shopper in the perfect mood to say yes before the TC asks.

*Based on real observations.

1.  Make sure you don’t have enough parking spots. Patients love it when the first 15 minutes are spent looking for a spot. Kicks the anxiety up a few notches. Ideally, they pull into your lot… only to be met with the headlights of another car heading in the opposite direction. A best practice is to have them pull out of the parking lot onto a one-way street driving away from the building with the first turn around a few miles away. You want them to have white knuckles before they walk in a few minutes late with a slight sweat.

2. Pack the waiting room. Make the only available chair next to the mom with the crying toddler - who’s ignoring said toddler - while ignorantly scrolling. Have her answer an incoming call and attempt to hold the conversation speaking as if no one else is in the waiting room. You’re aiming for proximity to this.

3. Make sure the front desk does not smile…Better if they aren’t even there. New patients are nervous, and feeling welcomed is overrated. Adults like standing at an empty front desk questioning if they’re at the right spot. If they walk up to the counter, have the monitor show another adult patient with the words ‘over-estimated treatment time’ written in red ink.

4. Hand out a bunch of paperwork to complete. Include questions about contact information from their dentist- including their home phone, cell phone, work phone, home address, work address, and their dentist’s favorite foods. Also, include a printout of how to brush and remove food with braces - especially if they’re not a patient yet.

5. Play the local news on repeat. Make sure the story is about a murder suspect who’s gone missing. Or, better: how expensive things are. Close-up shots of food prices going up, up, up. You want the orthodontic shopper to double-think their discretionary spending and what they’re doing with their monthly budget.

6. Be 15 minutes late to the start of the new patient exam. Let them sit in that waiting room, in that chair, next to that toddler, and that mom …and don’t come out until they check their phone at least 12 times and attempt unbreakable eye contact with the front desk …once the front desk returns.

7. Give them a long tour…..But make it way more unnecessary. Include the exam room, the chairs, the bathroom, and ..wait for it...the parking lot.

8. Have an assistant be on her phone during the tour. Double points if the assistant is ungloved and unmasked. Make it look like she hates being there, and those same fingers are about to go in your mouth for an intraoral scan.

9. Use as much orthodontic jargon as possible. Listen to their goals. But then explain that your goal is to use the lever arm of an incisal edge conventional attachment to achieve a desired second order movement gaining you perfect distal root tip on the lower anterior four. The more complicated the jargon, the better the chances of converting.

10. Ask for $1500 upfront. Ignore the fact that most have less than $600 to drop on any expense. Just explain that the industry rates for defaulting hover between 1-3%, but those odds are way to risky for a business making 40% profit margins. Double points if it’s cash-only. If they want flexible payments - offer to move individual teeth only.

Your new patient is now primed for the TC to ask for their business.

All you have to do is keep the TC and the doc off the same page, and gaining a new case start is a walk in the park.

“Is every one of our 100+ experiences leading up to our ask… a positive experience?”