People Don’t Buy Solutions to Problems They Don’t Perceive to Have”: Why 95% of Case Acceptance Happens Before You Ever Mention the Crown
What happens when a business degree graduate joins his father-in-law’s dental practice expecting to learn entrepreneurship for a few years, hates it for the first four or five months, then discovers mentors who show him there’s a better way to avoid burnout—and eventually doubles the practice to a million dollars by 2000 by focusing on communication skills instead of clinical expertise? Eric Vickery spent over a decade managing dental practices before becoming a coach in 2001, and he’s since coached more than 250 dental offices nationwide through All-Star Dental Academy, where he’s now president of coaching alongside 13+ coaches working with approximately 150 offices monthly. His core philosophy is simple but powerful: most practices are MAG-level, level-10 clinical practitioners, but their communication skills are level five—and patients only perceive value at that level. Dale Carnegie said 85% of your success is in your people skills, not your technical skills. So when doctors look in patients’ mouths and rattle off dental jargon—”You have an MODL amalgam with defective margins, class five on the buccal, you need a crown buildup and a crown”—all the patient hears is “dollar, dollar, dollar,” and the doctor walks out thinking they crushed it because the patient said “no questions” like Ricky Bobby talking to the smartest person in the room. Then the patient immediately turns to the hygienist asking “what did he say?” and tells the front desk “it’s not bothering me, I’m gonna wait.”
In this revealing conversation, Eric unpacks the 95-5 rule for case acceptance (spend 95% of communication on the problem, condition, and consequences, only 5% on treatment), why an 80% new patient call conversion rate is incredibly difficult to achieve without pressure tactics, and why practices shouldn’t pay insurance companies 42% of revenue (working four months a year for free) when they could invest that money in their team, retirement, and fair compensation instead. He shares killer words that crush case acceptance (little, tiny, small, kinda, maybe, possibly), the reverse-engineered math showing that 20 new patients requires 40 converted calls which requires 80 total calls including after-hours, and why the hero’s journey matters—because the patient is the hero and you’re Obi-Wan Kenobi, not the other way around. If you’ve ever wondered why patients say “I’ll wait until it hurts,” why recording calls and listening to AI coaching feedback is non-negotiable, or how an analogy about a sledgehammer splitting a log can replace confusing dental jargon and transform case acceptance, this episode will completely change how you think about communication, value perception, and what it really takes to help patients get healthier faster.
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Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- 02:47 – Most people get into dentistry by accident (except dentists and hygienists)
- 03:25 – First 4-5 months: “I hated it, thought it was a huge mistake”
- 04:10 – MAG-D level 10 clinical practitioner, but level 5 communication skills
- 05:56 – Everyone should be recording calls: “Why don’t you want to be recorded?”
- 07:17 – 80% new patient conversion rate is very hard to achieve (most don’t understand difficulty)
- 10:05 – Every patient has annual value: $900-$1000 minimum for high-quality practice
- 11:05 – Ideal: 15-20 adult comprehensive exam new patients (not kids, not emergencies, not freebies)
- 12:19 – Treating phone like alarm clock going off too early instead of opportunity
- 13:09 – The hero’s journey: Patient is the hero, you’re the guide (Obi-Wan, Yoda, not Harry Potter)
- 15:27 – If you can pay $100-$200 to get new patient, do it all day long
- 17:05 – Case acceptance goals: 80% of patients schedule something
- 18:50 – The 95-5 Rule: Eric’s case acceptance communication framework
- 19:40 – “People don’t buy solutions to problems they don’t perceive to have”
- 20:09 – 95-5 Rule: Spend 95% on problem/condition/consequences, only 5% on treatment
- 22:04 – Killer words #1: Minimizing severity (“little decay,” “tiny pinhole cavity,” “small amount of bleeding”)
- 22:54 – Killer words #2: Filler words (um, kinda, maybe, possibly, might, someday, considering)
- 23:45 – Killer words #3: Dental jargon (MODL amalgam, defective margins, crown lengthening, crown buildup)
- 24:58 – Remove killer words, replace with things that don’t exaggerate but use analogies
- 25:05 – The sledgehammer analogy: Old metal filling operating like wedge in log you’re chopping
- 27:36 – Golden nugget: Insurance freedom—being out of network, not fee-for-service
- 28:19 – Working 4-4.5 months for free every year for insurance patients
- 29:28 – “Why would you pay marketing company 42% to bring in new patients?”
- 30:45 – Annual Growth Summit: May 14-16 in Fort Lauderdale (sells out every year)
Summary:
Eric Vickery never anticipated a career in dentistry—he had a business degree and was climbing the banking ladder when his father-in-law, a dentist, made an offer: come learn how to run a business, be entrepreneurial, and then go do something else. Eric managed his practice for six of ten total years in practice management, and for the first four or five months, he hated it. He thought joining dentistry was a huge mistake, couldn’t believe he’d left banking for this. But he was blessed with mentors early on who showed him there’s a better way to practice effectively without burnout, without the hamster wheel exhaustion. They implemented systems from 1998 through 2000 focused on communication skills and human skills—the soft skill side of dentistry. His father-in-law was an MAG-D level, level-10 clinical practitioner, but their communication skills were level five. Because of that gap, patients only perceived value at the communication level, not the clinical level. They doubled the practice to a million dollars (incredible at the time) by recognizing that Dale Carnegie was right: 85% of success is in people skills, not technical expertise. You need to be an expert clinician AND expert at people skills so patients can get healthier faster. Eric got into coaching in 2001, met Alex and Heather at All-Star Dental Academy around 2014-15, became partners in 2021 on the coaching and events side, and now leads 13+ coaches across North America working with approximately 150 offices live every month on KPIs, leadership coaching, phone skills, case acceptance, stopping cancellations, and insurance freedom.
The hero’s journey matters because the patient is the hero and you’re the guide—you’re Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re Yoda, you’re not Harry Potter. You put your hand out to help the heroes. When a $4,500 new patient doesn’t show up, you’ve lost all that value plus all the marketing costs and energy spent to get them there. Marketing teams often focus on rankings, traffic, and social media likes, but practices need to connect different metrics: marketing spend → calls → booked → came in for treatment. If you can pay $100-$200 to acquire a new patient with $4,500 treatment plan value, do it all day long. Their KPI tracker shows by marketing source how many new patients divided by dollars spent. If you’re spending $3K on online marketing and getting only two new patients, there’s a problem. But $3K for 10 new patients = $300 per patient with $4,500 value = worth it. Some clients spend $50K monthly on marketing for all-on-4 and full mouth cosmetics/reconstruction, getting 10 patients and 10Xing their investment. Case acceptance goals: 80% of patients should schedule something, and 60% of treatment plan dollars should be scheduled. If you’re presenting $100K monthly, $60K should be scheduled. If your average exam value is only $1K, you either have a really healthy patient base or you’re approval addicted and not treatment planning properly.
Eric’s signature framework is the 95-5 Rule for case acceptance. Doctors focus on solutions, looking in mouths and rattling off dental jargon—”You have an MODL amalgam with defective margins, class five on the buccal, you need a crown buildup and a crown.” Or they call out to their assistant “crown on #3, crown on #4, crown on #5” and all the patient hears is “dollar, dollar, dollar.” The core problem: people don’t buy solutions to problems they don’t perceive to have. When patients say “it’s not bothering me, I’m gonna wait,” they don’t perceive there’s a problem because they think crowns are for pain. The 95-5 Rule says spend 95% of communication on the problem, the condition, and the consequences if they don’t do anything—only 5% on treatment. There are three categories of killer words to eliminate: (1) Minimizing severity (“little decay,” “tiny pinhole cavity,” “small amount of bleeding”)—when a $350 composite is described as “small cavity,” it doesn’t align with the “not small” price. (2) Filler words that permit doubt (“um,” “kinda,” “maybe,” “possibly,” “might,” “someday,” “considering”)—submissive, uncertain language that lets the husband tell his wife “he said it MIGHT be a problem.” (3) Dental jargon patients don’t understand—like a physician saying “breathe in, exhale, schedule surgery stat” with no connection. Doctors walk out thinking they crushed it because the patient said “no questions, Ricky Bobby” (smartest person in the room), then the patient immediately asks the hygienist “what did he say?” and tells the front desk “I’m gonna wait.” Replace killer words with analogies that don’t exaggerate: “That old metal filling is operating on your tooth like a wedge in a log you’re chopping wood with, but you don’t have an ax, you have a sledgehammer pounding, fracturing the log vertically, allowing decay to go to the nerve—like the center of a Tootsie Pop. Once decay hits the center, you have sensitivity, toothache, root canal. Two potential outcomes: the log splits vertically and you lose the tooth (extraction), or decay reaches the center (root canal). Or you could prevent all that. How concerned are you with stopping that from happening?” Then look to your assistant and say “foundation, full coverage”—not “crown,” which makes them think dollars.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- All-Star Dental Academy: Eric Vickery’s coaching organization with 13+ coaches working with ~150 offices monthly on systems, communication, leadership
- Shelly Van Epps / All-Star Dental Academy Episode: Previous Marketing 32 Show episode on training, front desk, and team communication
- Last Weeks The Marketing 32 Show Episode: Last week podcast episode
- Marketing 32: Performance-based dental marketing agency with growth guarantee
Quotable Moments:
“I think other than dentists and hygienists, most of us got into dentistry on accident. I didn’t anticipate being in this.” – Eric Vickery
“My wife’s father is a dentist and I have a business degree and he basically said, ‘Look, I’ll teach you how to run a business, be entrepreneurial, come learn, and then you can go do something else.'” – Eric Vickery
“The first four or five months I hated it. I thought it was a huge mistake. I couldn’t believe it. I had been in banking and I was working my way up the banking ladder.” – Eric Vickery
“I was blessed enough to get some mentors in my life early on in dentistry that showed me there is a way to do this effectively where you’re not beating your head against the wall and frustration and burnout—just tired of being in the hamster wheel.” – Eric Vickery
“We doubled his practice by focusing on communication skills, human skills, the soft skill side of it. He was a MAG-D level, level 10 practitioner, but our communication skills were level five. Because of that, patients only perceived you at that level.” – Eric Vickery
“Dale Carnegie said 85% of your success is in your people skills. So that’s really what we focus on. We need to be expert clinicians and we need to be expert at our people skills.” – Eric Vickery
“We help people understand there’s a better way to communicate so that people can get healthier faster. That’s how I would summarize it.” – Eric Vickery
“There’s so many little things in the practice that if you can just make it just a little bit better—if you have a stressful practice, there’s probably just a handful of these little tweaks and changes.” – Brett Allen
“My golden ticket is insurance freedom and being out of network, not necessarily a fee for service practice, but an out of network provider who isn’t struggling to pay the bills, who doesn’t have enough money left at the end of the month and thrives.” – Eric Vickery
“If average in-network dentist is writing off 42% for that plan, that’s working four months, four and a half months for free every year for those patients.” – Eric Vickery
“There’s a fear and an uncertainty around making that leap. I think that’d be a great conversation to have.” – Brett Allen
Key Action Items:
- Start recording all calls immediately: Everyone should be recording—you’re either growing or declining, no coasting
- Pick 2 calls monthly to review: One you crushed, one that didn’t go well—identify the difference
- Track new patient call conversion rate: Use simple Excel tracker (calls taken, converted, marketing source)
- Set conversion rate goal: Aim for 60% minimum, 80% ideal (very difficult without pressure tactics)
- Calculate every patient’s annual value: Should be $900-$1,000 minimum; new patient average treatment plan $4,500+
- Sponsor for the Episode:
This episode is brought to you by Marketing 32—the only dental marketing team with a performance guarantee where if you’re not growing, you don’t pay. Marketing 32 is truly invested in adding value to your practice and working with doctors they know they can over-deliver for. Marketing 32 helps you build the patient acquisition piece of that vision through strategic online presence, content creation, and growth campaigns. If you need help with marketing and growth, reach out at marketing32.com for a quick 15-minute discovery call to see if it’s a good fit.
Episode Transcript:
Brett Allen (00:23)
Hi, Brett Allen here, hosted the Marketing 32 show where we connect with leading dentists, dental influencers, industry experts, as you know, to uncover the latest and greatest, the insights, the innovations to help your practice grow and thrive. Today is no different. I’ve got a new friend on the show that’s going to talk all about the basics of training, ⁓ improving systems, all of that communication, case acceptance. It’s going to be a fun episode. This episode, as always, is brought to you by our team here at Marketing 32.
the only dental marketing agency and team with a performance guarantee of you’ll grow or you don’t pay. It’s really that simple. We are truly invested in those we work with. We don’t work with everybody. We try to find a great fit of practices we know we can just kill it and crush it. So if you need help with growth, check us out at marking32.com. We’ll have a quick discovery call, see if we’re a great fit together. Quick shout out to Shelly Van Epps. Recently, well a few months back, we had her on the show.
Talked all about training, front desk, communication with team, and all the things that they do at All-Star Dental Academy. You should check them out. In fact, today’s guest, Eric Vickery, is one of her teammates there at All-Star Dental Academy. And he holds a, let me read his intro for you. He holds a degree in business administration and has spent over a decade managing dental practices before becoming a coach in 2001. So he’s certainly got the experience.
He has since coached more than 250 dental offices nationwide, focusing on improving systems, communication, and leadership through his engaging humor-filled seminars, an expert in case acceptance, disc personality profiling. That’s a fascinating thing we could probably go deep on. ⁓ And patient communication. Eric helps practices boost efficiency and reduce cancellations while achieving financial independence from insurance. Also another thing I’m excited to talk
Eric Vickery (02:04)
Thank
Brett Allen (02:15)
Based in Northern California with his wife Abby and their four children, Eric is president of coaching at All-Star Dental Academy, dedicated to helping teams grow into their best professional selves. Eric, welcome to the show. Excited to have you on and to go deep with you.
Eric Vickery (02:28)
Thanks, Brett. I couldn’t have written that better myself.
Brett Allen (02:31)
And
yeah, AI wrote it, so pulled it from your website. We were talking a little bit about that before the show ⁓ and talking about who you are and the awesome things you guys are doing at All-Star Dental Academy. Tell us more about your journey and how you got into dentistry and ultimately with All-Star Dental Academy.
Eric Vickery (02:37)
Yeah, that’s awesome.
Yeah.
I think other than dentists and hygienists, most of us got into dentistry on accident. don’t, you I didn’t anticipate being in this. My, my wife’s father is a dentist and I have a business degree and he basically said, look, I’ll teach you how to run a business, be entrepreneurial, come learn. And, and then you can go do something else. So I managed his practice for six of those 10 years. And you know, although the first four,
Four or five months. I hated it. I thought it was a huge mistake. I couldn’t believe it. I was, I had been in banking and I was working my way up the banking ladder and I thought this was a huge mistake. I, I was able to, you I was blessed enough to get some mentors in my life early on in dentistry that showed me that there is a way to do this effectively where you’re not beating your head against the wall and frustration and you know, kind of, guess the phrase today would be burnout. You know, just
tired of being in the hamster wheel. And so we implemented that system in his practice, those systems into his practice back in 1998 through say 2000, 2000 ish basically, and doubled his practice. You know, at that time, you know, creating a million dollar practice was kind of incredible. And so we were able to do that by, focusing on communication skills, human skills, the soft skill side of it. He was a, you know, he was a, an MAG.
Brett Allen (03:57)
Wow.
Yeah.
Eric Vickery (04:10)
D level, you know, practitioner, level 10 practitioner, but our communication skills were level five. And because of that, patients only perceived you at that level. So we need to be expert clinicians and we need to be expert at our people skills. And Dale Carnegie said 85 % of your success is in your people skills. So that’s really what we focus on and we help people understand there’s a better way to communicate so that people can get healthier faster. That’s how I would summarize it. That’s my story. So then I got into coaching and
Brett Allen (04:36)
Yeah.
Eric Vickery (04:38)
Met Alex and Heather at All-Star Dental Academy in 2014 or 15 and then became partners in 2021 on the coaching and events side. And we have over 13 coaches working with us across North America. We probably coach somewhere in neighborhood of 150 offices live every month in our coaching division. And we follow KPIs and help leaders within the practice do leadership coaching as well as
Brett Allen (04:56)
over.
Eric Vickery (05:03)
you know, phone skills, case acceptance, stopping cancellation, insurance, freedom, all the things you’re mentioning. So it’s just things we’re passionate about and, and we love helping people get great results.
Brett Allen (05:12)
Awesome, awesome, yeah. There’s so many different things I could go deeper on with you in there. ⁓ I’m not sure if I mentioned this with Shelly or not, if we talked about it. I’d have to go back and listen to the episode, because it’s been a few months now. But when you guys are working with practices at the front desk and doing that training, do you have software that you use to help you track the quality? Because I know that’s a huge overlooked area of the practice. We built our own software tool to help practices with that. ⁓
because most practices don’t realize number of missed calls, number going to voicemail, or even since there’s such high turnover often at front desk, like the quality of how the calls are being handled, what’s the booking rate, all of that kind of stuff. Do you guys use any kind of software for that?
Eric Vickery (05:56)
We don’t have a software plug-in. let offices choose their own. We don’t have our own. What we do is either, well, first of all, everyone should be recording their calls. I think that’s the assumed thing that people are like, why don’t record me? Why don’t you want to be recorded? I don’t understand that. How am I, I’m either growing or I’m declining. There’s only two options. to get better, I’ve got, everyone’s recording everything now. Our coaching session is getting recorded. We get those to our clients.
Brett Allen (06:12)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Eric Vickery (06:23)
AI will coach me at the end of my coaching session and say, hey, these are some things that you could have done to make that coaching session better. So we’ve all got to be working on how to get better. We’ve all got to do this. And the only people who are declining are the people coasting. And so if you don’t want to be recorded, I would love to coach you and talk to you, understand more about that. Look, I don’t think any of us like hearing our voice back because it sounds different. That’s different. But look, listen to, pick two calls a month that you want to listen to as an administrative team member.
Brett Allen (06:28)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Eric Vickery (06:50)
Pick one that you crushed it. Pick the one you’re like, this is the one everyone, let me play this for everybody in the room. Everyone listen to how I did on this one. That’s great. That’s encouragement. You listen to things that you did and also listen to the one that didn’t go the way you wanted it to go. And then just what’s the difference between those. So think that’s the minimum. Then we also offer call grading. We have a call grading system where we have team members in the background who will listen to a new patient call grade, send that to you and your doctor.
Brett Allen (07:07)
Yeah.
Okay,
Eric Vickery (07:16)
So you guys can talk about
Brett Allen (07:16)
so personal.
Eric Vickery (07:17)
it and follow our great call process and talk about conversion rate. What do you want to be? It’s pretty difficult to get to an 80 % new patient conversion rate. It’s very hard, very hard to do. And I don’t think people understand how hard that is to do. And then we have trackers in place, simple Excel spreadsheet for each team member. How many calls did you take? How many did you convert? If you convert it, what was the marketing source? If you didn’t convert it, what was the marketing source? Very simple tracking. And I think what you measure, you improve.
Brett Allen (07:26)
yeah, that’s high.
Yeah.
Hmm.
Eric Vickery (07:45)
So those are just some systems and tools that you can put in place to improve. then, and then we’re role playing and we’re giving you systems and verbal skills to help navigate. Well, do you take Medicaid and convert that to a patient, a record? And, and that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen all the time, but our goal is to get you north of 60 % conversion rate and ideally an 80 % new patient call conversion rate without, without pressuring them, without over-promising them, without ugly sales techniques.
Brett Allen (07:50)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Right.
Eric Vickery (08:13)
and
bait and switch stuff without, hey, it’s free. None of that. With maybe your system is a prepaid $285 new patient exam. We’ll teach you how to convert that. Maybe your new patient process is different than, you know, it’s easier than that. It’s not so friction based. And we’ll help you with that one too. So any size, the verbal skills will work. The communication skills will work. But you gotta be willing to change and adapt, improve and grow with those skills.
Brett Allen (08:39)
Yeah, I love that. You said something in there. What you measure matters. Yeah, you right. Yeah, if you’re not focusing on that and you don’t even realize what’s happening, what’s most doctors I talked to that, you know, I asked him, what’s your booking rate at the front desk or, know, where do you, do you know how many go to voicemail? And most are like, ⁓ we’re good. We’re good. You know, and they give me that like, yeah, I think it’s, you know, Sally is doing great. And it’s like, well, do you know, are you tracking?
Eric Vickery (08:44)
You improve what you measure. improve.
Ha ha.
Yeah,
yeah, yeah.
Brett Allen (09:08)
And
yeah, I think you hit it. People don’t like to hear their own voice, but at the same time with these AI tools, it gives you so much insight. So our system called CallCat, it does record the call and then it transcribes it and the AI reads the transcripts and categorizes the call based on what happened on the call. And so we can see how many go to voicemail, how many were asked the price question, insurance questions that get fumbled, all that kind of stuff. And…
Eric Vickery (09:27)
Mm-hmm.
Brett Allen (09:36)
Just helping practices, that has been such a huge thing that people that work with our team love is like just reviewing that every month with their team of like, here’s where we’re at, here’s where we can do better. And our booking rate on average, I think most practices we start with somewhere around 15, 10, 10%. And so if we can get it up to what you’re saying, like 60, ⁓ just right there, imagine what that would do for your practice.
Eric Vickery (09:55)
Hmm.
Yeah.
We do an annual, so our KPIs are important, but one thing to know about a patient in your practice, every single patient has an annual value. Every single patient has an annual value, somewhere between $900 and $1000 at minimum, if you’re a high quality dental practice. That’s not looking at a new patient value. New patient value is much higher than average patient value. Average treatment plan size for a new patient, depending on what kind of dentistry you’re doing, could be somewhere around $4,500 or more.
That should be the minimum average case size value. So you have some that are 2000, some that are 6000, right? And then you have some that are 20,000, some that just need a cleaning, but there’s something in there. We want to get people healthier as fast as possible. So not only are new patients important to practice, but there is that bell curve. How many new patients are ideal for your practice? You don’t want a hundred new patients if you’re a veteran practice. You don’t want 60. You want
Brett Allen (10:35)
Yeah, they need treatment, yeah.
Eric Vickery (10:54)
I don’t know, tell 15 to 20 adult comprehensive exam new patients for you that are looking for what you’re doing. They’re not coming in for a freebie one and gone. They’re not emergencies. They’re adult comprehensive exam new patients, not even kids, but 15, maybe 25 at the most. Now, if you’re periodontist, that might be three a day, might be 45. Every practice is a bit different there. And if you’re scratch practice, of course, it’s totally different. the lost, the energy it takes
Brett Allen (10:57)
Quality, yeah
Right.
Eric Vickery (11:21)
to generate that call. Now reverse engineer that number. Let’s say half of them are referred. Let’s just do 20, this goes around number. Half are referred, half are from online. Okay, those are 10 new patients a month from referrals and 10 new patients a month from what you’re doing at Market 32. So, about it this way. If you have a 50 % conversion rate, you had to get 40 calls. Okay?
Brett Allen (11:24)
Hmm.
Right.
Eric Vickery (11:44)
to get 40 calls into your practice that you actually answer the phone between eight and five a.m. Think about the stars aligning for that. There was probably another 40 calls that happened outside those hours that you didn’t even see. So now you gotta say, well, I gotta get 80 calls. Now how many clicks to my website do I have to get to get the 80 call? You just, have to reverse engineer that number and know, well, what is it gonna take for me to do that? And so when that call is answered, most admin people…
Brett Allen (11:56)
Right.
Yeah. Yeah.
Eric Vickery (12:09)
Not most. I shouldn’t say most. I’m guilty of this. Let me say I’m guilty of this. And so I know other people may be guilty of this. I always joke and say, my name is Eric and I’m your friend as I deliver things like this. So I’ve been there before. And, and, and a lot of people like me, when they heard the phone ring and they were in the middle of 14 things going on, treated the phone like it was their alarm clock going off way too early in the morning. You know, oh, the phone’s ringing instead of, Hey, this is a potential opportunity for me. And the other thing that, that
Brett Allen (12:19)
Haha
Yeah.
Eric Vickery (12:36)
distorted the view of the phone was cancellations. This is what I hated about dentistry. People calling, I’m so glad you called me Eric. was just getting ready to call you. You know what? That tooth didn’t bother me or it’s just a cleaning or whatever it is or no shows in general. so what sort of people will say, well, let’s put a policy in place. It’s not about policy. It’s about relationship. It’s about communication. It’s about getting mutual agreement with them, helping them feel like they’re getting good advice from somebody they trust in everything we do.
Brett Allen (12:40)
Yeah, nobody wants that.
Eric Vickery (13:04)
You’re you’re there. We talked about the hero’s journey, right? You’re familiar with the hero’s journey. OK, OK, so the hero’s journey. think I think some people think they’re the hero in this story and they’re not. The patient is the hero. We are the guide within that journey. We’re that guide. We’re Obi Wan Kenobi. You know we’re we’re Yoda. We’re we’re gosh, I’m gonna try to get in Harry Potter. I mess up all the names, but not Harry Potter, right? We’re not able with other people in the story.
Brett Allen (13:09)
Yeah, I have heard of that concept. Yeah, fascinating.
Mm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Eric Vickery (13:32)
And where we put our hand out to help those heroes, the patients is how we have to perceive there’s opportunities and the new patient call conversion. And then think about this, what’s your no show rate cancellation rate on new patients to get those 10 to 20, whatever it is, new patients. we know that there’s huge value. One, think about that $9, that $4,500 value from that new patient not showing up.
And all the costs that that doesn’t include the costs that went in to get them into the practice. Dollar spent with marketing, energy spent, all of.
Brett Allen (14:05)
Yeah, yeah, there’s a lot.
Eric Vickery (14:07)
So we have to, we have to good,
good systems. Sorry, go ahead.
Brett Allen (14:09)
Yeah, no, there’s a lot that goes into that. And I think a lot of practices don’t realize too, especially if they’re working with a marketing team and the marketing team’s not communicating information that’s important for the practice to grow. A lot of marketing companies focus on, oh, this is your ranking. This is how much traffic you got. This is how many likes you got on social media. And it’s important from a marketing standpoint to know if we’re growing.
Eric Vickery (14:31)
Mm-hmm.
Brett Allen (14:37)
or online presence, those numbers are important. But at the end of the day, the office manager, the practice owner, the front desk people, they need to realize some of these metrics that are important for like, hey, we spent this much on marketing, this is how many calls we got, this is how many actually booked, this is how many came in for treatment. Like that’s the, you need to have a marketing team if, either internally or externally, help you make those connections.
Eric Vickery (14:52)
Yeah.
Brett Allen (15:04)
to your point, you can exactly identify, okay, how many appointments do we need every day to hit the goals we need, and what’s the value of that patient? I’m glad you brought up LTV, because that is a huge misunderstood thing in dentistry, and a lot of practices don’t realize that, man, if I can pay $100 or even $200 to get a new patient, I should totally do that all day long.
Eric Vickery (15:27)
Yeah,
our KPI tracker will show you by column marketing source, how many new patients you got from that marketing source divided by the hours, the dollar amount you spent on that marketing source. So if you’re spending three to four, I don’t know, we’ll say around number $3,000 on online marketing and you’re getting two new patients a month from it, uh-oh, there’s a problem there. ⁓
Brett Allen (15:34)
awesome.
Yeah, that’s not, yeah.
Eric Vickery (15:51)
But if you’re
Brett Allen (15:51)
Right.
Eric Vickery (15:52)
spending that and you’re getting 10, you’re at $300 a new patient, there’s value there because the average treatment plan value is $4,500. the more I talk about money, the more I start to get cringing myself and go, wait a minute, it’s not about the dollars, but it is about getting patients healthier and how do they know to find you the best dentist in your area to get healthier faster? numbers are.
Brett Allen (16:05)
Right.
Eric Vickery (16:13)
are simply a metric to know if what we’re doing is working. It’s not about more money, more money, more money. It’s, don’t want people wasting money. You know, we’ve got a, a couple of clients that spend $50,000 a month on marketing and they, they can make that valuable because they’re doing all on four. They’re doing full mouth cosmetics, doing full mouth reconstruction. And so if they’re getting, you know, 10 patients a month from that, it’s well worth it for them. They’re 10 Xing their investment, but you got to know what it is.
Brett Allen (16:18)
Right.
Right. It makes sense.
Eric Vickery (16:42)
And if it’s working and if it’s not working, what buttons to push? Levers to pull on the phone to convert and in here what I want to do is is piggyback what Shelley talked about on phone conversion to say look just because you get them in doesn’t mean you won the battle. You’ve got now case acceptance to work on. We want. Yeah, we want that that that to me is now OK so.
Brett Allen (16:43)
Yeah.
Right.
I was gonna talk to you about that, yeah. That’s the big one.
Eric Vickery (17:05)
maybe the front end is a lot of work and the back end, maybe we’re 50 % of the way there. I don’t know what the number would be, but we want 80 % of your patients scheduling something. Of those treatment plans presented, we want 60 % of the treatment plan to be scheduled in total. And we metric that with dollars. So if you’re presenting $100,000 in dentistry a month to your patients, $60,000 is being scheduled, in other words. So 60 % of the treatment plan.
Brett Allen (17:15)
Hmm.
That’s what you’re shooting for.
Eric Vickery (17:32)
That’s what we want. That’s a minimum. And when we look at our KPI tracker there, we’re also looking at what’s the average value of treatment plans you’re presenting. And if you’re not approval addicted and you’re not holding back and your average dollar of, of, you know, exams that you’re presenting to patients is like a thousand dollars, you either got a really healthy patient base or you’re approval addicted. You’re not sure you’re planning. I don’t know. I’m not a doctor. I, have doctors on our team that could help you with that, but that also tells you, well,
I’ve done a really good job in the past of case acceptance or I’ve got a really healthy patient base. I may need more new patients than the average practice because of that. And so if you’re averaging $2,500 per patient and your goal as a doctor is to produce $100,000, we can reverse engineer it and say, what do you need to be presenting? What’s that dollar amount you need to be able to hit that target? Cause you can just.
Brett Allen (18:06)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Eric Vickery (18:24)
randomly selected goal. I want to produce $100,000 a month. Well, great. Do you have the dental disease in your practice to do that?
Brett Allen (18:29)
Yeah, do you have the team equipped for that? you have availability for that?
Eric Vickery (18:30)
Yeah.
Patients with problems with the ability to convert. so let’s, our, our, one of our, one of our things we hang our hat on is, is in case acceptance, just simply the 95 five rule, just something I created on communication. And, ⁓ I think a lot of times what we hear doctors focusing on is the solution. They’ll look in their mouth and go, ⁓
that tooth has and a lot of bunch of dental mumbo jumbo, you know, an MODL amalgam with defective margins on class five on the buckle. They’ll just say a bunch of stuff that people don’t understand. And then, and they’ll go, so you need a crown and a crown buildup on that tooth. And they think that’s case presentation or they’re not even doing it that way, but they don’t realize they’re calling it out to their assistant crown on number three, crown on number four, crown on number five. And all that patient is hearing, they’re just hearing dollar, dollar, dollar, dollar. And so it’s,
Brett Allen (19:19)
Yeah, and the patients hearing that, yeah.
Eric Vickery (19:24)
really important to be conscious of the things that you don’t think the patient’s conscious of. And in your communication, filter out things, we call them killer words, things that kill case acceptance, they crush it. And the 95-5 rule says, look, people don’t buy a solution to a problem they don’t perceive to have.
Brett Allen (19:35)
Hmm
Eric Vickery (19:40)
I’m not spending money on something I don’t believe. And we know this is true for the non-dental human being who’s in our practice because they say, I’m so glad you called. I was just getting ready to call you. You know what? That too is not bothering me. I’m gonna go ahead and wait. They don’t perceive there’d be a problem. They think crown is when there’s pain. So we haven’t done a…
Brett Allen (19:55)
Uh, wait for pain.
Eric Vickery (19:57)
Exactly. So we haven’t done a good enough job. Chair side in the 95 5 rule to focus 95 % of our communication on the problem, the condition and the consequence if they don’t do anything and only 5 % this little bit over here that’s treatment. So our process is sell the problem, sell what’s going to happen if you don’t do anything and I just used an S word on your podcast. Sorry about that. Sell yeah.
Brett Allen (20:09)
Hmm
So, hey, know, selling,
⁓ there’s a couple things here. ⁓ Selling is, know, selling is not bad because we all buy things every day that we love and are grateful for that we bought. And so we just have to help people have the confidence and help people, like just show them the option of like, hey, this is a path for you forward, either not treating it or treating it. Which one, what works for you?
And so I love that you brought the 95-5 rule. think that’s helpful. You mentioned killer words that will kill the deal and kill the opportunity. What are some yes, like what are some good things? Do you have any like methods that you can, like if you say this or you present this way, you, yeah, walk us through that.
Eric Vickery (21:00)
Yeah.
All right, so let’s
do two things. First of all, the four letter S word, sell. I wanna just be really clear on this. I hate pressure sales. I hope I make that really clear. Yes, we’re in, Daniel Pink wrote an incredible book called To Sell As Human. He says, selling is moving a human being from point A to point B with really good advice and communication and nurturing and not pressuring them and forcing them. Most dental team members,
Brett Allen (21:14)
Yeah, no, absolutely. I think everybody does.
Eric Vickery (21:31)
when I, when I do our case acceptance mastery event, a one day program on just learning all of this and our coaching. I’ll say who got into dentistry because they were an incredible sales person and thought they would try their, their sales prowess and in dentistry, nobody raises their hand. Who loves sales? Nobody raises their hand ever. So it’s really about, I love sales because I’ve defined sales as this. I’m going to help another human being get as healthy as possible, as quickly as possible and be better for it by way of communicating with them.
Brett Allen (21:47)
Yeah.
Eric Vickery (21:59)
in a relational way, not a transactional way. So first I wanted to find that. Now underneath that killer words, there’s some words you just need to stop saying. You have a little decay. You have a tiny pinhole cavity here. I had a hygienist one time say, there’s such a small amount of bleeding, I don’t even want to chart it. We minimize the severity of the problem and we say, well, you have a little cavity. We want to be.
Brett Allen (21:59)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because you’re afraid. Yeah.
Eric Vickery (22:24)
I think we want to be nurturing. We want to be caring. We don’t want to freak people out. And I don’t want to freak people out either. But what happens is when a single tooth occlusal composite is $350 and you say you have a small cavity, let’s get you scheduled for that. Well, $350 is not a small amount of money for anybody. And they don’t align. They’re not in alignment. And so, so we’re missing the boat. So some things you just got to get rid of. The other thing we want to be careful of is filler words, things that we say that we’re not even conscious of.
Brett Allen (22:29)
Right.
Yeah.
Eric Vickery (22:54)
Today I’ve been really conscious of making sure I don’t say ⁓ or on your podcast I don’t know how I have to listen this back and see how did I do with that? I have different language I use to replace that with But I’m not gonna tell you what that word is either because then you’ll focus on that word, right? so we have to make sure we have to make sure that we are paying attention to words we use so things like ⁓ kinda maybe my
Brett Allen (22:59)
Yeah.
That’s right.
Yeah.
Eric Vickery (23:18)
Possibly want to think about someday considering a slight chance of maybe moving along you all those phrases, you don’t Yes, or there are things that we say that actually create doubt they permit doubt they don’t create it They permit doubt and the husband goes home to the wife says well, he said it might be a problem
Brett Allen (23:21)
maybe. submissive, uncertain. Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Eric Vickery (23:37)
And they grab a hold of that. And so we’ve got to drop that. We’ve got to move that. The third area I see is dental jargon. And I alluded to this earlier. You have an MODL amalgam with defective margins, class five on the buckle, crown lengthening, crown blow up and a crown. And the patient doesn’t know what any of that means. It’d be like if the physician put the stethoscope to your chest and said, breathe in and out. Now exhale, breath. Okay, let’s get you scheduled for surgery stat. They don’t, there’s no pro, you go, wait a second. Yeah. What are you talking about?
Brett Allen (23:45)
Yeah.
Right. There’s no connection. There’s no walking.
Yeah.
Eric Vickery (24:05)
And they’ll and dentists walk out of the room, the operatory thinking, ⁓ man, I am at the Midas touch. I’m golden tongue. They because because they said to the patient. Do you you have do you have any questions for me? Ricky Bobby? No, no questions for you. Smartest person in the room. So the dentist walks out thinking they crushed it. They immediately turned to the assistant or hygienist to go. What did he say? What did she say?
Brett Allen (24:13)
I said all the right things, yeah.
Clinical, yeah.
Eric Vickery (24:30)
They walk out front and go, you know, it’s not bothering me. I’m going to wait. Why would I spend 1500, $2,000 on this tooth? And because they don’t, the dentist doesn’t encounter that friction. We have to stop, pause and figure out what are we, what are we doing here? And so in the 95 five rule, that 95 % conditions and consequences we’re removing, limiting, we’ll call them killer words, removing these killer words from our language. Things we don’t want to say. We’re replacing it with things that don’t exaggerate.
Brett Allen (24:36)
Right.
Eric Vickery (24:58)
but it might sound like this. It might be like an analogy. I might say, know, Ricky Bobby, you have an old metal filling on that tooth in the upper right. It’s operating on that tooth like, and I’ll put a picture on the screen, like a wedge and a log that you’re chopping wood with, but you don’t have an ax. You’ve got a sledgehammer and you’re posing to the tooth. The opposite is like the sledgehammer and there’s a wedge in that log and it’s fracturing vertically that log allowing decay.
to go right to the nerve of the tooth. And like the center of a tootsie pop, once that decay hits the center of that log, sensitivity happens, you have a problem, and now you have a toothache, and now we talk about a root canal. Have you ever heard of a root canal before? Okay, all of our patients wanna help prevent that. You have two things that are potentially gonna happen here if you don’t do anything. This log is gonna vertically split, and you’ll lose the tooth, we’ll extract it, or the decay’s gonna reach the center of this tooth causing a toothache, and then you’ll need a root canal.
Or you could prevent all that from happening and we can address that. How concerned are you with stopping that from happening and addressing this? Wonderful. And then I look to my assistant and I say, foundation full coverage.
And I now I don’t say current now they’re not thinking dollar amount and I think of money. Why do I need that? It’s all about what 95 what the problem is, what’s going to happen if they don’t do anything. I’ve now laid out the consequences and then I put a line there and I, you don’t know 95 and five, and I said, how concerned are you with this? And if they go, yeah, I’m not really concerned about it. Great. Well, let’s talk about a crown on that too. You didn’t, you didn’t effectively communicate or they don’t care. Is that making sense?
Brett Allen (26:23)
Yeah,
yeah, that’s great. There’s a ton of value here. And I imagine going to your seminars is super helpful, not just for the docs, but the teams. I mean, I want to keep going further. We’ve scratched the surface of case acceptance. I’ve had some other people on the show where we go deeper on that topic. ⁓ It’s fascinating to me because it’s such an overlooked. There’s so many little things in the practice that you can, if you can just make it just a little bit better. It’s like if you have a stressful practice,
Eric Vickery (26:30)
you
Ha ha.
Yeah. Subtle.
Brett Allen (26:52)
there’s probably just a handful of these little tweaks and changes that you can make with Front Desk, Case Acceptance, ⁓ Ambience Team, all of that. It just transforms the practice into that seven figure practice like you’re talking about. So guys, if you need help with this, All-Star Dental Academy is ⁓ an awesome resource, awesome team. Like I said, you should check out Shelly’s episode that we had on the show. ⁓ Eric, we’re out of time, but ⁓ before we go,
⁓ A couple things, I want that golden nugget, this is the format of the show, what’s that golden nugget, that epiphany, if you can help them have that, it would have an impact in their lives. And then at the end of that, tell them where can they go to get more information and to connect with you.
Eric Vickery (27:36)
There’s so many golden nuggets that change our lives via our business. love looking at business degree, I business background, I love talking business. There’s so many things you can do and I think the one, I guess golden ticket, I would call it, is insurance freedom and being out of network, not necessarily a fee for service practice, but an out of network provider who isn’t struggling to pay the bills, who doesn’t have enough money left at the end of the month and thrives. you know, if average
Brett Allen (27:53)
Hmm.
Eric Vickery (28:04)
In network dentist is writing off 42 % for that plan. 42 average is 42%. So that’s, that’s working what four months, four and a half months for free every year, you know, for those patients. And so one of the things we really hang our hat on at all start an academy is establishing the KPIs, getting a healthy practice so that if you want to, you don’t have to be restricted by insurance plans. You don’t have to be working for them.
Brett Allen (28:19)
Mmm.
Eric Vickery (28:32)
And it doesn’t mean you gouge your patients from a price standpoint. It means you just charging a fair price. And now you have enough money to pay your team. Well, you have enough money to invest in your business. You have enough money to set aside for retirement and you’re being compensated fairly. We are single providers, maybe, maybe to four doctor level, we are not wired. We’re not set up to be in a PPO network plan. We’re not a hospital. We’re not getting grants. We’re not funding things differently. We don’t have.
donors to help cover the cost of this. Never, never should have been something we got into ever. And so we, we can help practices very successfully get out of that where you’re, you’re growing your practice by tens of thousands of dollars per month. And I could get into stories on that. And I, and so my thing would say, why would you ever pay a marketing company 42 % to
Brett Allen (29:04)
The overhead and everything,
I know.
Eric Vickery (29:28)
bring in new patients, it just doesn’t make sense at all. And so we have a system to help practices be free of insurance. That would be my, like, that’s, if I was owning a practice, that’s I’d want to get to. Yes.
Brett Allen (29:36)
Explore and get free of insurance. Yeah, and
that’s it. That is a topic in and of itself and I need to do a series on that because the trend in dentistry and the industry is People people are tired of it and they’re getting you know, they recognize the cost they’re paying but there’s a there’s a fear and an uncertainty around making that leap and So I think I think that’d be a great conversation to have and so I definitely encourage everybody to do that as well
Eric Vickery (29:44)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Brett Allen (30:04)
Where can they get more information to connect with you, Eric, your programs, resources, all that?
Eric Vickery (30:09)
Yeah.
Look, we just love to help. So love to get on here and give real valuable things. one of our founders, Heather Nottingham, she will just schedule a session with you and talk about your practice. She’s incredible at that. So I would just email Heather at allstardentalingacademy.com, connect with her and say, hey, I heard Eric or Shelly talking and I want to learn more about what you guys do. You obviously can go to allstardentalingacademy.com. There’s tons of information on there. You could come.
and spend a day, two days or three days with us in Fort Lauderdale where we do case acceptance mastery. We do our annual growth summit. That is May 14th, 15th and 16th this year in Fort Lauderdale. We do it every year. It sells out every year and it’s packed of valuable content. We’re not trying to sell you something else. It’s just a, it’s just a, it’s like drinking from the fire hydrant for three days. It’s team building. It’s really empowering. And so we’d love for people to join us there. That’s always an incredible event. So either of those would be wonderful.
Brett Allen (31:05)
Awesome. Well, this has been great, Eric. Thank you so much for sharing and I know there’s a lot here. If you guys want the show notes, head over to our website, marking32.com. We’ll have the show notes there along with Heather’s email. ⁓ Thank you again, Eric. This was great.
Eric Vickery (31:21)
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Brett Allen (31:22)
All right everybody, until next time on the Marking32 show, have a great day and great rest of your week. Take care.
