Episode 689: Acquire Lifetime Patients, Not Annual Ones

 Paul Lowry, CEO and co-founder of the Dental Menu, is on the podcast! He and Kiera discuss the benefits of membership plans, how to incorporate rewards programs, whether it’s possible to increase dollar per patient without expanding, and a ton more. Membership plans increase patients’ interactions with your practice!

Paul encourages listeners, whatever you do as a practice well, sell it as part of a package. 

Episode resources:

Look into Dental Menu and watch the modules under the Education tab

Email Paul: [email protected]

Reach out to Kiera: [email protected] 

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Transcript:

[music]

0:00:05.8 Kiera Dent: Hey everyone, welcome to the Dental A Team Podcast. I'm your host, Kiera Dent, and I have this crazy idea that maybe I could combine a doctor and a team member's perspective, because let's face it, dentistry can be a challenging profession with those two perspectives. I've been a dental assistant, treatment coordinator, scheduler, filler, office manager, regional manager, practice owner and I have a team of traveling consultants where we have traveled to over 165 different offices, coaching teams. Yep, we don't just understand you, we are you. Our mission is to positively impact the world of dental, and I believe that this podcast is the greatest way I can help elevate teams, grow VIP experiences, reduce stress and create A Teams. Welcome to the Dental A Team Podcast.

0:00:50.8 KD: Hello Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera, and you guys, I have an incredible guest today. I love him. We have hang out many times. We have gone the rounds on so many things and it's all things membership. And if you guys know me, you know I am a walking advertisement for anything membership plans. I think that they're the way for practices to make more, not be beholden to insurance plans. So I'm super jazzed to welcome Paul Lowry, owner and founder of Dental Menu. Paul, welcome. How are you today?

0:01:19.3 Paul Lowry: I'm doing great. Thanks for having me, Kiera.

0:01:21.7 KD: Absolutely. Paul and I just hung out on the Dental A Team summit, so it's fun to now get on the podcast together, kind of dive a little bit more into it. But Paul, I want the listeners, you and I were on a podcast a while ago, but remind everybody how did you get into dentistry, 'cause dentistry was not your first love. I know it was your ultimate love, 'cause here you are now, but how did you even get into dentistry and into membership plans?

0:01:45.3 PL: Yeah, so really, I was actually working for a printing company. Years and years ago, I was running a big sales team there and kind of their VP of business development and got lucky and fell into doing a bunch of postcards for years, [chuckle] for more and more dentists, more and more postcards. And that's really how I got into the membership side, 'cause what we are looking at is new patients as they come into the practice and what happens afterwards. And so I think I've mentioned this before, we did a study on 250,000 patients. So we looked at their first visit date, kind of their birthdate if you will, into the practice. And then we fast forwarded five years and said, okay, how many of those are still active that were generated? And the crazy thing is, these offices all had a "membership plan" and only 12% of patients without dental insurance were still active after five years.

0:02:36.7 KD: No way.

0:02:37.8 PL: It's crazy. So you generate 100 new patients and then fast forward five years, only 12 out of 100 were there. The insured patients, I always get this one mixed up. It's either 62% or 64%. I'd have to look at my study...

0:02:51.0 KD: No way.

0:02:51.9 PL: Were active in the practice. So we were like, what is going on? Now, these were clients that we knew well, we'd worked with for a long time and so we just wanted to get better retention on our marketing, so we sat down, listened to the front office team members, looked at different things and when we talked to the front office, it was, oh no, everyone buys our plan, everyone buys our plan. It's working really well. And so we're like, well, what is going on? 'Cause if it works well you should have more than 12 out of 100 active.

0:03:18.0 KD: I agree.

0:03:18.8 PL: And that's the whole point of a membership program, is to attract and retain fee-for-service patients. And so as we listened, basically what we discovered was these plans, these membership plans, I like to call them discount plans, they were discount plans, they weren't membership plans. So a patient comes in from your marketing, you sell them two exams, two cleanings, set of x-rays, 20% off treatment for a year for whatever, 300 bucks, they buy it, 'cause they come in, they need services, they buy it. But then at day 366, they don't renew it. They let it lapse until they're ready to buy it again. And so over the five years, they bought it and then they were inactive for a while, then maybe they bought it once more and they just kind of fizzle out. And I mean, some of them might probably consider them still active in the practice. They just haven't been in for two years.

0:04:09.4 KD: Interesting.

0:04:10.9 PL: So if you look at pre-appointment rates, look at a scratch start for instance, they're accepting PPOs and they also wanna build this fee-for-service pillar. If people are pre-appointing and showing up in your hygiene department to have PPO and people aren't that don't have insurance, what's gonna happen in five or 10 years to your practice?

0:04:31.4 KD: Yeah, not good.

0:04:32.7 PL: And I think I used this analogy on the the summit. I like to look at hunting versus farming. If you're a hunter, you're hyper-focused on a singular kill, basically, on a singular thing. And you have all kinds of methods and techniques, but at the end of the day, you're following the herd, you're following the buffalo, whatever, to get a big kill. And when you get a big kill, you've gotta stop, set up shop, you've gotta process it, and you have more than you can even eat at the time. And so you consume that with your wife and kids and whatever, right? But once that's consumed, you've gotta go follow the herd again and you've gotta go hunt again. And so what we see a lot in the fee-for-service side of things is hunting. They're marketing... They might have better tools and techniques, but they're still trying to get these big cases in. They get the kill, they get all the revenue and the treatment, but then they have to go back out and hunt. Now, in your practice, what we like to look at is when you move from a hunter to a farmer, you become more of a farmer. What do you do? Well, you plant seeds, you raise cattle, you raise different things and you harvest when it's natural. So you don't go pick your apples when they're little.

0:05:41.1 PL: You don't harvest your corn until it's ready to go. You're not gonna... As soon as your chicken has eggs and teeny little chicks hatch, you're not like, oh, time for a fried chicken. It's like, why would you do that? So we like to use the analogy of your hygiene is really your farm. That's where you're sending patients. Those are the seeds you're planting on a regular basis. That's where natural treatment is gonna happen, 'cause those patients come in every six months or whatever, they get to know, like and trust you. Their teeth are gonna break down, they're eating. And so eventually they're gonna need treatment but they're already gonna come to you, 'cause they've been in your farm. So when you look at PPO patients, they're very active in your farm. Those are the seeds you're planting. When you look at uninsured patients, you're not farming them. And so dentists are always complaining, why am I not getting more fee-for-service? It's like, look, you planted apples and you're asking me why you're not harvesting peaches.

0:06:30.9 KD: That's fair.

0:06:33.3 PL: And so if they're not pre-appointing and they're not coming through your farm on a regular basis and you don't have a fence. If you have free range cows and you never go herd them up and you don't put them in a fence during the wintertime, they're just all over the place. Anybody can come and take those cows, your patients. If you put them in a farm with a fence around them, you have them coming in regularly for hygiene. And there's different ways to build a fence around these uninsured patients. PPOs understand this. They've built a great farm and they've built a great fence and they've made you be a provider on their network and they send their patients and you're farming really well and you're... That's what you're producing most of the time. And so what we see is it's like you start out 50/50, insurance versus uninsured. You go down the road 10 years later, it's like, why am I 90% insurance driven and only 10% fee-for-service? That's what you're farming. So that's kind of what we see. That's how... That's a long answer, Kiera.

0:07:27.0 KD: No, I liked it. I liked it because I think a lot of us do think in discount plans. And as you were saying that, I thought about myself, we technically have insurance. I don't like the people on our insurance plan. I told Jason not to do it, but you're right. I am technically lapsed on my membership plan but they haven't called me to renew it and I'm not going to renew it until I go in there. There's no reason for me to do it. And they'd be much smarter because the revenue stops when I stop. It doesn't keep going. And it is an interesting way to think about, and like you said, I am a free range cow, guys, right now. [chuckle] Call me that one over there. But I can go wherever. I'm not tethered to that practice at all. Now once I sign up for it, I am tethered to them for a year but I'm not tethered to them long term. So I think that that's an interesting way to view it. And so Paul, what have you guys found? 'Cause Dental Menu is different than other membership programs out there and I really like a lot of the things you guys do. You do it in an unconventional way, your billing makes more sense. Your hygienists actually get paid on Dental Menu, it's not free cleanings and things like that.

0:08:33.1 KD: But what have you guys found for offices? So what I'm understanding if I break this down, the discount plan is where they come in, they pay one fee and it's for that year. A membership plan is where there's recurring revenue coming through and these people are more tethered to the practice. Is that the accurate way to understand it? Or is there a better way to explain it?

0:08:49.6 PL: Yeah. I mean, another way to look at it, I like to pull out a dentistry, 'cause we get really weird in dentistry. And so if you just... If you have some comparisons. So one of the comparisons I think, I brought up even on that is more of like a Groupon. And I think I talked about it, if you and I wanna go skydiving, we've already made that decision, we're gonna go find the best deal possible. And so Groupon or those fundraising cards, the high schoolers come around, football team, it's like, hey, it's $20 and it has all the discounts on the back. That's a discount program. You pay $20 to have discounts for a year at these places. If you think about, which is crazy, 'cause the office managers are always like, hey, we sell everybody our discount plan. And it's like, well no, duh, I mean, if I went into the restaurant and I could pay full price for me and my wife and three kids or I could spend $10 and buy a two for one for all of us, I'm already in the restaurant, I'm just gonna do whatever's the better deal. So if you already get me in your practice, from your marketing and I can either pay $3000 or I can buy your discount plan for 250 bucks and pay $2000, it's not a hard decision.

0:09:57.2 KD: Obviously 2000.

0:10:00.1 PL: Yes. I mean, it's like, so no wonder everyone buys it, your closer ratio is through the roof and it's like, well yeah, if you were deciding to buy my product or Dental A Team's product and you could pay this or you could pay less, which one would you choose? So if you look at true continuity programs that work well, think of Netflix. You pay to have access to their content. They don't call you after a year and it doesn't matter if you charge monthly or annual. What you wanna start thinking about is they're paying you to have access to services at intervals. Preventive dentistry is awesome because everyone that you treat has teeth and they need those services at intervals no matter what. Maybe it's perio, maybe it's regular cleanings, maybe it's something with dentures. But they should be coming in on some sort of regular interval for preventive. And so if you look at that, you know, Netflix doesn't call and say, "Kiera, have you enjoyed the content? Do you wanna renew for another year?" And you're like, "Actually I haven't even watched it, so I think I'll just let it lapse and then I'll buy it when I want to."

0:11:00.8 PL: No, they don't do that. Amazon Prime, you have access to some streaming stuff, you have access to better shipping when you order stuff. But how many times has Amazon Prime asked you to necessarily renew? They sell you one time and it just kind of auto charges and you have access. If you decide to... If you don't order anything for a year from Amazon, do you call them up and say, "Hey, I want a refund for the last year I didn't use it."

0:11:24.6 KD: Nope.

0:11:25.1 PL: No, 'cause you didn't buy 10 free shipping and, you know, five movies that are included and all that stuff. So when people are charging annual with a discount plan, see if this resonates. You sell your plan, month 13 happens, patient comes in and says, "Hey, I only used one of my cleanings, can I get my second cleaning, 'cause I didn't do my second one yet?" And you're like, "Well, you're month 13," so what are you gonna do? You're either gonna say, you gotta re-sign up, patients don't like that, or you've gotta give them the cleaning. So who captures that extra breakage? Who benefits by delaying the cleaning or delaying signing up? I mean, you know, right now you're benefiting financially maybe not from your oral health but you're benefiting financially by delaying that. And so most people aren't stoked. You got you and your husband, I mean, it's probably 600 bucks and it's like, I think I'll just wait one more month. I don't really wanna come up with 600 bucks. Nothing hurts. So I like to view memberships a lot like a gym membership. You have access to a cleaning at an interval, exams at an interval, X-rays at an interval.

0:12:28.8 PL: We've talked some about the rewards program that we do, that makes it really sticky. When they come in for that cleaning, their eligibility should kick back out six more months. So if they come in at month seven or month eight or month nine, you're happy to see them. Their eligibility kicks back out six months. If I were to ask your listeners, "Hey, has a patient ever postponed their cleaning or moved it because of a vacation or a funeral or sick or anything else?"

0:12:53.2 KD: 1000% yes.

0:12:53.5 PL: They always move. So if they move it from month six to month seven or month eight, you still get payments for that. They have access, whether they come in right on time or not, they have access to it. But now you got eight payments times $30 a month for the cleaning instead of six. Now they come in at month eight, happy to see them. We're very accommodating. Patient centric, we wanna take care of them. But again, their eligibility. No one wants to come in at month eight and now come in at month 11 because it's been a while. I just was there. I don't wanna waste my time coming back in. So just let their eligibility kick back out, sell it one time, set it up to recur and keep track of the benefits at those different intervals.

0:13:33.0 KD: Interesting. Well, and as you were saying that, I actually thought, and I've never thought about this so it was an aha moment for me. The insurance companies don't call and ask the patient, "Hey, how are you doing? Do you wanna renew your benefits?" They don't say that, we sign up for them. Yes there is open enrollment time but that's only typically if your employer is switching out, or in-of-network. But very rarely do you change that, so it just can...

0:13:56.4 PL: Yeah. You have access to coverage. Right? Whether you use it or not.

0:14:00.9 KD: Correct. And that's the other thing of like, if I don't do a cleaning and I do it right now and then six months later but then I need to move it out, they don't care. I have to hit it within my six months and whether that's within my 12-month period, there is no wiggle room on that. And so I do think it is a very interesting mindset to think about to charge more like that and to have it. But I like your thought process of we're not doing the discount cards, we're doing the Netflix, the Amazon Prime. Because what we're trying to do is get them to tether. I could go and shop... I'm sure everyone out there will say this, I can go and shop at many other places but I go to Amazon because I freaking get free shipping. And so I will go there and buy it there because that's what I... It tethers me. I could go to Target but I'm sick of their 5.99 shipping. So I go find it on Target and then go to Amazon and buy it on Amazon, 'cause I don't wanna have to pay for the shipping. So they're very clever in how they've done it and I think that that's your idea, Paul, is getting patients tethered to our practice of having it to where they come to us but there's not this set finite one year. We're not thinking in one year increments. We're thinking in lifetime value of this patient and keeping them for life. Is that a fair way to think about it?

0:15:15.3 PL: Oh yeah, for sure. So most offices have a discount plan. They'll include one emergency exam or something like that. Think of changing that psychology to where, look, for another dollar a month you can have access to emergency exams, emergency x-rays, they're paying you a dollar. But the psychology of that is just like what you were saying, is when you break a tooth and you've been paying a dollar for six months, a year, eight months, it doesn't really matter. Oh, I have that benefit. I wanted that benefit. I'm paying for access to emergency exams and x-rays just in case something comes up. Even if you're closed, I'm gonna wait till Monday and I'm gonna come in versus I'm gonna go shop you around on Google on Saturday and corporate groups are open and that's it or something like that. So that's kind of the psychology. I think the other thing that we've done is a rewards program that's been really helpful. So I know a lot of dentists, the one that he's fine but we're on a plan, our own plan and we get rewards. And so the way the rewards work is when you come in for a cleaning, you earn $25 towards treatment, that may be needed in the future. Some offices do 50, you can do whatever you want. But the idea is as soon as they come in, they use that cleaning, 'cause we don't... This isn't capitation, we don't want patients to go years without their cleaning.

0:16:29.8 KD: Right. It...

0:16:30.5 PL: But when they get that cleaning and they get those rewards towards treatment, now they don't, if they cancel their plan, those rewards go away. So if they lapse right now, Kiera, if you had $100 of rewards between you and your husband, you can either keep paying 25 or 50 bucks a month for the two of you or you could lapse and lose those rewards. But if you don't need any work, you're like, "Well, I know I'm gonna need work eventually so let's just stay on this plan and let's get back in there." As soon as you start getting rewards over a year or two, you don't want to cancel 'cause you don't want lose those.

0:17:00.8 KD: You're absolutely right, Paul. I would not want to lose that. As you said that there's psychology 'cause I'm like, "Well, if I'm having to pay 50 bucks for me and Jason a month, well, two months it's gonna be 100 bucks." But to your point, I know I'm going to need dentistry in the future and I don't wanna wash those $100 away.

0:17:17.8 PL: Especially if you know your cleaning is gonna be eligible after three more of those payments or something like that.

0:17:24.0 KD: Right.

0:17:24.7 PL: And that's the thing, is if you go in to get your cleaning, you're gonna earn more rewards. So you're like, "Well, I'm three or four months away, we're gonna get more rewards." And what happened in my family, there's five of us on this plan, we all get cleanings at different intervals and so we all are earning rewards at different intervals and so we can cancel, but at any given time I'm gonna lose $200, $300 of rewards for my family, which is a decent amount. Now I'm spending a decent amount, like you say, I could pocket that after a couple months, but we know we need to get in. And so it's just a way to reward them for coming in and being part of your membership base. Of course it helps with retention but it also helps with treatment acceptance.

0:18:04.5 KD: Well, I was gonna say, now you've got money that you can use on treatment, you've got... Because the cleanings and x-rays and all that I presume are already part of my membership that I'm paying. So we're not losing money by putting that money towards your cleanings. That's being covered by your membership fee. I think it's very clever, Paul, this is why I like you. This is why I like you guys as a membership company because there's a lot of psychology that you guys put behind this. And I think another aha moment I had just in our podcast today is, we are literally looking on this to have them as lifetime patients, not just annual patients. That was my aha, big epiphany just now, of I have been thinking of them in year terms, not in lifetime. I want them coming to us for life and looking for other ways to incentivize them to stay with us.

0:18:51.4 PL: Yeah. I mean, really quite frankly too, Kiera, if you're doing a discount plan, and you probably see this on all the Facebook forums and stuff where you've got somebody that says, "Hey, I'm thinking of doing a membership plan. What are you guys... " And it's very polarized like, "Oh, you don't need a company, do it yourself. PM me, I'll tell you." And then you got other people saying, "Oh, we use these people. We really like them." And whatever else. I always tell offices, if you're doing a pretty simple discount plan, you're charging annually, and I'm happy to show you how to do it, but you don't need a third party.

0:19:20.3 KD: I agree with you.

0:19:21.6 PL: They're pretty simple.

0:19:22.0 KD: You don't, it's very simple.

0:19:24.7 PL: No, I mean, you're just giving them a discount and obviously you've gotta do it so that your UCR is real with your insurance companies. And so that's why you have a discount plan and there's reasons to do it. And a discount plan for sure is better than no plan at all.

0:19:38.6 KD: Right.

0:19:38.8 PL: But you don't need a third party software to facilitate it. So that's why you see a lot of that. "No, you don't need it." And it's like most of the guys that are getting really very, very opinionated on those forums, they're saying, "Well, yeah, we do a discount plan and so you don't need anybody to help you." And it's like, correct, you don't.

0:19:55.5 KD: Right. Absolutely.

0:19:57.6 PL: But we're really more of a continuity program, so we keep track of the benefits and the benefit eligibility. If you look at, I always like to say, "Hey office, what do you hate about insurance?" And they'll go on for hours.

[chuckle]

0:20:07.5 PL: But if you try to take the emotion out of it and just say, "What does insurance do?" It exists, so maybe you hate it, but it's doing something, it's working. So for an employer and a patient, what does insurance do? And then for your practice, what does it do? Well, it keeps track of payments from the patient and processes those payments. You don't worry about those with insurance patients. And then it keeps track of benefits and benefit eligibility and then it sends you claims basically when things are used so that then you can reconcile the revenue. Now there's tons of bad stuff and we're not gonna go on and on about it, but that's essentially how we built our membership plan is, "Hey, let's take all the bad out of it with insurance." But there is some things that it does for you in terms of the structure with the fence and let's set it up that way. So it's a continuity program that's helping you keep patients long term. And that's really what we're about.

0:21:04.5 KD: I think it's really a clever thing. And you guys do, like I remember when you and I chatted, there are other ways that I feel this membership plan can work really well that's very unconventional from other membership plans that I've heard of. And so one of those, you and I were actually just talking, like a practice is maxed out. So we have no more space to do ops. We don't have... Our hygiene's full. We've got people on membership plans, but really are membership plans to retain and have higher value so we can drop insurance plans. Yes. But is there a way that you could increase the dollar per patient as a way to increase the practice without having to expand, not needing more new patients? And Paul, you had a really clever idea on this, which you guys, these are the ones that make me geek on business because I'm like, "Oh, that's so smart." 'Cause you're just, you either have to add more patients, increase your transaction amount or expand.

0:22:01.5 KD: Those are kind of our ways to grow a business. So this is a clever way that's actually beneficial to the patient to increase the transaction amount per patient without having to expand, without having to add more new patients. But you can still grow the practice. So Paul, I want you to kind of take the start of the show on this one because it's very clever of something else you guys are doing or seeing with other practices that don't need membership plans for more patients.

0:22:23.3 PL: Yeah. So again, if you look outside of dentistry, I just, there's tons of examples. I flew today. I'm in a hotel. [chuckle] So if you look at the airlines, you book your flight and what do they have when you book your flight? Do you wanna upgrade to first class? Do you want comfort with more leg room? Do you want just the economy? Do you want to check extra bags? There's typically several different things that you can add when you fly. Do you want WiFi? Those types of things. So in dentistry you gotta be careful because, and it's always this pricing question, you know, 25, do we get more people paying us than 30 then than 35? Most of the time I see doctors and practices going on the lower end where they're placating like, "Well hey, we don't want to charge too much because we wanna make sure that we don't price patients out."

0:23:09.5 KD: Right.

0:23:10.2 PL: And this is fine, but there's a subset of patients in every practice and it's bigger in some and smaller than others. There is a subset of patients that will spend more than you're letting them. If you just allow them, they want first class. They want the extra leg room. They don't even care how much it costs. So when you think of having your base plan have access to cleanings every six months, access to exams every six months, set of annual x-rays, these rewards, then you could create an add-on or two where, "Hey, if you wanna add bleaching it's an extra $10 a month or if you wanna add our premier package that it gives you access to Pano 3D, nitrous, emergency exams, bleaching, maybe a mouth guard or whatever and it's 20 bucks a month, 15 bucks a month, you'll have a subset that will upgrade that. Those upgrades have a really high margin. It's 90%, what does it cost you to administer nitrous or some bleach gel or things like that?

0:24:03.8 KD: Not much.

0:24:04.9 PL: You don't have to, like you were saying Kiera, you don't have to open more ops, you don't have to hire more people. You don't have to do a lot. I always joke that most of the plans we see, they include fluoride. And I always like to throw out, tell me how many patients bought your plan because it included fluoride?

0:24:21.1 KD: None.

0:24:21.2 PL: None. It's just something you've thrown in there. If you strip fluoride out, keep your price the same, strip fluoride out and you sell that as an add-on for $3 a month and you train your back office to explain the value of fluoride, as soon as they explain the value, the question's gonna be how much does it cost? If the answer is $30, they're gonna make a buying decision every time they're in the chair. If it's, "Hey, add it to your plan, it's $3 a month and then every time you come in for a cleaning, you'll get it." Then they're gonna add it. Now you just moved them up $3. And so you didn't raise your price but you did raise your price. But those that are very, very price sensitive, I wanna spend as little as possible, you didn't price them out, but you've got a lot of people. And you just look at cars. It's crazy. People, you know, will drive the clunker all the way up to you spent how much on your car? Because that's what they valued. And so we've got guys that do Botox, sleep apnea, whatever you do as a practice that you do well, you should be... If it makes sense, we should sell it into subscription in the continuity. Let them have access to those services so that then you get it on a regular basis, the revenue.

0:25:26.4 KD: Well, something that I hadn't thought of, I'm having a lot of epiphanies with you today Paul, and I feel like I know membership plans really well. But you're doing a good job of making me even think differently, was, this takes the buyer's decision out of all the different things we're doing at the dental practice. So adding on whitening for example means I don't have to make a decision of do I want whitening or not. I'm already paying for it. So odds are I'm gonna come get whitening more often. And I'm not having to be like, "Oh gosh, I gotta go pay 10 bucks more to go buy that." So then I'm like trying to squeeze out that syringe to the very end hoping that I don't have to come see you versus I'm probably still gonna come buy bleach the same amount realistically. Because people don't change their habits too much. So I'm still gonna use the same amount of bleach. I'm still gonna come pick it up maybe once or twice a year. But the fact that it's on there, I'm not making that conscious decision anymore.

0:26:14.4 PL: No.

0:26:18.3 KD: I'm not making the decision, yes or no, do I want fluoride every time I come in, it's a one time ask, then I get these rewards in there. So now my treatment, I'm gonna say yes to more treatment, cause I've got "$100" like in my mind I'm like, I got $100 coupon sitting in there. Or a $500. Great. Yeah let's do the night guard 'cause I've got money sitting there. Let's do it. I'm probably more inclined to do more treatment as well.

0:26:38.9 PL: For sure.

0:26:39.9 KD: So I feel like there's just a lot of pieces. But what I love is, it's an easy... I mean, $3 compared to $30 every time you see them, $3 one time compared to $30 every time, much easier even for clinical team members to talk about this with patients. So I feel like it's a very clever way to do this that benefits the practice, benefits the team presenting the treatment and benefits the patient as well. Because like as you said that, I also thought about myself. I'm like, honestly yeah, I would pay $3 more to do fluoride every time. Instead of like, "Oh man, I gotta pay 50 bucks this time." I know it and I'm still gonna say yes to it. But it takes the decision out every time they come to the practice.

0:27:19.1 PL: Yeah. And a lot of the back office doesn't bring up fluoride every time 'cause they're not salespeople. Maybe...

0:27:27.0 KD: Ask how many times I've been offered fluoride, Paul in my dental career.

0:27:29.0 PL: How many times?

0:27:30.7 KD: None. Not a single hygienist offered me that until I said, "Can I have fluoride?"

[chuckle]

0:27:37.6 PL: Yes. Isn't it crazy?

0:27:38.6 KD: Yeah. They're like, "Well Kiera, you've got great teeth." And I'm like, "Yeah, and I wanna keep them that way." So slap that stuff on and do a double layer since we've missed 10 years. Like, I can't go back in time.

0:27:47.5 PL: That's crazy.

0:27:47.7 KD: It's interesting.

0:27:48.9 PL: Another thing that's cool with the rewards as you're talking, so anytime you discount your treatment or your services, you're kind of devaluing it. So you have to be real careful with discounts. If you have a patient, let's say they have $150 of rewards. They've been a great patient for three years, they have great teeth, now they have a big treatment plan or they want some veneers or they want something that's got really good margins. Instead of saying, hey, maybe you're slow too and you're like, man, I gotta get some treatment in here. Think of about how much more powerful instead of saying, "Hey Kiera, if you get this treatment and you get it started by Friday or by June 1 or whatever it is, you could... And we'll give you 5% off more, 5% off or pay it the time of service." Think of changing it around where you say, "Hey Kiera, you know what? This month on any cosmetic procedure, it's triple rewards month or double rewards month. We'll let you double your rewards to any cosmetic procedure over $2000." Or we'll let it towards in-house whitening or whatever these services are where you have the margin, but you want to stay away from discounting, and you can even look at your unscheduled treatment on this here.

0:28:53.5 PL: And then you can look at your membership roster and who has rewards and you can custom tailor something saying, "Look, we don't want you to go too long without your unscheduled treatment. You've been a member this long. Here's the rewards you have. Here's a special offer to double or triple rewards." Because it won't pre-condition and when they come back in a year, they're not gonna expect you to give them the same amount of rewards. But if you give them a 5% discount, guess what they expect every time?

0:29:17.2 KD: 5%.

0:29:18.1 PL: Well, I got it last time, why aren't you doing it this time? Well, I'm... What are you gonna say? I'm not slow or this procedure doesn't have the margin.

[chuckle]

0:29:24.0 PL: I don't know. What are you gonna tell them? You're like, "Well, you did it last time. Well, let me explain all the circumstances."

0:29:32.0 KD: So they'll say no.

0:29:32.6 PL: I had a new associate doctor and he was slow.

[laughter]

0:29:35.0 KD: We didn't have as many new patients. All right, stop asking me questions.

[laughter]

0:29:39.4 PL: Yeah. So that's another...

0:29:41.7 KD: Well, what I like about that too is that's more fun from a patient's... As soon as you said triple the rewards, I'm like, heck yeah, let's do this. It's just psychology. I know sales, that's what I do for a living. I love it. I love to teach people how to close cases. But I'm still a human that falls for these dang traps that are brilliant because they make sense. But I also love because I'm a huge proponent of not discounting services. So it's just adding value and I'm sure there's a ton of things, Paul, you guys are really smart business-wise, which is one reason I promote you guys a lot because I feel like you think about the business side, how do we pay for this? Let's make sure that we're adding this on, but the rewards we're giving away are not too much to where we're discounting our treatment to it.

0:30:22.9 PL: Sure.

0:30:22.9 KD: But like at the end of the day, you're not really discounting the treatment as long as you've built the price point correctly.

0:30:28.5 PL: Correct.

0:30:29.1 KD: Nothing's being discounted off. And so Paul, that's something I think you guys do really well. So if people are interested, I think we've made a case for this as far as like, guys, if you're not into... If you're just doing a discount plan, it might be time to actually get a true membership plan. I'm guilty. Paul has educated me that I was doing discount plans guys, so as a huge proponent of discount plans, but now I wanna not have to sell it every time. [chuckle] Let's make life easier. So Paul, if people wanna connect with you if they're interested in Dental Menu, I think it's an amazing membership program out there. You guys have heard like even if you're maxed on space, this could be a great way to still grow your practice without needing to bring on more team members, and giving a better benefit to your patient. So Paul, how can people connect with Dental Menu? How can they get connected to you?

0:31:13.0 PL: Yeah, so on our website dentalmenu.com there's actually, at the top there's an education button and we've got five modules that are free. You don't even have to put in the email address and you can go watch those modules and it'll help walk through a lot of these processes. So you get a flavor of how it works. From there you can schedule a time. Anybody that wants to email me, feel free to email me directly. It's [email protected]. So D-E-N-T-A-L-M-E-N-U. So feel free to reach out to me directly. Happy to meet with you and help. Or you can just schedule some time off the website there and you can post something. Kiera, I'll send you a little couple of links and you can put them up on your... With the podcast.

0:31:53.2 KD: Yeah. For sure. Paul does a great job for our Dental A Team family and I appreciate that a ton. So you guys, if you've been thinking about it, even if you're with another membership program, I might consider just looking into it because I think Dental Menu is a very unconventional membership program. I think they think about it differently. Everything you've just heard is very different. I had three epiphanies today, which is always fun.

[chuckle]

0:32:15.5 KD: I feel like sometimes I don't have as many epi... I'm like, I know, I know. And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, that's so fun." So definitely reach out to Paul. I think that what they're doing is really awesome. That's why I wanted him on the podcast for you guys today. 'Cause now's the time guys. I think set yourself up for this. Get patients to stay with you long term. Patients you want with you long term. Make it to where it's not a question if they keep coming to you, but it's an expectation because they're committed to you. Just like Amazon and Netflix, they expect us to watch with them. They're assuming that we'll stay with them. They're not assuming that we're gonna just stay for a year and then have to talk about it again. So Paul, thanks for being on today and being in a hotel right before you go speak somewhere else. I appreciate your time today.

0:32:54.3 PL: Yeah. You bet. Thanks Kiera. Good to be on.

0:32:56.9 KD: Awesome. All right guys. Well, reach out [email protected]. Head on over to the website, and as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast.

[music]

0:33:06.9 KD: And that wraps it up for another episode of the Dental A Team Podcast. Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.