These are the 6 words that are the most expensive for any private practice: "I need to think about it" What you and I would rather hear are the 5 most lucrative words in private practice: "How do we get started?" I'll be honest, it's getting harder to get patients to say those 5 words. The price pressure in the market is no joke.
An owner once told me: "I got into this to provide great care, not to defend my prices constantly."
A Different Approach
I'm an advisor on Dr. Cliff Olson's team. Every provider in his practice has absurdly high treatment acceptance rates, provides top-tier care, and charges premium rates. Their single location generates more revenue than most 5 office chains, and they do it on the back of amazing patient care. Regardless of your opinions about Dr. Cliff's brand, success leaves clues.
Here's a fundamental belief that I share with Dr. Cliff, and that I'm working with my clients to apply in their own practices: Price objections can reflect more than pricing. They can also reveal a gap in trust before the consultation. Waiting until the consultation leaves less time to build trust and help patients understand the value of your care.
Sure, the quality of the consult and skill of the provider matters...but it's not the big opportunity to move the needle in a leveraged and scalable way. The practices like Dr. Olson's that have cracked this aren't successful because they're better clinicians. They're successful because they've built systems that do the trust-building work before the consultation even starts.
Think about the last patient who came in with zero price resistance and was an easy "yes". What was different about them?
Chances are they came through a referral from someone they trusted, or they did a deep dive on your business before they came in. The trust was pre-loaded before they arrived. The consult was easy because your value wasn't in question. Now ask yourself: do you have a system that creates that experience reliably for patients who didn't come through a referral or proactively try to learn more about you?
Most practices don't. And it's not their fault. Nobody is teaching how to apply this principle without becoming an influencer like Dr. Cliff. If a prospective patient found your practice today with no referral and no prior relationship, what exists beyond your Google reviews to build trust before their consultation?
