This Wednesday I was teaching Practice Management at my local AuD program.

We were talking about patient resistance and objections.

The scariest of the objections for my students?

Money objections.

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Here's what I saw from my students as they did role-play practice without guidance.

Patient: "I need to think about it. That's more money than I was expecting."

Clinician: "I understand, it is a lot of money. We actually have 18 month financing with CareCredit, would you like to look at that?"

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As a class, we unpacked that interaction.

Did the patient say they couldn't afford it?...

Did they say they would move forward, if only there was a way to spread out the payments?...

No, they said it was more than they were expecting.

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When we move straight to addressing the logistics of cost, we risk missing the real underlying patient concern.

Then we lose alignment.

The patient perceives that we're no longer on the same page.

We also risk coming across as salesy.

What can we do instead?

Acknowledge their response, then get curious. Seek to understand the true concern.

If your solution were free would they want to move forward with it?

If not, we've missed their subtle pushback earlier in the consultation and blown past it. We need to slow down and understand where they are.

Did they have pre-conceived notions about treatment cost?

If so, where did those come from? What are their perceptions of the value of treatment? Do they see it as a commodity, with price as a primary differentiator?

Or, do they actually have financial limitations? Do we need to find alternative solutions to make it affordable?

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TLDR?

When you run into financial objections, don't jump to conclusions and try to solve an affordability problem.

First, make sure you understand what the concern actually is.

Ask questions. Reflect. Actively listen. Watch body language.

Money objections are rarely affordability problems. They're often value and trust concerns in disguise.