Ep. 6 | How To Thrive In Uncertain Times | Case Closed: From Consult to Crown

How do successful dental practices continue growing when patients become more hesitant to spend?

In this episode, Ryan Pritchard and AJ Davino tackle one of the biggest challenges facing dental practices today: navigating uncertainty. Whether it's economic slowdowns, changing buyer confidence, rising costs, seasonal fluctuations, or unexpected global events, practices that adapt are the ones that continue to grow.

Drawing from decades of combined experience working with implant practices across the country, Ryan and AJ break down the strategies they've seen consistently separate thriving practices from struggling ones. They discuss why slowing demand doesn't necessarily mean fewer opportunities, how patient buying behavior shifts during uncertain times, and what offices can do to continue converting high-value treatment.

The conversation also takes a fascinating look back at the pandemic shutdowns, sharing the unconventional strategies that helped practices continue generating implant revenue while many offices were forced to close their doors. From virtual consultations and creative patient communication to adjusting marketing and financing strategies in real time, the lessons learned remain just as relevant today.

You'll also hear practical advice on:

• How economic uncertainty changes patient decision-making
 • Why practices should offer multiple treatment options instead of a one-size-fits-all approach
 • How financing can dramatically improve treatment acceptance during slower markets
 • The seasonal trends that impact implant practices every year
 • Why marketing messaging should evolve as buyer confidence changes
 • How to recognize real market shifts instead of relying on gut instinct
 • Why patient experience becomes your biggest competitive advantage when people are spending more cautiously
Whether you're an implant dentist, practice owner, office manager, or implant treatment coordinator, this episode is packed with practical strategies you can implement immediately to help your practice remain resilient, adaptable, and profitable regardless of what's happening in the economy.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You want to have options for people, I think, right? You want to be able to help anyone that walks through the door right now because it doesn't matter what's going on in the world, right? People are still going to need dental treatment, right? Like that need doesn't stop. Maybe the biggest version of the dental treatment maybe gets put on pause, right? But someone's got tooth pain, they need to get out of it.

SPEAKER_02 0:27

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Case Clothes from Consult to Crown. I am your host, Ryan Pritchard. As usual, joined by my co-host, AJ DeVino. AJ, lovely to see you. Hello. Today we're talking about how to thrive in uncertain times.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

I mean, very topical right now, I think, right? A little bit. That's why we're talking about it today.

SPEAKER_02 0:52

Yeah. I mean, times, times are tough, right? There's uh global conflict, there's uh buyer confidence issues. Uh everything's a little bit low, things are a little down.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

But people are thinking with their wallet, I think is the expression. Yeah, thinking with their wallet.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

Second guessing, maybe more so than than normal. Right. Right. And so um we thought, let's have a conversation about this. Let's talk about the times today. We'll get in that a little bit later. But just also like zoomed out in general, when times get tough, whether it's sort of random and you don't expect it to happen, um, or maybe cyclical or seasonal as a dental office can be. A lot of people might think a dental office isn't seasonal. A lot of people confuse the seasonality of an implant office with a general dentistry office. Very, very different. We'll get into that as well. But um, let's start off with talking about uh buyer confidence and kind of where we're at today and what people are feeling and and what it's sort of doing to us in our offices and what we're doing with our clients.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

You know, um uh times like these, right? Um you want to have uh you want to have options for people, I think, right? You want to be able to help anyone that walks through the door right now because it doesn't matter what's going on in the world, right? People are still gonna need dental treatment, right? Like that need doesn't stop. Maybe the biggest version of the dental treatment maybe gets put on pause, right? But someone's got tooth pain, they need to get out of it, right? That doesn't go away, right? So having the ability to help lots of different people with lots of different uh ailments, whatever the heck is going on, right? That doesn't necessarily stop, right? Someone can say, you know what, I'm not gonna buy a house for the next year, I'm gonna wait for interest rates, whatever, right? Generally speaking, depending on what the treatment is, people aren't delaying dental treatment for years. Some people are, and I'm sure anyone listening that's a dentist knows that some people do.

SPEAKER_02 2:53

That's a natural thing. Especially if you're you're buying on vanity, which we talk a lot if you're cosmetic stuff you'll push out.

SPEAKER_00 2:59

Yeah. Uh, but I mean it makes sense, right? This is at the end of the day, this is a medical treatment still, right? Like, yeah, we're talking specifically about implants and getting people in to give them the smile that they always wanted, or being able to chew the way that uh they deserve to be able to chew, right? But there comes a point where being able to maybe offer someone, hey, you know, I've got the Ferrari for the people who can afford the Ferrari, but I also have this really nice Camry option, right? That's gonna maybe bridge you between the now and when things are better or you feel like spending more money on something like this.

SPEAKER_02 3:38

Yeah, and and certain things can change buyer confidence, and it might not feel like, well, that's not happening here, right? Right. You know, um, without getting, you know, overly political. There are certain regions of the country where when something happens, you know, blue areas react in a way versus red areas reacting in another way, and being kind of cognizant of what sort of globally is happening is is important, but then also locally what's happening, you know, and it's kind of interesting that there are certain things that can make one area really fire, and at the exact same time, another area on the kind of the opposite end of that spectrum really like the opposite of of fire. Yeah. Um, but in general, you know, a study was was done by McKenzie and company where they said that 60 to 70 percent of of top executives are saying that uncertainty is higher now than it was pre-2020. And so in general today, uh buyer confidence, I think when you boil it down, that's what it is. Right. Buyer confidence. Yeah. Which is something in dentistry we are already dealing with, right? You you throw in how expensive treatments usually are, um, you throw in uh the the fear of dentist, and now you throw in fear of what the hell was going on in in the world, and closing becomes very difficult.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:02

Right. That said, at our crown offices, most of our offices today are closing just as high, if not higher, this year. So January, February, March, April, uh than ever.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:15

And so let's talk today about uh how that's happening. Um I think the very first point to talk about here is the speed at which we tend to respond to what we're seeing in in the universe. It's easier for us to respond because with the the help of Maxilla Marketing, we have this sort of global data that is pretty current. And so we can see on a global scale, uh calls are down. Calls, just calls. Yeah, right. We can see acceptance rate is down. Even even the people that are really great, it's down. Right. As a whole sort of global market, we can see the shifts with the help of Maxilla kind of telling us this is what this is what's happening globally. And then you and I can can make those changes. And I think uh, you know, I I think it's if you respond quickly, you you have two to three X return to companies who don't what the hell does that mean? Who who who really knows? The point here is you have to respond quickly to things that are happening. Yeah. Um, but I'm a huge advocate of don't you know, listen to your gut, but but go verify. I I had a calculus professor in college who used to say trust but verify is great advice.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

Yeah, yeah. It's it's uh it's very valid, right? And above all else, right? Uh uh you just don't want to keep your head in the sand, right? Uh you don't want to just pretend that every everything's gonna be everything's fine, everything's fine, everything's gonna be uh no. I mean, do you have to make uh massive course corrections a lot of the times? No, not necessarily, right? But just don't be uh ignorant to the fact that there's outside factors happening, right, that are beyond your control. Uh and I think we're gonna touch on you know even some things that we've done in the past where actually you know we did have to make a huge course correction many years ago during COVID. We're gonna get into that, but um it's just people who just I don't know, pay attention, I think, generally are able to you know get through these times versus people who just pretend, right? I feel like we've said the word people a lot so far. This this in the in the 10 minutes we've been talking about.

SPEAKER_02 7:28

I mean, because that that's what it is, right? It's people uh causing and engaging in in issues, and then it's it's people responding to those issues. So so it is a people problem. Um you know, when when one thing that we'll we'll hear a lot from doctors is hey, whatever, such and such is happening.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:46

Uh, and then we have to go in and say, well, hold on. Yeah, wait a minute. You know, wait, wait a minute, right? Um, let's go in and see if that is actually happening. Something we'll talk about, I think, in another episode is um not really related to this, but it's a good example. I think I hear a lot that I have saturated my market. I think it's time to do something different than what we're doing. I'm all about doing something different than what we're doing, but let the data drive that decision, right? Your gut. Just because you're overseeing that postcard, because it keeps coming into your office, you think I've seen this a lot, we should stop it. That's the opposite thinking. Yeah, I've seen this a lot, we should do it more, right? Let the data tell us if you've saturated your market, which is a it's a pep peeve of mine. The idea of any dental office on the planet saturating their market is just laughable. But you know, we'll talk about that. But let's talk about the I think the foundation of uncertain times. Is there in our lifetime a better example of uncertain times for humans in general, but but dental offices too, than COVID?

SPEAKER_00 8:54

No. Uh, I mean, maybe when we were in college, I don't know, felt like the world was coming to an end. Uh if you talk to my parents. But yeah, yeah. For those of you that don't know how to do it. Submarine mortgage mortgage collection. Early 2000, 2009. Sorry. Uh to go on a tangent there. But yeah, uh COVID was wacky. I I was thinking about this on the drive over here. Uh, I remember the first time that I heard about COVID. I was uh that's back when I used to go to the gym. Uh a gym is where you work out and get strong. Uh I was going on a more consistent basis back then, right? And uh I remember our good friend Archie. Uh yeah, Archie. He uh he's a little more uh uh worldly, I'll I'll put it that way. He's a little more into the global politics, I guess. And he he said, AJ, uh, because he knows uh my family lineage is from Italy. He goes, Hey, you know, AJ, are you are you paying attention to this this COVID, this COVID-19? And I'm like, I know. Archie, I've I have no idea what the hell you're talking about. He's like, Well, uh, you know, in Italy, uh, it it looks like uh looks like it's spreading, and there's people who are out of quarantine. I'm like, what are you talking about? That was the first time like that I had heard a word about this, and this was in late 2019.

SPEAKER_02 10:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

It was the first time I had heard a whisper about this. And then uh I was thinking about I'm just fast forward, fast-forwarding mentally in my mind. I fast forward to the conversation where you, me, uh, the Maxilla team, my team, my team at that point was me, uh, were all in that room, and you had to have a tough conversation with all of us about like this is this is in uh April, I think, of 2020. We were at a course. I'm sorry, yeah, we were at a dental course, and we're all in a room and pulled everyone together and uh this isn't going away.

SPEAKER_02 10:42

Shit was really hitting the fan. Yeah, yeah. Things are starting to close. I had to tell, you know, like get get ready, team. Yeah, you gotta dig in. Your phone is gonna start ringing with with with people that that want to cancel.

SPEAKER_00 10:55

I I think it demonstrates the point. Before that happened, room conversation, guys, this isn't going away. We have to prepare for this. We we we can't pretend that it's not anymore. Yeah. At that time, I think it was uh uh people over the age of 65 were basically being instructed to like shelter in place. Don't go home. Don't leave home.

SPEAKER_02 11:16

Yeah, yeah. I this was the news article that I brought in and read. I said, look, they're they're they're advising people over 65 years old to not leave the house. Yeah. And that's our client. These are our people. Right. I mean these are the patients. That's our dental client, but that's our that's our patient. That's our demo. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, it's our demo. And so we we knew very early, um, just sort of by being perceptive, this is going to be a problem. Now, did we call our doctors and say, hey, this is happening? Yeah, of course not, right? That that's jumping the gun a little bit, but we definitely made sure that we were prepared. And funny story, uh, while most offices saw anywhere from a 60 to 80 percent decline, um, in certain states, uh 100% decline, right? There were states like Pennsylvania where I think it's Governor Wolf, um uh he he shut the whole state down dental-wise, yeah, right. Which which I think was a short-sighted. What the hell do I know? But I think it was a little short-sighted as a bad idea. I think the whole idea with COVID is that we're overrunning the hospitals. Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

And so uh someone with a toothache shouldn't be in the ER.

SPEAKER_02 12:24

Yeah, so so if we stop dental offices and you have someone with a toothache, they're gonna go to ER. So you you're you're really doing the opposite of what it is you're trying to do. Right. Um, but it did happen in in Pennsylvania specifically. We had major, major issues. And I have a client there. We both have uh a client there and and a mentor. I've talked about him on the show before, but he called me on a Sunday night, somewhere in the middle of as things were starting to really close the beginning of the end. Um he called me and and he said, Ryan, uh, I think we should do more marketing. And I was like, Oh, thank Jesus for that. Um, and so we said, Okay, uh uh lovely, because every other phone call I've gotten this week is to turn off my marketing completely. Like, right, I'm I'm done. You can't see patients, so why market?

SPEAKER_00 13:18

Right.

SPEAKER_02 13:19

Which which is makes logical intuitively is the logical thing. I can't see patients, so what am I marketing for? Uh, but he called me and he said, I think we should do more. And I said, Uh Frank, I love this. Um, but let's talk about it. Like, what do you what do you mean? Why why? You know, tell me why. And I I'm ashamed of myself for not thinking of this, but thank God I've got such relationships with my clients. He thought of this and it's a great idea. He said, Here's my thinking. We've got a ton of people at home. They're not working, they're bored out of their minds. Aren't they going to more likely engage in our marketing? And isn't marketing going to be really cheap right now? Because everybody's stopping. And I was like, brain exploded. I'm like, holy shit, Frank. Yes, that logically, you are making a lot of sense. And so um, we ended up doing that, and his office was very successful. But there was a different office in Pennsylvania after I got that call, and and I I called the other office in Pennsylvania who had canceled, and I said, Listen, if you want to cancel, it's on the opposite side of the state. I said, if you want to cancel, it's fine. Right? Like paused. He didn't cancel, he paused. Yeah, yeah. Uh but hear me out. I just got a call from Frank. He knows Frank. I said, here's what he's thinking. And this doctor said, Yeah, I think this makes a lot of sense. Let's do it. However, I'm not allowed to see patients. What am I gonna do? And then I called you and we had a conversation.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Yeah, and we hashed it out. And the idea is, okay, we can't see them. We'll be able to see them someday, right? That was a knock on wood, like I think, right? Okay, so what do we do? All right, well, we have a captive audience, right? That's stuck in their house. Bored. Bored. Most people turn to watching television, right? That was it's a normal response to when you can't go outside, right? Great. He loved this idea. What do we do with them? Well, okay, I know we'll have them call the number on the screen and then schedule a time to have a virtual consultation remotely with them, right? And I feel like someone listening to this uh may already think, well, virtual consultations are a thing that there's some companies out there right now that that's that's their whole gig. I get it. I don't think it was prior to that time.

SPEAKER_02 15:34

No, definitely not.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

I I think at least it wasn't mainstream. It wasn't what no, no, it just wasn't.

SPEAKER_02 15:40

I think I think actually consumers weren't ready for it and COVID forced them to be ready for it. And interesting note, I think that consumers backtracked a lot once you could go in the office. Right. People were way more okay with doing it. We don't do virtual consults now at Crown. That's a great point, right? Like because they don't want to. Yeah, but during COVID, it was that or nothing. Right. And people were prepared to do it.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:01

There was something about the uh the American buyer that does have a sense sometimes of putting on blinders and just being like, I don't care what's happening in the world, I need new teeth, and those people you need to capture.

SPEAKER_00 16:15

Yeah. And and capture we did. So just to uh broad strokes uh explanation, what we did. Uh, so someone would call the number, and then uh we had a service that would schedule a time to speak with me. Uh this is when uh funny, interesting side note uh my company I incorporated in uh October, oh October 16th of 2019. And my entire business is predicated on visiting offices, working with them, observing them, working with patients, showing you know what I can do and how I can close. In person. In person. And uh it went bye, you know. As soon as you started the world was like, no. So we had to do something, and and this was our our solution. So uh again, uh today this is more of a thing now. Like I think uh there's like telehealth now, you know, you don't have to go in to the ER anymore. You can have a doctor come to you. I I get all that, but this is this was not predates it. Yeah, predates it. So uh patient would see the ad, call, get scheduled to talk to me. And am I a dentist? Am I a doctor? Of course not. I never will be. I would kill every patient I touch. I just never will. I uh it's that's a lot of death mentions today out of me. I'm sorry. Anyway, so uh I I'm not uh so I I don't need to be a dentist uh to hear someone say, I have dentures, I don't like them. What are solutions you have? What can I do? How can you help me?

SPEAKER_02 17:49

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

I I didn't need to be a dentist to go, well, I can't see you. I don't know what your bone level is, there's all these factors. This is how implants work, right? But what I can tell you is if you do have enough bone, this is about how much it's gonna cost to fix you or get what you want, or sit or secure your denture, or give you brand new teeth. If you want, I can actually apply you to a finance company right now and I can get you pre-approved so that when the office opens, you can walk in the door with your pre-approval. All you need to do is bring the bone, right? We were nurturing these. I I was, I get we I keep saying we I and and I had some other people that were helping me too. We were nurturing these people during this time. So the ad runs, you know, one week. They have the consult with me in the week two, and then by week three or four, they're going into the office. We kept them interested, we kept them excited about this concept.

SPEAKER_02 18:51

And it's important to note that during that time, you could not go in a dental office, right? It was not allowed. Yeah. Um, and so uh what we had to do, we were forced to adapt, which is kind of the whole point. We've gone down like a bit of a rabbit hole here in COVID times because I think we're both sort of rehashing maybe old wounds, but uh, you know, it it it we were forced to adapt to do something different and not just a small adaptation, something really kind of big, which we did. So we we were able to uh generate the calls because people were home and they were engaged and they were listening. We did see more phone calls and advertising was like pennies compared to what it was pre-COVID. So that was awesome. Uh the cost per call during COVID was just nothing. Thanks for to Frank, it was like what an idea. So, so our cost per call was crazy, but we couldn't answer the phones. He couldn't. The the the doctor we're talking about. He said, What how do I can't answer the phone? No one's here. And that was like, oh shit, you know, we that's true. We can't answer the phone. So we we we took every call and sent it to the call center andor your staff, right? And then you guys took the calls, uh, you booked appointments, and then I think what you did, correct me if I'm wrong, is you first would have a virtual consultation. So, hey, I am the coordinator, let's talk about what's going on. Tell me what you think you need, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you would book a call like a week or two later with the doctor, right? Yep. On FaceTime. And literally we're doing a consultation, like, uh, consultation with a patient over FaceTime with the doctor. The doctor says, okay, yeah, I think this is what's happening. Here's what we can do. AJ's gonna get back on the phone with you, right? And we're gonna do a financial consultation. And this we purposefully designed uh based on the recommendations for when we thought offices would open based on what the Pennsylvania government was saying. Right. So we said, okay, this is our our our nurtural, our nurture funnel. This is our timeline. We need to keep people engaged, we need to help people, and we built a system to take them through that so that once we got done with our part, it was like now you go in the office. Yeah. And this sounds convoluted and crazy, and it was. But that office produced more in that month in revenue. It was over $300,000, maybe closer to four.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

One of the days it was like seeing, I remember I got the call from that doctor. He had seen like five of the patients that I had gotten pre-approved, you know, over the span of the previous few weeks. Uh, he's like, AJ, I I just collected like $140,000. It's the biggest one day I've ever had and probably ever will have.

SPEAKER_02 21:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

And I'm like, uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 21:42

All when the office is closed and you were not legally allowed in it. Right. This sounds wonderful. I uh glad you're happy. We we've spent 20 minutes talking about um about COVID in in that time, but I think it it really sets the stage for what it is to adapt to uncertain times. And it's obviously the most, I guess, dramatic. Uh example of that, at least in in my lifetime and my working career. I had just started during subprime mortgage, so it was kind of fun to I actually worked at a financial firm and we lost like $37 billion overnight, something like that. Small number. Yeah, people jumping out of the windows and shit. But um, but uh, you know, for the COVID obviously was was the the real hit for us, but we were able to adapt and do things, and then we were able to take that and we actually got people to kind of come back from COVID, I think sooner than what most people did with with some of this information saying, hey, let's just start. You can do it this way.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

Yeah. I I mean we I think we started with only a couple offices, and uh when that thing started reopening, I think by then we I had I was doing this for six or seven offices, and then several of them just continued on after. Uh not exactly the same because patients could go into the office, but the this this this idea and concept of engaging with patients that were still a little gun shy about leaving their house, right? They could, but they they were still feeling some type of way about leaving the house. I mean, this this this continued on for a while. Uh it it ah, it was a crazy time. I'm glad that we're about to turn the page on that right now.

SPEAKER_02 23:11

Yeah, moving on from COVID. Uh it it but but maybe even not, because what we're talking about here is the the the the really is the change in buying behavior and uh the outside circumstances that uh our forces, you know, that that that pull and tug at buying behavior. Look, it if if we were able to do what we were able to do during COVID, I mean it's gonna take I something far more dramatic than COVID to convince me that there's any scenario of any uncertain time where you can't perform. Right. You just have to adapt. Yeah. And so given the times now, obviously we've just come out of the the world of of tariffs and we've got global conflict and and we've got buyer confidence, you know, lower than maybe ever since I've entered, you know, even during based on what we were just saying, even during COVID. So we're in the middle of of adapting to what we see now. But I think the important note is that, you know, patients, they're not gone. Right. Right? They're not gone, especially in dentistry. You sort of talked about this. Yeah. You know, they're there. It's just they're making decisions a little slower. Affordability is on their mind, and I think you said they're they're thinking with their wallets. It's not that they're gone, they're just slower to pull the trigger.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

Yeah. Prioritizing different things, right? So uh, you know, I guess an office that's working with us, shameless plug, where you are treating people to an amazing experience where this process in your practice is really dialed in, right? Is going to help make someone uh feel better about maybe making a decision, whereas if they went to an office, didn't really have a great experience or they didn't really feel super confident about the way things uh went when they were there, right? Um I'm very confident in patients coming into our practices, uh what they're treated to and the offerings that we have. Again, I'm gonna harp on again and having options. Yeah. You know, I I worked for someone for a long time that used to say, you know, AJ, if you if you always offer the cheapest option, you know, they're only ever gonna choose that option. And I finally, you know, I was finally able to convince him one day uh uh to stop thinking that, right? Because I said, hey doctor, that car out in the parking lot, that that that you know, Porsche Carrera, yeah, uh GT. Yeah. What about it? Well, I don't understand. Uh why didn't you just buy a Camry? Well, what are you talking about? I I wanted that car. Oh, but you just told me when given the option, someone will always choose the cheapest version of whatever that option is. Well okay, well, but right, but I I mean I I want the jig was up. I I got him to really understand people like choices. Some people will pick the least expensive option, some people will pick the middle option, some people will pick the most expensive option. They like these choices, you know. Um, I I gosh, ever before I got him to really see the light, I used to hate when someone would get approved for like $15,000 in loans, right? But you know, he wanted 30. And it's like, but but can't we do something? And we had to kind of turn the patient away. Well, it's like, ah, what are we doing here? This is not the time. Relating it back to now, this is not a time to be doing that, right? I mean, loans from some of these finance companies may be affected by what's happening, right? Maybe they don't get approved for as much money as they would have a year ago or two years ago. Why would we turn someone away that does have something, right? That does have maybe not the the the the top of the line, but but you know, middle of the road there.

SPEAKER_02 27:07

Well, yeah, it's not just the patient who's uh buyer confidence uh is is weakened by these uh scenarios. It's also banks, lenders, right? Right? Lenders they tighten up, and we see lenders tightening up by the day, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:24

Even without what's going on by the hour, right?

SPEAKER_02 27:26

Like in the more way like we've had this kind of weird thing that we've noticed that if you you run uh loan applications in the morning, they tend to to be more successful per patient per approval than in the afternoon. Yeah. And we I once brought that up to one of our contacts in in the uh in the lending world, and they said that's actually makes perfect sense. It's because, at least with my company, you know, we have like a daily pool, and as you tap that daily pool, uh it there's less access to it. It's it it it diminishes and then it tightens. Right. You know, so we had certain offices we started to tell people just run financing in the morning. Yeah, but forget about again the success of the practice and in in in money and in the whole thing. It's also patient forward, right? A patient who comes in and needs help and and all you want to sell to them is a Ferrari, but you could do the Camry and you're not mentioning that, that's just not patient forward. And so what we found is the offices that have options, uh, we like to say these offices are like recession proof, right? Um because you might see a shift in in dollar per patient, you might see a shift in in total revenue per patient. Um, you know, but but you still have success. You can uh lessen the blow of what is happening globally. And you know, I think one of the lessons at the end of this whole show is you have no effect on this. Right. We can't go and stop what's happening in the world, right? We can only react to it. Right. And so, you know, uh when when buyer behavior changes based on that, we have to react. Are you a dentist looking to place more implants, but not sure if your staff, systems, protocols are actually ready for growth? Not to worry. Just take Maxilla Marketing's free implant readiness assessment at anothercaseclose.com forward slash quiz. It only takes about five to ten minutes, it requires no obligation, and it's a great way to determine exactly where your office stands in its implant journey and what your next steps should be. Whether implants are already a major part of your practice or you're just getting your feet wet, this is a simple way to gain clarity on what may be holding your practice back. Again, that's another caseclose.com forward slash quiz. Okay, cool. So, you know, global conflicts and COVID and all this crazy shit's going on, and and okay, you know, I I get it. Some offices just batting down the hatches. I'm not I'm I'm not totally against it, but I wouldn't do it, right? I I want to I want to kind of push through those times. But there's also regular seasonal changes in an office. Let's talk about those for a second. So, you know, the holidays, you know, you have Thanksgiving, you have Christmas. One thing I really want to talk about is general dentist dentistry. We see a huge push in December, right? I've got to use up the last of my benefits. Yeah, sure. Need that cleaning, need those fillings. Yeah, I gotta get in there. Fine. Uh, like all of our offices are general dentistry slash implant. Um, and so cool. Let's let's let's do that, let's focus on that. But it's the complete opposite with implants. The closer you come to Christmas, the less likely you are to book, to um begin treatment, uh, close treatment, the whole thing. You you just don't. And it's I mean, it's pretty obvious to me. If it's December 18th and I'm in your office and you're telling me, okay, this is gonna be a $35,000 procedure and I'm gonna just, you know, reconstruct your face. It's like I in two days I have uh uh family coming. Family coming to town for a week. Uh no, like and also I have gifts I need to buy. Right. I like to joke about uh December is is the one time in in our lives that with that we're forced to think about other people. And so we spend that few weeks to do it. And then in January, it's like okay, now it's about me again, right? New year, new me. Me again, me again, yeah, yeah. So so December's a terrible month, but what are some other times during the year for an implant office that we see downturn?

SPEAKER_00 31:40

Yeah, you know, uh I I actually uh I I bet uh some dentist out there is gonna laugh when I chuckle when I say this. You know, uh believe it or not, uh dentists aren't machines. Uh they also need to like take breaks and take time off, right? Oh, isn't that crazy? Yeah, don't tell our dentists that never. Uh what I tend to see is uh July, your your like summer like doldrums. I I see a lot of offices, that's when they shut down or they take a break, or the doctor takes a break, the office needs a break, they take a week off. And I also feel like it's a little harder to capture patients' attention sometimes, right? They're oh, it's summer. I I only have X amount of nights, uh, I only have X amount of days, or if you're where we're from, I mean July is when weather actually It's when you finally see the sun. So the idea of like going and hanging out at a dental office for a couple hours, you know, for a lot of people it gets pushed out of out of their minds. Uh another time of the year that can put wreak havoc, and this is different depending on what region you're in, is back to school time. Can't tell you how many times I've either heard recordings of patients calling into offices saying, uh, it's back to school time. I'm preparing to bring my child back uh to school next week. I can't really focus. I don't know when I can come in. And uh also uh dental practices have people, uh people that work there with lives that their children are going back to school. You could see some time off requests, what have you. I I I tend to see a slowing around back to school time in some states. I think in Florida, it's uh I don't know, it's crazy. It's like August uh around here, it's in September. Um uh another really interesting time of the year is uh is tax time. Uh and I know that uh uh tax time can actually be quite a quite a boom for a lot of offices because people are are given, you know, getting money back and they're gonna be like, oh, you know what? I got money back, I'm gonna go get that that missing tooth I I I've wanted to replace for a while. But what we've actually seen, especially at our offices, is the first uh couple of weeks of April uh can be brutal because people are mentally they're anticipating the or they don't know whatever it is. Yeah, maybe I'm gonna oh let's see what's yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:00

We do see that. You're right. We were just talking, we just had a whole meeting about this.

SPEAKER_00 34:03

Yeah, uh to be able to better prepare for it. And um you you you can, right? Uh what's cool a lot of times uh when you get someone to move forward with a with a especially a big implant treatment, right? You're generally not doing it immediately, right? So there is like some some lag, some lead time. So I think it you you you can maybe schedule things or or or position, you know, that it's like, okay, I I we usually have an awesome March. Let's remember the beginning of April is gonna be a little bit slow, right? So maybe from uh uh an employee needs time off perspective, maybe we have them go out the first week of April. And this is, I feel like this is pretty uh in in-depth inf information, heavy stuff we're talking about.

SPEAKER_02 34:48

I mean, we're living it right now. That's I think why it's fresh in your mind.

SPEAKER_00 34:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:51

Um but yeah, I I are are did I No, those, I mean, yeah, those those are those are the solid times is is your holidays. It's weird, you know, certain holidays you see an uptick and in certain holidays uh a downtick, and then and then like you said, not holidays unless you really like paying taxes. Right. Um, tax season has this interesting wave where um we come into the new year and we'll have very, very strong across the board of Crown. We had we had awful December, since that's just what an implant office season. Yeah um, and then we had an incredible January, great February, uh, an unheard of March. Yeah. And we had a it's weird, but we had the end of March, beginning of April, it was like just crickets. Everything just bottomed out, like what the hell is going on? And it's what sparked our conversation. We got on the phone with Maxilla Marketing and started talking about what's going on with calls. Calls are kind of the same, booking rate's kind of the same. It was really acceptance rate. People just weren't ready. And you know, it's only theory, but why are people not ready? End of March, beginning of April. Uh, you know, our theory is uh tax season. Yeah. I don't know if I owe yet. I don't know what I owe. I don't know what I'm getting back. I won't commit to anything. Or I will wait until I know I maybe I do know I'm getting $3,000 back and I'm gonna wait until then. And and you know, we sort of had this conversation in early April, and then it was corroborated, I think. By mid-April, end of April, we started to see all everything kind of came back.

SPEAKER_00 36:27

Yeah, the last week of April was a frantic uh sprint to the finish line. It was a sprint to the finish line. Yeah, it was pretty incredible. And most offices ended up uh being able to recover. Uh, but those are times where you dig in and and maybe you, you know, you maybe make some more follow-up calls. Like if you're an implant treatment coordinator, right? Or you're just an office that sees a lot of patients, right? That's times where, okay, it's a little bit slow for the implant side of things. What can we do to change that? You know, a lot of implant treatment coordinators tell me they don't have time to do this, they don't have time to do to do that. Well, if you call me and say, hey, I don't have any consults tomorrow, what do you think I'm gonna tell you to do? Get them. Get on the phone, sit. Uh, we had one coordinator sit down at the front desk and was listening, was answering phone calls, and actually uh discovered that depending on what the person says, he he found consults from people who probably, if they would have come in through the regular uh uh front desk uh employees, maybe wouldn't have been a consultation because they were calling with an emergency, right? Yeah, right. Yeah, uh hey, well, that emergency sounds like we might need to take a tooth out. So why don't we just get you in for a consultation? Right.

SPEAKER_02 37:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:44

That's what you got to do in those times when it's slow.

SPEAKER_02 37:48

Right. And and then if you're built in in this way where you have product that you are offering service that you're that you're offering, you know, like we talk about it a lot, the the Ferrari, the Lexus, the Corolla, right? And you're you're working that into your systems on a daily basis. Whenever you're talking to someone, it's like we're gonna meet you where you are. All of these things will get you there.

SPEAKER_01 38:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:14

It's just more bells and whistles, and it's up to you. What do you want? It's really, it's the same treatment for the same problem. It's just like a car. A car is gonna take you from your home to work, but do you want, you know, I don't know, do you do you want your car to talk to you and also? Want a car to drive you. Yeah, drive you, yeah, right there. Do you want to drive it? That's what this is. It's all, it's, it's the same, it's it's strip it down and we're solving the same problem. Yeah, reaching the same end with different bells and whistles. And so when we have offices that do it that way, when you have downturn, whether it's seasonal, cyclical, just normal, expected downturn, or it's unexpected downturn, it's way less of a hit than when you're an office that's that that focuses entirely on I want to be the Ferrari office. Right. Because when all you do is sell Ferraris all day long, when an uncertain time hits, people stop buying Ferraris. And when it's the only thing on your lot, what are you gonna do? Right. And this happens cyclical, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:18

You know, across industries too, of course. But I mean, say we're talking about dynasty, but it's everywhere, yeah. It's absolutely everywhere. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:25

All right. So let's let's move on. Uh I I think to to the next topic, which is uh how marketing uh has to evolve in this environment. Some of it is subtle and some of it is uh not marketing, as we talked about in we have a uh a marketing myths of marketing episode. In fact, I think we're gonna have two. Um, but we we talk about how marketing and getting the phone to ring, that's kind of the easy part, but it's just the tip of the iceberg for everything else that you got to do. There's so much more you need to do.

SPEAKER_01 39:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:56

And so it's this evolution of of marketing during these times, these adaptations of marketing. Um, so let's talk a little bit about that. I can start with the marketing, you know, just this is very simple, uh, honestly. But what we're doing with our marketing pieces right now, there's a buzzword today, you know, for better or worse, you believe it or you don't, it's a buzzword, and it is affordability, right? Um, and it's not wrong, consumers. Uh, you know, buyer confidence is about affordability. Can I fit this into my budget? And so what we're doing now is we're shifting some of our marketing messaging to really be built around affordability and to be built around sort of this is life-changing. And so it's not always affordability. It's it's do I want new kitchen cabinets or do I want new teeth? Um, and so some of our marketing pieces and then some of our training is to help people understand kind of the concept that you know what good is new kitchen cabinets if you can't eat the food that's in them. Uh and so that's kind of our messaging, right? That we get out there. But what are we doing inside of offices that kind of evolve and adapt to uncertain times?

SPEAKER_00 41:02

Yeah. Uh internally, what we have to make sure we're doing is uh we already talked about having multiple options too, but I think also like if if if I'm an implant treatment coordinator or I'm just someone who's talking to patients, right? I think like having a meeting with everyone and getting them on the same page to be like, hey, look, not everyone is gonna maybe be moving forward the way that they used to a year or two ago. Um, that's okay, right? This is where we have to express the importance of whatever treatment that they need, why they shouldn't maybe wait, right? Like I think about, hey, I completely understand why you might want to uh wait on this. I'm just gonna use uh a cavity. Okay. I can understand why you maybe want to wait on this cavity thinking about other things right now, but right now it's small, it's simple, it's it's it's this price. If you wait, you could actually be making this worse for yourself. Uh you could be taking something that's very affordable right now, and maybe if this goes for another six, seven, eight months, and maybe it's not gonna be as affordable for you, right? We can fix it right now. I think basically teaching your team to to just listen a little bit more and and be more, you know, uh understanding as to what someone may say to you as a reason why they might not want to move forward, right? Um, I also think uh, you know, we've been talking about being able to give someone an option that isn't always uh going to break the bank. Um there are some offices that come in and it's like, I'm only doing implants. If they can't get implants, I don't want to work with them. And it's like, but wait a minute. Maybe we could just give them a partial and just make them, you know, they were a new patient, they're here now. Uh let's just get them into our office with a partial with the understanding that this is not something that's a super long-term solution, but maybe it'll get you by right now. Some other things we definitely need to do internally is we have to have finance companies. I think uh you can't just sit on one at this point. You need to have more options to be able to offer patients, more uh companies to be able to decide, hey, uh yeah, you know what, uh, I will give you the money that you need. Uh and not even just that. Maybe the difference between someone saying yes and someone saying, I gotta think about it is I'm gonna say it may be an interest rate. Maybe it's, you know, uh, you know, a company like Care Credit maybe offering 0%. And that's what puts someone over the edge to be like, you know what, I'm gonna do it. I like the the idea of, you know, a year interest-free, you know what, things are gonna be better in a year. I'm okay doing this versus hammering them maybe and saying, you know, I need I need 24%. Well, whatever it is, right? I I think that these are things that we can be doing internally that will just make it easier for someone to be able to make a decision right now. Uh, or or just whenever something is maybe toying in the back. of their mind, making them re-re consider, rethink about things. So that's these are some things that I think of or where my mind goes. I I think just being remembering that we're all people I think is important. Maybe that's a little too I feel like I got a little weirdly deep. I don't know why, but yeah that should be on a fortune cookie. But I I mean it I mean it we're all people we should try to help each other.

SPEAKER_02 44:26

I mean in and that's in look it it's it's corny but it's absolutely true. Uh that's what you have to do in in meeting people where they are this this shift sometimes has to happen in an office. So okay if you're the Ferrari office you you better start selling Corollas or Lexus at least.

SPEAKER_03 44:43

Right.

SPEAKER_02 44:43

Right. But if you're you are doing everything right you have to understand in this time in these uncertain times when you start to see shifts of buying power and don't go off of your gut right because you might be every day checking some feed somewhere that is just melting your brain into feeling that something's happening when the data Maxilla has shows it's not. Right? You might come to us and say people are moving forward less than they ever were and you know Ty or Missy or some someone at Maxilla Missy's not at Maxilla anymore someone at Maxilla can can tell you no that's not happening. Right. Right? Or or yeah well well holy shit yeah your your acceptance rate has fallen off a cliff right you were at 75% and now you're at you know 52. Let's talk about why let's talk about pricing let's talk about presentation let's talk about where you're starting yeah you know if you're starting with the Ferrari and someone says no I can't do that and then you move into the Lexus I can't do that. You can fatigue someone through that funnel and so maybe for a period of time we we don't start with the Ferrari we don't not mention it but we don't start there. Now we start with the Lexus and then you you tell the patient you can go either way. There is another one. Right. There is a Fire one yeah yeah but you start and right so these little nuanced changes um that are reacting to the global behavior of a buyer right um can have very measurable changes and effects on the bottom line at your dental office and seeing it sort of hypothesizing it going and verifying it and then developing strategies to to address it this is how you stay ahead of the curve in and you'll never you'll never just stay there.

SPEAKER_00 46:28

The curve changes I wish things wouldn't change but that that's no that's not true.

SPEAKER_02 46:34

I actually enjoy change but most uh most people don't and most offices don't love that right if everything remained the same all the time it'd be it would get boring right I think so yeah I mean you know I I have what what they call uh ADHD uh entrepreneur brain where I'm I'm very much like oh shiny oh shiny shiny shiny when things start to get like too easy and boring I do things like start podcasts.

SPEAKER_00 46:58

Well you know too complacent yes yes yeah I don't I don't I don't like the the the I don't like comfort I guess the mundane yeah it's weird um that's good all right so look do you have anything else when it comes to you know the uncertainty in in the uh being able to adapt to that and anything else that you want to add to that I think um being open to hearing people who have ideas I think is also important uh in a time like this um uh maybe some people's first reaction is to like I it was under a different topic I think but you know you were talking about patience but like tunnel vision yeah right yeah blinders up right I think that's not the time to to to put blinders up. I think this is when you you maybe should be listening to you know a group of people who have weathered some storms before and say hey look uh we've we we've done this in the past we've seen we've seen this we've seen this before let's let's do this I I yeah right right right I mean look I uh you know hundreds of clients in in in my career and I don't know most of them turn their marketing off during COVID yeah all honestly honestly all all but one right and it was Dr.

SPEAKER_02 48:13

Frank and he calls me and he and he says listen what the hell are we doing this is this is a great opportunity and I was like oh my God yes you're the man you know holy shit he was right yeah well I mean totally right yeah um and so that sort of creativity and that ability to listen and and work with the people that you have supporting you as well because they'll have ideas right so for our clients you know it is before you decide to change your pricing before you decide to bat down the hatches before you decide to stop selling Ferraris call us breathe breathe stop stop strategize hypothesize right and and call you and call me or or call someone at Maxilla and have a conversation with what it is you think you're feeling right get that confirmation that you are or you are not and then work with your support systems to develop strategies to mitigate whatever it is that's happening. Yeah and once you've confirmed that it is cool.

SPEAKER_00 49:17

All right so there's no way that you don't have crazy AJ adventures during COVID time we brought up COVID so why not talk about uh AJ adventures you know I have crazy COVID stories but this isn't Ryan adventures it's AJ's adventures let's hear it some of them uh involve you uh so man if ever I'm sure anyone listening uh if you were alive back then and uh were a sentient person you realized uh nobody that fly no one no one listening is remember they uh they grounded lots of planes uh lots of routes uh flight routes were shut down uh I remember uh I needed to get to a particular office in Texas and at that time uh this is when travel you know I I was I was going to a state where I could actually go and I could actually walk into a dental office that was actually open and uh to drive all the way down to the lowly Erie Pennsylvania airport. Oh my God. How many terminals? Terminals I think it had three gates. Wow yeah yeah three four I think it had five total gates it's if if anyone from Erie is listening it's a gem it's a it's a great airport it's beautiful um it got us through COVID. It really did that was our that was our little airport yeah drove down well the first time I drove by myself and and flew all these wacky routes the the these little regional airports just didn't have the same volume of flights. So in order to get somewhere I'm taking like three different flights to get to you know what's normally very easy to get to in Austin. And um when I'm coming back on that uh from that trip so just remember there's only a handful of states that are that are allowing passengers you know from other states to come and even visit uh I I I get on a plane from I want to say it was from like Dallas Fort Worth to I don't know New York City or something or JF what one of the LaGuardia airports. I don't know. I'm one of about 12 people on the plane and um there's a there's a colleague of ours um that uh we love very dearly and she decided to get married during COVID and by decided I mean uh she said hey let's get married and it happened when COVID happened so she got married anyway um she was flying back from her honeymoon she had no idea that I was coming back from Texas I had no idea that she was flying back from her honeymoon she was coming from some other state both secret flyers since it was Covenant because since it was COVID. So um we we I get on the plane and I sit down and I get a text message and it says it's from her and it's like are you on a plane right now? Yes turn around there she is there she is so I go and I say hello remember you're masked up and keeping distance you know three of like the 10 people on this flight happen to be like to in my brain I'm thinking there's there's only a few thousand people in the whole country that are on an airplane right now right now. Yeah we happen to have just fallen backwards into being on the same flight and the funny the to me the the what was even funnier was I I can't remember where we connected to we we were both having to come home to Buffalo we both live here we didn't take the same flights from where we went we we we took different flights to ultimately come to Buffalo we weren't it wasn't even a flight that was like even though we were the you know the the where we were trying to get was the same end uh at that time we just had completely different routes to even get back to there. I just what what a what a wacky time um I hope I explain that in a way that made sense to anyone if anyone out there listening just calling yeah I'll explain it.

SPEAKER_02 53:14

But if you flew during that time I mean I remember flying during that time I remember landing in airports and there would be military asking for you know your papers please papers yeah yeah there was a few times I I would skirt those lines I'd find myself in like a family that already showed their papers I got a I got a call from a tracer or two here and there.

SPEAKER_00 53:36

Remember those remember that job for a minute?

SPEAKER_02 53:38

Yes COVID tracer yes you have to stay here in this city for six weeks. What um awesome uh AJ once again as usual uh I absolutely love doing this with you I I think I think the takeaway from today it's pretty simple uh you need to pay attention to to what's going on in in the market in cyclical uh seasonal in your area global you've got to pay attention to all of it and lean on the people that you work with to go and ask what other people are doing. Uh it's one of the benefits to working with you. You're so well connected to offices all over the country. So almost always if you call one of us about something you're feeling we have already felt it we're already talking about solutions and and we might even have data to back up solutions we've come up with either back it up or prove don't do that. Oh my god that was a stupid idea we've certainly had those um but yeah uncertain times you know it's happening now call us uh go on our website um if you are uh a a listener and and again you're you're you're hearing this and you're saying yeah you know what I'm I'm feeling this I'm seeing this uh I there's been a change in in behavior in my patients in my area um let's just chat about it you know uh leave a comment uh anywhere that that you're consuming our podcast or or reach out to us directly on another uh case closed dot com uh but for now that'll do it for for today thank you for listening and AJ that's another case closed case closed terrible at that we'll figure it out someday one day the gavel will help thanks for tuning in to Case Closed from consult to crown new episodes drop every other week if you're watching on YouTube give us a like leave a comment and consider subscribing to catch all of our upcoming content click the notification bell and feel free to leave a review or share the show with a friend. We greatly appreciate your feedback and if you'd like to reach out to AJ or myself directly leave us a message at anothercaseclose dot com. Thanks for being here and we'll see you in the next episode