Howard Speaks Volume or Value: Which Defines Your Practice? by Howard Farran, DDS, MBA, MAGD

Eventually, you're going to have to decide whether you're in a "volume" practice—selling products like crowns, fillings and root canals, and actually advertising your prices—or you're going to be a value-driven office and you're going to sell you.

Show them the money …

If you're going to be price-driven and sign up for every PPO on the planet, you have to keep one eye on costs and the other on patients and their PPOs, until you can manage to make some kind of profit. A vast majority of dentists have lowered their fees and signed up to work with PPOs. But if I ask one of them, as a PPO doctor, if he's trimming his costs and selling a lot of products to offset the loss in fees, he'll say, "Well, no—I have long-term staff, and I want to build relationships with my patients."

If you're going to make your money off volume, you need to market yourself, your information and what you charge—especially on your website. I've always said that half of America buys dentistry according to price. Your patients are saying: "This guy takes my PPO, he takes my Affordable Healthcare Act. This is where I can afford to go."

… Or show them the value

The rest of America, though, says, "You know, the time I went to a dentist, I tried a corporate chain and my dentist was some kid. I didn't like it so I tried another one. I didn't like that, either, so now I'm looking around online and found the stuff on your website." They're buying the dentist.

You can't be value-driven if your website looks like you're a commodity or something stamped out of a factory—and worse, an old factory. It still requires savvy marketing. Ask your mom what the greatest sewing machine in the world is. She's going to say that it's a Singer. Isaac M. Singer didn't invent the sewing machine, any more than Henry Ford invented the car. But the reason we all know Henry Ford is because he marketed his cars as being affordable. Singer did the same thing for sewing machines.

He noticed that, in an era when millions of immigrants were looking for jobs in textiles, the hindrance was that to work, you had to have your own sewing machine—and they were $50. Singer knew that a person could get a job for $3 a week, so he financed his sewing machines for $1 a week for 50 weeks. People lined up in droves to get a machine for $1 a week, so they could land a $3-a-week job. The rest is history.

Helping them afford it

Let's apply that to our industry. Take a dental implant center that basically does 20,000 arch implants a year in the U.S., for $25,000 an arch. No patient wants to buy an arch when they hear how much that sounds like! So dentists think, "OK, if I sign up for a PPO, drop my fee 40 percent, I'll still get $15,000."

Most patients who buy full-price implants don't have the full $25,000 lying around—but they probably don't have even the $15,000, either. So the dental implant center takes the full amount and divides it by 60 months, so now it can say: "Sure, you don't have $25,000 to pay up front. But can you pay $499 a month for 60 months?" Another thing with value-driven dentists: They use patient financing companies such as CareCredit, which is what we use at my practice, and they've honed their plan presentation so it sells the doctor's expertise first, then follows up with the treatment and the trustworthiness.

It's when the treatment plan coordinator says things like, "Oh, Dr. Farran's assistant, Jan, has been with us for 29 years, and Dr. Farran has worked on her, her husband, her mom, her sister. … You are so lucky to come here, too!" That's never be followed by, "… Oh, and by the way, the treatment is $25,000." Instead: "You've got great credit and have been approved by CareCredit, and you can have this whole thing done for just $499 a month for 60 months." Patients love that, and at that point completely trust the doctor and the practice.

Only 10 percent of the cars on today's highways are paid for in cash. Same with homes. Ninety percent of nearly everything sold in America is paid for with installment credit nowadays—why not high-dollar dentistry procedures?