The Payment Strategy That Will Revolutionize Your Orthodontic Practice

[00:00:07] Welcome to the GrowOrtho Podcast. I am one of your hosts, Zach Dyches, joined by Dr. Bryce Gilliam, 2024's 40 Under 40, America's top young dentist, co-host of the TV show Making Modern, available on Max, and the owner and operator of Elevation Orthodontics. Dr. Bryce, welcome to the show.

[00:00:31] What's up, my man? I'm so excited to be here.

[00:00:33] I am so excited because today we've got a really awesome topic to talk about.

[00:00:39] And for anyone that's joining us, you know, we can talk theory, we can talk all of these things about running your practice, but you are in the trenches every day, Dr. Gilliam.

[00:00:52] You've made these decisions and you've seen the fruit that we're going to be talking about today.

[00:00:57] So this isn't theory, this is hard won choices that you've done in your practice.

[00:01:03] So let's get into today's topic of the episode is financial considerations.

[00:01:11] Let's talk about the concerns about lowering the down payment and potential collections issues.

[00:01:17] I know this is something we preach here at HIP.

[00:01:20] This is something we're like, let's make it more affordable to get more people into.

[00:01:25] But let's jump into that.

[00:01:26] Dude, I think the financial concern with orthodontics is always something that we're going to be dealing with.

[00:01:33] And specifically, like lowering the down payment or people not paying on time and things like that are big concerns to us.

[00:01:41] And, you know, I'm a big fan of not devaluing my product or my service.

[00:01:48] So I don't want to get into the race to the bottom type of things.

[00:01:54] But there are three things that you can really do to help lower that down payment and then help with the funding of the treatment.

[00:02:05] And one of those things is a third party lender.

[00:02:08] The idea with this is to get, you know, a care credit or something like that that will front the money to the patient.

[00:02:16] And then they pay you.

[00:02:18] And then the third party collects the money over time.

[00:02:22] And if they fall delinquent or any of those type of things, then that's on the third party vendor to collect that.

[00:02:31] Another thing that we like to do if the down payment seems to be too much or where there's concerns, we like to do ACH payments or a credit card on file.

[00:02:43] The idea with this is if you can get them to commit to putting an ACH on file, then you have the ability to kind of auto draft those payments every month.

[00:02:52] And it's harder to close a bank account than it is to close a credit card account.

[00:02:58] You can pause credit card accounts and things like that.

[00:03:01] But the ACH gives us as providers that extra layer of protection to continue to draft out those funds.

[00:03:10] And then the third thing is you can split up the down payment.

[00:03:13] If the down payment is the hurdle or is the problem, split it up into two different appointments or two different payments that they can pay over time.

[00:03:21] That makes it a little bit more palatable and it gets them started and it gets you rocking and rolling.

[00:03:26] So let's say we put these into place with your practice.

[00:03:31] How has that helped you?

[00:03:34] I'm just curious here.

[00:03:36] That's a great question, actually.

[00:03:37] There's a couple of reasons why it helps.

[00:03:39] It helps with starts, which that to me is the lifeblood of a practice is to getting patients to start.

[00:03:46] But then it also gives us the security of them having an ACH payment set up that we are going to continue to get that money.

[00:03:58] And their payment is important.

[00:04:01] They sign a contract with us.

[00:04:03] But, you know, the idea is for you to keep your AR as low as possible or as current as possible and for you to be profitable as a company.

[00:04:12] And so to ensure those things, we've put up these safeguards.

[00:04:15] And a lot of times it's really easy on the patient and they don't have to think about it.

[00:04:22] So it's a win-win for everybody.

[00:04:24] Yeah, because let's be honest, everybody wants convenience.

[00:04:29] They don't want to think about things.

[00:04:31] That's why there's so many subscription services.

[00:04:34] Printers literally have subscription services now for ink and all of that.

[00:04:39] Nobody wants to think about these things.

[00:04:41] And protecting yourself as the practice owner, I think, is key here.

[00:04:46] But it goes to that point.

[00:04:48] You're wanting to increase starts.

[00:04:50] If you're saying, well, you've got to pay $6,000 up front, not a lot of people have got $6,000 in cash flow ready to go.

[00:05:00] When this is, let's be honest, kind of a luxury thing, you know, when you really get down to it, it's like nobody's going to die with crooked teeth.

[00:05:08] You know, like they're not going to die because of that.

[00:05:10] Yep.

[00:05:11] Whenever you look at it and you say, man, my down payment is $1,500, $2,000, you know, even $1,000 sometimes, that's a lot of money to most people.

[00:05:20] To come out of their pocket and pay you that all at once is a lot.

[00:05:24] So our goal would be to kind of soften that blow.

[00:05:28] You want to lessen all the barriers to entry that you possibly can.

[00:05:32] However, you can't make it zero because if you do, you're in upside down already.

[00:05:39] So you want to make sure you balance it correctly to make sure that you as a business are protected, but then also you're delivering a product to your patients or a service to your patients that's helpful to them as well.

[00:05:51] You want to avoid the perception of being a budget practice or, you know, like being kind of less than.

[00:05:59] So you want your leads to feel like you are a premium service, but you're affordable.

[00:06:06] They're getting kind of like they're flitting the door with this thing.

[00:06:09] Like they want to be part of the in crowd.

[00:06:11] That's right.

[00:06:12] I've got a thing that I always say, and it's let's not be a bottom dweller.

[00:06:15] The idea is, you know, you can race to the bottom, but the problem with racing to the bottom is what if you win?

[00:06:23] Right. And so so now you you're down to the bottom and your profitability, your profitability is all off and things like that.

[00:06:29] Really, when you race to the bottom, what you are doing is you are devaluing your services.

[00:06:38] You're setting up the expectation that, you know, I'm willing to do kind of less than service to to make it make it work for you.

[00:06:47] And I just don't like that model.

[00:06:50] I'm a big fan of doing add ons or value ads, but I don't like to just continue to decrease the price point because I think it devalues the brand.

[00:07:02] Dr. Bryce and I are going live on December 12th at 1230 p.m. Central Time.

[00:07:07] We'll be discussing how to make your practice the best that it can be.

[00:07:11] And we're going to be taking questions from viewers just like you live.

[00:07:16] So mark it on your calendar for December 12th at 1230 p.m. Central Time and come ready to discuss and grow.

[00:07:22] You're a specialist, you know, when it comes down to it, you're a specialist.

[00:07:28] You're not Joe Schmo, you know, selling a hamburger.

[00:07:32] You know, I love me some hamburgers.

[00:07:33] I'm going to lie, but you're specializing in something and you put a lot of time and effort into this.

[00:07:39] So racing to the bottom, like eventually, like you're going to be like a certain DIY company that is giving subpar service and you don't want to be known as that.

[00:07:51] That's right.

[00:07:52] You bring up a great point.

[00:07:53] I mean, when you're racing to the bottom as a as a small business, it is going to be hard for you to ever compete with pricing as some of these huge corporations.

[00:08:04] So the idea of me, you know, let's just say I sold T-shirts.

[00:08:11] Well, if I sold T-shirts, I'm never going to be cheaper than what Walmart can sell T-shirts for.

[00:08:17] Right.

[00:08:18] It doesn't it doesn't make any sense.

[00:08:20] Or if I am cheaper, there's no way I can have the same profit margins that they have.

[00:08:24] So you don't want to get to the situation where your business is suffering because you're just trying to drop your prices so low.

[00:08:32] What I would rather do is I'd rather add on like a retainer program or I'd rather add on some whitening or something like that.

[00:08:40] That's what we do here in the office to add the value without actually having to decrease the pricing.

[00:08:46] So that brings up like offering discounts like you can slap a discount on things very, very easily.

[00:08:54] But how do you effectively do that on top of maybe say like insurance?

[00:09:01] So you've got to be very careful and selective whenever you're offering discounts.

[00:09:06] I think that this is this is something that you want to make sure that you maybe aren't doing all the time.

[00:09:12] And this is speaking solely from personal experience.

[00:09:16] Whenever I used to go into the exams, I would start talking to the patients.

[00:09:21] This is really early on in my office.

[00:09:23] And I'd be like, OK, you know, I would like the patient.

[00:09:25] I'd say I'm going to give you a discount for you.

[00:09:27] I'm going to give you a discount.

[00:09:29] And then my treatment coordinator at the time would look at me.

[00:09:31] Her eyes would get all big and she would be like, Dr.

[00:09:34] Bryce, stop doing that.

[00:09:35] And so now we have this rule that, Dr.

[00:09:37] Bryce, you need to get out of the room before you start giving people discounts.

[00:09:41] So you've got to be careful with the discount.

[00:09:43] And what I would do instead of just doing this blanket discount, I would say discounts have to have a very distinct time period.

[00:09:53] They have to be, you know, I'm going to run this discount for 14 days and that's all we're going to do it for.

[00:10:00] Also, if you're going to run discounts, you've got to be hyper individualized.

[00:10:05] And what I mean by that is maybe you're not doing this big discount over all of this huge patient population.

[00:10:11] Instead, you're saying, you know what?

[00:10:13] I know that this person is going to start, but it's just a little bit outside their price range.

[00:10:18] So what I'm going to do for you is I'm going to give you, you know, 25 bucks off.

[00:10:25] I don't I don't know.

[00:10:25] I'm just making that up.

[00:10:26] But, you know, you give it to them only.

[00:10:29] Right.

[00:10:29] And then if you're going to do a discount, I also like a referral discount.

[00:10:34] I think that putting discounts toward a behavior that you want to continue is really great.

[00:10:41] So what we do in my practice is we give the referee, we give them a gift and then we also give the referrer a gift as well.

[00:10:53] So the person that's coming in that's not our patient, we give them, you know, some type of discount, whether it's kind of like a family discount or a friend's discount.

[00:11:02] And then for the person that actually referred them, we give them a little prize, too.

[00:11:07] And I think that is so much better than, you know, racing to the bottom and making your discounts kind of this like it's too good to be true thing, because usually when something is too good to be true, it probably isn't good.

[00:11:22] You know what I mean?

[00:11:24] So like being, you know, honest and it's like, well, you're a business.

[00:11:30] You have to make money.

[00:11:32] You know, you got that's, you know, you got to pay the employees, keep the doors open.

[00:11:37] But being able to, oh, well, I see these people need, you know, need these options or, hey, this person, they've brought in 10 people.

[00:11:47] I'm fine with giving them, you know, a little gift or whatever.

[00:11:50] Like, I think that is a really great way of doing it.

[00:11:53] And anytime you are offering discounts, always think about the optics of how you're going to be seen, because you don't see Rolex putting out discounts on their watches.

[00:12:09] Right.

[00:12:10] That's right.

[00:12:11] All the luxury brands, you know, you don't see very many discounts at all.

[00:12:14] I do think it's really important that you have a strong TC and you give them a little bit of autonomy.

[00:12:20] Right.

[00:12:21] So the TC, how my office works is the person from the initial call to the initial appointment is now handled by the TC because I wanted that person to be able to build rapport with the patient.

[00:12:34] So she gets the patient from the back or I mean, gets the patient from the front, brings them to the back, brings them to her office, has a little small talk with them, finds out what's important to them.

[00:12:43] But she all along, she's building this rapport.

[00:12:46] And so once it gets time to the financial consideration or the financial presentation, when she does that, she already has some type of idea about this person.

[00:12:57] And I when I leave my exams, I say, this is Miss Abby.

[00:13:01] She's going to take care of you from here.

[00:13:03] She has levers that she can pull.

[00:13:06] But it's important that you give her information to help her pull that right lever to help you get started today.

[00:13:12] And that just gives them the confidence that Miss Abby is there looking out for their best interest.

[00:13:19] But then also it gives Abby the confidence that I'm saying, hey, do what it takes to close this case because you have an idea of what kind of hardships they're going through or where they're at.

[00:13:33] So that's how I do it.

[00:13:35] I think that's helpful.

[00:13:36] But you really have to give autonomy to your treatment coordinator or your financial coordinator, whoever you're using.

[00:13:42] Yeah.

[00:13:43] And it goes back to episode one of this series where you're trusting the team.

[00:13:49] You've put that trust.

[00:13:52] You've built that relationship and set up systems for them to operate in.

[00:13:57] And that is where it is all about.

[00:14:00] So let's say there is somebody that calls up.

[00:14:03] They're on the phone with one of your schedulers.

[00:14:06] And they ask, how much is this going to cost me?

[00:14:11] How do they handle that?

[00:14:12] What is the whole process of them going about telling them?

[00:14:15] So we like to give a range whenever we have a call.

[00:14:19] When we get a new call from a client or a potential client and they say, how much is it?

[00:14:24] How much down?

[00:14:24] How much?

[00:14:25] We say, good.

[00:14:26] Well, we can go as low as $400 down.

[00:14:31] But the more down payment you put, the less your monthlies will be.

[00:14:34] We offer 0% interest, but we also have a nice third party that will be able to help you.

[00:14:41] And we can do it that way.

[00:14:42] There are a lot of different ways that we can make this work for you.

[00:14:46] And so we're just trying to let them know that we are here for them and that we can help them

[00:14:53] as much as we possibly can to get them started.

[00:14:57] There you go, guys.

[00:14:58] That is our episode for today.

[00:15:00] If you have a question that you want us to answer on the podcast, let us know.