Bart Knellinger: Guys, what’s up?

Leslie Ramos: Hello. [inaudible]

Bart: What’s going on? [background noise] Just gonna to give everybody a minute to sign on here. [alert sound] [pause]

Manuel: Great. Demini. [laughs] [pause]

Tamara: [Inaudible]

Bart: I’m just giving everybody a second here to sign up, sign on guys, and then we will get going. Everyone doing good? Everyone closing some arches?

Manuel: Yes.

Bart: Cool. I talked to a bunch of people that kind of had a, a little bit of a slower August. A little bit of a slow August, not totally uncommon, but I did talk to some people that said it was a little bit slower in terms of their production for that month. But September, it usually ramps up obviously, big time, Q4 is usually huge. So, hopefully, everyone’s rolling. Hey, guys and also make sure, if you guys are like, are newer to, um, to TCI, if you haven’t had an opportunity to get your doctor into one of the power sessions, it’s not a bad idea to do so. I’m seeing a lot of the treatment coordinators, like, absolutely doing wonderful with the first 10 and the third 10, but I feel like there’s some, sometimes there’s some disconnect with the second 10. You know, because you guys have just had so much more training than the doctor in the 10, 10, 10 that sometimes it just kind of puts you in a position that’s difficult to recover.

So, if you guys can, um, when you’re coming to a power session, try to get your doctors over to at least one, and, you know, make sure when you’re doing your videos, you guys get to turn the videos in, you get a critique. If you have anything that would have helped you on the second 10, try to get some time outlined with your doctor, you know, to go through the second 10 with, uh, go through the second 10 with the doctor and say, hey, you know, here’s kind of some of the things that I feel like would help me a little bit, right, in the close. Um, and then make sure that you ask the doctor, is there any information that I’m not giving you before you walk in the door, that would be more helpful for you? And watch it with him and try to, try to get a little bit better as a team too, um, because obviously, you guys are the ones going through the online learning. You’re the one watching all the content. You guys are the ones coming to the power sessions. You’re the ones that are predominantly on these calls.

So, you have to kind of quarterback the entire condition process. And that means, you know, helping the doctors help you as well with, with their delivery and what, what it is that they’re doing, you know, and obviously main thing being you need doctors to make a primary recommendation that’s clear, and it has to be obvious that that is a vehicle that’s going to get the patient what they want. That is their plan to achieve whatever the aim is that you guys discussed in the first 10. As long as that happens, right, a lot of the other stuff will be okay. But you wanna make sure that you guys are going into the third 10 without a treatment plan to sell. I know I’ve said that a lot, but it’s, it’s something that a, that is kind of a recurring issue, and I think it’s just because the doctors haven’t really been to a lot of the training. So, um, I think those two things would help if you can get them to at least one power session. Um, and then try to have time once a month, or once every other month, or whenever you can, schedule an hour with the doctor and just go through a couple of videos and watch them together. Uh, and that, that might really help as well.

Okay. Um, I’m gonna go ahead and get started here. We’re going to be playing, um, a consultation, the treatment coordinators, Cody and, um, the doctors, Dr.-, Dr. Carpenter. But we’re gonna play a consultation here. And I’m gonna go through, uh, a few of the parts of the first 10, the second 10 and the third 10. I’m gonna give you guys kind of the cliff notes version. Overall, Cody does a jo-, a really, really, really good job with this. So, let’s go ahead and go through this. Remember any questions you guys have, just type them in, type them in Caitlyn is sitting here with me, and she can stop me, and, uh, and I can stop and answer the questions since everybody’s on. [clears throat] Okay. Here we go. Make sure you turn your-, the, the audio is pretty good here, but make sure that you guys turn the volume up on your, uh, on your device or your computer. [background noise]

Cody: Like I said, I’m Cody. I’m the treatment coordinator here.

Ramona: Okay.

Cody: And really my job boils down to two things. The first being your current state, kind of, where you’re at right now. Get a little bit of a better idea about that. And then your desired state; what do you want your outcomes to be? How you want your mouth to look, feel, function, everything like that. Does that kind of make sense, what I’m looking for?

Ramona: Yes.

Cody: So, I’ll be asking you a lot of questions about stuff like that.

Ramona: Okay, cool.

Cody: So, I know from our phone call, I gathered a little bit of information then, and it looks like you’re missing at least three teeth. Is it more than three?

Ramona: More than that.

Cody: Yeah. How many teeth are you missing?

Ramona: Hmm, probably at least 10.

Cody: At least 10? Got you. Okay. Sounds good. And that doesn’t sound good. It sounds awful, actually. [laughter]

Ramona: And then the rest, um [inaudible].

Cody: Yeah.

Bart: Missing 10 teeth sounds good. Awesome. Okay, great.

Cody: So, are they all missing up top or is it on the bottom as well?

Ramona: Kind of spread out on the back, on the bottom, in front, and [inaudible].

Cody: Okay.

Bart: So, um, one thing to keep in mind, guys. So, when you guys walk into the room and sit down and again, I didn’t see how, how Cody actually met her face-to-face, but, um, you wanna make sure that the first time that you meet the patient, the, the first three seconds, you guys make some kind of an impact, right? You always wanna try to extend your hand and make sure to shake their hand. That might have already happened in the lobby. I’m just kind of making a point of it that, hey, that your, your first impression, you wanna make an impact on that person immediately that, hey, you’re, you’re a figure of authority. You’re somebody, you’re somebody they wanna talk to.

Cody: And you also said that you had…

Ramona: Yeah. [inaudible]

Tamara: [inaudible]

Cody: Was there root canal on one of the front teeth? Is that what it was filling on the front tooth?

Ramona: Yeah.

Cody: Yeah.

Ramona: And then it fell out, and the tooth, when, the other one, I don’t know, it just like fell off[?]

Cody: Sure.

Ramona: It just shed halfway [inaudible].

Cody: So, you’re completely missing the one up front and then there’s one adjacent to it that’s half broken?

Ramona: Well, it happens. It’s broken.

Cody: Yeah. Oh, I see. Oh yeah. It’s broken off at the gum line in there.

Ramona: Mm-hmm.

Cody: I’m sure that makes it really…

Ramona: It’s hard to smile. [laughs]

Cody: Yeah, well.

Ramona: Even talking, I whistle.

Cody: Right, right. And that’s number one annoying, that you whistle when you talk. And number two, like, it’s a shame that you feel like you have to hide your smile when you talk, especially because you said that you’re an educator. You, you teach at some…

Ramona: Yeah, I have to get in front of [inaudible].

Cody: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I believe you. And that’s really, that’s really hard, especially because they’re, they’re younger people, right?

Ramona: Yeah.

Cody: And they are very quick to draw a conclusion and I’m sure you’ve dealt with that.

Ramona: Yeah.

Cody: So, I- I- That, that’s really tough. But the good news is, like I said, lots of ways to fix it.

Bart: All right, one thing to pay attention. So, this, this particular patient, how would you describe her demeanor at this point? Because these types of patients can be a little bit more difficult, right? Because she’s very, she’s extremely soft-spoken. She’s extremely reserved and she’s, she definitely, she is not somebody that is exhibiting any type of outgoing personality here, and she’s not saying a whole lot, you know? So, with those patients, right? Sometimes they say something, um, sometimes when they, when they say something like, yeah, you know, this tooth fell out or that fell out or whatever the case is, you have to make sure to allow them to elaborate. You know what I mean? The whole goal is to get her talking as much as possible, even if there’s some pauses in there. Sometimes it takes a little while to get these guys going, but you wanna make sure that you get them going so that they’re contributing as much as possible to the conversation.

And that can be tough because sometimes they can just give you real short answers. Um, but when you feel like you hit a nerve and they show any emotion, let them elaborate on those points. Like, I thought where she was the most animated is when Cody said, yeah, so you’re missing, what are you, you’re missing like three teeth, right? And she’s like, oh God, no more than that. More than that. And you’re like more, how many are you missing? How long has this happened? Oh, my God. Really? Have you been dealing with that? Wow. And you’re just saying things like that just to get, get this person going, right? You have to get them going somehow speaking to you and it takes a little bit of patience when you’re dealing with somebody that’s extremely reserved with their personality.

These guys, I think this personality type is the m-, the most difficult because it’s very hard to read what their level of urgency is. She doesn’t show, um, any emotion, right? Uh, she doesn’t show any emotion, one emotion more than the other, and she’s not, she’s not speaking a lot. So, these are, these types of, this type of profile is, I believe, is the most difficult to close because they don’t share information. You guys really have to be good at extracting the information from these type of people, whereas somebody with a very dominant personality, even if they’re, even if they’re a difficult person or a difficult personality, I still find it much easier coz they just give it to you. They’re just gonna give it to you direct, tell you whatever they think, right? And then the real talkative people, they’re gonna talk and they typically show emotion. So, you can tell very quickly what their level of urgency is, whereas this personality type and this demeanor, you guys have to get all of that out of them and extract the information, um, and which is, which is a little bit more difficult.

Cody: Let’s see. And you said that you had a partial denture or have a partial denture?

Ramona: Yeah. Um, just not the front one but the next one. I got attacked by a guy, and I, I don’t know, he hit me. I don’t know if it broke off then or, I did bite him.

Cody: Mm-hmm.

Ramona: Yeah. Um, it was like this one. So, they had to, um, pull it out, and then they made this, you know, I had the wire thing where you stick it in and…

Cody: Right.

Ramona: And, um, when I got, went in the army and they, well, when I was in the army and they, um, fixed it, they could. Um, well they put it on, so these three teeth were a bridge or something, right?

Cody: Right, yeah.

Ramona: And then, eventually this one, they had to cut it off. And I don’t remember why they cut it off because I [inaudible].

Bart: So, did you guys hear that right? So, she just said she got attacked, right. So, all right, if I’m Cody here, right, we know the goal is like, ma’am, like, I’m starting to pull, she’s starting to talk a little bit more. Okay. So, what you want to be mindful of, it’s really good to take notes. But if you’re taking notes, and they say something that you feel like is very emotional, or it’s an emotional trigger, something to do as soon as you hear it is like, what are you ki-, for, seriously? Oh, my God. Right? Like that. You know what I’m saying? It’s like, I’m putting the notes down. Like, holy, are you… Wow. Oh my God. You got attacked, really? Because they’re gonna open up. They’re gonna open up. They’re gonna start showing a little bit of more emotion. And if she’s willing to share something really personal, then that’s, that’s where you can connect. That’s where you guys can connect and start to build some trust, right? But the whole, the whole game here with this personality is getting their trust. It’s difficult, right? And I feel like she feels comfortable. She obviously feels comfortable enough when Cody did to disclose that, but what happened is she didn’t get any reaction out of Cody when it was disclosed. So, she glossed right over it. Does that make sense? Okay.

Cody: [Inaudible].

Ramona: Because I think it was like, um, how they do the… It was, uh, anyway, they pulled the tooth out that was affected, so they didn’t, uh [inaudible].

Cody: Got you. It just, it just doesn’t fit anymore, and you haven’t gone in to get a new one yet, is what I understand.

Ramona: Yeah.

Cody: Okay. Got you, got you. That makes sense. I’m really sorry to hear that that happened to you, especially because, now you’re partial doesn’t even work, so you can’t even lean on that.

Ramona: Yeah.

Cody: That’s really tough.

Ramona: Well, they just gave the, they just gave me the tooth and they said to keep it up, put it back in, and there, there was my way for it to… it’s behind…

Cody: You’re kidding.

Ramona: I was like, That’s crazy.

Cody: They told you put your tooth back in…

Ramona: Yeah.

Cody: … Back in there?

Ramona: The one that, that it was, um, they had the drill.

Cody: Yeah.

Ramona: And then there was, I had a bit, like a fake tooth or something and…

Cody: Hmm.

Ramona: I mean, they, I was just like, there’s no way that it’s gonna stay in there.

Cody: No.

Ramona: And they said, Well, you have to make an appointment to come back. And that was at IHS. And that was before they got the new place, but…

Cody: Sure.

Ramona: … I went one time and I had this toothache and, um, really bad. And so, and I had to wait for, for them to get me an appointment. And they pulled it and they said it should feel bad. I said, when I was gonna feel better, and they said, immediately tomorrow it shouldn’t be, and it’s still the next morning and really bad. So, I went back in the next day and then she pulled the wrong one.

Cody: [Inaudible].

Ramona: And, uh, didn’t even say sorry. She didn’t even talk to me. She has something else for them. I said, I want to talk to the dentist who did this.

Cody: Yeah.

Ramona: They wouldn’t let me talk to her.

Cody: Oh, my goodness.

Ramona: I said, she pulled the wrong tooth, and that one didn’t even have a cavity or anything, it didn’t have, you know what I’m saying?

Cody: I didn’t. Oh my gosh, that is so [inaudible].

Ramona: That’s awful.

Cody: That is awful. Um, how about, you know, as far as function. I know that you talked a little bit about, you know, eating and stuff like that and just talking. How important is that to you, say on a scale?

Bart: So, I would do, I would do kind of a recap, right? Coz the whole point is to get a good, get a good understanding of what a current state is, right? How many teeth she’s missing and what some of her pain points are, but then you’re like, man, so you’re missing like 10 teeth, 12 teeth. You already have a partial, but that’s not even working. That must be tough. That must be tough. How, how have you noticed that kind of effect in your health? Has it affected your ability to eat or speak, or what do you think is the biggest things you’ve noticed as you’ve lost more and more teeth? I would ask that question just to get her talking a little bit about the, uh, about the quality of life right there. And then when you transition into talking about the future states, you know, you wanna do a real quick recap. It’s like, okay, I think I understand kind of where we are, totally get what it is that you’re going through. And, you know, you obviously, I think Cody does this a little bit later and it’s, it’s normal to kind of go out of sequence to a certain extent, but it’s typically, we get the pain points, how it affected their life and then the trigger point in terms of what made her pulled the trigger right now.

And then we transition into future state where we’re talking about, okay, talk about what you want, because the treatment. We’re going to, the, the treatment is nothing more but a plan. They call it a treatment plan coz it’s a plan to get you from where you are to where you wanna be. So, let’s talk about how you wanna look, how you wanna feel, how you wanna function, and what you want in terms of longevity moving forward, so that we can rectify all this stuff. Sound good? Okay, cool. And like you have to, like the, the main thing that you’re gonna see guys, you see, with Cody’s, Cody’s got a very good demeanor, uh, and shows really good empathy. And then there, there’s certain times within the consultation where you’ve got to kind of amp it up to get them up, right? So, in the very beginning, when you meet somebody, like, you’re mirroring matching the patient. So, if the patient’s reserved, they speak quietly, you’re reserved, you speak quietly, so they feel comfortable communicating with you, but after you’ve established communication, you’ve made a connection, you’ve established some trust, then you want to reverse that process to where you start changing up your delivery so that they start matching you.

So, if you feel you need to get their energy level up, what do you do? You raise your energy up, right? And look them to match it, right? And that’s gonna tell you whether or not you’re in rapport with this particular person, okay? So you’re only mirroring matching them in the very beginning. Once you’ve established trust and connection from that point forward, you’re managing their energy, right? So, there’s certain times where you’ve got to like, pick it up and that, that transition is, is one of them.

Cody: On a scale of 1 to 10, if we could restore full function, how imp-, important is that to you?

Ramona: Um, a 10.

Cody: Yeah, yeah. That’s kind of what I figured. And I’m assuming that eating your favorite foods is pretty difficult.

Ramona: I, yeah, it takes me forever to chew it. That was at least half of them followed out, yeah, but, um, my boyfriend at the time, he goes, “You eat like a bird.” And I say, “What?” And he was like, “You barely eat.” And I said, he goes, uh, it takes you a long time. And it was because I had to…

Cody: You just couldn’t. You couldn’t eat any faster, I’m sure.

Ramona: Yeah.

Cody: And the, the tough part about that, as well, is when you’re not able to eat properly and eat the things that you need to, that affects your overall health as well. And I’m sure you’ve seen some effects of that as, as long as you’ve been dealing with that. How long has this been going on?

Ramona: Jeez, forever. Even in the military, they, um, you know, it would be, they’d say, well, you need this, this, and this done. And, uh, when I got out, they still needed to do some dental work, but they hadn’t been able to fit me in, but they didn’t, um, I didn’t retire, so they didn’t fix it, which is important to me, it doesn’t help somebody.

Cody: So, it’s been going on for quite a while, I’m curious, what was, what was the main point? What made you say, this is it, this is the last straw, I’m coming in for this [inaudible]

Ramona: When this tooth, it’s, when this tooth fell out, I was just like, I’m so embarrassed, I’m just like, um, I just can’t talk to anybody. [laughs] You know, I’m just like, Yeah, I just don’t want to talk.

Cody: Yeah, well, I, I really do appreciate.

Bart: Your tooth fell out? Which one? This one. Oh my God. What were you doing? Were you eating? Who were you with? You know what I’m saying? Like that, that should shock you guys. You know, like you wanna lack surprise there, like, oh my God. Like, that’s a big deal. Your, your, your teeth are not supposed to just come out and then you put them back in. That’s weird, right? It’s like, oh my God. Your tooth fell, what, were, were you eating? Were you with somebody? Oh, my God, right? Because just saying that; that’s it. She’s gonna elaborate on it a little bit more. That’s really good stuff. I mean, damn, [chuckle] what else can you do? Your teeth are literally falling out of your head. So, I’m going, “Okay, we’ve got, we’ve got quite a bit of urgency here.” The only thing that I am, [mouth click] like, just from, from observing, observing this firsthand, when I look at her, I’m wondering, like, man, okay. This lady’s got such bad teeth. Her teeth are literally falling out. Um, she clearly has urgency, but she’s not asking any specific questions about anything, which is a little, which is just a little odd, right? Now, she may have them, but with, with her reserve personality, maybe she’s just holding on to them.

Um, but whenever you have anybody that doesn’t have any questions, and they’re not contributing at all, sometimes it’s like, ma’am, I’ve got someone in front of me that obviously, they sound more desperate than anything, um, without any questions. It’s kind of like in in, the back of my mind I’m going, you know, okay, are, are they qualified, right? I’m just, I’m just thinking that to myself. [clears throat] Anytime I see somebody that’s just completely desperate for it and their teeth are horrible to where they haven’t done anything to them ever, it’s typically because they never paid the money to get it done. [clears throat] And I don’t know where, where she went, where they pulled the wrong tooth or whatever, but you can imagine that’s some type of a clinic-based, I don’t know what that is, but that’s not a normal practice, probably.

Cody: [Inaudible] and I, I’m sure this is, you’re very brave, is what I’m trying to say, for coming in and talking with me because I know that it’s embarrassing and hard for you to do that. And that’s, it’s not something that you should have to deal with and we’re gonna do what we can to get back to supporting. Um, and the next question would be aesthetics. So, how it looks like we just talked about on a scale of 1 to 10, like, in comparison in terms of…

Bart: Uh, Cody, where’s the practice located?

Cody: Our practice?

Bart: Yeah.

Cody: Or the one that she went to before?

Bart: No, your practice. Where’s your practice located? What city?

Cody: We’re in, we’re in Rapid City, South Dakota.

Bart: So, just a question. Does she, does she live on a reservation?

Cody: She, uh, let’s see.

Bart: Coz…

Cody: Yes. Yep. So, she’s originally from a reservation and it’s like what you were talking about, where it wasn’t a normal clinic that she had gone to before.

Bart: It’s on the reservation?

Cody: Right.

Bart: That’s what it is. Yeah. Okay. All right. [pause]

Ramona: Well, what happened too is that I just started working with these people and, um, this one woman I was just like, so, her teeth, there’s something wrong with her front teeth, and they look like, I don’t know, but it looks like her, she has some kind of di-, gum disease or something. I mean, couldn’t figure, I just looked at her and I was like, “Whoa.”

Cody: Yeah.

Ramona: And I just thought, oh my gosh, I know that’s how I… That was before this one fell out.

Cody: Sure.

Ramona: I, I mean, I just recently started working with them.

Cody: Right.

Ramona: But I was embarrassed to smile and I kept, um, I have a friend, um, and he’s a dentist, and he was gonna help me find somewhere, but he’s taking forever, and, um, I’m just like, “Oh my gosh, it’s so embarrassing, I can’t even look at anybody here.” You know…

Cody: Right.

Ramona: I don’t wanna smile at anybody here.

Cody: Yeah.

Ramona: But I don’t wanna be like, I mean, I don’t like, you know, she doesn’t smile at all… [laughs]

Cody: Right. Yeah, you’re caught between a rock and a hard place. Yeah.

Ramona: … Or even talk.

Cody: So, as far as maintenance goes, so, you know, coming back into the dentist’s office every three to six months versus coming in every year, or every two years. What do you think? How important is that to you? Do you want something that’s more…?

Bart: For me, it would, it would it would also help to know what, to know what she does, um, for work, um, and have an idea of where she lives. So, it’s just kind of just picking up on things, you know, you guys are trying to pick up on things the whole time to figure out, like, what, what is the situation here? How am I going to frame this? And how do I get this done? So, all of that stuff helps for you to understand, like, all right, what am, what am I dealing with? If, you know, what kind of job does she have? She’s not wearing a wedding ring. Is it? Is it? It’s one household income, is it on a fixed issue on a fixed income? What am I kind of dealing with here? Because I’m getting those, uh, those vibes. Uh, also another way. It’s like, hey, have you looked into going? I mean, you went to this clinic, they pulled the wrong tooth. Have you looked into going anywhere else besides us? Is that the only place that you’ve ever been? You know what I mean? Just questions like that. You know, because you might end up getting something out of her. Well, yeah, I go to this place because we have special pricing, or I go to this place because it’s subsidized by the government, or I go to this place for this reason, or that reason, whatever you’re just trying to figure out what the situation is and how, and how you’re going to get this closed.

Cody: And then you can kind of just set it and forget it, or would you be okay with coming back for regular maintenance?

Ramona: Well, I think I’d rather have something not permanent, just…

Cody: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s, really that’s the way to go, in my opinion. Just get it done, get it done right the first time, and then you don’t have to worry about it. Because we’ve heard a lot of people that just kind of put Band-Aids on things. Yeah. They come in and get crowned. They, you know, get root canal, they get a filling and it just, the dominoes keep on [inaudible] sometimes.

Bart: That’s really, that’s really good to say.

Cody: I think that’s something that would be a great option. Um, I think I have pretty much everything that I’ll need to, to the doctor, and the next…

Bart: All right. I’m gonna fast forward here to the doctor part. This is where Dr. Carpenter walks in here, okay? But, first part, really good. Okay. You just wanna make sure that you’re gonna do, that you do a really quick recap and, and Cody said, like, hey, I think I’ve got all the information I need here to give the Dr. Carpenter, you know, but we wanna make sure she knows. Hey, I know exactly where you are. I got an i-, good idea of what we wanna do. We wanna restore all the functions, so, you can eat and talk. We want to give you something that’s going to look good, so, you can smile. So, you can smile and not worry about how you look with people. We want something that’s done right the first time and that’s going to last, and let’s just do this the right way.

Do I have all that right? Am I missing anything there in terms of what you want as far as an outcome? No? Okay. Good. So, what I’m gonna do is give this information to the doctor. Um, I’m gonna take a couple minutes and just kind of fill the doctor and then the doctor is gonna come in, talk to you, explain if you’re a candidate, what, what he sees, and then he thinks is the best way to approach this, to get you from where you are now to what you want. Does that make sense? Do a real quick recap, simplify it, and then leave the room. Okay. What is it?

Tamara: Was up here. Just where he’s got the attitude here to comment probably next.

Bart: What?

Tamara: When he’s asking about maintenance.

Bart: Yeah.

Tamara: Can you have her to come one or two years?

Bart: Mm-hmm. One to two years. Well, I don’t know.

Tamara: [inaudible]

Bart: Yeah, I don’t know what the treatment plan is yet, but I’m going to get to that right here.

Tamara: Okay.

Dr. Chad Carpenter: Hi, Ramona.

Ramona: Hi.

Dr. Carpenter: I’m Chad.

Ramona: Nice to meet you.

Dr. Carpenter: Nice to meet you. I’m the dentist. Did you guess that?

Ramona: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Carpenter: [laughs] I thought so. Well, welcome. Cody told me a little bit about you.

Bart: This lady won’t smile. Do you guys notice that? Like he was laughing and she still wouldn’t smile. That’s crazy. I would take it as a personal challenge to get her to smile, but I don’t even know if I could do it. She’s just not used to smiling, you know?

Dr. Carpenter: He told me about you had to bite that guy and it busted your partial. Now, you’re missing that tooth.

Ramona: Yeah.

Dr. Carpenter: So, sorry about that.

Ramona: Yeah, well he, I had to bite it. I don’t know how it got, but anyway, but then they, um, put that, that, that’s why I ended up partial.

Dr. Carpenter: Oh, yeah. Okay, got it. How long ago was that?

Ramona: That was long ago.

Bart: Hey, man, too bad you had to bite him with a partial. Now hey, after you get some teeth that are fixed, then bite him. Go back and bite him again. These teeth are going to hurt more. [laughs]

Dr. Carpenter: Okay.

Ramona: At least 20 years.

Dr. Carpenter: Yeah, okay. I thought it was more recently. Sorry, were you in the military here in town, or where were you…

Ramona: No, I was everywhere around.

Dr. Carpenter: All over? You’re an educator, that’s what I heard. Very cool.

Ramona: [chuckles]

Dr. Carpenter: Where do you do that at?

Ramona: [mouth click] Um, right now, we’re working on the, um, Pirate Reservation.

Dr. Carpenter: Okay. Is it with the special program or like at the school?

Ramona: Oh, we’re doing it…

Bart: It wasn’t actually Pirate Reservation. It was, she’s working on the, on the reservation. So, that’s, that’s where, that’s where…

Ramona: Project, project with the, all the schools and reservation.

Dr. Carpenter: Got it.

Ramona: And K–12, and that’s a sexual violence prevention program.

Dr. Carpenter: Okay.

Ramona: So, we, we go into the schools, we, they’re making time for us to come teach.

Dr. Carpenter: Very cool. Um, it looks like you’re, you’ve been struggling with your teeth and you just need some sort of a solution. So, [clears throat] I looked at your X-ray and, um, it’s gonna be a little tricky because of those ones that you’re missing on the left coz you’re missing a few of them in a row, and you have some infections above some of them.

Bart: So, first thing is obviously, Hey, I got the information from Cody. He kind of filled me in on everything that you’ve been going through. Sorry to hear all that. You know, I know that you’re missed several teeth. Um, you know, Cody explained to me that what we’re going for here, and the goal is kind of restore the function, give you a smile. That’s pretty something’s beautiful and something’s gonna last, right? This, something that’s gonna last for a long tim, is that right? Okay. Well, listen, in order to get these things accomplished, let me go through your, your CT scan and let me kind of tell you what I’m seeing here and how I would approach it. Does that make sense, guys? Like, right off the bat connected, connected. The one thing we want to stay away from is just going, “Hey, here’s what I see, there’s a bunch of different ways I could do this”. No, it’s like, in order to achieve this result, this is how I’m gonna do it, the one way, okay?

Dr. Carpenter: But, um, there’s enough bone there to work with. If you wanna get something done, you’re, you can do it.

Ramona: Okay.

Dr. Carpenter: Um, do you know anything about which options are? Have you heard anything or?

Ramona: No, can I?

Bart: So, so this is, the whole point here is, we already know what she wants coz she already told Cody. So, if you want to do something, she doesn’t wanna do something. She’s, her teeth are literally falling out of her head. That’s why she’s there. She doesn’t want any of that. She wants the opposite of that, right? So, what she wants is the feel, the function and the aesthetics, which she’s already voiced. So, we just say, “Hey, I’m really clear on what it is that you want. Let me talk about how I would approach this to achieve all the things that you want. Here’s what I would do.” Boom. Make sense? You don’t wanna give her any options to do anything at this point. Um, we just wanna give her what the plan is to achieve the goal that she set forth with Cody.

Dr. Carpenter: Okay. Can I tell you a little bit about some of your options?

Ramona: Okay.

Dr. Carpenter: [mouth click] So, one thing that I think you’d be really happy with is you can get your teeth, your…

Bart: Cody, are you in the room for this?

Cody: Yeah, you can just barely see me in the bottom right corner.

Bart: Oh.

Cody: I’m standing behind the doctor.

Bart: Okay, cool.

Dr. Carpenter: And teeth wiggled out, and then, I can put implants in your jaw, and then right then I hook the teeth onto them. And so I can make you some nice looking prototype teeth, and then screw them in, right, like on that same day.

Ramona: Oh.

Dr. Carpenter: So, you leave with your new teeth, you walk in with what you have, and you walk out with your new teeth.

Ramona: Yeah.

Dr. Carpenter: [mouth click] So, that’s a really popular option because you don’t have to like have your teeth come in and out and they’re just fixed in there and they look really nice. Um, these cases that we have on the wall, that’s like before and after. For all these cases, that’s what that is. So, people can get their teeth pulled and they get their new teeth, their new teeth put in.

Ramona: Oh, yeah.

Dr. Carpenter: [clears throat] This is kind of what it looks like. You can see the implants…

Ramona: Uh-huh.

Dr. Carpenter: … And then the teeth are just screwed in. We start with a prototype set, that’s, that’s your healing teeth.

Ramona: Okay.

Dr. Carpenter: And so after you wear your healing teeth for like three months, then I can make you your final portion teeth.

Ramona: Oh, okay.

Dr. Carpenter: So, [clears throat] um, you know, what about your bottom teeth? Are you wanting to do something with that, or just leave that alone for now?

Ramona: Um, I don’t know if you think that…

Bart: So, so the patients are always looking for direction, for the most part, from the doctors, right? They’re looking for the direction. They tell us what they want, big picture, and then, and then we tell them how to get there, right? So, everything kind of, everything goes back to, to what they want. And I really like it when the doctors just take charge here and go, lemme show you kind of what I’m seeing on the scan, because you’re to the point where, you know, yes, we’re gonna be able to do something, we’re gonna be able to help you, but you’re to the point where a lot of other practices, a lot of other doctors, the route that a lot of people will go is just to begin with, like, like a partial or a denture, right? The problem with going into a partial or a denture is that your bone is going to continue to deteriorate. You’ve already got some loss here. Let me show you. Here’s some areas where you’ve you’re, you’re suffering from some bone loss. This is why your teeth are loose and mobile. Here’s this. Here’s this. Here’s this. So, a couple of the goals like we want to restore function. It’s all about building a solid foundation to put the teeth on. Does that make sense?

So, in order to do that, right, to do it the best way, the way that I would do it here, is not using something like a denture or partial would be to use implants, right? Implants to actually screw down into the bone. I still have some places where I can put some implants. So you’re not in a position where you’ve lost so much bone to where the implants aren’t there. Do you guys get what I’m talking about, how I’m explaining it? You know what I mean? Um, she doesn’t sound like she’s been to several consultations. She hasn’t had one pointed or specific question yet, and my guess, just from hearing that she’s gone to a clinic that pulled the wrong tooth, my guess is she’s never had a consultation in regard to implants in her life. This is the first time. So most of the time with those clinics, they’re just gonna pull the tooth and send you home. If anything, they might pull the tooth and put you in a partial, or they might put you in a denture, but they’re not doing implants over there.

You know what I mean? That does not sound like that’s the kind of place that she’s in. So, I want to kind of make a distinguish that hey, you know, in order to get what you want, dental implants is the way to go. And right now you’re still a candidate for dental implants. Not everyone is, right, because you, again, you’re trying to build as much urgency as you can. So if I break it down in order to restore function clinically, what do we have to do? We have to build a solid foundation and you explain that, right? And then to have something that’s gonna look good, right? Then, what kind of material is going to be aesthetically pleasing and also have the longevity associated with it? Well, in order to, to achieve the aesthetics and the longevity and the durability, this is the type of material I would choose, right?

Um, and to have as little maintenance as possible and be as easy as to maintain, you know, I would do something that’s fixed also. So this is kind of how I would, how I would do this, and I think that you would get an unbelievable result. It would completely change everything for you. But you want to just explain it with, I like that when the doctors explain it with full confidence, like full confidence. I don’t wanna ask the patient. Well, you know, so what do you want to do on the bottom? I wanna say the bottom is messed up. Look here, look at the CT. Like it, it all boils down to your rec-, the doctor’s recommendation. Like, look at the CT. Here, you’ve got bone loss here. You’re missing this tooth, that tooth. If you’ve got a partial that doesn’t even work. You know? I mean, if you wanna restore function, you’re gonna need to restore it on top and bottom. The teeth have to come together to close to function properly, right? So let’s talk about doing that. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. So we want full confidence there.

Dr. Carpenter: [inaudible] Well, it just kind of depends on what you want. Can I show you your scan?

Ramona: Sure.

Dr. Carpenter: Is that okay? I don’t wanna, some people don’t like to look at that, but that’s just…

Bart: I want you guys to help bring that outta your doctors because this is how they learn it in school, and this is how some places still teach it, right? Is we just present options and the patient picks what they want, but that’s not right. You know what I mean? The patient can’t pick it coz they don’t want any of it. They only want the outcome. So the patient’s job is to describe the outcome that they want. The doctor’s job is to tell them how to achieve that outcome. It’s simple and plain, right? So make sure that you guys can help them and review some of the videos and walk them through it because if you don’t, that the patient’s gonna have to play doctor. And once they have a decision to make, if they’re not dead set in terms of what decision they’re gonna make, they’re going to want to think about it or they’re gonna want to get a second opinion. Especially somebody that’s come in and they haven’t been to any practice, you want full certainty if the decision as easy as possible and as logical as possible for them. So where they don’t even have to think about it, it’s just, oh, well this makes sense in order to get this, I do it like that. Cool. That’s the way it’s gonna be done. So you wanna make simple as possible.

Dr. Carpenter: That’s you. So you can see this dark circle up here?

Ramona: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Carpenter: That’s the infection above this tooth right here, and it kind of shows how you have that little bridge partial right there, and then, um, you know, on the lower, you’re missing some teeth over here and over here. If you wanted your whole mouth rebuilt at the same time, you could get the top and bottom done at the same time.

Ramona: Oh, yeah.

Dr. Carpenter: If you didn’t want to do that, you could just do the top, do the bottom later.

Ramona: I don’t know if I could get them done at the same time. That would be… [laughter].

Dr. Carpenter: Well, it’s double the cost.

Ramona: Oh, okay.

Dr. Carpenter: If you do them both, then it’s like…

Bart: When she said, I don’t know if I could get them done at the same time, you ask her what that means, make sense? Coz that would be really good. Coz then she’s gonna have to give me a financial objection or I’m guessing that’s what she would say, right? If I’m like, well, I mean, here’s what I would do. Here’s what we would do on the bottom. We’re gonna do both of them at the same time. Here’s what I’ll do on the bottom. Here’s what I’m gonna do on the top. Boom, boom, boom. I’m explaining it. And she goes, well, I don’t know if I can do both of them the top and the bottom at the same time. Uh, oh. Okay. Uh, so why is that? What, what would be stopping you from just getting it all done? Ask her right away. Because if she says, well, I just don’t know if I can pay for it, then, then we can handle it immediately, right? I don’t wanna jump the gun. I’m gonna play this a little bit longer and I’ll come right back to that.

Dr. Carpenter: For some people, you know, they’re trying to like fit it into their budget, and so, um, you know, that’s why we’re gonna talk about what you want and what works the best for you.

Bart: But we didn’t talk about it. You know what I mean? So he touched on it, but I didn’t get it, she didn’t say anything, right? She didn’t say anything coz if she would’ve said, like if I said, you know, why is that? And she said, well, you know, coz it’s probably double the money, I just, I don’t have an unlimited budget here. Um, so I just, I don’t know if I could actually financially do both of them at the same time. Say, okay, well that’s good information to know. Now listen, the the way that, the way that I’m approaching everything here with what you’re seeing is to give you everything that you want in as short of a timeframe as I possibly can, right? So I can literally extract the teeth, I can place the implants and put your new teeth in. So to where you walk out with new teeth in one day, that’s what I have planned here, right?

And that’s what’s ideal, but there’s what you want, there’s what you need, and then there’s what you can pay for. All three of those things are very important. So it doesn’t matter. We could talk about the best thing in the world and we could talk about it all day long until we’re blue in the face, but if financially it’s impossible for you, what’s the point? I have some people that we can get them everything that they want in a day. Some people it might take them six months, some people will working towards that goal for a year or two years, but the most important thing is that we start moving in the right direction and doing what you can’t afford. Does that make sense? Yeah. Say, okay. So give me a, so help me help you, right? Let’s have an open and honest conversation about what you’re working with in terms of your finances. So, so that I know coz I don’t wanna talk about something that’s impossible for you either.

So, do you have a, a specific budget in mind that you have saved to invest into this? Um, kind of give me an idea in terms of what you can afford. And that’s gonna help me, that’s gonna help me adjust the treatment plan to something that’s realistic. And if I have to sequence the treatment out to get you everything that you want, maybe I can’t do it in a day. Maybe we can do it in a year or two years. But I have to, part of my job is to make it affordable for you as well, coz that’s what I’ve been waiting to hear from this particular patient the whole time. Because I don’t wanna make a presentation for 55K if that’s impossible. I don’t wanna make a presentation for 35k if that’s impossible. Makes sense? So you guys can jump in there too, right? If you see somebody, if someone says that and the doctor missed it, um, all the doctor had to do right there when she said, I don’t know if I could do both at the same time, is just ask her o-, okay. So, and, and why would, and why is that?

That’s all you had to say. And then she, you, you would hear probably what I’m guessing to be a financial objection. And you have asked questions when their personality, because they might have a budget of $50, but they’re so adverse to, um, confrontation. They’re so adverse to confrontation that they’ll keep everything to themselves. And they’re very, very easy to talk over and they will not interrupt you to interject. So this personality, you have to give them a minute and you have to ask them questions and you have to wait. But you want, you want to get, you wanna figure it out what, what it is that she’s thinking because it’s not so obvious. She, what I think she’s thinking right now is, oh my God, this sounds amazing. There’s no way we’re gonna pay for. This gonna be, that’s what I think she’s thinking.

Dr. Carpenter: So the way this would work, is we would wiggle your, coz you have a couple teeth back here that are kind of broken off, we take all the bad teeth out, put the implants up into the bone, and then make your, uh, your, your healing teeth and screw…

Bart: But we don’t know, right? Th-, this is kind of where, where we have the big problem coz we don’t know, right? What if she, what if we got a budget of her and she said, listen, I’m on a fixed income, right? I don’t have a lot of money. I work for a nonprofit. I don’t make a lot of money. I’m on a, I have a fixed income provided to me on the reservation, right? And here’s what it is, right? I get X amount a month and I have X amount saved. Here’s what I could pay and blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Okay. But then you might say, hey, here’s what we can do. Like priority number one is the top. That’s the priority number one. So I can fix your partial, we can get you with a partial or a denture on the bottom, right? And we can focus on the top teeth.

We can do this, we can do that, or you put her in a bar over denture, you put her in a removable, it just, it all depends on what her budget is. But if they, if they say something like, I can’t afford this or I can’t afford that, or there’s a financial in the second 10, figure it out right in the second 10 so that you know that your primary recommendation can be sold. Because if it’s impossible to sell, what’s the point, right? And it’s a lot easier to change it right here than for you to pitch it, figure out they don’t have, they’re nowhere near, right. They don’t have anywhere near this amount of money, then you have to go back to the during, come back and like she’s giving you the opening right here. Um, so everything kind of changed.

Dr. Carpenter: Right? Okay. Can I look at your really quick? Is that okay? Okay. I know you don’t like people looking at them.

Bart: I’m gonna…

Dr. Carpenter: That’s my job. Don’t be embarrassed, I’m here to help. I wanna help.

Bart: And I’m gonna go to the next video here. Okay. So you just like looked in her mouth. It’s a disaster. Here we go.

Dr. Carpenter: Usually people don’t have to do that, do that. Usually, I’m able to put, um, healing teeth in the same day but sometimes we have to, um, you know, wear attention while we heal. So, if this was something that you wanted to do, what…

Bart: She wants to do it, that’s why she’s there, right? So we just assume it. We’re never saying, you know, if you want to do this or if you wanna do that, we say, okay, so we’re gonna do this. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, right? She’s there. Okay, so she’s there because she needs help. Here’s what we’re working towards. Here’s how we’re gonna do it. It’s a, it’s a take charge figure of authority type thing that we want to see from the doctor. You guys just think of anytime you deal with a doctor, right? If you’re sitting there, whether it’s medical or dental, and your doctor’s looking at you and say, Hey, I got a good idea of kind of how you’re feeling right now. I got a good idea of what you want. Here’s what we need to do to get there. We’re gonna do boom, boom, boom. And they have full confidence. It makes you feel good, right? Like, you guys are gonna feel good and confident because the doctor feels good and confident about it. So we want to, we wanna express that, that confidence and it’s going to help tremendously.

Dr. Carpenter: We do. Is get some pictures of you and some scans of your teeth, and then I can plan your surgery and I’m gonna design exactly where I want all your teeth to be. Then you would come back in, I would wiggle your teeth out…

Bart: Wiggle them out.

Dr. Carpenter: … Put the implants in, and then screw your new teeth in.

Ramona: Okay. [Inaudible]

Dr. Carpenter: Yeah, you can do it. Um, you, you’ve got enough bone, this side’s great. I’m looking at your cat scan. I’m just, I love it. This side’s gonna be a little more challenging because the bone here is gone. This tooth has a big infection above it and your sinus is really big back here. I’ve got one good spot, but I think I might be able to get some additional, um, bone from back in here. So I’m gonna be looking at that and seeing, seeing what my options are. Um, so what questions do you have for me?

Ramona: Um, what should I do about the bone and the infection in my teeth?

Dr. Carpenter: Well, there’s nothing you can really do because on, the only thing is if it starts to hurt, or if your face swells up, then call me and I’ll take care of you, um, until you figure out what you wanna do. I have a patient that came in and we talked and he’s doing his top and bottom at the same time. And so I said, okay, I’ll see you in a few weeks by. Well, then he called me three days later, his teeth started acting up and hurting. So then I had to, he had to come in and I had to take care of it, but…

Ramona: Um, so the other part is the, the pain, the, um, how [inaudible] those work?

Dr. Carpenter: Yeah. Well, it depends on how, you know, how you need it to work. Um, some of our patients, they, you know, have the ability to, um, you know, get money. Maybe they save some money or they have to sell something, or they borrow it from somebody and they come in and then they just pay for it and then they get a discount. Other patients like to make payments over time. It’s better into their budget. So, Cody knows all the different ways that you can pay.

Bart: You see, he’s right there. He’s right there. You know? He’s just not saying like, listen, there’s a lot of different ways you can pay, but you know, hey, like what’s your, what’s your, what’s the situation here? You know, give me an id-, give an idea, right? Like it’s, it’s everything except getting the objection out of her, right? Because she’s, this lady’s super hard to read. This lady is not, she doesn’t talk a lot. She doesn’t show emotion. She’s super under the radar. You know what I mean? But you’re thinking in your head like, man, why is she so reserved? What is going on here? Plus she’s been through like a traumatic experience with an assault and all these different things, but once she brings it up, for someone like this to repeat herself twice within the same timeframe about money, and she hardly ever talks, you know, that money’s an issue here, right?

Or you have a really good idea. Never like to jump to conclusions, but you’re always trying to pay attention to these things. You know, again, like if I’m a doctor, I like to say, listen, I would, this is how we’re gonna, if we, if we’re trying to get the feel, the function, the aesthetics, the longevity, everything that we want, it’s really important we go through and we do the, the top and the bottom and we do this right and get it done for you the first time, then you’re not gonna have to worry about the pain. You’re not gonna have to worry about teeth falling out. You don’t have to like, it’s gonna change your life. Having said all that, right, you’re telling me from a financial point of view that you have a very, that you have a strict budget or you have a dollar amount that you cannot go over.

I want you, you’re, this is a collaborative process. I want you to feel open and, and honest and comfortable about sharing with me what you can and can’t do financially because if I have to change the trend, I’ll change the treatment to make it more affordable. And maybe we get to the, to this point in a year from now or two years from now, just so long as you don’t walk out the door with teeth still falling out of your head. The goal is to start moving towards the feel, function and longevity that you’re after, right? But there’s no sense in talking about the best if, if, if financially it’s impossible. So where are we financially? Do you have any specific financial constraints? Is there a dollar amount that you can’t go over? Just ask the question. Just ask the question right there, right? I mean, you, you’re the, the treatment coordinator’s in there with the doctor.

And, and if you guys hear it, you guys can ask the question when he, he’s looking at Cody, like kind of like, uh, Cody knows all about this stuff. I don’t, Cody can jump in right there and say, listen, that’s the treatment plan to achieve everything that you want, but I want you to, you can feel comfortable if [inaudible]. If you have a specific number in your mind or if you have a budget that you can’t exceed, right? Then tell us, tell us what that is. So, hey, maybe we can’t get there in, in a day, but as long as we’re working in the right direction, right? We have to get, that’s gonna work. That’s gonna improve your situation and something that you pay for, right? So, so what’s the financial situation? Just, you know, do you have a number you can’t go over? What is it? Give me an idea just to make sure that this is even feasible for you. Ask the patient right then coz I would definitely want to be qualifying this patient at this point. I’m going to scroll here. Whoops. Financial close. All right.

Cody: That back to you. And so with…

Bart: This is the close.

Cody: … Bundling it together like that, that will drop the cost all the way down for this number here. So instead of 75,000, it’s 55, and that is for your upper and your lower.

Ramona: Oh, okay. So how would [inaudible] payments, would you do payments for that?

Bart: We can, yeah. Um, we have some people that will come in and just kind of toss a bag of money across the counter and would be like, Doctor said, paid it in full. We’ve had people go half and half, half now, half later. We’ve had people go a third now, a third later and a third even later. Um, and then we can spread it out over monthly payments that you were saying as well. What do you think?

Ramona: Right, right now I’d have to do monthly payments.

Bart: Sure. Sure. So with the monthly payments, we don’t do any in-house financing here. So we’ll have to go through a third party lending company. We have a couple different ones that we can take a look at and I can actually help you with that right now and get you requalified if that’s something that you’re interested in.

Ramona: Yeah.

Bart: You don’t have to ask her if she’s interested in it, right? Just say, hey, okay, that’s something we can take care of and get right to the question. Doesn’t third party financing, whatever, it doesn’t really matter. Just say, okay. She says, “Hey, we would need to do payments.” Okay? Um, and just kind of get right into the next part. Like you do and you do a great job here, Cody, following everything. But what are, what are we trying to determine right now? She said I need payments. So what am I, what am I thinking as a treatment coordinator, I’m going, does this person have any money? That’s what thinking, do they have any money or is this entire sale contingent on financing? And if they do have money, how much money do they have? That’s what I’m thinking. And I’m thinking if they don’t have, I’m thinking if she doesn’t have $10, we’re probably in trouble. You know, if she can’t get out, if she can’t pay, say, $10 over the next 2 or 3 months, then I’m thinking we’re, we’re in trouble if the financing doesn’t go through. So that’s the number I’m looking for here. Because if she could pay, if she could pay $10, 10 or 12, at least I could get her in an overdenture or something. We can do something to help her, but that’s kind of the number I’m looking for here.

Cody: Treatment plan and everything. Makes sense. What doctor talked about?

Ramona: Um, yeah.

Cody: Okay.

Bart: No emotion from [inaudible].

Cody: He’s done a bunch of them. He’s actually doing one tomorrow. He does them all the time. So, the next question is going to be, if you could choose, would you rather have, um, a higher monthly payment and put less money down or a lower monthly payment than put more money down? Add your pick.

Ramona: Put more money down.

Bart: Good sign.

Cody: Sure, and that’s, that’s usually the way to go because…

Bart: Put more money down.

Cody: … How that works is when you put your down payment in, you’re not submitting it to the lending companies. You’re submitting it directly to us. And so because of that, we’re able to submit for a lower loan amount, which automatically lowers your monthly payment and sometimes your interest rate. So it’s, it’s an all around payment if you do it that way, in my opinion. Um, do you have a number in mind that you would be willing to put down towards the surgery?

Bart: Just ask her how much. Say, “Okay, so how much you wanna put down,” and then a liter.

Ramona: I don’t know.

Cody: I see

Ramona: Probably

Cody: Are you thinking 500,000. 5000?

Bart: So, here’s the deal. The numbers he just put in her head are low numbers. She said she’d rather put more money down. So, if the treatment’s 55k, I’m gonna start with 20. I’m gonna say, so, so, okay, so more money down. Have a lower monthly payment. Okay, so it’s 55,000. So what do you, you wanna put down 20,000, 15, 10? How much do you wanna put down? I’m definitely not gonna say 500, right? I’m not gonna say 5000. That’s, that’s not even 10%. So I’m gonna start at 20, 15, 10 because if you say 500 or 1000 or 5000, even if the odds of her picking a different number is super low, right? So she’s gonna pick one. But if she picks one, you still don’t have an answer to the most important question, which is does she have money? If she, coz, coz, here I’ll show you.

Cody: [Inaudible].

Ramona: Maybe 1000.

Cody: Maybe 1000?

Bart: So she said maybe 1000 right now. But did she say 1000 because he said 1000, or did she say a thousand because that’s all she has? And if she only has 100, why did she opt to say, I’d rather put more money down? That’s confusing to me. Does that make sense? Coz now I’m unsure. Now, I’m unsure. Like, okay, she said she would rather put more money down, but then she said I’ll put 1000 down, which is not putting a lot of money down on 55 grand, 1000 on 55 is not a lot of money. That’s like bare minimum. That’s almost nothing, right? That’s almost like a payment. So I’m confused now, right? So I don’t know what number to fall back to. I don’t have a plan B. What you’re trying to do guys, is you’re trying to formulate, right now you’re formulating my plan B, my secondary close if they’re not approved.

That’s, that’s the only reason why I ask all these questions, coz I want a secondary close. So in the event that she’s not approved for anything, I know what I can fall back to coz I know how much cash she has, but I don’t, right? Because the numbers that you letter with, I wish you would’ve said. So what do you want? You wanna start with 20,000, 15,000, 10,000. Give me an idea how much you wanna put down? That’s gonna tell me she has any money coz I’m looking for her reaction. If she gives me a reaction like, are you crazy? There’s no way I could do that, right? Okay, so how much can you do? You know, get a number and if the number really is 1000, then you’re in trouble, right? If she doesn’t get approved, the odds of closing it today are slim to none.

Cody: Write this down so we don’t forget, 1000 down, which means that we would submit for 54,000 financing. Does that sound good to you? Okay.

Bart: What monthly payment do you want, okay? That’s the other half of this. So you want full agreement before you actually run it for anything. Because what if if she says, oh, I could do $100 a month. What, why even put it through? She’s not gonna get financed for $54,000 at $100 a month. There’s nothing you can do to hit that number. So why do it? Just address it right then and just tell her there’s nothing that I’m gonna have for $100 a month. Even if you have the best credit and I could spread it across over say 90 or 91 months, I’m not gonna be able to get anywhere near $100. You know what I mean? You’re gonna be looking more like $600, anywhere from $600 to $1300 depending on how many months we go out for. Because you wanna just address that. Like $100 is not possible, right? So even if they get approved and you show them $850 a month payment and that blows them out of the water, you know, it’s, it’s more difficult to overcome that objection. So you find out how much money they have and then what they want as far as a, a low monthly payment. Um, and then you kind of go from there and you handle any discrepancies conceptually before you run them. Make sense?

And you know, again, I bet you she’s on a fixed income. Um, you know, it’s just this personality. You have to ask questions and you have to wait. You have to get the, we have to get her talking to us. And you guys are always from the second you meet someone, you’re in your head, you’re going, all right, how do I close this deal? How do I close this deal? What’s the angle? Do they have money? Do they not have money? What’s the probability, right? The probability of them not being qualified keeps going up and up and up. Then your, your approach and your questions should become a little bit, a little bit more diligent and a little bit quicker to qualify them, right? So if it comes up in the first 10, do it. If it comes up in the second 10 address it, comes up in the third 10, address it for specific, you know, that way if you need to qualify and triage somebody out, you can.

But in this instance, we just run her, she doesn’t get approved for anything and then Cody does a good job, goes through the, the funding checklist and sends her home. The only problem is, I don’t know what she can afford. I never got a number out of her. Can she afford a denture? Does she have $5? Can we at least like clean her up? Can we extract the teeth that need to be extracted? Like, can we do anything to help her? Does she have any money at all? We never learned what she could do. It’s just one treatment plan. Submit to financing, finances not approved. Here’s where you check for the money, bye-bye. Right? Okay. But I wanna know what they can do. That’s the whole point is they’re gonna walk out. Your mentality is you’re, you’re here to help, you’re here to help the patient.

So they’re gonna walk out in better shape than they walked in. So guys, and, and say this, tell them, say, listen, I’m open to in any way to start getting you on the right track, right? Anything, anything is better than sitting in the same place. Suffering, not smiling, not being happy, and not eating, able to talk, not being able to do your job. That’s insane. So, I’m open to anything moving forward, but be open and honest with me about the financial situation. If you say, “Hey, I’ve got X amount of money, or I can do this, or I could do that payment or whatever,” tell me what the situation is and then I can tell you what the best we can do for, for your financial situation is. Does that make sense? Because some people start and the best we can do is extract the teeth, clean it up and put them in a denture.

And guess what? A well-made, well-fitting denture is better than having no teeth, right? It’s a light years ahead of that. And some people, we can make a denture for them and with their finances we can, maybe we can’t put six implants in, but we can put two and maybe it’s not down, but it snaps in. So that’s light years better than the denture without implants. Some people, we come in and we do an all on four and we put the four or six and it’s fixed, but it’s a, a different type of material that doesn’t quite last as long, but it’s a lower price. So I can do this in number of different ways, but at this point, I just need to know what your financial situation is so that I can help you. So what can you, what can you do? Cash? And think about it over the ne-, over the over 90 days, could you make $5,000 a month payments for the next 90 days?

Could you make $10,000 a month for the next 90? Could you make $3000 a month for the next 90? What could you do if it was cash and there was no financing other than just what we could do, which we would do over a three-month period, what could you do? I am gonna be super insistent on getting that information out of, because guys, you,` don’t tell me you don’t offer any in-house financing because you can offer in-house financing. You just get the financing done before you start the case. Does that make sense? So you’re not scheduling that. If they’re gonna pay, let’s say, let’s say you end up going with an overdenture and let’s say it’s $12, okay? And she’s gonna pay $4000 a month for the next three months. Why not finance it in-house? Finance it in-house schedule her, schedule her surgery, 95 days out, five days after the last payment is there to be made and, and do it.

And ask her, do you wanna put this on a credit card? Do you want to do an ACH? Do you want to do a cheque? How do you want to do it? I’m open to any idea. My goal here is to help you. Tell me how I can help you financially. What can I do? What can you do, and get that out of them because you’re just gonna make a presentation? Nah, you didn’t get qualified and then they’re gone. But we never really knew, um, what their financial situation is. And a lot of times people that live on a reservation, they have the same amount of income coming in every single month and it’s subsidized. They get meaning they get a check every month whether they work or not. And then depending on what they do for work, they get money on top of that.

It doesn’t work the same on all of the reservations, but it’s pretty safe, safe if they’re on a reservation, they have a certain amount of fixed income, right? It’s how much room do they have there, and do they have any savings? Do they have anything that they can sell? And it’s working through that with the patient. So you guys know clearly, I wanna be able to say when the patient leaves that I feel like I exhausted every option and they literally do not have the ability to make any payments that would help them at this point. Like, they don’t have the ability to even get an a denture because they have the ability to make $5000 in payments over the next three, over the next three months. If I don’t do a denture, I’m gonna refer them to another practice that I think is good that does dentures, and I’m gonna tell them, you’re in the ballpark for a denture. This is what I would do. You can’t sit there with, with no front teeth. You can’t not eat. We have to start restoring some type of function and a well fit denture, you can get into something for around four or $5000 that that’s possible. Here’s a practice that does it and help, help her, help her. You, you guys understand? Anyone have any questions on that?

Okay, cool. So, so be, be really, be really upfront. I don’t want anyone to feel like, man, I’m scared to ask about their finances. If you’re sitting in the room and the doctor looks at you, doctor’s looking at you for a reason because the doc-, when the doctor looks over the treatment coordinator, they’re saying, oh, this is kinda out of my purview. So, if the doctor ever looks at you when the patient has from the financial objection, I want you guys to jump in right then and say, listen, the treatment plan that we have that Dr. Carpenter has here is to get you from where you are to where you want to be. But if where you wanna be financially, if that’s impossible, then I want you to feel open and honest about telling us if you have specific budget or anything in mind because there’s what you want, there’s what you need and then there’s what you can afford.

And what we want is to get you the best that you can get for the money that you have available. So, if we are working within financial constraints, tell us what they are because if we have to make an adjustments, we can do that right now. We’re open to any ideas. Do you have a specific jump right in and do it right them with the doctor. With the doctor in the room. Makes sense? Help them, help them. And then the doctor can change the treatment plan and go, okay, well here’s what we could do if you’re in the $10,000 price range, right? Just cause they might say, hey, I could do something like $10 if I could pay for it, you know, over two or three or four months I could do $10,000. That’s kind of what I was thinking. $10,000. I don’t have good credit, I won’t get approved for anything.

Okay. So, if we’re looking at like a $10,000 price range, we could do something that’s gonna help you out a lot. I could still clean you up, get rid of all the infection, extract the teeth, and I could put you in something that’s gonna restore function. It’s gonna look a hell of a lot better than you are now. It’s not gonna be fixed, it’s not gonna be quite this. It’s gonna be leaps and bounds above where you are. And that would be something that snaps in and out, right? Let me show you what it is and you just get right into it and then you go and you close them on the $10,000. Make sense? Okay, awesome. Was there any questions?

Leslie: Um, Dr. Leilani said, does the doctor need to get into the financial objection during their 10 or should that be cleared by the [inaudible].

Bart: Yeah, Dr. Leilani asked that if the, if the doctor should get into it. Well, if the patient asks, I don’t want the doctor running from it. I would prefer if I’m the doctor and I make a presentation about what the treatment plan’s gonna be and they hit me something like, oh, God, I don’t know if I could do both arches at the same time, then what I, what I immediately think in my head is, this is not gonna get closed. They’re telling me right now. So I wanna know what that means. So I’m gonna say, well look, this is, it’s really important for us to address the top and bottom, to completely restore as much function as we can give you something that’s fixed that has the, the look and the feel closest to natural teeth that we can get everything that you want.

It’s really important because the top and the bottom teeth are equally important. So by having said that, there’s what you need. There’s what you want and there’s what you can afford. If you’re telling me you only have a certain amount of finances saved for this and you’re operating on a very strict budget, tell me what that budget is and if I have to make adjustments or break this up over time, I’ll do that right now. I’m open to any idea because if you can’t pay, we talk about the best in the world all we want. But if it’s something that’s impossible to pay for, what’s the point, right? That’s what I would say that that’s, that’s exactly how I would address the doctor doesn’t address it. I want you guys to jump in there and address it. That way when you go back for the third 10, you have something that the patient has already agreed upon in principle, the patient hasn’t agreed on this treatment plan in principle yet. Make sense? All right, cool. Okay guys, sorry I ran over a little bit. Go get them, close some [inaudible] let me know if you need anything and I’ll see you guys at the, uh, at the next power session. All right guys. Bye-bye.

Leslie: Bye.

[END]