Summary
The video explores the psychology and strategy behind case acceptance, focusing on how to encourage people to take actions beneficial to them, such as agreeing to a treatment plan. The core premise is that people’s fundamental wants cannot be changed by external pressure or tactics; instead, success comes from aligning what you offer with what they already desire.
Key Insights
- Case acceptance challenges often stem from a misalignment between what the provider wants for the patient and what the patient (or decision maker) actually wants.
- Attempts to force or pressure people to change their minds usually result in difficult cases and problematic relationships.
- The goal is not to convince everyone but to attract and engage those who already share the underlying values and goals aligned with your service.
- In cases involving minors (such as orthodontic treatment with braces), the decision maker is usually the parent, whose motivations may differ significantly from those of the patient (the child).
- It is crucial to understand what the parent truly wants beyond the immediate treatment (e.g., braces), which might include social status, identity as a responsible parent, pride, or affiliation with a desired social group.
- The example of Japanese geishas darkening their teeth to achieve a culturally specific ideal illustrates that people’s desires are culturally and contextually shaped; therefore, a treatment like teeth whitening would not align with their goals.
- Braces as a service are not the ultimate want but a means to achieve deeper desires such as:
- Looking good as a parent
- Demonstrating care and responsibility
- Gaining social acceptance or pride
- Providers should design marketing and practice experiences that connect with these more basic or emotional wants rather than only focusing on the functional aspects of the treatment.
- Instead of optimizing the moment of presentation or consultation with pressure sales tactics, the provider should focus on attracting and serving a specific audience whose underlying wants align with the service.
- This approach leads to higher case acceptance rates because the clients are already predisposed to say yes, making the final acceptance interaction more about reassurance than persuasion.
- Relying on aggressive tactics can yield short-term gains but may damage long-term relationships and reputation, making it harder to attract aligned clients in the future.
Conceptual Framework: Hierarchy of Wants Related to Braces
| Level | Description | Example/Implication |
|---|---|---|
| Specific Want | Getting braces for the child | The direct service or treatment |
| Intermediate Want | Looking good as a parent, social signaling | Showing responsibility and care to peers |
| Basic Want | Pride, social affiliation, acceptance, love | Emotional and identity-driven motivations |
Practical Recommendations
- Conduct an exercise to identify the deeper wants your clients are seeking to fulfill through your service.
- Tailor marketing materials and practice culture to reflect and appeal to those deeper wants.
- Focus on attracting clients who naturally align with your practice’s values and offerings.
- Avoid relying on pressure tactics or manipulation during treatment presentations.
- View case acceptance as a function of alignment and attraction rather than persuasion at the moment of decision.
Conclusion
Successful case acceptance is achieved not through momentary persuasion but through strategic alignment with clients’ pre-existing desires and identities. By understanding and marketing to these deeper motivations, providers can foster authentic engagement, improve acceptance rates, and build stronger, long-term relationships with patients and decision makers.
00:00:00
Let’s take a deeper look into how people behave when it comes to case acceptance. How do we get someone to take an action that we want for them that we know that if they took would benefit their lives? And to understand this, it starts with understanding that we can’t change what people want. If someone wants something, it’s not our job to tell them that they’re wrong and tell them that they have to do something differently. I’m sure you’ve engaged with people like that. And what you’ll notice is that
00:00:32
whatever you try to do, it’s a very tough case. And there’s all these tactics that exist to try to get them to change their mind. But at the end of the day, what you have is probably a very problematic patient um because at the onset of that engagement, there was a mismatch between what you wanted for them and what they wanted. So, I want to break down um what drives people to take action, what gets them to do the thing that you want them to do, and not so that we can um create more situations
00:01:08
where we change people’s minds, but how do we get more people who already align with what you want for them? and how can we get them in the door so that when it comes down to the case acceptance or treatment acceptance, they’re already aligned and they’re already ready to go with what it is that you want them to do. All right, so let’s say here we have the patient. All right, so and this is going to be their journey. they come in to your office and whatever it is that you do, let’s
00:01:44
say in this example, let’s say it’s braces. So, we’re going to add another layer of complexity. Um, because now we have the patient who is a probably a minor and then we have the adult, the parent or guardian who is the actual decision maker in this case. So, what does the decision maker want? Um, and that might differ from what the patient actually wants, from what the actual person receiving that change wants, but ultimately it’s going to be the decision maker. They’re out there to
00:02:16
care for that minor. So, um, we we seek to work with them and engage at that relationship at that level. So, let’s say braces. All right. So, you do everything. You do the uh exams, you do um the consult and now you get to the coordination and the uh planning and you present it and let’s say they say no or they say yes. Um what happens in this interaction such that it causes a yes or a no. So let’s say this is a no and let’s say this is a yes. So, back to the idea that we can’t get
00:02:58
people to change what they already want and we want to show how our solution, your solution, can get them closer to what they already wanted. All right? So, let’s if we look at braces, people aren’t born wanting braces. There is a context around it. Why do they want braces? What about our culture? or what about their beliefs makes them believe they want braces? And to illustrate this, um, Japanese geishas back in the day, they used to darken their teeth, uh, because it would brighten the
00:03:35
appearance of their face and they wanted their face to appear brighter. So, if you went to them and you offer teeth whitening, they would probably say no because it’s misaligned with what they wanted, which was status, which was affiliation with the other geishas. So, braces, what other wants does that help people achieve? What What are they going for that braces gets them closer to? And when I say they, I mean the parent. All right. So, let’s draw their kid here. What they want isn’t what the parent
00:04:16
wants, and not always. They might want something else. They might want the social status among their friends that they’re getting like they’re getting um an image improvement done or whatever, but the parent wants braces for a very different reason than the kid wants it. It’s possible that the kid doesn’t want it, but the parent still wants it and they’re looking out for their long-term best interest, but at the end of the day, we’re working with the parent. So, what does the parent want? It’s not
00:04:44
braces. What does brace What does getting braces for their kid achieve? Right? And if you look into basic wants, so let’s put basic here and let’s put very specific. So specific wants, specific wants could be getting braces for their kids. So let’s put braces right here. Now let’s move a level back because if we engage with braces, if we find people who are only looking for braces or if we find people who are who are already at the level of braces then and we try to align with people who just want the
00:05:28
cheapest braces or whatever, we’re going to have a very hard time because now we’re in competition with all the other providers of of braces. But what if we could get what if we can address a more basic desire? So let’s start with braces and let’s start moving backwards. What is it that when they get their kids braces are they achieving? Now this is an exercise that you should do for whatever service that you offer and um even if you do offer braces, it’s possible that you might be seeking to
00:06:00
serve a completely different profile of people. People who get braces for a completely different reason. So don’t take this as the answer but rather my interpretation of it and you should do it as well for whatever service or treatment that you do so that you can understand this and serve people in a way that’s more meaningful. All right. So when I get braces for my kids, what I actually want might be to look better, look good. I might want to look like I’m a great parent. I might want to tell my other
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parents or tell the other parents of my my kids’ friends that hey I got my kids braces or when other parents come to pick up their kids they see your kid with braces and they think oh wow this parent must be a very good parent. So it says a lot about your identity or their identity as a parent. So look good as a parent. So just imagine we got one level deeper and now if we can create a service or create a practice that aligns with that goal of hey working with us not just braces but just working with us in
00:07:14
general is how you become a better parent is how you can show other people that you are becoming a better parent. And if you can serve that, let’s say you can give them, let’s say you can give them stickers they could put on their car that supports this, right? We can design other elements that supports this more basic desire. All right, let’s let’s go one level deeper. Why do they want to look good as a parent? All right, is it a feeling of pride? Maybe they want pride. All right. Maybe they want um
00:07:45
reassurance. Or maybe not reassurance. Maybe they want like um like like social standing, affiliation. That’s what I meant. Maybe they want to affiliate with a higher class or a higher status of people who also get their kids braces. All right. So how if we chose to serve affiliation now that’s also more impactful if we can create a practice that serves affiliation or even pride right and and you can move down towards the more basic needs. Why do they want affiliation? Maybe they want to feel loved. Maybe
00:08:29
they want to feel accepted. Maybe they want to feel like um intelligent. Right? And when we understand the more basic wants that people are actually going for, now we can design this entire thing, not just the actual like when they when they’re at the table or when they’re at the treatment coordination um office or room, not just saying, “Hey, this is why you need braces. This is what it does for you um like functionally. It helps you breathe better and it helps you chew better and
00:09:01
all this stuff.” They might not care about this. They might care more about this stuff. All right. And so the goal is not about optimizing. So let’s here we have like multiple steps in here. Let’s say one, two, three. This might be the exam or consult or whatever. And this might be the actual presentation. It’s not about getting people as many people here and then optimizing this moment because what happens then is you start to create a very broad funnel and you start having to get a lot of people in with like very
00:09:41
different beliefs, very different wants. Maybe these people don’t want to they don’t care what other parents think about them. Maybe these people don’t like care about their kid at all or whatever it is. We get them to this situation where now we’re presenting to them and there’s all these different beliefs, all these different ideas and we’ve created a practice in service of a completely different want. So therefore, we’re going to struggle here and we’re going to have to rely on tactics and
00:10:08
other things of like pressure sales and these less than ethical things in order to get them to say yes because there was misalignment. So what I’m advocating for is that you take an approach where you start differentiating and and ex not explicitly but really implicitly suggesting that this is what you’re going to help people do and you can vocalize this. And so when that happens now people who want this come through the door because you’ve done the work here, not the work here. It’s not about optimizing this moment.
00:10:49
It’s about creating marketing that is and also here. It’s about creating this that aligns with people who want it so much so that they get attracted to it. And so you’re going to get more people who say yes because you’ve created something that shows that they’re you’re going to get them closer to their goals of whatever it is that they want. All right. So, I rambled a bit, but I think I hope you get the idea that case acceptance is not about tactically maximizing this moment. If you go that route, sure, you
00:11:24
will get a short-term boost in results because that’s what those tactics are meant to do. But think about all the other effects that you create because you take that approach. The people who say no, how do they feel as a result? What are they going to say about you? Right? Sure, you’re going to get a people a few people who say yes more, but it’s going to turn off people who say no more than your original method than if you didn’t have than if you hadn’t done all the tactical stuff.
00:11:57
So, instead, focus on what it is that they want. Focus on creating a practice that helps them get there. and focus on creating the presentation and the marketing that shows them that aligns with what they really want and show them how you can actually get them to align and once they come in the door get them to align. And all this becomes is just reassurance that you are there to do um what they thought that you you were um or they were going to get as a result of coming into your office. So again, hope
00:12:34
that makes sense. Hope you found this valuable. Thanks.