7 Ways to Upsell as a Dentist

Upselling is an essential part of growing any business, but it’s especially useful in the Dental industry, as there is a huge amount of untapped opportunity in most practice patient lists.

What is upselling?

Upselling is the process of selling any additional products or services to your current patients that are already receiving dental work. Upselling is key in capturing a larger share of the dental market by maximising the average spending of your patients. This is an essential part of growing the income for your dental practice and becoming more profitable.

In this article, we will talk about 7 ways a Dental Practice can use upselling to increase its overall revenue and profits in your business. See how our Business Coaching Services can help your dentist practise.

1. Training your Team in Upselling

Upselling starts with a strong dental team. Every practice needs the right dental team with the same mindset; spotting the potential upsell for each patient. The dental team must have the dental knowledge to answer basic dental enquiries from their patients, allowing them to identify opportunities to upsell different services and products.

The dental team needs to have individual knowledge of each product and service that the practice can provide. Pairing customers’ situations with additional services need to be done correctly so that both parties benefit. This will result in additional work for your practice and the customer will receive additional products or services to complement their existing treatment.

2. Identify Opportunities to Upsell Patients

One of the most important parts of upselling is identifying the correct patients to recommend additional treatments. The service recommended must be relevant and the patient must benefit from it. Your goal is to identify which other service or product pairs well with the work they are receiving or inquiring about. 

A great example of spotting product combinations is Invisalign. When a client is going through Invisalign treatment, quick-minded employees could spot the potential to upsell teeth whitening at the end of their treatment. This would ultimately increase the total spend of that customer. Identifying the patient’s situation and then matching products and services together is a key skill that the team needs to make the most out of upselling.

3. Understanding your Patient’s Needs & Requirements

Listening to the patient is one of the most important ways of establishing a good relationship with your patients. A great way to do this is by asking open-ended questions such as “what would you like to change about your smile?” 

This can be used as an upselling technique as you may uncover needs or wants from the patient and you can offer solutions to their problems. This is a subtle way of upselling and can be very effective. By offering a range of products and services, you can help patients with different needs.

4. Upselling with Small Consultation Fees

When the patient has shown an interest in a certain treatment, your team will be able to offer a consultation appointment for a smaller fee. This will help to determine who’s serious about their treatment and who isn’t. As in any dental practice, each team member’s time is very valuable, so narrowing down the valuable clients will allow you to be more efficient with your time.

The Dentist will then be able to provide an insight into what treatments may work for the patients and they can help gauge the patient’s interest. This is the prime time for the Dentist to focus on upselling to their patient – providing the patients with the relevant information to help them choose their treatment plan. 

We want to avoid patients feeling confused or pressured sales as this is unlikely to yield results. For example, if a client is in for a consultation on Invisalign Aligners and you immediately try to upsell Teeth Whitening or Composite Bonding they are unlikely to be interested in these. However, once this patient has perfectly straight teeth you may want to upsell Teeth Whitening or Composite Bonding to help them perfect their smile.

5. Using Special Offers to Upsell

Dental special offers are a great technique to use as this will encourage patients to take advantage of treatments that they may already be looking into carrying out. This method is used to increase sales, but the same theory can be used when upselling. 

A special offer is a great way to start a conversation as this is an ideal way of promoting treatments for various accompanying products. These special offers will help to generate more sales in a smaller period. Your dental team will be able to upsell a range of treatments to patients when the special offer covers the different products/services you offer. 

Offers with a limited time window are much more enticing to customers and create an urgency to purchase/enquire. If the special offer has no ending window, the customer will not worry that they could miss out.

Your practice could try offering 10% off any treatment if they book the appointment that day or at a set period. Alternatively, the first 10 patients to sign up get 10% off on the longer, costly treatment plans such as Invisalign. The aim is to provide the patient with an incentive to be able to become more decisive therefore increasing the chance of a sale.

6. Upselling Pricing Strategy

Discounts are important to give the patients a sense of receiving a ‘good deal’ on their dental treatment. Alternatively, you may offer a 0% finance option. This will help the patients to spread their payments over a fixed period as is a much more enticing offer than a reduced discount.

The benefit of this for you is that more of your customers will be inclined to purchase treatment at a larger cost if they know they can pay off the debt over 3-5 years and not need to pay any extra for the luxury of 0% interest.

You also need to ensure that your prices are competitively matched to the surrounding dentists that cover your target areas. You can either price match to be the same, undercut cheaper or price higher but offer more discounts. Making enticing promotions such as 10-20% off promotions might seem daunting, but if you price higher than you would usually charge, it effectively seems like the customer is getting a better deal but you’re making the same profit. This way if the customer feels like they’re getting a better deal, they will be more interested in other services making the upsell easier. This results in higher revenues and business growth, so by using a strong upselling pricing strategy, you can maximise the revenue generated from each patient.

7. Ethical Selling when Upselling

Ethical selling is done by clearly laying out the fundamentals of the service you offer, and making the treatments and procedures you offer more transparent. 

It’s important to establish a good relationship with your patients. You should never make your patients feel pressured or forced into any decisions as this may create a negative opinion of you and your business. This helps to create patient loyalty and build trust. Patients will feel more comfortable booking a range of services with you and will also recommend you to friends and family. This referral process will then help the Associate Dentist to benefit from the extra income that they’ll be generating, as well as maximising the potential earnings of the practice too.

If you found this blog helpful, then check out our How to Increase Dental Practice Revenue by 35%

If you want to learn more about how to grow your dental practice through your existing patient list, get in touch for a free consultation.

Or view this case study of the results we achieved with a dental practice recently.