John Meis: Hey everybody, welcome to this episode of the Double Your Production podcast. I'm Dr. John Meis with my partner, Wendy Briggs. Hey Wendy, how you doing?
Wendy Briggs: Doing amazing, Dr. John, ready for another great episode.
John Meis: Yeah, we're so happy to have Paul Lowry with us. Paul is with Dental Menu, which is a very unique company on creating a membership plan for dental offices. And I'm not going to explain any more than that because we'll let Paul, the expert kind of talk about what Dental Menu is and how it can help dental practices. Paul?
Paul Lowry: Yeah, well, thanks for having me on guys excited to be with you for a few minutes today. So, yeah, Dental Menu, it's a platform to help offices run and administer their own membership plans. And, you know, membership plans aren't new. I mean, most people have heard of them. They've been around. You guys obviously have heard of them for years. So our platform is built specifically to help offices really run a plan that's going to benefit their office the most. So it's all customizable. It's white labeled for the practice. We're going to help them basically take their plans to new heights. But I did want to talk a little bit today, John and Wendy, the difference between kind of a discount style plan and more of a membership plan. So we see, you know, a lot of offices we work with don't have a plan and we help them. And that's great. A lot of the offices we work with, probably a higher percentage, they have a membership plan already or what they call a membership plan. And so. Sometimes I feel like we get a little weird in dentistry and so I like to look outside of dentistry and see what's going on. So if you guys were to think of like, like true membership continuity programs, I mean, what are some that come to mind for you guys outside of dentistry that you see that work?
Wendy Briggs: Probably the most popular for us would be like Delta Sky Miles or some type of airline I used to say years ago I'm never gonna be like beholden to one airline over another and I totally am right I mean they got the perks far out way you know flying on another airline so that's probably the most common other ones that I see.
Paul Lowry: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and then you don't even shop around as much. You're just like, well, I'm flying. I'm just going to get my flight. That's great. Now, some of the ideas we've talked about and thrown around is if you look at a discount plan, something like Groupon. Like if the three of us said, hey, we're going to go skydiving. We decided we're going to go skydiving. We've already made that choice. Now we're going to try to find the best deal possible, and we're going to go get a discount if we can. and try to find that. If we go to the ice cream shop and it's like, hey, you know, can we get a two for one? That's a discount. We're going to do that. Things like that are discounts. Those fundraising cards that the kids bring around when they're doing their, you know, football fundraiser and you buy the card, it has all those discounts. You're paying 20 bucks to get discounts to all these different places. And so then you go and you buy your stuff and you get your two for ones or you get your discounts, your 20% off. Those are discounts. continuity programs, you look at something like Netflix. You're paying every month to have access to their content. But if you think of Netflix, they don't come and say like, hey John, it's been a year, how have you liked our content? Do you wanna renew for another year? And we'll actually even finance it and only charge you 12 bucks a month for our content. They don't do that. They set it up every month and whether you're watching it or not, you're accessing the content, maybe you're not. A gym membership is probably my favorite example. that goes along with membership plans, because you're paying to have access to the elliptical and the weights and the spa and everything else. If you don't use it, you don't get the benefits. And so what we see a lot in the membership space is we see a lot of discount plans where patients get a discount on treatment. They might get two exams, two cleanings, a set of x-rays. They get 20% off treatment. Usually how the sales process goes is patient comes in, it's like, hey, Wendy, you don't have insurance. You've got a treatment plan of $4,000. Would you like to get a discount today of 20%? It's $350. By the way, you also get some cleanings and exams. You're like, all right, yeah, that's easy math. So you sign up. But again, then in a year, the conversation is, hey, Wendy, do you want to re-sign up? And you're like, I think I'll wait for a while. The discount plans we see, they buy them and then they go off them for a while and then they go and buy them again. So if you can kind of switch, and a discount plan's not bad, but just realize, That's what it is. You know, I like to use the analogy because if you talk to front office team members, hey, how's it going selling the plan? Everybody buys it. Everyone we present the plan to buys it. Well, think again of our analogy of the ice cream shop. If you and me, we go into the ice cream shop, we've already decided to buy ice cream. There's a little sign here that says, hey, you can sign up for our plan. It's two bucks and you can get a two for one on anything in the store. And you're just going to see what's cheaper and you're going to go for it and you're going to buy the ice cream. It didn't mean that's actually what drove you in. It just means maybe you bought the triple scoop instead of the single scoop because it was a better deal. And so when patients have already made the decision, they're already in your office, you've already diagnosed treatment, a discount plan is a great tool. I'm not saying it's not, but it's a tool to close treatment to get them to go for the triple scoop or at least buy something versus going out the door. But they're already in your place of business. It didn't really... create continuity of patient flow. If you look at dental insurance, which people typically are very like, I hate dental insurance because of all the write-offs, all this other stuff. Your typical PPO insurance plan is a continuity program. A business usually is paying every month for people to have access to care at certain intervals, whether they use it or not, just like a gym membership. But they have access to that. I know we've talked a little bit before about the analogy of like a hunter versus a farmer. If you think of a hunter, that's a discount plan. He goes out, he has to find that big kill. He uses whatever techniques he has, whether it's a spear or a gun or a trap or whatever, those are all discounts. Those are ways to close the deal, right? He gets close to the animal, he's got to kill it. So he has different arrows in his quiver, so to speak. He's got these discounts, this discount plan to make the kill. But even though he makes the kill, once he consumes that, he's got to go back out and find another animal to hunt and kill. If you look at a farmer, which is more your continuity program, he's planting crops, he's raising the herd, he's having natural harvest from patients coming in naturally on a consistent basis. Your hygiene department is your farm. The patients that are coming through hygiene on a regular basis, that's who you're going to get natural production from. And so sure, you might have some tools to close treatment, but if the majority of people coming through hygiene or PPO patients or insurance patients, guess what? That's what you're gonna get naturally for production. And so we help offices take their plan and really turn it into a really killer continuity program where patients are paying on an interval to get services. And you know, we've got guys doing all kinds of crazy stuff. Botox, you could sell Botox in a subscription. if you're doing Botox, whitening could be in a subscription. There's all kinds of stuff you can do. But set it up like a gym membership. Let them pay you every month to have access to your content, so to speak, or your services, and then get them coming in on a regular basis and move from being that hunter and that discount, move it more to a continuity so you can actually build your practice on that versus just a one and done type of a thing.
Wendy Briggs: Yeah, you know, I love that analogy and some of those examples that you shared, because I think that's something Dr. John and I talk about a lot is how many, many practices overlook the value and the importance of patient retention and what that really does long term to profitability. It's massive, right? I mean, Dr. John, we've seen this time and time again. In fact, I remember years ago, the conversation you had with the CEO of a very, very large group practice. and you were asking him some key questions. Do you remember the conversation?
John Meis: I'm not sure which one you're asking. Who are you talking about?
Wendy Briggs: Well, you asked me to share with you which metrics track directly with ability. And you wanted all the numbers, right? And of course he was smart and said, I'm not going to give you all the numbers, but he gave you one. Right?
John Meis: Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yep. And the one he gave me was the number of insurance plans an office is a provider for. Now this is 15 years ago, so I'm not sure that this applies today, but the point, he was saying that because of the retention of patients. And so that part of the message certainly still applies today. that retention is king. People focus on new patients so much, but retention is what's correlated with profitability, not new patients.
Wendy Briggs: As you mentioned, you know, that's that is the recall department. That's keeping people coming back. And and we as dental professionals may hate dealing with insurance. But I can tell you this from the patient perspective, they think having dental insurance is a very good thing. And if they didn't have it, they wouldn't come in a lot. We've seen that. Right. So I love I love the approach that you've taken into shifting from a discount plan into a more strategic. plan to keep patients engaged and coming in, as well as another feature that I love about what you guys bring is the ease of which people can customize their plan to what it is that they want, right? We talk a lot about giving patients what they want, and that's something I think that's unique to DentalMenu right now as well.
Paul Lowry: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, what do you guys see on pre-appointment rates when you talk retention? So if you ask a question, if you have a plan right now and you say, okay, are people mainly buying your plan to get that discount on treatment? And is your plan helping close treatment, but is it actually helping to retain patients? It's two different things. And the pre-appointment rate is always significantly higher on insurance patients than fee for service, and that's because they have that prepaid benefit. Like you say, they like it, you know, and so offices don't like it, but it's a good thing for consumers. It gets them to come in consistently to visit the dentist. I mean, and so your, your membership plan should be mimicking the good things that insurance does, which is providing a benefit at an interval to get them to come back to your place of business.
John Meis: Yeah, and of course, retention is one of the big things, but when we measure the amount of treatment accepted on people who are on membership plans, that they accept more care, and the number escapes me, but it was in the teens percentage, they accept more care when they have that. So it's really a double whammy, helps with retention, but also they get more of the treatment that they need. So it's really... improving their dental health in more than one way.
Paul Lowry: Yes, yeah for sure. Yeah and the discount is definitely good. You know, you got to get them in there, you got to get them to accept treatment. Yeah, yeah and then when do we see like that? We're seeing right now about if you offer any kind of upgrade to your plan. So you know, let's say you offer a premier upgrade. It's 15 bucks a month, it includes some services, maybe any and all needed x-rays, Pano, 3D. stuff like that, nitrous, maybe it includes some whitening, maybe it includes emergency services. You put those and bundle them for say 15 bucks a month. We're seeing about 30% of patients nationally will actually upgrade their plan. So if you take, let's say you have a hundred patients and you can get 40 of them to spend another 15 bucks a month in the office, just by offering that, obviously that increases the profitability, but it allows patients to access the care more readily and have. access to things. A lot of people want nitrous, but they're worried it's going to cost too much, things like that. So if you can have them buy that upgrade, then they don't have to worry about, it's kind of like upgrading with Delta or the movie channels or whatever. Let them upgrade their package, their content package versus every time you go to Amazon Prime, you're like, oh, that one's free. That one's another three bucks. Do I really want to buy that? Versus like, no, all these now are included. They're all free. They're going to consume more.
Wendy Briggs: As you mentioned, you know, that's that is the recall department. That's keeping people coming back. Yeah, you know, and you mentioned outside plans. It's interesting. I was interviewed on a entrepreneurs panel and one of the ladies that I was interviewed with, it was some kind of feature on women in business. And, and she had created a company that was all about your skin and skincare. And interestingly enough, you know, the reason her company grew so fast is because they had a continuity plan and they had a way for. for people who were interested in caring for their skin to essentially prepay for their packages. And when people prepay, it's funny what happens just from their mental switch, right? Like you said, it's certainly not free, but if they've already paid for it, if they're on a plan where they're paying for it consistently in their mind, it's not an extra added benefit. So they're gonna use those services more consistently, right? And like you said, I think sometimes we can benefit from looking outside. of our own profession and seeing what's working elsewhere. Certainly we do see a lot of elective services like the esthetician or med spas, going with plans like this to help people get more of what they want. So I think it's a great fit. And we know that we have a lot of our members that are using you now that are very happy with the plans that they've chosen and the ease of implementation. So that's another thing that I think is important to highlight is. Over the years, we have seen so many practices struggle with headaches from poor administration of a discount plan, right? They don't know what they don't know. And so in my mind, it makes perfect sense to have somebody who does this every day come in and help make sure that when you do this, it's administered well and it's easy on the team.
Yeah. Yeah, and I'm trying to remember last time we spoke. So we do have integrations with Eagle Soft, Open Dental and Dentrix now. I'm not sure trying to think when we spoke last, if we had those, but obviously that helps, you know, as you're trying to keep that ledger up to date and you're trying to keep everything going when your plan grows to a certain amount, those integrations are really nice. And then I was going to mention you had thrown out the Delta with the SkyMiles and stuff, but we do have a rewards program as well that's helping with really both those things, John, is the... You got the treatment acceptance and you have the continuity. The rewards program is pretty awesome because when they're a member, they come in, they get a cleaning, they earn 25 or $50 towards treatment that may be needed in the future, as long as their plan stays active. So that does two things. It keeps them on the plan. But then when they need treatment, just like you were saying, Wendy, like, hey, you've been a great member, you have $50 of rewards, do you want to use that towards treatment? That's nice because it doesn't discount it, which means it doesn't cheapen your services as a provider, which you have to be careful discounting too much because you're valuable. So it doesn't precondition that discount, but there is some perceived value there when they have rewards to help pay for that treatment. And then of course it keeps them really coming back and keeping active on that plan. So the rewards have been pretty fun. There's a lot of different ways to use them, a lot of fun ways to help patients access that care and to make them feel good.
John Meis: It does create some pain on disconnect because if they leave the practice, they lose the discount points. So.
Paul Lowry: Yep, yep. Or even if their plan goes inactive for a period of time, they're going to lose those. So if you have 75 points and your payment is 25 bucks a month, you're not going to want to drop off for two months to then restart again.
Wendy Briggs: Yeah, I love that too. You know, surprise and delight has power in regards to patient experience. So I always love it when I go check out at Nordstrom Rack or something like that. They're like, hey, you have, you know, 20 bucks in Nordstrom notes. Do you want to use that today? And I'm like, of course I do. You know, it's like, I didn't realize I had it. It's awesome. It's a, you know, it leaves you with, I guess, maybe focusing on the discount, not the total that you just spent or the total that was necessary to spend prior to, to get the discount. So anytime we can surprise and delight people, I think that's just an added win. So I love that feature as well.
John Meis: Smart.
Paul Lowry: Yeah. Yeah, and you can use it, we've seen people, let's say you have a bigger treatment plan, the margin's there, it's a big cosmetic case or something like that. Instead of offering another 5% discount, we've seen people double or triple the rewards towards that treatment case. Hey, you know what, for anything, any cosmetic case over $4,000, we'll let you double your rewards. Or maybe you're slow in September, you wanna close some treatment or something like that. It's a lot more powerful to double rewards, triple rewards than it is to discount. And again, if you look outside of dentistry at the Delta reward, you know, sky miles or just any of this kind of stuff, my flight was canceled with Delta. And so they gave me a bunch of miles, you know, and so you're like, well, now I'm even more tight in. I'm mad because my flight was canceled, but now I have, you know, these free miles. So I've got to kind of use them versus going somewhere else. So the rewards have been really fun. The add-ons are really great. And then the integrations with the admin side, like you're talking about. If you're running a plan that's great for patients, but it's terrible for your team, I mean, you know,
John Meis: That doesn't work.
Paul Lowry: They say patients are first and foremost all the time, but if you've got a bunch of disgruntled team members. That's an uphill battle. And so if they're not happy with the plan and that it's causing them all kinds of angst on the management side with the ledger and the payments and all that stuff. You're not going to be able to run a very robust program. Your team member is going to come and say, hey, we hate monthly payments. We hate these options. This isn't working. We want to do a simple annual plan with a discount. Not because it's best for the practice or patience. It's because it's best for management standpoint. So a lot of them regress down to a very ineffective plan because that's the easiest to manage. Which you guys know all that. That's why we like working with you guys and your coaches and stuff. You know, when those pain points come up, obviously we want to solve those.
John Meis: Yeah, for sure. Well, it sounds like you've got some, you know, exciting improvements on what you had in the past. And I love the. Your thought process on the difference between a discount plan and the continuity plan. And I love have always loved the flexibility that you have where plans can be customized based on what the patients want. So what a good deal.
Paul Lowry: Yeah. Yeah, we appreciate you having me on, guys.
Wendy Briggs: Well, awesome. Well, thanks, Paul. Hey, for those that are listening, we'll go ahead and put a link so that if you'd like to have more information about DentalMenu and what they can do in your practice, go ahead and go to our show notes page and click the link so you can learn more about Paul. Paul, is there also an email or something, a website that you'd like our listeners to go to if they'd like to learn more about how they can customize a plan for their practice?
Paul Lowry: Yeah, for sure. So we've got actually from the last time we talked to, we've got five free educational modules. You don't even have to put in your email address that'll walk you through a lot of the process. So, you know, we're, if you're a DIY person and you're like, Hey, I like what you're telling me, but I think I want to dip my toe in and try it myself or whatever. That's we're very open with what we've learned. We're happy to, you know, help everybody. And so if you go to dentalmenu.com slash education, and we can give you guys that link to post. That'll give you free modules. There's one on pricing. There's one on the admin side with the ledger. There's one on add-ons and things like that. You can go watch those for free. If anybody wants to reach out to me, my email address is paul at dentalmenu.com. So feel free to email me. You know, you can check out the website. There's also a free assessment if you have a plan. You can go through that assessment and kind of see how it scores, how it stacks up. There's 15 questions, I believe, and you can kind of see, hey, how's my plan? scoring, is it pretty good or am I kind of on the low end? So go do the assessment, check out those videos, feel free to email us or reach out if you wanna chat.
John Meis: Awesome. Very good. Well, Paul, we really appreciate you being on with us. Appreciate all that you've done to support our clients. And that will be it for this episode of the W Production Podcast. We'll see you all next time.
Wendy Briggs: Thanks everybody.
Paul Lowry: Yeah, thank you.
