Educating Patients With the Speed-Sell

Man goes into a store to buy a tie. He emerges 90 minutes later wearing the expression of a stunned mullet. His sales receipt indicates he was sold a complete wardrobe -- a three-piece suit, shirt, socks, underwear and cufflinks. He re-enters the store. Forgot the tie.

Woman goes in to purchase a new handbag. Two hours later, she has matching pumps, lingerie, and a darling frock with mix-and-match accessories to die for. And a hat -- no, two hats -- plus some cologne, body lotion and appropriate jewelry.

What does this tell us? Are these people victims of their own feeblemindedness? Exploitation by avaricious salesclerks? No, of course not! They have been educated. The education has been done altruistically by people with specialized knowledge of what the customer needs.

It is a win-win proposition. The education is in the consumer’s best interest, because frequently the customer doesn’t know what he needs. What he wants is subject to whimsy. What he needs is guidance. In providing that guidance -- that education -- the store wins, incidentally, by making a tidy profit.

Or maybe not so incidentally. This has been SOP in the retail world since Day One. What is depressing is how long it has taken dentistry to recognize how pitifully inadequate our attempts to educate our patients have been. We’ve been dedicating our efforts into explaining what they need. How many patients want what they need? Why not education based on want rather than need, the marketing mavens ask. Seems to work for everybody from Tiffany & Co. to Burger King.

Imagine this scenario if you can: Patient comes in for a prophy, that’s all. She wants her teeth cleaned, she needs her teeth cleaned; wants and needs neatly balanced. Cost: (she thinks) about $50. One hour later, she has had her teeth cleaned; had impressions made for tooth-whitening splints; and had her shopping bag filled with a tongue scraper, a home hygiene maintenance kit consisting of fluoride rinses, anti-halitosis agents with a volatile sulfur measuring device, two kinds of floss, assorted vitamins, whitening splints, a month’s supply of bleaching materials, a shade guide to confirm her bleaching progress, and a handful of referral cards to hand out to her friends. She is wearing the expression of a stunned mullet. Cost: about $500 (for the stuff -- the expression is free), but she has been educated, and the cost of education can sometimes be a little high as parents of college kids can affirm.

The above scenario, according to brochures, fliers and product report magazines deluging our desk, is becoming more common as forward-looking dentists seek innovative ways to educate their patients with the avowed purpose of improving their oral well-being.

In other professions, this is called the "speed-sell." One would think that long experience with used car and aluminum siding salesmen would inure people to some extent from blandishments of this nature. But it is sometimes difficult for the consumer to tell where the education leaves off and the speed-sell begins, so closely and skillfully are they interwoven. If the ostensible purpose of the message is to improve or safeguard his health, it’s hard for the patient/consumer to argue with the messenger.

That’s why a customer will drive away in his new car with $10,000 worth of leather eight-way power seats and dealer-enhanced pin striping he really didn’t know he needed. That’s why one dentist can insist that 100 percent of his patients receive the bleaching procedure as a part of their treatment plan and another has a hygienist so adept at speed-selling that he had to inaugurate an intricate extended payment plan to handle the $20,000 extra a month she generates.

Is any of this unethical by any stretch of imagination? Well, hardly, if you consider that an educated patient is better prepared to make intelligent choices. After all, nobody held a gun to his head. Perhaps it all depends on the curriculum and who is doing the educating.

Maybe our comfort level with high-powered marketing will increase with time. Shoot, even the general acceptance of global warming and presidential perjury took a while.