Dr James, 9s:

What is the truth about sales, and is it even something that's relevant or important to us? Well, in my opinion, yes, because it is actually low-key one of the greatest things that can accelerate a wealth journey and there's a lot of perceptions that people have whenever it comes to the topic of sales that I feel could be enhanced to allow them to see it more clearly and to make a decision on whether or not that's something that they feel is important whenever it comes to their finances and their general financial outlook. So, when it comes to sales and when it comes to how we see it, I mean really we've got to flip it on its head a little bit about how we're looking at it, because I feel like a lot of people perceive it as something that is negative and is something that is beneficial for one party but not for the other. Do you know what? I was actually really interesting because I was talking to an American guy the other day and I know that it's quite common in the UK where we have this perception that sales is a slimy word, it's a dirty word, it's a greasy word, it's a dirty word, it's a greasy word, and certainly what used to spring to my mind back in the day was that if someone was selling to me, that that would be an inherently uncomfortable process, like a second-hand car sales person, and that that would not be fun. And certainly whenever it's not done well, it can come across as a negative thing, it can come across as not so fun and an uncomfortable experience. I was chatting to an american guy and he was saying that really their perception is a little bit different, where when someone is selling to them inverted commas they are able to distinguish the method and the methodology and the approach that the salesperson is using from the actual value of the product that is behind it. Because think about it, right, what about if a used car salesperson is incredibly bad at selling and they do a really poor job of describing what they have for sale, but they actually have a really nice bmw or a merc that is going at a really good rate or a really good price? I mean, that's possible, right, you know. So he was saying that when it comes to america, obviously America is a big place. So he's speaking from his experience. But it was interesting that he realized this. He was like, okay, they're selling to us, but they, it could be that they actually have something that might actually help us. And to facilitate that help, that massive benefit in my life then there's a transaction which has monetary value which I would exchange in in return for the privilege of having that thing, but actually it's a win for me. I mean, someone will only say here's the biggest thing to understand about the concept of sales and the concept of making more money. The biggest thing to understand is someone will only ever say yes to you and your proposition if they believe that they are getting the better side of the deal. Now, the word believe is the operative word there, because the problem is they may actually be getting a really, really, really good deal, but they don't believe it and see it until they actually get the product. But the only real way they have to decide whether or not the product is any good is what you're saying to them beforehand, right? They're making a decision purely on the value of the product based off what you're saying. And here is something I want everybody to remember who's listening to this podcast today the patients don't say yes to your dentistry. The patients don't buy your dentistry, they buy your description of the dentistry, because that's the part that they say yes, to remember, they don't actually shake hands on the price and the dentistry is already inside their mouth. They don't have a look at your crown or your filling and be like, wow, that's amazing, I'm going to give you a thousand pounds for that amazing indirect restoration that you've given me right there. Or that tooth that has amazing primary, secondary and even a little bit of tertiary anatomy in there. Oh my God, that's brilliant that you know that's the best villain I've ever had. Here's 500 quid for that posterior restoration. They're never going to do that, right, and I'm not saying that you should put your price up to those levels. I'm just saying that that conversation would never happen. What I am saying is that really the only thing that allows them to say yes, or what they will say yes to, is how you explain that treatment before it actually goes in their mouth. They don't give you them, they don't pick a price after the dentistry is already inside their mouth. They say that beforehand and then afterwards they decide that if it was worth the money. But your job as a dentist is to get as good as you can at your possible at your dentistry in the whole wide world, not even from a financial standpoint, but from the standpoint that it's your duty to do that for the patient, to help them to the high standard. However, it's also your duty to be able to explain to that patient how much it is worth, because that patient has no context, they have no ability to decide on that and then they can only really choose whether or not, to decide whether or not they think that's a good deal, based off what you have said. So actually, the onus is on us to be able to articulate to a very high standard the value of our work and also the remuneration associated with that. Really it lies to you, down to you. Really it lies down to the individual. So, like I say, that comes purely beforehand, like from your description. So therefore, the patient will say yes to your description, to the value of the dentistry, your description of your dentistry, not your actual dentistry, but of course you have to be good at dentistry as well. You can't just charge people loads of money and then not give them very good dentistry. They're going to realize eventually it has to be good and that will come back to haunt you. But providing you can do that, then your next job is to be able to explain why to the patient so that they can benefit from it, so that they can have it placed inside their mouth, and the money that is exchanged hands at that stage is just merely the thing that facilitates that transaction. And you know, a lot of times people want lamborghinis. A lot of time people want really nice cars and they're willing to pay a little bit more. You just have to be able to explain why your dentistry is the lamborghini dentistry, and then let them decide if it is the lamborghini dentistry. Of course, if you have worked hard and you have invested loads in yourself and you have got to that level, then you're ready. Now that is an interesting thing, because it actually brings you back to an analogy that I really like. Imagine if you had a lamborghini, and imagine if you had a veil over it, and imagine that nobody knew there was a Lamborghini under there apart from you. And imagine if you went around asking people hey, do you want to buy this car under this veil for 500 quid? Do you want to buy this Ford Mondeo under this veil for 500 pounds? Something along those lines. A lot of people will maybe say, hmm, I don't know. Maybe some people would say, no, I don't know. Maybe some people would say, no, I don't really trust it. It's under a veil. You know you've described it as a Ford Mondeo. Maybe it is worth 500 quid, I don't know. But they'd be hesitant to right. And then you would say, okay, cool. Well, you seem hesitant. That was your choice. That opportunity is gone. Now you could have had this amazing Ford Mondeo no-transcript, because you described it not as what it was. You didn't describe it accurately. You called it something different. Therefore, that person could not benefit from it. They could have literally got a Lamborghini for 500 quid or 5,000 quid or even 50,000 quid. That's still a bargain for a Lamborghini. It's like a quarter of a million car. They would be annoyed at you because you didn't explain that right. Therefore, it completely flips it on its head. It's like actually, did I do them a disservice because I didn't sell to them accurately? I didn't describe the value of what I was giving them accurately? You might argue that that's how you take it one step further. So actually, everybody's scared of selling people, but wouldn't shouldn't be more scared, or at least a scared of doing, doing, doing. It's describing what we have, this amazing thing that we have. Not to this, not to a standard that befits it, articulating its value to an inaccurate level or not doing it's describing what we have, this amazing thing that we have not to this, not to a standard that befits it, articulating its value to an inaccurate level, or not explaining why it will fully benefit somebody, because actually that's just as bad as case in point for that picture, case in point for that description that they gave you just then. Whatever, dentistry is a Lamborghini dentistry, but we're describing it to people as Ford Mondeos and they're not willing to say yes and they're not willing to actually benefit from what we have in front of us, or they're not willing to actually benefit from that. They go down the road, they get a GIC stuck in their tooth for like 10 quid and they're happy, or 50 quid or whatever, and they're happy. They think they're happy, but in reality, would any of us dentists ever really want that for most of our teeth? No, we'd probably pay a little bit more. We'd probably do that. We pay for quality all day long, but if the patient is making different decisions, well then we have to look at ourselves. We have to look at the way we're articulating it and explaining it to the patient in order to be able to understand why they're not making decisions to the same level as the dentist is because the dentist when the to the same level as the dentist is when it comes to the dentist's own oral health care, because, remember, the dentist already has a full understanding of what's going on. The dentist doesn't need any more information. The dentist can just decide. But the patient needs more information and we're the conduit of their information. So we have to recognize that, we have to understand that these are the permutations of it. We have to understand these little things so that we know how we come across and we also reframe a lot of these things that people think are negative about the world of sales, because sales is just helping people get what they want. Sales is just describing the value of what you do. That's what the skill is. Building value on. Articulating value, you articulate it to a level that allows the patient to understand that they're actually getting the best out of the deal, but only if you truly believe it, only if you really think that this is awesome and you really think that this is going to help people. So, really, it starts from your beliefs and the second side of that is not only does it start from your own beliefs about the quality of your work, but it also the second aspect to it. The second thing we must realize is that it also stems from our beliefs around the concept of sales and it being an inherently bad thing. And I'm just pointing out that actually, if we don't get it right, it works both ways. Because we're doing lackluster dentistry, we're doing bog, standard dentistry that might wind up costing the patient more in the long run, given that it's not gold standard, given that it's not the standard that we could be, because we didn't go do a good job of articulating its value. That's my point, and that actually applies to any business, that actually applies to a lot of things in life and it certainly applies to our clinical dentistry every single day. But it's a skill, it's a power, it's something that you can get phenomenally good at. But you have to use it responsibly, because what you can do is eventually is potentially potentially, if you're a nefarious character, you could potentially bit overstate the value of what you're about to give somebody. But my point is, in my honest opinion, if you do that, it will bite you in the ass anyway, because eventually people will realize that and eventually people will understand that it's really overpriced versus its actual value. So if you want to be sustainable long term, if you want to be a practitioner in any profession or any field long term, then providing, providing, providing that you can actually come through and deliver, then you'll always have happy people who work with you. But at the flip side, if you don't ask for a level of remuneration that fairly values you well, you're always stuck in a zone where you're exchanging a lot of your time and maybe not having that for money and maybe not having that much free time. Ask yourself this take however many days your week you're working on. You're currently working as a clinical dentist. Say it's five, and maybe subtract one. Most people would love an extra day off every single week. Most people would love to go from five days a week to four days a week or six days a week. To set five days a week or whatever, or seven days a week to six, and even if you actually love working the same amount of time, that's also totally fine. What I'm about to say still works. But let's go back to the reducing a day thing. Most people want to drop a day whenever it comes to their clinical dentistry, and I bet I bet I bet about everybody listening to this podcast that if we could really delve down into the crux of the reason why most people don't take a day off it's usually the income thing is because they're scared their income is going to drop. It's because they're scared that if they have an extra day off every week, their income is going to go down and not be what it used to be. My point is this if you can maintain your income and have an extra day off, that's an unbelievable thing, that's an incredible thing, and in what I've just said, there is a lot of wisdom and logic that will help you be able to get to that level and do that thing. Should you embrace the concept of articulating the value of what you do incredibly well Because, remember, you can boost your clinical ability as much as possible. However, if we don't boost our ability to explain to the patient why it's as good as what it is well, that's a separate skill set in and of itself and it'll mean that we never really, really really benefit from the fruits of our labor. And the downside to that is, well, we might be working in an exogenous clinic that we necessarily have to until we embrace and understand and learn this stuff, because finance is really cool. I love finance, dennis who invests and there's some amazing things that you can do out there. A lot of it's pretty formulaic though. It's pretty straightforward. It's just like put it in this account, do this with it. If your time frame is very long, then you should probably do this and just buy and hold and forget about it. The cool thing about finance is, eventually it will compound to such a level where it's worth incredible amount of money. Should you be confident and you know what you're doing, or, if you don't, definitely get an advisor. That's that's what I definitely recommend. But the problem is it takes a long time. It takes like 20 30 years for it to get to that level, whereas the stuff that I'm talking about now how we boost our income in here and now well, that will allow us to get a day off in the today, maybe within the next six months, maybe within the next 12 months, versus 12 years or 20 years or something along those lines. So now we realize its importance is because there is going to be an immediate benefit in that for ourselves, and that's why I think we should absolutely be able to talk about money, because sometimes it will mean that we're in a zone where we feel like we're having to work incredibly hard just to get to where we need to go, just to make ends meet, and a lot of the time that means that there's actually well, well, we could be much more happy, or there's a compromise in terms of our happiness on this life. And just to bring it back to the income thing that we were talking about a second ago, I really feel like if most people could add an extra five grand to their income every single month that's an extra 50k 60k in a year. That's a fair amount of money. Most people would have a extra day off, most people would be able to have more free time. And you this is the thing you know you can use. That's not selfish. You can use that free time to do other positive things in the world. You can use that free time to do charity work, be with your kids, be with your family, or even just chill or just relax. So really, whenever we look at it in those terms, in the cold, hard light of day now, we understand the importance of this stuff to a whole new level. Finance is more of a long train in order to grow your wealth and grow your money, whereas a lot of the stuff that helps you increase your income in the short term. Well, that's more for today. You in the here and now rather than future. You food for thought.