Are all crowns the same?

To your patients a crown is just a crown.  You offer white or porcelain, porcelain fused to metal or gold based on the location of the tooth and the occlusal factors.  When you don’t educate and demonstrate why your product and service is better and worth the investment, your patient is more apt to shop you by calling your competitors and asking the familiar “How much do you charge for a crown?”   Patients are used to receiving more information before making purchasing decisions for televisions, cars, computers and cell phones especially when it involves parting with a large amount of money so why not provide the information that is available on the crown as a “product” and also a service.

When you look at the advertisements that are targeted to dentists from dental labs that construct the crowns and other prosthetics you will read marketing material designed to make the dentist purchase their product/service.  Why not use this information to educate your patients on the importance of having the best possible crown made for them.  Below is part of an advertisement from Glidewell Labs for their new PFM product.

“Obsidian® Lithium Silicate Ceramic Pressed to Metal restorations are state-of-the-art PFMs for today’s clinician. They are over four times stronger and achieve over two times more chip resistant than their predecessors. By pressing lithium silicate ceramic, rather than traditional porcelain, to metal the finished restorations achieve far greater strength than that of their predecessors. These natural-looking, chip-resistant restorations are ideal for areas where monolithic restorations are contraindicated, such as covering dark preps or endodontic posts when occlusal reduction or vertical dimension is limited.

Obsidian Pressed to Metal restorations are available in the 14 most popular VITA® shades.”

To some patients this information would be important in the decision making process.  If you are selling the very best you will need to define what you feel that is to this patient and their individual needs.  

Selling service is about gaining trust and having the display of confidence throughout the practice.  It is far more difficult to convince a patient that you are the best to perform the services especially if what you are saying is something the patient is not seeing in the practice and the people.