People love to buy. They hate to be sold. (part 3)

Over the past two weeks I've written about the concept that we should stop recommending treatment to patients and offer choices instead.

The question is how many options do you offer? Two, three, four, five, more?

I'm going to tell you.There is abundant psychological research that proves that the ideal number of choices is two. Given a choice between two clearly explained options the majority of people can decide without difficulty.

Conversely, if you give people five options virtually no one can decide. The percentage of people saying "I'll think it over" will be close to 100%.

So for example, if you have a tooth with irreversible pulpitis, the options might be extraction or root filling.

But what do you do if there are other options that the patient genuinely needs to know about? What do you do then?

I don't want to give all my secrets away so I'm going to give you a choice.

You can work it out yourself or come to one of my Case Acceptance seminars in 2017 and I'll tell you.