The three types of communicators
Over the years I’ve had the pleasure of sitting in the corner and watching dozens of dentists “communicate” with patients. The dentists fall into three categories:
Incoherent
They meander, use lots of jargon, and talk about things that are interesting to themselves but not interesting to their patients.Coherent
They can communicate facts but seldom say anything memorable or persuasive.Eloquent
They use words and body language to win over their patients.
If I were to put percentages on the breakdown, my summation would be 60% of dentists belong in category 1, 35% belong in category 2 and 5% belong in category 3.
Interestingly, I’ve seen quite a few dentists who believe that they’re in category 3 but are actually in category 1.
The worst example of that, that I’ve ever seen was a dentist who spent 45 minutes babbling to a patient about the technical details of treatment. At the end, the patient was completely frustrated and confused.
“I’ll go home and think about it.” said the patient
“Yes, good idea!”, replied the dentist.
The dentist thought that he had done wonderfully well. He was proud of his communication skills. His inability to read the patient’s obvious body language was quite astounding.
I had to break the news to him that he could have explained the case much more clearly in less than two minutes. And, doing it in this way he would have gotten a decision.
Over the next few months I’m going to give you the key “secrets” to putting yourself in category 3. But, before I do, think about how you perform right now.
Where do you place yourself? Category 1, 2 or 3?
