121: How Dental Offices Are Decreasing Patient Anxiety with Jessica Martin

Jessica Martin, the owner of Martin Management and co-owner of Martin Dental, a thriving dental office in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, loves sharing ways to help dental offices decrease patient anxiety and make the dental experience positive for every patient.  She uses her background in psychology to get to the real reasons why patients feel anxious or fear at the dentist and have created tools for dental offices to remove some of the most common barriers to dental care. Jessica is a speaker, trainer, and consultant and is on a mission to make dentistry better! Part One of ‘How Dental Offices Are Decreasing Patient Anxiety’ When Jessica and her husband launched their first dentistry business, it led to a realization that most people don't really like going to the dentist. Thus, it led Jessica to use her background in psychology, which makes it easier for her to deal with kids effectively, particularly those with autism, ADHD, and behavioral issues.  About five years ago, she started putting some new techniques and strategies in place for her patients to really see how that could impact their experience. Now there's an ongoing expansion, hiring a new doctor, and building a new office. Her new mission is to share those strategies with other dental offices. “This is a great time to build power partner relationships.” — Ursula Mentjes  In the beginning, she had limiting beliefs in the dental practice because there are many competitors out there that made it hard to stand out. But when you believe in something, you can convince other people to believe in it. But when you're in that space of doubt, it's hard to fake it. You have to figure out ways to truly be confident in what you're serving people with for them to believe it.   It's about networking and building connections with people that could turn them into becoming patients. The rewarding part of building a business relationship with people is when they provide valuable feedback. It's essential in any relationship that you're there to serve the other person.  And then, once you can provide some value to them, they're going to help you in return. This way, it feels more authentic and easier to convert people from an acquaintance to a patient. Moments like this make it more about them than yourself. Jessica Martin used two main sales strategies to switch from being desperate to have a prosperous business.   Creating a niche or finding a way to differentiate   Any business can do that. You just have to really find what's going to resonate with you and the people that you want to attract.     Networking   Find people who want to help you grow your business. Build genuine relationships with people where there's an authentic concern for one another's businesses. The best thing about building power relationships is you get to collaborate with people whom you have shared values with, and they typically attract the same people that you would want to attract for your business. Part Two of ‘How Dental Offices Are Decreasing Patient Anxiety’ You must find ways to spot dental anxiety, but unfortunately, not everybody is great at reading people.