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just by having financing options doesn't mean you're going to get that Improvement it's all about how that case and how that treatment plan is presented and how the dollar amount is presented and that's really the magic moment there hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the raving patients podcast as you know I'm your host Dr Len ta I do want to thank our sponsors both Dental intelligence and the doc sites for their support uh being able to come to you every single week to your inbox Fridays at 5:00 a.m. eastern standard time uh today's episode I'm I'm really excited because I get to talk some about something I'm really passionate about uh many of you know I I talk about third party financing I talk about how to help it increase case acceptance we're going to be combining those things today's episode is called boost case acceptance with payment plans my guest is Andy aoy from Cherry Technologies who they have a product that's called cherry and um I use it personally in my practice qu prior to retiring um and it's one one of my preferred vendors I guess you can say I do recommend um if you're listening to this to pay attention because it is it is a great uh product so I'm going to introduce Andy and arita's bio and then we'll we'll jump right in so Andy received his BS in engineering from the West Point and as an NBA from Stanford Business School he spent over five years as an active duty infantry officer in the US Army he has been leading high performance teams for 10 plus years and now serves as a chief Revenue officer at Cherry a leading patient financing company for dental practices so please welcome to the raving patience podcast Andy cahoy Andy thank you so much for joining me today thanks so much Len it's a pleasure to be on the show appreciate it so as I mentioned um I am a big fan of cherry um I talk about it in all my sessions um they made it into my um my on demand Workshop called The Art of dental financing so I am very familiar with it and I'm I'm glad we're going to be able to talk about it and inform other people about this great service to Dental practices so I think I think the first thing um I want you to do is is kind of expand on your bio a little bit um yes you are chief Revenue officer at at Cherry um so why don't we start off by you introducing yourself to a little bit greater extent and also expanding on exactly what Cherry does for practices absolutely and thanks again for being for um inviting me on the show here today um but yeah like you mentioned I um I studied chemical engineering in undergrad I spent 5 and a half years as an active duty infantry officer in the Army really enjoyed um that time in my career pivoted to the private sector and I used an MBA as a way to do that to figure out what I wanted to do but ultimately wanted to get into business and technology I was at a different startup and a growth company for a number of years really enjoyed um growing and leading our sales and operation teams there um and now I've been at Cherry for a little over two years I have the good privilege of serving as the chief Revenue officer here and I think the most F this is one of the most fulfilling um roles that I've had in my career because I really enjoy working with these medical practices to help achieve their goals by leveraging by now pay lader technology and we've done that with over 15,000 practices um since I joined and we've seen a lot of growth we've seen a lot of success but more importantly we've seen success in the practices and that's what we're here for right so um but that's that's what we do is we is we are a byy now pay later technology platform using by now pay lader technology to help practices achieve their goals um and that's that's what Sherry does perfect I think that's great um obviously as you know more than anybody there is a a very big or a very competitive Marketplace we have there um a lot of people a lot of different companies are in there so I think I think the first thing I want to talk about it is is that patients expect some sort of payment plan in practice so can you shed some light on that on your feelings related to that yeah absolutely um I'm only throw a few stats out at you here so 40 47% of Americans ing to the mly fool in some some recent research that they did cannot handle a $500 emergency without worry and then 57% of Americans can't afford a $1,000 emergency expense and that's ing to Fortune so basically the takeaway here is half of the people out there have a significant amount of stress or worry when there's not a pocketed expense that's $500 to $1,000 or more and unfortunately that's that's certainly the case in in this business right so I think that the the first takeaway here is that there's absolutely a need to make your treatments more accessible and affordable um and then the other staff that I'll throw out there for you is ing to the Federal Reserve and some of the research 24% of adults went without some form of Medical Care last year because they couldn't pay and guess what unfortunately was the most frequently skipped type of medical care it was Dental um Dental treatments so there's there's definitely a need in the market to make um treatments more affordable got it and I I think I think that's a very big key part of of really helping a practice increase their case acceptance is making it affordable for the patients if the patients can afford the treatments they're more than likely to say yes to it and offering some sort of payment option okay to them is a certain certainly a big key in getting them to to be able to say yes to treatments so what are ways or what are some ways that payment plans can help practices achieve their goals yeah that's a great question and what I like to look at because there's a lot of uh other companies in particular in technology have really figured out how to leverage payment plan technology for this exact exact use case right so if you look at anywhere else these consumers are and these these are the same consumers that are your patients right they're used to using payment plans elsewhere right so if you go on the Apple website and you're looking for a new iPhone for example and you go to that iPhone page what it'll say is it's $1,296 today or it's as low as $54 a month right you see that on Amazon on their product pages you see that on pelaton where it'll say it's $2,700 today or it's as low as $63 a month and the reason that they do that is that studies show that by presenting that full price alongside a monthly amount that that technique alone will increase conversion rate by about 25% um it also increases the average ticket size which that's a little bit of a different um you know application to our business but that that is kind of full treatment acceptance right so not only does the likelihood of full treatment acceptance go up when you do that but the likelihood of getting that case accepted in the first place also goes up um and that's I think that's really the insight and bringing that same technology and methodology into the dental practices is is is what we do best yeah it's amazing to me everywhere you turn it's always presented the way you present it which is this is the pay in full price this is the pay in monthly price and that's why we call it it's almost like layaway but you're you're you're getting the product up front but you're taking months to pay it versus traditional layaway which is you have to pay them before you get the product yeah and the last thing and the last thing I'd mention that before we get into more goals that we hear um our payment plans even though that is a big use case is making a more affordable that's actually not the only use case right um a lot of consumers prefer this payment option now out of convenience and these are folks that could afford to pay out of pocket right so it's also good to remember that payment plans are not always about affordability for every patient and it's often most helpful for the patients that don't need it right and for those patients offering 0% really is a perk right like that's it's a perk of visiting your practice to offer a true 0% patient friendly healthy option options right um and it's a great way to retain those valuable patients and enhance their experience I agree with you 100% so you know one of the parts of the question was what are what do you see are several common practice goals um that payments plan payment plans can provide practices with we hear goals from a lot of different practices but usually they fall into three different buckets the ones that we hear the most and we're excited about these because these are things some that we can help them accomplish um but number one is treat more patients right practices want to in increase their case acceptance rate I think that that's a goal that's shared by a lot of practices second is complete full cases they want to treat patients optimally right not and not kind of settling for kind of that minimum standard of care um and then the third goal that we hear a lot is retain great patience or sometimes this comes in the form of offering elective or cosmetic treatments increasing fee for service um and that sort of thing right and offering preferred payment methods are a great way to do that but I would say that payment plans are exciting because they're a way for a practice to to Really strive to achieve all three of those goals yeah I agree and I never understand because I give a lot of seminars on these topics uh even when I talk about marketing I I get into case acceptance eventually and one of the biggest you know reasons why I don't think a practice has case acceptance or as high as they could have is because they don't offer third- party financing and I would say there's always a couple outliers in the room that don't offer it and I'm always surprised to hear why most of the time it's based on well I don't my doctor doesn't think our patients need it which I think is ridiculous you know um but they also say that they don't want to pay the the merchant fee for it another reason I hear is that their patients only like to pay cash um they so it's just really interesting see I recommend every single practice offers third party financing every single time because I remember in my own practice I had millionaires millionaires who wanted to to Who had who wanted to use third party financing even though they have the money and I people people who are have no money to rub two nickels together but they still want to get treatment done so you want them to offer it to you want to offer it to them as well so I always think that's a very interesting um conversation when you talk to practices as to why they don't want to offer it so um I know that U regulatory scrutin scrutiny is high on deferred interest um and especially medical credit cards or credit cards in the dental space so can you shed some light on on your thoughts on related to that yeah absolutely this is a very hot topic right now and in fact the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or cfpb for short the Department of Treasury and the HHS HHS have all opened up inquiries or published white papers around this recently um and the most recent one actually was cfpb published a white paper in I think back in May of this year and it's called medical credit cards and financing plans and when you really peel back the onion um there's there's a lot of scrutiny there and it's about a very specific practice called deferred interest and the way that you spot that is with kind of the tagline no interest if paid in full and that really is seen as a predatory lending technique um from a lot of eyes and particularly from The Regulators and that's something that we don't do here at Cherry and but I think it's an obligation for us to educate practices and patients on really what that is and what's the difference between true 0% and deferred interest yeah I remember so that would be similar to um a company offering when they and here's an example they get a loan for $5,000 out um they pay back $4,900 of it and somehow leave a $100 balance uh at the end that they're paying retroactive interest on the full $5,000 is that is that rather than the remaining balance is that what you're referring to here yeah that's right so deferred interest again you spot it by you know the no interest pay in full which is always the tagline usually and it's applied if you're late on any payment whether it's full or partial after that 0% promotional period is over so what it does is if that happens then it applies an interest rate back to the original purchase price retroactively and back to that date too and so it doesn't matter how much you may have already paid off and so even if there's not that much of a balance outstanding on that amount you're going to be paying that full interest rate back to that original price and date and that's ing to this white paper actually um from the cfp BB one in five medical purchases results in deferred Interest being assessed and so that means that one out of five patients that maybe are using one of these medical credit cards out there are getting hit by a fee that could be 27 or 30% you know over the course of that six or 12 month duration and it doesn't matter if they've actually uh paid off most of it by that point and you know and we hear from practices all the time that hey these patients are coming and complain to us at the practice for that because even though it's not really directly the practice's fault right it's just that that's where that that patient maybe opened up that credit card um and that's that's a tough practice experience to deal with with that patient and it happens a lot ing to the the cfpb I've been offering Care Care Credit in other companies for a very long time in the practice I had up to eight credit uh financing companies that I've used and I got to tell you I I'm not their financial advisor but I definitely discussed with the patients when they took out the card that you need to pay this back in a timely fashion if you don't you're going to be hit with credit cards I I thought it was my obligation to have that discussion with them because a lot of times they were looking at me for assistance and helping them be able to afford it and if I felt I had to offer it and push them that direction I wanted to make sure they knew everything that was involved when when something like that came about so I I I certainly understand that and I and I want to share with you a recent experience I had so there's a company who was in dental and is no longer in Dental I don't want to call the company out but I um I actually had to get some work done on an air conditioning unit in my house and the company that the company used that I bought from uses is this company that used to be in Dental no longer in Dental now and I I I'm a very happy thirdparty financing in my personal life i' rather if I can get no interest I'd rather pay it off over time instead of taking money out all the time so I I use them for whenever I can I bought a couch I did no interest I bought Furniture I no interest so I had to buy this upgrade to my air conditioning I went on no interest and um I set it up automatically I when once I get the information I go online and I make it Auto pay for the time that the the no interest so if it's 6 months and it was you know $6,000 $1,000 a month for 6 months okay so I have zero Ed at the end so I'll never pay interest on it and what I thought was really weird was I set this up the day I got the card I set it up online changed the amount to autopay um and didn't didn't pay attention to it I just assumed it was paying the three payments went through and they took out the minimum amount of money and I went ahead I went back in I changed it again and the next month they wanted to take out the minimum amount of money so something was funky about that I have no idea I called the company said they better make it sure that it's paying this amount each month and then yesterday was the first time the payment came out with the actual amount of money that I asked for from the very beginning so I don't know what was going on with that company but that's very predatory because they obviously want me to pay interest and if I wasn't paying attention I'd end up with this huge interest bill at the end of the 12 months that I have the loan for yeah and unfortunately whether it actually happens that way or not right there's kind of an incentive for the company to want to trigger that toer interest because that's the only way that they're you know maybe making something on that but but and and I think the other thing this Consumer Financial Protection Bureau mentioned in the white paper too is that um you know the APR of a typical Medical Credit Card could be in that 27% to 30% range whereas right now I think the average credit card in the US is like 21 or 22% so they actually made the argument in this white paper that most patients are better off just putting it on a regular credit card than they are um you know using a medical credit card which tend to trigger for a lot of patients and and are actually quite a bit higher so so I think one of the questions that people who are listening to want to know and I it wasn't in our list of questions but I I think I can ask you this with that and you can answer it what makes Cherry different than some of the other credit uh third party financing companies in the dental space so we don't do deferred interests and that's actually an important thing to us right like we are in the business of helping practices and helping patients and we just don't think that that's in the business of helping patients um and so we do what's called true 0% right and so that means that if in our scenario a a patient doesn't make their payments on time we would assess interest only starting on that date and on any remaining amount whereas again a deferred interest offer would go back to the original purchase PR price and the original date and so that's something that we do very differently we really feel that that's the right thing to do and you know we think it's Our obligation to help educate our um dental providers and patients out there that there are better options out there than those no interest if pain and full options got it the other thing I would like you to touch based on I mean I talk about this in my seminars that I give which Cherry is included is you kind of have a a unique or or a style to to for the office to get the patient approved is a little bit different you use some technology you have an easy to use you know text message that you sent out can you just talk about that something I really think makes Cherry different is the application process yeah that's absolutely one of our you know secret sauces if you will is a really fast application and obviously we want to make sure that those treatment coordinators and the folks at the front desk can have more time to do their actual jobs instead of work on financing and payment plan as a part-time job right and so as a part of that we don't do hard credit checks we'll probably get into that in a little bit too but it's also just a really really fast and easy application you know 60 seconds or less and you know it's it's it's a great what we call a first Peak option right take a peek with cherry first to see see what the patient has for options because there's just literally no downside in doing so and it's fast got it okay thank you for clarifying that and you kind of led us into that direction there obviously is companies that are hard credit checks and there are companies that do soft credit checks so can you talk about the difference so people who are listening and watching can understand what they're actually getting when they get a soft credit check versus a hard credit check yeah so the first thing I'd mention is that we don't do hard credit checks here any at any point in the process we only do soft credit checks there are some companies that um don't do hard credit checks at first but then if you end up opening a balance or opening the medical credit card then you do get a hard credit check right um and most of the time when you're opening up a new credit card and that includes a medical credit card it almost usually or always results in a hard credit check they show up on a credit report um soft credit checks do not show up on your credit report um and so you know for again your first Peak option or First Look option best practice is that you don't want to be offering something that does a hard credit check because that could scare patients away from wanting to apply um U from the outset right but by kind of assuring that it's a fast and easy and it's like just a really quick Peak to see your options you can you know you can read we can reassure the patient that there truly is no downside in applying and it's it's really just a quick look to see your options got it and in general the other companies that are pretty well known in the industry are are they also um soft credit checks is there a combination or I mean is there a wide variety of what these company's doing is that something more unique to what charry offers now so where do you stand on those that answer I think it is unique to us like we only ever do soft at no point in the process do we do a hard credit check some and so you just just got to ask the company you know any other company that you're working with if and when they at any point in the process to a hard credit check I think that that's something you'll you'll need to ask because there are definitely companies out there that maybe they say it's not a hard credit check to apply but then if you end up opening a balance then they will do a hard credit check at that point potentially right but it's good to ask those questions of any prospective financing provider got it um ultimately the reason why an office would use a product like cherry or other third party financing is really to make it easy for your patients to say yes to treatment and boost case acceptance that's ultimately the goal in my opinion of using one of these products okay um so can you talk about what you've seen in you know in Dental I know you're in other Industries as well but what you've seen in the dental space when it comes to in you know using a product like Cherry to boost to boost case acceptance yeah and first I would say hey it's it's there's a lot of value in measuring case Acceptance in the first place I mean you mentioned Dental intelligence um I know that they they publish studies of case acceptance and ing to their studies um you know the Nationwide average I believe is around 29% for same day treatment dollar acceptance and they also published a number which is I believe 40% for overall treatment dollar acceptance and so what that means is it's a good well it's a good number to measure first of all but it means that there's opportunity to move that number up right like there's it's pretty low honestly so there's a lot of work that a dental practice can do and they can partner with us or use other tools to to help get there but it's it's a it's a valuable metric to measure um and again I think this and we we'll get into a few other things here too but I think the number one takeaway um that Studies have shown really moves the needle the most in treatment acceptance is presenting that full treatment price alongside monthly options in terms of actual monthly dollar amount and again that's different than saying hey your full treatment price is $1,400 and then like waiting for the patient to react or to ask oh do you offer financing right like that's that's actually not the technique to get the case acceptance just by having financing options doesn't mean you're going to get that Improvement it's it's all about how that case and how that treatment plan is presented and how the dollar amount is presented and that's like really the magic moment there when I give my workshops and courses I actually recommend a different way of presenting that overall I don't like starting off with the actual full cost of treatment I think sometimes you're can end up with with sticker shock potentially and you may you know if a patient hears something and they're they're they're not interested right away even offering them financing they don't you don't have a chance of closing the case so what I actually discuss is I actually recommend um figuring out what the total is but breaking it into 24 months and if they qualify no interest payments and you tell them that so just as an example if it's $7,200 okay that's $300 a month for 24 months so I would say to them well we can get you your treatment started it would cost $300 a month for 24 months no interest financing if you qualify as an example yeah you you Haven been given them the cost of $7,200 and unless they're really good at math they won't know that right away versus saying let's say they thought treatment would only be $5,000 okay and you tell them it's 7200 so that may that may be some sticker shock okay um so the uh I I prefer doing it the way I just recommended which you say it's $300 a month for 24 months and see what they say and then they may say I don't need to use financing and then you can know you need to move away from that but that's how I recommend presenting it to the to the patients I'm curious your thoughts on that Len you're ahead of your time going going that that direction right but but that's right I mean at the end of the day what you need to do is you need to get monthly dollar amounts in front of the patient and that's true for anytime you're presenting an out-of- pocket cost actually right so so like you hit the nail on the head there absolutely I mean there's a few different ways you can do that right but the key the key thing is to make sure that's part of the practice workflow to make sure that you're putting monthly options actual monthly dollar amounts in front of every single patient when you're presenting that treatment plan and and you were all over that right so that's I think that's a great technique and I actually I was the financial person in my office when I ran it nobody else talked about money I was that person so I was very successful in getting patients to accept treatment because of the way I presented which is what I teach all over the place because most dentist don't do it themselves they bring someone in the room and that person has to be really well trained in how to get the patients to say yes to treatment so um I'm curious Andy um is there anything else that you wanted to cover before we move into our our Q&A my my lightning round Q&A and then towards the end we'll get um information on how people can reach out to find out more information about Cherry yeah maybe it's maybe maybe one or two more things right like one one one question I typically get asked quite a bit is um why are payment plans any better than a credit card and I think that's a really good question one thing is that some patients can or a lot of patients can get a 0% option with a payment plan right and they they can't get a 0% option for six or 12 months with their existing credit card so it can just be a perk of going to your practice right and there's a lot of patients that will enjoy that and appreciate that some patients don't have credit cards some don't carry them with them right and a lot of patients probably don't have a high enough credit limit to transact that full treatment price that you know just given the dollar amounts that are involved with some of the procedures that we're offering and you know really the other thing that's that's that's valuable about a payment plan like what we do is it sets patients on a responsible and consistent friendly payoff schedule because it has autopay set up right out of the gate right and so there's there's a lot of benefits and that's why we educate our practices um to to really focus on saying hey we offer cash credit or easy monthly payment plans right like it's it's a payment method that you should be proud of it's a perk for your practice and and it's all about educating patients that you offer it every single patient right not profiling different patients and only at offering to certain people but really making sure you're offering it to everyone um and if you have a couple minutes too there's there's there's one other method that we really like to to drive home on increasing case acceptance that I can mention sure go ahead um so we we talked about the first thing right we have what we call the the three-pillar method here um but the first pillar is anytime you're presenting a treatment plan that involves autop pocket cost make sure that you're offering a monthly dollar amount option right and you your practice nailed that with what you mentioned the second pillar is if patients are visiting for fee for service procedures or evaluations or maybe you're a specialty um clinic right and you know that someone's coming in for an evaluation or a treatment um make sure that you you try to get them pre-approved or getting that application link ahead of time um so that they they can see their options and then you can also know their budget by seeing what approval amount that they have to work with and that's really valuable and then the third pillar is kind of a catchall right it's like anytime patient costs or accepted payment me methods are mentioned say hey we accept cash credit and easy monthly payment plans and I kind of mentioned that one already but those are like the really the three pillars that I think really lead to success and practices that are committing to doing those things do see you know 25% boost to their case acceptance so it's worth absolutely implementing those in your practice I think that's great I think that's great so um Andy let's um before we get information on how to reach out to Cherry learn more about their product see a demo I'm going to um run you through our our pod deck section which is a little Q&A as I told you before we recorded these are very easy business related questions um you don't need to really think about it all that much um just go ahead and answer the questions and make the answers really short okay we're going to try to get through eight to 10 of these so how how many hours a day do you think you work on average um I would say at least 10 or up to 12 depending on the day okay easy see how easy that was what habits have helped make you successful making every minute count like you you have to in between meetings um being deliberate about which meetings you go to getting something done in every single meeting but you have to make every minute count and I think that that's key to success in a professional environment being time efficient in other words so now how have you gone about developing key Partnerships yeah I think it's really about it's finding the partners that have the same objective and Mission that you do right you can't fit I guess a square P peg in a round hole um and the same is true with Partners right there are folks out there that have the same macro goals and you align on those goals first and you're a natural fit to work together and I think that that's absolutely key great who has been your greatest inspiration yeah you know I had a um a mentor back when I was in the Army he was a special forces officer and he and he was absolutely instrumental in in how I shaped my early career in terms of setting goals and what branch I wanted to do with my time in the service um and I always draw back on my time spent with with him um and you know and that's really what started my career trajectory I think in in the way that it is um just because it started with with me being an officer in the Army that's great and by the way thank you for your service I appreciate it so I've got to got to mention that earlier so I wanted to get that out um what business related book has inspired you the most or what is your favorite book well I'm obviously in the sales profession right and so I think one of my favorite alltime sales books is called spin selling by Neil rackam and I think the tidbit in that book that I that still stands out to me that day is the most valuable the best the best sales conversation is one where the customer would be willing to pay for the conversation itself right and so we as sales professional need professionals need to bring value to every single conversation that we have that's a challenge that I of course have to my team but I think that's like the right mindset right is make the conversation valuable and I think that that's like it was a oneliner I think in that book that just stuck out for me like many years even after reading it that's great if you could take a class to learn anything you wanted what would it be you know I would spend more time taking some computer science classes I took I studied chemical engineering but now that in the technology um space I think having some computer science credentials would be really interesting and I and I really enjoy that sort of thing so maybe you know this second level of computer science CS 2011 maybe it would be that's good um do you make a to-do list every day weekly or when I do I I would say every day um usually when the day starts and when the day ends I kind of um synchronize the list of what I need to get done um or what I got done and what what I need to get done and what's spilling in to the next day two last questions describe Mondays for you in one word very busy or busy that's two words but that's okay I'm just messing busy there one word that's good and last question this is a tough one but I'll I'll stated it by saying it could be both professional or personal either one what is one subscription you cannot live without Salesforce Salesforce has been a great uh tool for our our company and uh you know we've built lot around it and we leverage it to hopefully it's fullest and we learn something new about it every day that's great so Andy um I know one of the questions I was going to ask you um was you know talk about um interest rates talk about Merchant fees but I know that you would rather have somebody set up a a demo or a call with someone at Cherry so can you give the the listeners viewers the information on how they can do that please absolutely we would welcome the opportunity to dive into more detail than this presentation with you and your practice the place to go is with cherry.com so it's with cherry.com um and that would be a place for you to go book a a demo with one of our um product experts takes takes about 20 or 30 minutes and they'll they'll go through all of the different plans that we offer and the reason I can't really quote fees is because it really depends on how how long you want to offer 0% to your patients and that sort of thing right so we'll really go through those goals and see what goals you have and and see how P plans can help get you there so again with cherry.com it's the place to go any final thoughts before we end the podcast Andy thanks so much for your time um today and hopefully we'll see you um on the other side of the conversation with your practice and and seeing how Cherry payment plans can be a tool to increase your case acceptance well this was great Andy thank you so much for joining me today guys if you uh want to learn more about Cherry he gave you the information it's with cherry.com my last name set up a call with one of their team members to learn more about how how it can help um if you like the episode please share it please let your colleagues know uh please like us please promote it um do whatever you can subscribe um this is great I love I love coming to your inbox I want to thank the sponsors both Dental intelligence and the doc sites for their support and as always as I end my webinars and seminars and podcasts remember your reputation matters until the next episode Andy thank you so much for joining me today and we'll talk to everyone soon