Price

With many teeth whitening products now available on the high street at a low price, it is important that your treatment fees do not scare away potential patients. It’s also important to stress the differences between an over-the-counter High Street product and a regulated professional dental one, and how this leads to the price difference.

Aim to set your fees at a price that is profitable for your practice but affordable for patients. The cost of private tooth whitening in the UK ranges from anywhere between £300 and £1000.

Keeping your fees around the mid to lower end of this scale can go a long way to convincing a customer to whiten professionally over opting for a quick fix from the local pharmacy.

To keep your own fees down, it is important to shop around for whitening products that offer the best all-round value. All our latest deals on our most popular tooth whitening ranges can be found here.

Expertise

No matter how reasonable your whitening fees might appear, price is guaranteed to be a sticking point for many patients.

One way to get around this obstacle and steer patients away from a cheaper high street product or potentially dangerous online kit is through education. All members of the dental team should be adept in explaining to customers the differences in effectiveness between your treatment and over the counter and DIY home whitening alternatives.

A grounding in how tooth whitening actually works is a real benefit for selling the treatment to the patient; recommend that your dental nurses read our blog for more on this subject. To help generate enthusiasm among the team, consider designating a tooth whitening champion, and perhaps incentivising them for selling discretionary treatments.

For patients interested but unsure whether to proceed with treatment or not, being able to provide a leaflet or flyer with the relevant information can let them buy into the idea in their own time.

Patient literature on White Dental Beauty is available to support this.

Tactfulness

It is one thing having a team clued-up on your tooth whitening options, but another thing choosing the right time to open this dialogue. This can be a sensitive skill to master.

It is important to be tactful and avoid coming across as rude or insulting when starting a tooth whitening conversation with a patient.

One approach to increasing the likelihood of the patient starting these conversations is to promote your whitening options around the practice. This could be through posters, commercials played on the waiting room screen or with a menu of whitening services.

Putting together a menu of services that spell out the tooth whitening services you offer, what they get and how much it costs can make it easy for them to digest and understand exactly what their options are.

To gauge the interest of new patients from the get-go, including a question on their medical history from related to whitening treatment is a recommended. Another option might be to discuss tooth whitening in the context of a particular upcoming event in the patient’s life, for example a holiday, wedding or party.

The dental team can also be powerful advocates for whitening themselves if they choose to undertake treatment.