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Apr 01, 2026 // 14 min read

Dental Business Management Part 5: Ethical Sales in Dentistry

dental practice management referral and consultation human characteristics ethics

Series overview

In October 2023 the ITI launched its Digital Dental Entrepreneurial Program powered by the Campbell Academy. This innovative and interactive online modular course is designed for dental practitioners to enhance and improve their knowledge of business concepts, to improve their practice, their team and their patient experiences. It is hoped that this course will be able to inspire a new generation of dentists to improve their working environment for both themselves and their teams, and therefore improve their satisfaction, their well-being and their enthusiasm for the industry.

This course is set around six modules over a four-week period and the modules include vision setting, dental practice finance, marketing, human resources and leadership, and sales and strategy, together with discussions regarding social legacy and corporate social responsibility.

To accompany the launch of this course, a series of short papers have been devised around the subjects of the modules in the course to assist practitioners in their understanding and learning and to augment the course material. It was felt that this course was necessary, and indeed that these publications were necessary, because it is clear that healthcare practitioners throughout the world are struggling with overwhelm, burnout and difficulty in organizational management. There is a raft of research and evidence related to this, including physician burnout in the United States, which in some cases is reported to run at approaching 50% (Shanafelt et al. 2012). In a recent study in the United Kingdom 43% of practitioners said that they were very engaged with dentistry (BDJ 2019). But the sad part of this is that it means more than 50% of practitioners are not highly engaged in dentistry. Certainly, one of the things that lead to burnout, stress and disillusionment is the inability to create and nurture organizational structures and strategies to reduce the overwhelm of administration and non-clinical tasks. Developing an excellent structure in dental business not only improves the lives of the practitioner and potentially their appreciation and satisfaction in their work, but also improves the lives of the team, the supplier-partner relationship and, most importantly, the patient outcomes.

This series of articles, in conjunction with the ITI Digital Dental Entrepreneurial Program powered by the Campbell Academy, is designed to augment clinical education and development for practitioners around the world, ultimately feeding into the aspiration of the ITI to improve patients' lives worldwide.

Part 1: Creating a Vision - The ‘Why’ of your Business

Part 2: Financial & Non-financial Monitoring

Part 3: Marketing

Part 4: Leadership and Human Asset Management

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Introduction

The first four articles of this series talked about vision setting and values in the creation of your dental business, discussed a financial model and the measuring of financial metrics in dentistry, explored aspects of modern marketing to attract the type of patient and the type of dental treatments you wish to offer for patients, and outlined a strategy for human resources and leadership. This next short article begins to approach the topic of sales in dentistry, which for some is a difficult topic to consider.

For all those who work in healthcare, you effectively work in sales all the time. You may not realize it, but you are using your influence, your expertise and your experience to lead patients in a particular direction, for their own benefit. However, sales can be a contentious issue in healthcare for a number of reasons. Some clinicians may feel uncomfortable discussing the cost of treatment with patients, despite it being a very relevant factor in sales and treatment uptake. Additionally some individuals might, unintentionally or intentionally, use their persuasive skills to convince patients to have treatments that are not in their best interests, going against the basic principles of healthcare. Carried out properly though, ethical, honest dental sales discussions provide patients with the opportunity to see the full range of treatments they could undertake, and allow them to make informed choices in their best interests. When correctly implemented and well executed, a dental practice sales strategy allows patients to feel listened to, consulted with, and completely involved in the ‘shared care’ decision-making process of their treatment planning.

There are some key elements to this strategy outlined below:

Fig. 1: A treatment coordinator (who is also a dental nurse), talks through treatment options with a patient in an informal non-clinical environment

Fig. 3: An essential aspect of the consultation is to be able to listen to the patient. Around 25% of the consultation should be focussed on informal discussion with the patient in aspects of non-clinical care to establish trust

Fig. 4a: It is important for the clinician to sit with the patient and discuss potential treatment options with explanations of features and benefits

Fig. 4b: It is important for the clinician to sit with the patient and discuss potential treatment options with explanations of features and benefits

Fig. 5: Prethics – the sliding scale between profit and ethics