Effective Consultations: Closing With Confidence

Discover One of the Most Powerful Tools in Patient Engagement

It’s affirming, infectious, and sometimes hard to find. It can make or break a deal and lift you to victories you never thought possible. It’s confidence — that crucial state of self-assurance that success can’t happen without.

Learn why confidence matters when concluding patient consultations and how to lead with it every time.

What Confidence Looks Like

Confidence in consultations isn’t a rigid stance — it’s a flexible mindset that adjusts to the moment and earns patient trust. Here’s what it can look like in practice:

Confidence From the Patient’s Point of View:

• Trusting your recommendation and seeing value in moving forward
• Feeling a genuine emotional connection with you
• Aligning with a shared goal of better hearing and quality of life

Confidence From Your Perspective:

• Feeling assured in your clinical recommendations
• Delivering them with calm, clarity, and conviction
• Believing in the impact your care can have

In Audigy’s consultation framework — part of the Patients for Life® process — confidence plays an important role in discussing and recommending treatment solutions. Whether explaining test results, recommending a solution, asking for a commitment, or handling objections, doing so confidently helps patients feel informed, supported, and ready to invest in their care.

Why Confidence Matters

Imagine you’re going in for a medical procedure, and the surgeon visits your room for a pre-op chat. The surgeon has slouchy posture, stumbles over their words, doesn’t make much eye contact, and seems unsure. Low self-confidence? Possibly. At this point, no matter the surgeon’s skill, you’ll probably want a second opinion — maybe even a third — fast.

It’s the same in just about any industry. People judge your competence at least in part by the confidence you demonstrate. If you speak with poise and confidence, they’ll assume you can handle the job unless they’re shown otherwise. If you speak with nervousness or fear, however, the audience may assume ineptness until they’re proven wrong.

Confidence isn’t just a personality trait — it’s a professional tool that can:

• Position you as the expert — To be respected as the professional, it’s important to exude self-confidence to your patients, helping ensure your external appearance matches your internal competence.
• Build trust — It’s all about maintaining consistent behavior in your relationships with patients. People perceive you by your behavior. Confident behavior helps cue them to believe in you and have faith in your abilities.
• Support success — Which comes first: confidence or success? While the answer isn’t always clear, confidence and achievement can go hand in hand. Research suggests that those who believe in themselves tend to be more successful and vice versa.

How to Project Confidence in Every Consultation

Want to close consultations with more confidence?

Here are six practical tips:

• Know your motivation — It’s sometimes easy to forget the “why” that motivates you every day. Understand that you and your patients have a shared goal: improving their quality of life. Rather than pressure patients into making decisions, the intent is to help them understand how treatment will positively change not only their lives but the lives of those around them.
• Make eye contact — An insecure person will feel uneasy looking you in the eye, and an arrogant person may stare beyond you, looking for the next captive audience that might prove more beneficial to their purposes. When speaking with others, looking them in the eye projects confidence and attentiveness, and helps assure them you have nothing to hide.
• Eliminate verbal tics — Uhs and ums may seem handy when thinking of what to say, but those and other verbal tics can make you sound unsure of yourself. Better to simply pause midsentence, then proceed. Record yourself and practice, if needed.
• Avoid articulating a statement as a question — A little uptick at the end of a sentence transforms even a definitive statement into a plea for approval. When asserting or making a statement, speak in a way that reflects your knowledge and opinion. If you have a question, use inflection that indicates a question. Don’t mix the two.
• Avoid interrupting — Confident people know that talking over others doesn’t make their argument more convincing. Interrupting can project arrogance and give the impression that others’ opinions or perspectives don’t matter.
• Refrain from immediately responding to objections — Confidence allows you to hear, accept, and apply constructive and accurate criticism rather than respond with aggressive defensiveness. If the criticism isn’t productive, self-confidence helps it roll off your back. Take the time to listen before you decide one way or another.

Closing patient consultations effectively takes confidence, which doesn’t necessarily come easy for everyone. The good news? It’s teachable. Audigy’s professional development experts provide coaching to help you and your team master confident communication, close more consultations successfully, and build patient relationships that last a lifetime.