How to Run a Productive Dental Lab Sales Meeting

Meetings are an essential aspect of running a successful dental lab sales operation, but too often are thought of as necessary evils. There are numerous ways they can be sabotaged — there are no-shows, people spend the meeting twiddling their thumbs or on their phones, big talkers dole out too much, others spend time hiding and counting down the clock, and so on.

Meetings have long been considered a curse in the business world, eating into an extraordinary amount of a dental lab’s most valuable resource — time. The good news is: There are still ways to conduct productive sales meetings. Adopt the following tips and you’ll increase your chances of promoting your sales objectives in meetings. Just as importantly, you’ll also spend less time in meetings and more time selling.

Find your purpose

Why are we here?

Productive sales meetings have a purpose. Can you identify your main desired outcome?

• Are you dealing with short-term or long-term sales objectives?
• Are you going to discuss the company’s latest sales reports?  
• Are you enhancing your sales negotiation skills?
• Are you creating a sales contest?

Get with the agenda

If it’s not important enough to create an agenda, is it important enough to attend a meeting?

If you don’t have an agenda, then your meeting will probably just turn into a “conversation” where the most dominant people speak.

An agenda should go beyond just laying out the obvious, namely:

• Purpose of the meeting.
• Attendees (both required and optional attendees).
• Location (or alternative method of attending).

The agenda should also detail:

• Topics to be discussed.
• Decisions to be made.
• Allotted time for each topic/decision. 

Share some successes  

Who’s winning?

One straightforward way to kick off a sales meeting is to encourage attendees to briefly share a success they’ve had since the last time the team met. This reinforces a sense of optimism. It also helps people feel like they’re part of the meeting, instead of just an observer. And if there are negative topics to cover, this puts any problems in a wider context.

Harness the power of recognition and praise

Who’s ready for some encouragement?

People crave acknowledgement. Also, there’s more than just anecdotal evidence that recognizing good work and saying thank you is a great idea; research shows that when sales managers use praise, their employees are more productive overall. So if you’re leading a meeting, don’t miss an opportunity to motivate your team by letting them know they’re appreciated.

Prevent the meeting from going off course

What were we just talking about?

It’s better if everyone chips in to make sure the meeting stays on track — not just the boss or most senior person in the room. To prevent well-intentioned people from derailing a meeting:

• Rein in the ramblers and ask them to keep their comments to a minimum.
• Beware of tangents that stray from the agenda — be ready to put tangents in their place.
• If a topic comes up that only relates to a few attendees, move it offline so that everyone’s time is respected.
• Balance the need for everyone to feel heard with the need to accomplish the goals of the meeting.

If no matter how hard you try, you still can’t keep meetings on track and on time, there is a nuclear option: meetings at the end of the day. If you schedule a meeting, say, 20 minutes before your salespeople are supposed to knock off, this might be the saving grace that prevents them from straying off topic.

Confirm next steps

OK people, who is doing what?

Recap, recap, recap . . .  before leaving the room.

In a TED Talk, Jason Fried says: “Meetings are places to go to talk about things you’re supposed to be doing later.” With that in mind, just before a meeting ends, make sure you agree what are each salesperson’s next steps. Ideally, these steps should be concretely linked to activity goals. Leaving the meeting, each salesperson should be clear about the decisions made and deadlines set during the meeting that impact their activities.

Track progress

How are we tracking decisions and outcomes of this meeting?

You should check on the progress being made between meetings, either using a central checklist or process document. Because each salesperson’s objectives were properly defined in the first meeting, you now know the goals and deadlines to track. One of the key goals of tracking steps is to identify any roadblocks or other issues impeding progress — of individual salespeople, or the team-at-large — and address any problems that protects your overarching sales goals.

To make sure your salespeople hit their activity goals, encourage them to use block logic to book slots in their calendars. Block logic allows salespeople to manage multiple demands and their time more effectively, to aid focus and achieve more.

Now to get all your sales ducks in a row …

DentalLabSupport is all about productivity. Our sales management software helps you focus on the most vital parts of your business, so you can bring in more money, faster. But software alone can’t transform your salespeople into an efficient, effective sales team. In terms of meetings, it takes discipline and leadership to improve structure and order — and ultimately their quality. Incorporating the above tips into your sales meetings so they become habits is a strong step in the right direction to gaining control over your sales meetings.

But whatever you do today, make sure you don’t let your salespeople or your company down by holding unnecessary, ineffective or inefficient sales meetings.

For more information, visit DentalLabSupport.com or call 1-888-715-9099 

Email Marketing Tips to Retain your Dentist's

By: David H. Khalili, Founder of DentalLabSupport.com

Effective email marketing not only converts your prospects to customers… it helps to retain and maintain your Dentist base so they keep coming back to you for more.  It is much easier (and takes less work) to retain a current client than it is marketing for a new one.  They’ve purchased your product or service, so they already know, like, and trust you.  The key here is to continue building relationships with your customer list and create a WOW factor to convert them into loyal fans of your brand.

And email marketing is the proven way to achieve this goal!

You see, email marketing is said to generate 50% more sales compared to other marketing strategies with an impressively high conversion rate.  No business or organization can afford to overlook this technique and stay current on its strategies.  It plays a huge role in the success of any company

Here are four tips to help you retain more customers and grow your small business with email marketing:

#1 Keep the focus on your customers…not your product!

This may seem like a no-brainer but how often do you receive emails from companies that constantly talk about their product?  Separate yourself from amongst the masses by thinking about your target market and their problems.  What are their needs?  Who are they?  What do they enjoy doing?  How does your product or service meet their demands?  Share content that benefits your audience.

Giving value is a sure way to keep your customers liking and trusting you.

#2 Keep it short and simple

With the endless distractions of the Internet, messaging, videos, etc., its important to get right to the point in your message and use designs that are simple to follow.  Make your intentions clear quickly (in 3 lines if possible) by sharing a problem that your target market faces and how they can solve it by clicking on the following link (or whatever your goal of the email is).

And by the way, never ever send an email message with a call to action!  Tell your readers what to do next (typically its to click on a link).

#3 Include Video Link in Your Email Content

Using the word “video” in the email subject line boosts open rates by 19% and click-through rates by a whopping 65 percent Therefore, every time you create new media (and blog) content, be sure to promote to your subscribers.  This keeps your brand in their forefront.  Your CRM can easily connect your contacts to platforms like YouTube and Vimeo, allowing you to better leverage your time.

#4 Segment Your Email List

This tip is golden!  There’s nothing like a subscriber getting an email they feel was created just for them, also known as contextual emails.  These emails are personalized uniquely for the customer, speaking directly to their qualities.  Segment your list by using criteria like geography, age, interest, or responsiveness towards certain email messages.  Subscribers are more apt to open and react to your messages when the content resonates with their interests.

Customer retention is critical for the success of any company.  You want your clients to continue doing business with you for a long-term sustaining organization.  Leveraging your email marketing with your CRM software tool properly will help you maintain those relationships thus driving sales, boosting revenues, and creating happy customers.  A win-win for all!

Metrics Can Help Your Dental Lab Close More Dentist

By David H. Khalili, Founder of DentalLabSupport.com

Ultimately, the goal of any Dental Lab is to attract and retain dentists. Closing sales is a crucial part of that; if you get members of your target audience into your sales pipeline, but they never end up becoming customers, your efforts will be wasted. Marketing software can help your Dental Lab close more sales, but only if you know just what metrics matter in measuring your success. Here are 4 metrics to pay attention to as you optimize your sales process.

1) Lead Origin

Do you know where your leads come from? How did they learn about you, and where did they first made contact? If you gather this information, you can gain a better understanding of which leads are most likely to convert to customers.

For example, you may find that leads originated from your website are actually more likely to become customers than those who contacted you directly. Now, you can increase your focus on the former to maximize your success and close a higher percentage of sales.

2) Lead Engagement

Your LabCell Marketing Software can help you measure just how engaged your contacts are with your content after they sign up to become a lead. As you can probably imagine, leads who continue to open and click through your emails, or read conversion pages on your website, will be more likely to become customers than those who sign up initially, but never follow up.

Measuring lead engagement comprehensively allows you to categorize them into a number of groups, which your sales team can then use to prioritize its effort. Time is limited, and pitching your company only to leads who have shown continued interest in your product or service can be a valuable tool to improve your closure rate.

3) Average Lead to Customer Time

You may also want to consider measuring the amount of time it takes for a lead to turn into a customer. How many days, weeks, or months do they need in your system before they're ready for a sale? How many emails do they receive on average before indicating their readiness to buy?

Answering these questions helps you establish an average time line for your lead. If they don't become sales-ready until at least a month into the process, making the sales call a week after they enter your database will be of little value. Timing your sales-based communication means increasing your chances of reaching them at a time when they are most likely to make a buying decision.

4) Internal and Industry Conversion Rates

On average, how many of your leads turn into customers? Knowing that number, and how it compares with figures common for your industries, can go a long way toward helping you determine the effectiveness and success of both your lead nurturing and your sales efforts.

If you lag significantly behind industry averages, you may want to investigate just why that is, and how you can rectify the situation. Of course, simply running ahead of the average also deserves further investigation: you want to understand why, so you can replicate the process for future leads. Either way, knowing both your internal and industry conversion rates can help you close more sales in the future.

Of course, none of the above is possible without Marketing Software that tracks your interactions with your leads, and provides you with reports that help better understand the buying journey your leads take on their way to becoming customers. They can help your business close more sales, but only with the help of software that makes tracking them easily.

For information on LabCell Dental Lab Marketing Software please visit DentalLabSupport.com.