Proposed Tax Bill: What it Means for Your Dental Lab

Congress is moving quickly on a business tax reform package that will lower corporate tax rates in an effort to encourage investment and make America more attractive for jobs. Both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate have approved versions of the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act."

There are important differences between the bill passed by the House and one approved in the Senate. Before any tax reform can become law, the two competing bills must be reconciled into a single piece of legislation, passed by both houses of Congress, and signed by the President. Republicans hope to enact legislation and send it to President Trump before Christmas. If approved, much of the new legislation would impact business beginning in 2018.

That makes it important to stay on top of developments and how tax reform will affect you as a business owner or entrepreneur. Here are some of the key provisions:

Tax rate structure for small businesses. Both the House and the Senate propose a new tax structure for “pass through" businesses. This includes sole proprietorships, partnerships, S corporations and most LLCs. Owners of pass through businesses report their business income on their personal tax return and pay tax at their personal income tax rates, which can be as high as 39.6 percent. The House and Senate bills have different pass-through features, but both versions have been endorsed by the National Federation of Independent Business.

The House bill has a maximum 25% tax rate for pass through businesses. This won't affect the 85 percent of pass-through business owners who already pay a tax rate of 25 percent or less. But business owners in higher tax brackets will get a tax break.

The House bill has a few additional wrinkles for pass-through businesses:

• Business owners who actively work in their business will only get the 25 percent rate on 30 percent of their business income—the other 70 percent will be taxed at their normal individual rate. Passive investors, on the other hand, can take the 25 percent rate on all their pass-through income.
• People who own businesses that provide a service, including consultants, accountants and lawyers, aren't eligible for the 25 percent tax rate.
• Small business owners who make $150,000 or less ($75,000 for individual filers) will only pay a 9 percent tax rate on their first $75,000 of income ($37,500 for individual filers). This will be phased in between now and 2022.

The Senate bill allows pass-through business owners to deduct 23 percent of their business income, but the deduction would be phased out for people in professional service businesses earning more than $500,00 (for joint filers) or $250,000 (for individual filers). The deduction would expire in 2025.

Tax rate structure for C corporations. Both the House and Senate bills permanently reduce the top corporate tax rate from 35% to 20%. However, under the Senate version, the tax reduction would not take effect until 2019. Rate reduction benefits all C-Corporations, large or small.

Expensing of capital investments. The House bill allows businesses to immediately write off the costs of investments in new depreciable property, excluding structures acquired after September 27, 2017 and before January 1, 2023. Under current law there is some expensing for certain types of business entities under Section 179.

Increased Section 179 limits. Section 179 of the tax code allows businesses to deduct the full cost of qualifying equipment and software in the year it is purchased. Currently, businesses can only deduct $500,000, of these expenses. The House bill would increase the limit to $5 million, while the Senate version would increase it to $1 million. This creates immediate expensing for business expenditures, reducing taxes paid in the year of investment instead of having to spread it out over many months.

Interest expense. For larger corporations and pass-through entities for tax years beginning after 2017, an entity's interest deduction would be limited to 30 percent of the business's adjusted taxable income under the both the House and Senate tax bills. Certain small businesses with average annual gross receipts for the prior three tax years of $25M or less would be excluded.

Entertainment expenses. Currently, business owners can deduct 50 percent of the money they spend on business meals and entertainment. Both the House and Senate propose eliminating the deduction for entertainment, but keeping the meal deduction.

The tax reform legislation is likely to evolve over the coming weeks. As a business owner, it's always important to be aware of changes that could impact your business. Contact your legislators if you want to make your voice heard during this historic process.

Call Recordings: The Good, Bad, and Ugly

If you haven’t spent time listening to your recorded calls, you are doing yourself a disservice. Call recordings within the dental lab sales process are an essential part of your development and should be integrated into a dental lab's sales environment. With all the technologies out there for call recordings, this is becoming more common in today’s sales environments.

Let’s discuss the various points of view on this:

THE GOOD

Call recordings are the best way to train, learn, grow and develop your skills. It is a perfect onboarding tool if you want to quickly ramp your people up. When you are using it as a coaching tool, the rep is usually less anxious and defensive and can listen to feedback in a more relaxed way.

You can break down calls and only work on specifics such as just the opening of the call or just the questioning. There is a stronger chance for improvement when you break it down into small chunks. You can also role-play new techniques.

THE BAD

It’s still a controversial topic because of all the laws and regulations for call recordings in certain states. Some organizations do not allow call recordings. They are very cautious about call recordings, and if they allow it, they will add a disclaimer at the beginning of the call which requires the rep to announce the recording is taking place and ask permission. While this works well for inbound customer service types of calls, it is not well received on outbound prospecting calls. The prospect loses trust and cooperation.

THE UGLY

Unfortunately, some reps have been traumatized from the feedback they received in working with a manager who listened to their call recording. It was either too negative, or too much to absorb and they walked away with a negative experience which demotivated them.

CONCLUSION

We highly recommend you consider creating a safe call coaching culture across your organization. This is the best way to grow, develop, and improve performance.

For more information contact DentalLabSupport.com

Are You Guessing or Asking What Your Customers Want?

If you have the opportunity to gather insider information that can help you to achieve your goals, why wouldn’t you? Assuming is a horrible business practice. Invalid and incomplete assumptions can lead you down an empty rabbit hole, and in the case of inside sales, away from closing a deal. Conduct the research, fill your customers wants and needs, and augment your sales by applying the sales prospecting tips in this article.

4 RESEARCH TACTICS FOR MANAGEMENT

Management should research target audiences before salespeople jump on a call. The more information and understanding your callers have about your prospects and the daily issues that they face, the more they’ll be able to relate and dig deeper into specifics. Regularly scheduled training is an excellent way to provide sales representatives with the information discovered.

Here are four ways to find out more about your current and future customers:

1. Conduct Surveys – Survey your current clients. Ask questions about how their purchases have improved business, what were the major selling points. While you’re at it, ask for criticisms. The customers’ responses will be highly valuable in building your relationships with them, as well as with your prospective clients.

2. Review Industry Statistics – Industry research can reveal a lot about your customers. What other areas are they investing in? Are there any new trends affecting how they do business? How much are they spending on products like yours? Find out anything you can about driving factors in their companies and industries.

3. Ask your Salespeople – Meet with your sales team and ask for insights. They’re the ones calling on your prospects and working to understand them better to make the deal. Find out the questions and concerns your salespeople hear over and over again. Ask reps about the requests they receive, too.

Maybe clients want an app that pairs with your product or customers have voiced concerns about an online chat system. You may never know if you don’t ask. Are any of these concerns and requests that are falling through the cracks? Establish an open line of communication so your employees can easily share this type of information with you.

4. Consume Trade-Related Content – Staying up on current trends is vital in business. In addition to the newest technologies that can simplify your processes, you’ll learn about tools and problems your customers face, too. You may even find out what your competitors are doing. In addition to magazines, follow hashtags on social media to see what’s trending in real-time.

15 SALES PROSPECTING TIPS FOR YOUR SALESPEOPLE

After researching, be sure to relay any new insights to your sales team. From there, ask them to familiarize themselves with the following sales prospecting tips.

1. Ask the right questions. You should already know the basics about your prospect, but try to get more details from them by asking open-ended questions to get contacts talking.
2. Find out what problems your prospects face and how your product or service can serve as a solution.
3. Build your social media presence and your position as a thought leader by sharing your knowledge. When people see you as an expert in your field, they’re more likely to trust you.
4. Be confident. On the occasional call, you will stumble. Use those experiences as learning opportunities to build your confidence for the next time when you’re in a similar situation.
5. Remember that not everyone you call is a good fit. Prospects that you initially thought would be the perfect buyer for your product may actually be better suited for a competitor’s product.
6. Be more helpful and less salesy. Take on the role of a consultant. Relating back to number five, being helpful includes letting them know if your product isn’t right for them.
7. Don’t give up after one objection. If the prospect cites price as a barrier to entry early in your conversation, don’t accept it as a no. Instead, explain the value of your product to them and show how it can actually save or make them money.
8. Maintain a positive mindset. Don’t let an objection or a missed sales quota keep you down. When you’re optimistic, you’re more productive.
9. Be a human, not a robot. Scripts are very helpful when making sales calls; however, be sure you’re not speaking in a monotone voice. Study and practice your pitch. Don’t just jump on a call and simply read the script verbatim with no rise and fall in your voice.
10. Remember that the call is about the prospect, not your pitch. Ask about the person and his or her processes and any issues they face. Find out what the buyer wants!
11. Organization is key. Software can help to keep you stay organized throughout all your calls. If you’re taking any notes, keep them orderly. You don’t want to be flipping through papers or browser tabs while on a call.
12. Take a break. As with any work, regular breaks allow you to refresh and come back to the phone more focused.
13. Follow up with prospects. Most sales will require multiple calls and meetings to close the deal, especially if you’re selling a high-dollar product. Use technology to set reminders and send personalized communications.
14. Ask for referrals. Once you transform a prospect into a customer, it’s time to ask for referrals. There’s a reason the person did business with you and not your competitor – it could be your shining personality, your expertise, or your ability to listen. The customer likely knows contacts in the industry who could benefit from your product too. If you ask for referrals, your customers are more apt to take action.
15. Be open to coaching. Most inside sales professionals today are familiar with having their calls recorded. To improve your selling skills, review recordings with your manager from time to time and pay attention to any constructive criticisms.

These sales prospecting tips combined with the above research tactics will set your sales team up for success. Knowing exactly what your customer wants simplifies the selling process and saves time for everyone.

For more information about dental lab sales calls contact DentalLabSupport.com 

Have You Asked Your Sales Reps What They Need to be Successful?

As a sales leader, you know the ins and outs of your business. And you probably think you know what your salespeople need to reach their sales quotas. However, there is likely more that you’re not seeing. Just showing them how to be a successful inside sales representative isn’t enough. Have you asked your team what they need to succeed in their roles?

In this article, we will look at eight factors that lead to sales success. We’ll also review a few ways to open up a conversation with your sales reps and find out what else they need to thrive as a sales professional.

8 FACTORS TO ADDRESS FOR SALES SUCCESS

Let’s take a look at the qualities and skills required to be an accomplished sales professional. Do your sales representatives embody these qualities?

1. Product Knowledge – High-performing sales representative know their products inside and out. They can adequately respond to most questions and know how to redirect technical inquiries.
   Your Job as a Manager – Provide ongoing training and keep your team updated on any changes to your company’s products.
2. Focus –To understand and connect with prospects, sales reps must practice active listening. Eliminating distractions and avoiding multi tasking keeps a rep’s mind on the task at hand, in this case, interpreting how your product is a solution for the prospect.
   Your Job as a Manager – Ensure a clean working environment free of as many distractions as possible. Provide distraction-free sales tools that keep salespeople on task, too. A system with features such as lead routing automation and auto dialing can keep sales productivity flowing.
3. Ability to Handle and Prevent Objections –Your team should have a clear understanding of your prospective clients’ recurring concerns. Enable your inside sales team to address any gripes before they become an issue. Instead of just handling these problems as they arise, they can be prevented.
   Your Job as a Manager – Deliver coaching to your team on a regular basis and keep an open-door policy. Give them an opportunity to come to you with any grievances they’re facing in their work.
4. Thought Leadership – Prospects are more likely to become customers when they’re dealing with someone they trust. Salespeople can build their thought leadership presence on social media to form relationships with their clients and prove their competency in the industry.
   Your Job as a Manager – Allow your salespeople the time to devote to social selling. Foster their journey to becoming a thought leader and consider starting an employee advocacy program. An advocacy program enables you to provide your team with content to share that will help them stand out in the industry. The better they do individually, the better your company will do as a whole.
5. Conduct Demonstrations – Customers want to see the product in action. You wouldn’t buy a vehicle without taking it out for a test drive, so how can you expect your prospects to spend thousands of dollars or more on your product if they haven’t seen it in action?
   Your Job as a Manager –Provide a tool for demonstrations. There are free and paid options like Zoom, WebEx, and GoToMeeting that offer screen sharing for virtual meetings.
6. Time Management – A successful salesperson spends more of their time on the phone or in sales meetings than they do on menial tasks like inputting notes into more than one system. These reps are organized and have access to technologies that save them time.
   Your Job as a Manager – What can you do to streamline their work? Consider any duties you can take off of their plate, so they have more time to focus on calling leads. Automation software will give them the ability to drop a voice message in a mailbox, send a follow-up email, or nurture their prospects with the click of a button.
7. Spend Less Time Prospecting – Salespeople who thrive in their space are working with qualified leads. They’re not usually the ones spending their time identifying prospects through cold calling.
   Your Job as a Manager – Take your experienced salespeople off the job of making cold calls. Instead, assign them only qualified leads that they can quickly close and then move on to the next. Your new salespeople should be making the cold calls and working to qualify leads.
8. Understand the Competition – Prospects consider price and lack of features when comparing your product with competitors and good salespeople are aware. They know how their product compares to competitors in the marketplace.
   Your Job as a Manager – Consume as much industry content as possible so you can learn about any new products or updates in your space. You’ll want to keep your employees in the know of how the product their selling lines up against competing goods or services. This will give them an advantage when questioned by a prospect.

ASK YOUR SALESPEOPLE WHAT THEY NEED

Many employees will not come to management asking for things, even if these requests could lead to improvements to help them to do their jobs better. Consider surveying your sales team just as you would your clients, on a regular basis. Surveys can be printed or emailed, and ask yes or no questions as well as open-ended ones.

Another way to get your sales team talking about what could improve their performance is to devote part of your meetings to this conversation. This could be in a team or one-on-one meetings. Maybe you even have lunch with your employees a couple of times per month to invite a casual discussion. It’s essential to have an open-door communications policy where your inside sales representatives can come to you and know their ideas will be considered.

People who want to know how to be a successful inside sales representative should first and foremost be optimistic and confident when talking to prospects. When stressed out take the time to exercise and relieve some stress. As a manager, bear in mind that each salesperson will have their own vision of success. There’s a difference between hitting goals the company has set and reaching their own ambitions.

Engage With Prospects Early in the Buyer’s Journey

The sales game continues to change thanks to the ways technology has empowered the modern buyer. Purchases that once required a salesperson to engage with prospects through a phone call or face-to-face meeting can now happen partially or entirely online. Customers research solutions via search engines and review sites. They crowdsource feedback through social media networks. However, they don’t tend to reach out to salespeople until they are ready to purchase.The modern era of digital commerce has put buyers in control in both B2C and B2B scenarios. This empowerment is great when you are the shopper but what about when you are the sales rep?

The modern era of digital commerce has put buyers in control in both B2C and B2B scenarios. This empowerment is great when you are the shopper but what about when you are the sales rep?

HOW TO ENGAGE WITH PROSPECTS WHO AREN’T READY TO ENGAGE

Buyers have grown more averse to speaking with a salesperson early on in their buying journeys. Salespeople, on the other hand, want to — need to — engage with prospects and customers early to help make a case for their brands. Good old cold calling, dial-and-smile tactics are not enough to reach decision makers. Let’s look at these three tips to uncover better ways to engage your target audience earlier in their buying process.

Tip 1: Meet prospects on their turf

Sales and marketing teams must be ready to address customers and prospects across various channels. An omnichannel marketing approach will ensure a consistent experience for your audience no matter where they choose to engage with your brand.

Beyond marketing considerations, there is a role for the salesperson. Take time to research your prospects, leads, and customers online. If you’re in B2B sales, start with LinkedIn. B2C sales reps may have more luck with Facebook or Twitter. Learn about who the person is, his or her concerns, and ways your communication can make a difference to that individual. The next step is to engage the prospect on the channel of his or her choice through social selling.

If you’re going to delve into social selling to engage with prospects and customers, remember to think in terms of “social helping.” People have begun to circumvent the salesperson because they don’t want to be “sold to” — they want to learn about solutions that can solve their problems. Help your social connections by providing valuable information and insights. Create a bond before trying to make a sale on social media. Try these relationship-building approaches:

• Participate in LinkedIn and Facebook groups, as well as Twitter chats, where your prospects are active. Answer questions, provide valuable insights and don’t be afraid to share other people’s content. Don’t make everything about you or your brand.
• Post thoughtful, relevant comments on posts published by your prospects. Show genuine interest in the information someone shares. Don’t immediately use the post as a springboard for a sales pitch.
• Private message people with whom you’ve built a rapport. Once you’ve established that you have expertise and interest in understanding a prospect’s problems, your private message has a better chance at a warm reception that can lead to bigger conversations.

Other opportunities for reaching prospects and customers before they are ready for a “sales call” include texting them useful tips and sending educational emails with personalized insights. This approach can work well when you have an existing relationship with a prospect or customer. Use texts and emails responsibly to stay top of mind between customer purchases or when building up to the first sale.

Remember that your contacts have granted you privileged information by sharing their mobile phone numbers and emails. No matter how excellent your advice or tips may be, never send unsolicited messages to people who have not opted in to receive your messages.

Tip 2: Learn and guide instead of talk and sell

Merkle Loyalty Solutions conducted a 2017 study on what drives loyalty in B2B purchasing. The respondents, made up of executives from across North America and the U.K., were asked to list their greatest challenges in searching for, identifying, and choosing a B2B service or product provider. The number one issue deals directly with the sales experience: “vendors/sales reps are more interested in selling their products/services than listening to my needs.” Sixty-five percent of respondents chose this as the number one challenge. Ouch.

I get it. You have a job to do and a quota to meet, so it’s easy to get laser-focused on your goalinstead of uncovering the goals of the customer. But, this approach just isn’t working. In fact, it’s part of the reason why:

• 59% of B2B buyers prefer not to interact with a sales rep as the primary source of research (Forrester & PROS)
• 93% of B2B buyers prefer buying online (Forrester & PROS)
• 53% of customer loyalty is driven by the sales experience and the rep’s ability to provide unique, useful insights (CEB)

Make every sales call count by learning the needs of the customer and guiding the buyer to a unique, relevant solution that addresses his or her needs.

Don’t set yourself up for failure before the call has actually begun

We all get into habits that don’t always serve us well. Listen to recent call recordings of some of your cold calls and observe your style and approach. Do you set yourself up for success or failure from the very outset of the call? Some of the well-meaning things you do may work against you.

Do you ask a prospect, “Is now a good time to talk?” This approach seems like a respectful and reasonable way to start off a conversation, but it’s a trap you’ve set for yourself. If you’ve reached out unexpectedly, you have given that prospect an easy way out of the conversation. “No, now isn’t the right time. Please email me a link to your website.” Ugh. No sales rep wants to hear that.

Mr. Inside Sales Mike Brooks says, “Never ask if it’s a good time to pitch or qualify or have a conversation with a prospect or client. . . . rather than ask if you caught them at a good time, listen to their voice and to how they answer the phone to see what their mood is. If you actually listen, you can always tell.” Use these cues to help you gauge how open a contact is before you launch into your pitch or qualifying call.

As you listen to your call recordings, look for other ways you may be inadvertently giving prospects a way out of the conversation before you’ve even had a chance to engage with them. Think about additional ways you can evaluate a buyer’s interest and openness and serve up alternative ways to overcome common objections.

TIP 3: ADD VALUE INSTEAD OF DISRUPTIONS TO THE BUYER’S JOURNEY

As you go about your day calling prospects and qualifying leads, put yourself in your prospects’ shoes. Your typical customers, whether B2C or B2B, face a ton of interruptions all day. There are thousands of emails to read, coworkers or family members to deal with, tasks to accomplish. If you can’t find a way to add value to their day, then you are just another disruption — and another reason why they go online to find their answers first.

Approach your prospects and customers as a trusted advisor who listens. Your delivery of a top-notch sales experience can make a difference between a sale for you or one for your competition.

For more information about engaging your prospects contact DentalLabSupport.com

Cold Calling: What Kind of First Impression Are You Making on Dentists?

Despite many claims about the “death” of cold calling, 92% of customer interactions still take place over the phone. Initial sales calls usually last for 30-40 seconds. In this limited time, your team should be able to make a fantastic impression on your prospects.

Here are a few proven techniques that can help your team improve the average 2% cold calling conversion rate to perhaps 5% or higher.

1. Do Your Homework

Many sales reps equate making a large number of calls to more absolute conversions. This is a mistake.

On average, only a small percentage of these calls actually reach a decision maker who is relevant to your business. Therefore, it is important to do your homework to find out who are the right people to connect with within the organization and what do they care about. The right decision makers should be willing to listen to your cold calls since your solution or offer is relevant to their organization. You can create a list of prospects and decision makers by:

•          Obtaining industry contacts
•          Focusing on your competitors’ targets
•          Researching local businesses through Google
•          Finding companies through Twitter, LinkedIn

According to Kirsten Boileau, Head of Regional Engagement and Social Selling, SAP: “Going through social media accounts of the key decision makers of a company will help you understand what matters to them – professionally and personally.”  

While conducting this research, note any similar interests that you have in common with the prospect. Weave these subjects into your conversation to make a connection at a personal level. Understanding your prospect helps you leave a memorable first impression and improves the likelihood of a future conversion.

2. Build Team of Cold Calling Experts 

58 percent of buyers report that sales representatives are unable to answer their questions efficiently. To avoid creating buyer frustration, create a detailed document for your sales representatives that highlights key selling points and information about your products/services.Your employees can integrate this information with the cold calling script to create a comprehensive reference guide.

Encourage your employees to create a list of answers to frequently asked prospect queries. The team can also create a shared knowledge bank which can be used to tackle difficult buyer questions.

Your team should access the knowledge bank every week to have a better understanding of the product and/or service.

3. Avoid Trying to Sell

The goal of the first call is to build trust and get an appointment with the potential client. A common mistake that some salespeople make is to launch into the sales pitch immediately. This can often annoy the prospect as he or she has no idea about you, your product, and how it relates to his or her business. Moreover, prospects are busy, and it’s unlikely that you would have someone’s full attention on that first call. Therefore, your goal should be to get an appointment, in person or via a call, or to schedule a demo.

To make sure your team can persuade the prospect to set an appointment, they should personalize each call.

4. Be Persistent to Get Your Chance at a First Impression  

You must be persistent to get the chance to make a first impression. Rarely is one call attempt enough to get a prospect on the phone. Examine your level of persistence. An average salesperson gives up after two failed call attempts. That’s a mistake. It can take up to eight attempts to reach a prospect.

Not only does it take multiple attempts to reach a single contact; it takes numerous tries to reach the right prospects. In any medium-to-large company of approximately 100-500 employees, an average of seven people is responsible for most buying decisions. Therefore, don’t give up after one rejection. Try to contact other decision makers before moving on to the next company. After all, you want to make a great first impression with the right contact.

Don’t forget that making a live connection isn’t the only chance that counts when it comes to first impressions. Work on your voicemail message skills, too. A brief, interesting voicemail can be the deciding factor as to whether or not a prospect takes your next call or calls you back.

Conclusion

The first impression will determine whether or not your prospect is going to take you and your company seriously and move forward in the sales process. If you know about the prospect’s business and can answer all of his or her questions, you will have a far better chance of making a great impression during cold calls. With 78 percent of decision makers taking appointments or attending meetings as a result of a cold call or email, that first impression can really make or break success rates.

For more information about cold calling dental offices, contact DentalLabSupport.com or email us at info@dentallabsupport.com

Sales Automation Rocks…Don’t Forget to Personalize the Sales Experience

Automation is a powerful part of your sales and marketing arsenal, so this may seem like a strange question to ask– Is it really possible to over-automate your customer and prospect communications?

In short, yes.

Over-automation is, basically, treating every prospect and customer the same. You remove any customization or personalization from the sales or customer service process. To avoid this problem, you must keep communications personal. Customer relationship management (CRM) tools are one way you can personalize the sales experience on every call and email to individual leads, prospects, and customers. Specifically, sales automation software can help your sales team benefit from automation without slipping into impersonal over-automation.

SCALE COMMUNICATION WHILE AVOIDING OVER-AUTOMATION

Understand the role of personalization.

According to CEB, 53% of buying decisions are driven by the sales experience. While automation certainly does increase efficiency and productivity, it only works in communications if it’s done correctly. Simply merging a contact’s first name into an email or greeting them by name on the phone isn’t personalization; it’s laziness. Personalization takes communications to the next level and demonstrates that you have:

1. Done your homework on the prospect’s business.
2. Taken time to understand possible pain points and the climate your prospect’s business operates in.
3. Invested time and energy into serving the potential customer.

Giving your sales communications this level of personalization doesn’t mean you have to do a lot of manual research or crafting of one-to-one custom emails and call scripts. Use solutions that automate aspects of communication preparation so that every touchpoint is personalized. Here are a few examples:

• LinkedIn Sales Navigator can help your team easily stay on top of news and job changes with their target accounts and contacts. Sales Navigator also delivers lead recommendations and provides advance search filters to make research more efficient. Team members can use the information they uncover to create proactive personalized communications.
• Marketing automation software can help you understand a lead’s on-site actions. Work with your marketing technologist to route details to your sales reps such as pages the lead viewed, items downloaded, and more so salespeople can understand a lead’s likely interests. Work with marketing to develop sets of email and call script templates based with various on-site behavior scenarios so that sales reps have easy-to-personalize templates to drive personalized communications.
• Social media listening tools allow sales reps to set up listening streams based on specific companies (leads), your brand name, keywords, competitor names, etc. Your inside sales team can use intel they gather from social media to start meaningful conversations with prospects via social media, email, and phone calls.

Personalization isn’t just a fad. Your customers expect it in both B2C and B2B buying scenarios. As LinkedIn recently found, the majority of millennial and Gen-X decision makers expect personalization in their communications during the sales process.

If we don’t treat communication as the meaningful, personalized interaction it should be, we’re bound to get it wrong. Without personalization in your communications, automation will produce limited results.

Go beyond segmentation and personalize the sales experience to recognizes individuals.

Segmentation and personalization aren’t necessarily the same. You can use segmentation as a strategy to help you customize sales, but don’t assume that segmented communications are sufficiently personal.For instance, you wouldn’t presume that understanding prospects’ demographic characteristics means that you’ve understood an individual. Just grouping leads into categories doesn’t mean you’ve successfully identified their needs. 

Empower your sales team with sales automation tools

Forrester Research, Inc. found that 45% of companies struggle to personalize offers or pricing for customers. The right sales automation platform will empower your inside sales agents by providing lead-specific information and streamlining sales processes. Automating sales workflows make sales reps more successful without making your communications sound impersonal.

Examples of this include:

• Access lead history details–During calls, agents have access to prospect or lead information to help them customize the call. Past correspondence such as emails, notes from prior phone conversations, chat transcripts, and other information can be available on-screen to guide the agent through a dialogue with the prospect.
• Automate call activity–next-best lead routing, auto dialing, and voice drop make your sales agents more productive and efficient.
  • Queue-based lead management workflows ensure the next-best lead gets called every time. Inside sales reps don’t need to worry about finding the right lead to call next. This also prevents cherry picking to ensure every lead gets worked.
  • Auto-dialing speeds up call activity. When an agent finishes one call, he or she can quickly connect with the next best lead through progressive dialing.
  • Voice drop allows agents to craft a custom voicemail recording so they leave the perfect voicemail every time. 

TIPS FOR REFINING YOUR PERSONALIZATION STRATEGY

Now that we’ve discussed over-automation, let’s talk about ways you can prevent a lack of personalization throughout the sales funnel. No matter where your lead is on the road to conversion, you need a proactive means of protecting the sales experience for your customers.
Here’s how.

1. Build a buyer persona for your target prospects, but don’t use it in place of personalization. Buyer personas are great tools to help sales and marketing teams understand who your target customers are. Personas are valuable, but don’t trade personalized communications for persona-based content. Persona-based content has its place in the sales and marketing experience. However, sales reps should focus on making a personal connection with qualified leads.
2. Use what you know. Once you have information in your CRM, use it. Train your entire team to think creatively about conversations with leads–what little details, past experiences and bits of data do you know about a contact’s business? How does a lead’s earlier conversations with your sales team influence the conversation you’re rep is having now (or about to have soon) with that person?
3. Keep improving the process. Congrats, you’ve identified what works and your sales team is improving in multiple key benchmarks! Keep at it; you’re never done. You need to keep responding to changes in the sales environment and to new challenges. Continuous improvement is a philosophy that will serve your sales team well.

The sales process boils down to two significant factors: building relationships and establishing trust. The inclusion of personalization throughout the sales process creates an environment where you can engage with prospects on a personal level so that you can build a relationship. Once a relationship is sufficiently established, trust will follow. Over time, the buyer starts to view you as a trusted adviser rather than as a self-serving sales rep.

As you look at your sales calls and communications, maybe you’ll begin finding signs that you’ve left out the personalization. Don’t despair! This is your opportunity to retool your communications process. Having the right CRM for your sales team can help. DentalLabSupport's sales automation software solution LabCell CRM helps you manage your leads, automate your contact center’s workflow and still deliver a great sales experience for your customers. 

For more information about LabCell CRM visit DentalLabSupport.com or email us ar info@dentallabsupport.com.

The Role of Your Dental Lab Marketing Department — And What You Should Expect From It

Marketing vs. Sales in Professional Services

One of the first steps is to be clear about the language we use to describe a marketing department and how it differs from a sales function. The reason that this distinction is so tricky is that many firms do not use traditional language to talk about these concepts. Sometimes the term dental lab business development is used to refer to the sales function. In other firms, business development refers to both the marketing and sales function. In this article, we are going to use the traditional definitions.

Marketing is the process of understanding your marketplace and competitors, defining your firm’s market positioning, pricing and services, promoting the firm to your target audience and explaining how they might benefit by working with you. Put another way, marketing is about offering the right services with the right benefits to the right prospects.

Sales is the process of qualifying your prospects and convincing the right ones to buy your services. It’s about turning business opportunities into clients.

While this difference seems pretty simple on the surface, there are a few areas that can cause confusion. In some organizations, for instance, the sales function is also responsible for generating and nurturing leads until they become viable business opportunities. As you will see below, we have some strong opinions about this practice.

Dental Lab Marketing Department Functions

So what exactly should be the role of your marketing department? What should you expect from your marketing team?

Whether your team is in-house, entirely outsourced or a combination of the two, your marketing team has five core functions.

1. An understanding of your target market and competitors

Marketing should always start with the market. You should expect Marketing to be able to give you detailed and specific descriptions of your target markets and your key competitors in those markets.

But you already know all about your competitors and clients, right? Wrong. Unless you are already doing systematic, structured research, you are kidding yourself. Anecdotal experiences can lead you astray.

Our research shows that internal staff almost always inaccurately perceive their market and their clients’ true feelings and priorities. In fact, firms that do objective research on their markets and clients grow faster and are more profitable.

A professional marketing function can commission this research and allow you to make decisions based on marketplace reality, rather than hunches and wishful thinking.

2. A strategy to drive growth and profitability

Once you have a research-based understanding of your firm and its place in the market, your marketing department should be able to help craft a compelling strategy to drive growth and profitability. That strategy may require adjustments in your target market, service offerings (see the next point, below) and marketing plans.

Your strategy should clearly identify compelling competitive advantages (your differentiators) and a clear market positioning (are you the premium-priced leader or a value-driven alternative?). Think of these as tools to describe your brand. How do you want to be known in the marketplace? As you wrestle with your options, expect to be challenged with new thinking and bold choices.

You will also need a marketing plan. This plan will map out exactly how you are going to build the visibility of your brand and generate the new opportunities your business development (sales) team will convert into new clients.

3. Which services to offer and how to price them

Historically, many firms have left the key decisions about what services to offer and how to price them to individual operating executives or the finance and accounting function.

Decisions about service lines and pricing are important elements of a growth plan. They should be informed by an overall research-based strategy, not individual client requests. Why? It is too easy to get over-extended trying to be everything to every client. You will soon lose focus and experience, increasing costs as you struggle to provide an ever-expanding array of services.

Innovation and client responsiveness can all too easily become undisciplined dabbling. A strong marketing department plays a leading role in maintaining that balance.

4. A steady flow of new leads and opportunities

More leads! Better opportunities! Who doesn’t want a steady flow of well-qualified new business prospects? Fortunately, that is exactly what you should expect from marketing. While some firms assign lead generation and nurturing to the sales (business development) function, we think that is a bad idea in most cases. The time horizon for lead generation and nurturing can be long. Nurturing leads can take months, even years. Sales are almost always placed on a much shorter operational cycle (“what can you close this month?”).

Your marketing team should turn your overall strategy into a formal plan to generate new leads and nurture your existing prospects until they become well-qualified opportunities. This plan should look ahead at least a year and be guided by clear, trackable metrics (more on this below).

Be careful that you do not continually add new “marketing ideas,” underfunding campaigns or other unplanned initiatives that may derail the plan. If you fall into any of these traps, you cannot expect the plan to work, nor can you hold your marketing team accountable.

Also, be patient. Lead nurturing can take time — sometimes a very long time. Don’t focus only on immediate results. You will need new clients next year, and the year after as well.

What you need to provide

At this point, we have identified what benefits Marketing can provide to your firm. But what do they need to be able to deliver these results? The answer is straightforward. They need four basic things:

1. Talented people. Your marketing team must include people with the right skill sets and experience. If you don’t have these talents in house, you may need to outsource parts of the process or do some hiring. We’ll discuss these options when we cover how to structure your
   marketing department, below. A word of caution here: marketing professional services is its own specialty. Don’t expect someone with general marketing expertise to understand the unique rules and dynamics of the professional services marketplace.
2. Adequate resources. Your team must have sufficient resources to do the job right. Underfund the effort and you will not get the results you deserve. The requirements are not excessive. Our research shows that high-growth firms spend no more than average on marketing — and yet they are still able to deliver outstanding results. But don’t expect superior results with stingy resources.
3. A seat at the decision-maker’s table. The kiss of death is investing in your marketing then ignoring your team’s advice. It happens more often than you would think, especially in flat organizations, such as partnerships, where decision making is diffused over many people. If your decisions are broadly consensus-based, you may be better off delegating marketing decisions to a single partner or a small committee.
4. Patience and cooperation. Once the previous three considerations are in place, you will see impressive progress. But there is a catch. Just like any other functional area of your organization, Marketing needs cooperation and a bit of patience from the firm. Support your marketing team’s efforts over time and you will reap the rewards.

These four basic requirements lay the foundation for marketing success. But what does an effective marketing department look like?

Marketing Department Structure

Structuring a modern professional services marketing team is not easy. At many firms, marketing is a relatively new function — one, regrettably, that is not always highly regarded. In addition, many firms are working in a very competitive and rapidly evolving marketplace. When they lack marketing agility, firms put themselves at risk.

To keep things simple, let’s focus on the three aspects of departmental structure that are most relevant to professional services firms: the Role of marketing, selecting the right Resources and Reporting Relationships. 

1. Role of Marketing In The Dental Lab

At different firms, marketing comes in different guises — from a low-level support function charged with basic implementation responsibilities to a comprehensive team of specialists who deliver the full spectrum of strategic and operational skills. In our experience, the more comprehensive its marketing function, the more success a firm enjoys. (Keep in mind that marketing expertise does not necessarily need to reside in-house. See Resource Requirements below for the details.)

At many firms, a key decision revolves around lead generation and nurturing. Do these functions belong to marketing or sales? We believe that marketing is their proper home.

Why? Many, many firms today employ the Seller-Doer Strategy, so their busy professionals lack the time and focus to carry out a long-term program. Better to leave these tasks to individuals whose attention is not divided between business development and project delivery. Make lead generation and lead nurturing a prime role of the marketing department.

2. Resource Requirements

Where will you find the people with the specialized skill sets and experience needed to pull off the comprehensive vision we believe is so important? Well, you have two choices: staff up your in-house team or outsource the skills you need.

The in-house approach is appealing from an accessibility perspective. And if a person is fully utilized there can be some cost savings. Of course, no single person is likely to possess the full range of skills you need to implement a modern marketing program. So you are faced with the challenge of filling in the gaps. But how?

One avenue is training. This is, or should be, a given. Technology is always evolving and new research findings continually challenge our long-held beliefs and assumptions — what worked five years ago may not be what is most effective today. That means ongoing education is a must.

But even if you scrupulously train your marketing team, you’ll still need outside help on occasion. In fact, our recent research has shown that high-growth firms tend to spend more on outsourced resources than their slow-growth peers.

How do you decide whether to outsource a marketing function? Ask yourself a series of five questions about each function that is a candidate for potential outsourcing (see Figure 1).

Some dental laboratories outsource all of their marketing so that they can concentrate their internal resources on core functions only. However, most dental labs employ a mixed model in which some functions are handled internally and others are outsourced. Specialized services that are not used on a regular basis are often the best candidates for outsourcing. Examples include research, strategy development, analytics or the development of a new website.

3. Reporting Relationships

Whom should the marketing department report to? Many firms struggle with this question. The answer may depend on the role and resources choices you make.

At firms with limited marketing personnel, it makes sense to have the department report to the head of Administration or Sales (Business Development). The latter situation works particularly well when Marketing’s primary role is to support Sales. In neither of these cases, however, is Marketing in a position to make a major contribution.

As the marketing Role increases in sophistication, it should be allowed to influence major strategic decisions. This can be accomplished by having Marketing report to a senior partner who has responsibility for both Marketing and Sales. Having a single point of decision making minimizes conflict and makes it easier to align goals and priorities. It also gives Marketing a seat at the table when major decisions are being made.

A variation on this theme is to have the Marketing leader report directly to the CEO or Managing Partner. This gives him or her visibility into the firm’s strategy, which can only make marketing more effective. This reporting relationship is also well suited to our vision of Marketing as a key function that can drive growth and profitability of the firm as a whole.

Learn the best techniques and strategies to market your professional services firm with Hinge University

A Final Thought

In many consumer-facing industries, marketing is a core function that the rest of the organization is built around. These companies evolved in that direction because it gives them an advantage in financial performance. Perhaps there was a time when professional services firms did not need the perspective and discipline that marketing offers. No longer.

With the rise of digital communications, the collapse of geography and the proliferation of new competitors and business models the pressure is on. The advantage will go to the firm with the greatest marketplace visibility and the best value proposition. And that is exactly the promise that marketing can deliver.

What role is your marketing department playing in your firm’s success?

For more information about Dental Lab Marketing and Dental Lab Sales, visit DentalLabSupport.com.