Dental Lab Marketing Software

Dental Lab Marketing Software is a collection of web systems and applications that help dental labs expand their outreach with profitable and engaging campaigns. There are many types of marketing programs, but most of them are not designed for dental laboratories. LabCell Dental lAb Marketing Software offers campaign management, resource optimization, and offer features such as data collection, branding, event scheduling, content distribution,lead nurturing and converting. The most advanced dental lab marketing software also comes with a handy analytical suite for you to generate accurate reports. 

Key Features of a Dental Lab Marketing Software

A top quality marketing software app can help you make the most of your leads and maximize sales. Look out for the following essential components while selecting a suitable system:

• Lead Management – The software should enable you to attract buyers and nurture them with personalized campaigns. You can then pass them on to sales to close deals. You should be able to identify promising leads to be able to close faster. Improve your marketing efforts by tracking effective campaigns. Use automated, personalized campaigns to engage potential buyers at all stages of their lifecycle.

• Sales Insight – The marketing software should help your sales team to prioritize and interact with promising leads to close deals faster. You should be able to identify hot leads and engage them with smart campaigns. Understand the moments when a lead shows interest in buying your product. This can help your reps be prepared at all stages of the sales cycle to engage promising leads at the right time for effective results, as well as to maximize conversion ratios and boost profitability and customer satisfaction.

• Email Marketing – The marketing software should have a useful email marketing component. You should be able to prepare a detailed profile of your target customers and engage them with relevant email marketing messages based on their demographics, preferences, and individual behaviors. The app should offer smart automated A/B testing to help your improve the outcomes of your campaigns. It should provide in-depth reporting and analytics features that help you get a clear idea of the impact and ROI of the emails you send to prospective customers.

• Social Marketing – The software should help you use social media websites effectively to learn about your customers. You can use these networks to get new customers, engage existing customers and create brand advocates by engaging them using referrals programs, sweepstakes, polls etc. You should be able to offer shareable videos and social media sharing buttons to enable your customers to share your content with their social contacts. Plus, the software should offer social metrics to see which social marketing activities drive conversions and sales, and should cover traditional media in an equally good and personalized way.

Benefits of Dental Lab Marketing Software

Our in-depth comparisons indicate that these are the main benefits companies experience when using a solid online marketing system:

• Focusing on the final business mission. The first effect of optimizing and automating marketing is free time to focus on more important aspects of the business flow. Without such system, poring proper analytics and researching marketing opportunities would take significantly more time and money.

• Marketing consistency. Automated marketing eliminates the risk of human error, as there is only software to control the wheel, and such cannot be influenced by opinions and feelings, or interrupted as an employee could. Therefore, the entire marketing strategy is smoother and more consistent, and you have a variety of tools to promote your business even when you’re not directing it.

• Quality reporting. Quick and efficient reports are the dream of every busy company struggling to outreach and identify changes and optimal decisions. Marketing software is tailored for the purpose, as it usually comes with a set of advanced reporting tools, which are as well customizable and easy to personalize.

• Lead nurturing. This is a benefit many companies don’t expect, but marketing software is indeed empowered for lead generation and nurturing. Assuming that your business relies on leads too, you can use these systems to reach as many people in the cyberspace as your business needs.

• Multi-channel efficiency. The internet is good because it allows us to connect with people in many different ways, which can be even more valuable in the business sense of the word. You can use your marketing automation system to reach people through emails, social media, remarketing, ads, and so on.

• Eliminating practices that don’t work. Obtaining a perfect batting average is the blessing of few, and that’s not because most marketers don’t work, but rather because they don;t have a clean insight on what they’re doing. Soon after implementing a marketing automation software you will see the difference in the performance of your campaigns, and you can use its valuable analytics to improve the least efficient ones.

Latest Trends

Good quality marketing software systems are evolving and reinventing themselves to keep up with the changing times. Here are four important trends in the continuing development of marketing software:

• Systems are Becoming Easier to Use – Many users are put off by marketing software systems with complicated interfaces. As more and more businesses are opting to use marketing automation over standard email marketing, vendors are making it simpler for these companies to adapt by making sure their systems are easy to learn and use.

• Computing Everywhere – Mobile devices are becoming more popular and this trend is creating major challenges for businesses. Good quality marketing software apps are catering to this trend by ensuring their systems are accessible on popular mobile platforms to enable users to be productive even in the field.

• Social Intelligence – Canny marketers are making use of social intelligence to stay ahead of the pack. They are using social media channels to listen to their customers and become more responsive to their needs and feedback. Social intelligence is helping marketers to look into the future and optimize their products effectively to cater to changing customer requirements.

For more information about Dental Lab Marketing Software, visit DentalLabSupport.com or call 888.715.9099 

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.

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.

Starting Early: How Message Consistency Can Help You Close More Doctors

By David H. Khalili,  Founder of DentalLabSupport.com

Every dental lab wants to maximize its sales process. But in reality, that's often easier said than done. By the time your sales department picks up the phone and calls a lead, their decision on whether or not to become a customer has probably already been made..

You can still convince members of your dental audience who are on the fence to go one way or the other, but if you truly want to improve your sales rates, you have to start earlier. From the moment your target audience is first exposed to your brand, they will begin to form an opinion about your brand that ultimately impacts their likelihood of becoming a customer. So if you are looking for effective ways to close more sales, you have to start early: with message consistency.

Messaging and Branding

The ultimate marketing goal of every business should be to create a consistent brand. Global powerhouses like Nike and Apple succeed because everyone knows their brand and has a general ideal of what it stands for. How did they get to that point? 

Below is a list of 7 key characteristics that successful dental laboratories share. They include:

1.  Audience Knowledge
2. Uniqueness
3. Passion
4. Consistency
5. Competitiveness
6. Exposure
7. Leadership.

Achieving any of these characteristics for your brand as a dental lab requires a thoughtful, strategic approach. But for the purposes of this post, we will focus on what we would argue is the single most important aspect of branding: consistency.

Think about it from a Dentist's point of view. If you hear about a dental lab a few times, and the message or visual identity is different every single time, it will be impossible form a coherent image of that brand in your mind. If, however, the same brand establishes a clear visual and textual identity, focusing on the same core benefit again and again, it will be much easier for you to form a reliable opinion about that brand. Consistency, in other words, is absolute key.

The Consequences of Cognitive Dissonance

At this point, you may be wondering how branding and message consistency plays into your ability to close more dentist. To answer that question, we have to explain a key psychological concept that applies to all of us: cognitive dissonance.

In social psychology, dissonance theory suggests that we have an inner motivation to keep our attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge in harmony, and avoid disharmony at all costs. If, however, messages conflict with each other or don't line up in our minds as desired, we tend to discount all variations as untrue to maintain harmony.

If you're not careful, cognitive dissonance can affect your sales efforts in the dental lab, in a very tangible way. If your messaging throughout the marketing campaign, leading up to the final sales call, has not been consistent to create a firm brand image in your leads' mind, they will dismiss your company as not credible and the final sales call will do little to persuade them otherwise. And even if the marketing has been consistent in itself, a sales call that's inconsistent with previous promotional messages can lead potential customers on the fence to say no to your company.

How a CRM Improves Message Consistency

Consistency, in other words, is crucial for your business to close more sales. Fortunately, Customer Relationship Management software can help you increase and maintain that consistency, in two ways:

• Consistent email marketing. If your email marketing relies on sending impromptu messages to potential customers, you run the risk of sending conflicting messages without even noticing it. A single change in phrase can suggest something entirely different to your audience. A CRM allows you to set up and automate your promotional messages, increasing the consistency as a result.
• Consistent Marketing-Sales Hand Off. Especially if your marketing and sales efforts are maintained by different departments, integrating both to maintain message consistency can be difficult. Because CRM software stows all of your contact information, your sales department can make more informed sales calls based on information your marketing department has gathered in previous efforts.

 In short, optimizing your sales efforts starts with message consistency. To learn more about how a CRM can help you achieve just that and maximize your ROI, contact us at 888.715.9099 or visit DentalLabSupport.com

Never Give Up On Your Prospect: Reviving Cold Leads

The lead has been in your organization’s sales pipeline too long. You know it. Your manager knows it. Maybe it was a hot lead at one point, but something happened. The holidays, maybe. Or maybe it was another person’s lead and you inherited it. Maybe the prospect has been putting you off. Or maybe you just went a little too long without contacting them.

Leads go cold for a variety of reasons, but that doesn’t mean you ought to abandon them, according to David H. Khalili, Founder of LabCell Dental Lab Software: Turning Cold Prospects Into Hot Customers. David said 56% of the people who indicated they are looking to buy a product are typically still in the market within six months of contact; within one year, 35% of those potential buyers are still in the market.

“Leads do not go cold as much as it is not yet their time to buy in the one-year cycle,” David said. “A rep may approach them before they are ready.”

Don’t let it get cold in the first place

According to David, leads often go cold because a sales rep fails to follow up with a prospect early enough in the sales cycle, and the prospect doesn’t remember inquiring about the product in the first place.

"if the salesperson has a comprehensive email ‘drip campaign,’ where they first get permission to stay in touch with the prospect, and then in defined intervals continue to stay in touch with that prospect — by delivering value to them in the form of articles their prospects may find valuable, inviting them to different events, delivering value-based webinars (rather than a pitch) or updates within your company through a newsletter — they are not only the first to know when changes are happening within the prospect’s business, but they are also insulating their prospect from the competition, while maintaining the integrity of that relationship,” David said. “This way, the prospect doesn’t feel, ‘Well, the only time you call me is when you want something from me.’”

Of course, despite the best effort of salespeople, leads often do go cold. And that’s when reps have to spring into action.

How to talk to a cold lead

“You should definitely review every lead again in the future,” David H. Khalili, president of DentalLabSupport.com, said. “Think of it like a ‘cold case’ that gets reopened by a detective. With a fresh perspective plus new clues, new witnesses and new technology, there are often breakthroughs. The same is true with leads that were once cold.”

Not all cold leads are worth a second glance, however. If a lead wasn’t properly qualified in the first place, Art Sobczak of Business By Phone said, it’s not worth your time to follow it up. But if a lead was pre-qualified, you should definitely give it another look.

“I suggest the more time and the further you have gone into a process, the more emphasis should be placed on revisiting a lead,” he said. “You’ve already done a lot of heavy lifting, another attempt might break the logjam.”

David suggests that reps email a cold lead first, then call. That call should remind the prospect that the last time you spoke, they didn’t seem ready to buy, so you are following up now. If they still seem non-committal, ask them a simple question: “Should I close your file?”

“No one wants the rejection of a phone call,” he said. “But for a real lead that has contacted you in the past, the most courteous thing to do is call.”

It might not be easy, but not following up is the biggest mistake a rep can make. “Only 10% to 25% of all leads are followed up,”David said. “By following up, you stand a chance of standing out.”

Following up and being too aggressive is another common error. Reps should not follow up on a cold lead and immediately ask if that person’s ready to buy.

It should be a simple follow-up, reminding the prospect they contacted you first, and updating them on what’s changed since your last interaction — a new product, for example, or a price reduction, new terms, or new features.

You should always plan to discuss something with a lead, David said. It’s a mistake to say: “Uh, I’m checking back in with you.”

“Remind them of what they were interested in previously, and then bring some new possible value to the table to re-engage them,” he said.

For more information on Lead Management, Contact DentalLabSupport.com.