Dental Lab Tools to Manage Your Busy Schedule

Dental Lab Tools to Manage Your Busy Schedule

By David H. Khalili, CEO DentalLabSupport.com

Dental Laboratories need to use proper tools to manage their time and schedule in order to maintain competitive excellence in the industry with much larger players. Because of advances in IT programs and infrastructure, the tools for time management normally reserved for large corporations are now available for small dental labs. Many of these tools come in integrated packages which provide the tools you need to run your dental lab in one affordable package. 

The following 4 tools provide you systems management for your dental lab to increase your available time.

1. Workflow Planning/Whiteboard

One of the most powerful business tools of the 20th century was a whiteboard. Work planning, task assignment and scheduling, and goal setting were all managed efficiently from whiteboards. For modern business systems, a physical whiteboard is no longer the best method for workflow planning because the time lost in transferring items from a whiteboard to your computer systems increases both time necessary for planning and the chance of items not being copied into your computer system. 

A modern workflow planning system will give you tools to manage planned activities, assign tasks in specific order, and plan in such a way that everyone on your team knows where you are going, the time-frame to get there, and who takes the lead at any given time. 

2. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

An essential part of any dental lab sales or marketing system, a CRM is a software program designed specifically to track and manage contacts with your customers and leads. A CRM saves businesses time in multiple ways. Preventing lost leads, reducing redundancies in customer service communication, and managing your customer database from a centralized place are all part of how a CRM saves you time in your business. 

A good CRM for time management will be accessible from your sales team's mobile devices. This saves time and data as you are able to capture leads and store them directly into your database without carrying business cards in your pockets, transferring data from notepads to excel, or any other of a variety of systems people attempt to use to manage contact information. 

3. Automation Software

Although automation software is an obvious time-saver, many small dental lab owners do not know how affordable and accessible modern automation systems are. Many software programs have automatic processes for marketing emails, follow-up responses, integration with multiple software systems (ERP, accounting and financial, CRM, WMS) to give your business accurate and timely information across your software platforms. 

While automation software and hardware used to be added to a business's IT systems, this has changed. Advances in cloud computing and storage have moved many business process management systems online. Online clouds enable many software providers to integrate automation systems and API's within their core software at an affordable price for small businesses. 

4. Cloud-Based Software

Although not a specific tool, cloud-based software programs offer small dental labs several time saving tools that traditional in-house platforms do not. Cloud-based software offers reduced install times, gives you universal access to your software, and reduces your costs involved with in-house data centers. 

A cloud-based software system is accessible via an internet connection, meaning any web-connected device can be used by you and your team to get work done. From a quality software company, it also provides you better security and infrastructure than most small businesses can afford to put in on their own. 

Workforce planning, CRM, automation and cloud-based software can all be found in separate platforms or integrated into one. Because of advances in technology, these 4 tools are all available to small businesses at affordable prices and in good time. For more information about how our CRM fills all the roles of these tools, please contact us today.

DentalLabSupport.com 

1-888-715-9099

5 Ways to Develop Prospects for Dental Labs

5 Ways to Develop Prospects for Dental Labs -- By David H. Khalili, CEO DentalLabSupport.com

In the digital market, there are many dental laboratories vying for the same dentist. As web offerings increase, the potential customer base essentially stagnates, or at best, grows more slowly than the products and services offered, it will become increasingly difficult to find new prospects. To stand out from the crowd, your business has to do more than just offer a product. It also must do so in a unique and memorable way. Your dental lab must think about more than the current sale, it must also consider how to make a one time purchaser into a long term customer.

Offer something unique. Your product and services may be something which is available in one form or another from a variety of dental labs, but that does not mean that you cannot have, or create, a unique marketing draw. Perhaps you feel that you have insight into the industry which other dental labs do not. Blog about your knowledge, or if you have enough detailed technical information to do so, write a whitepaper. This demonstrates your specialized knowledge, it makes you an expert in a crowd of websites who limit communication to generic FAQs.

When you offer something, get something back from a potential prospect in return. For example, if you have something on your website that you offer to customers as a free download, such as a whitepaper, request their email or other contact information. This contact information does not automatically translate into a prospect, but it does indicate specific interest in your product by at least one specific user.

Ask permission. There's a saying that it is easier to ask forgiveness than permission, but just the opposite may be true when gathering potential prospects. Do not subscribe people to your mailing list without expressly communicating your intent to do so. It may seem like an obvious match from your perspective, but you need to consider the perspective of the potential customer as well. People sometimes spend their first couple of minutes with morning email weeding through the junk mail. It's an annoying reality of email, but don't be an annoyance to someone who may one day become a customer. Consider how many times you have added an email to a spam filter versus how many times you have gone into your spam filter and removed an existing entry. Once you are in someone's spam filter, you are likely to stay there permanently. Don't get into the spam filter in the first place by sending unsolicited emails.

Build on your reputation with existing dentists. This sounds simple, but there is a wrong way and a right way to do it. The right way is to be completely open and forthright about it. If one customer is happy with your service, tell them directly that you value them and their ideas about other potential customers. Facebook received some negative publicity when it went about this process the wrong way: Facebook decided that if a customer used a product, they could be translated into an unintended spokesperson for that product. Public reaction was terrible. Build a relationship, not a database.

Ask satisfied customers to let you mention them. In a business to business relationship, this is a win-win proposition. The customer expands their presence and your product gains legitimacy by actual testimonials. It may be tempting to rework the statement you put on your website in a testimonial, but resist the temptation. Ethics issues aside, the customer may be able to address potential customers better than you can simply because they are both in the same, or nearly the same position.

For more information on how to identify and gain prospects, and turn them into long term and loyal clients, please contact DentalLabSupport.com or by calling 1-888-715-9099.

Dental Lab Lead Generation Success

WHAT IS LEAD GENERATION?

Lead generation describes the marketing process of stimulating and capturing interest in a product or service for the purpose of developing sales pipeline.

Lead generation often uses digital channels, and has been undergoing substantial changes in recent years from the rise of new online and social techniques. In particular, the abundance of information readily available online has led to the rise of the “self-directed buyer” and the emergence of new techniques to develop and qualify potential leads before passing them to sales.  

WHY IS LEAD GENERATION IMPORTANT?

The buying process has changed, and marketers need to find new ways to reach buyers and get heard through the noise.  Instead of finding customers with mass advertising and email blasts, marketers must now focus on being found and learn to build continuous relationships with buyers.

Information Abundance and Attention Economics

With the growth of the internet, the world has changed from one of information scarcity to one of information abundance.  In fact, according to Google chairman Eric Schmidt “there was 5 Exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization and 2003, but that much information is now created every two days and the pace is rapidly increasing”.  

The problem is that information abundance equals attention scarcity. This is known as attention economics. Social scientist Herbert Simon was the first person to discuss this concept when he wrote “in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients.”

This has transformed the buying process. Buyers are overwhelmed with all the noise and they are getting better and better at ignoring the messages they don’t want to hear and researching what they do want to learn about on their own.

LEADING DOWN THE FUNNEL

With the new buyer it is important to note that your marketing efforts don’t end once a new lead comes into your system – what we call Top of the Funnel (TOFU) marketing.  Many companies do a good job at generating leads, but the problem is that most new leads are not ready to buy yet.  And if a sales rep does engage and the lead isn’t ready to talk with them, it reinforces the notion that marketing sourced leads are not great. As a result leads get lost, ignored, or snatched up by your competitors.

To prevent this from happening, good lead generation marketers will invest in lead nurturing and other Middle of the Funnel (MOFU) techniques to build relationships and trust—earning the lead’s business once he or she is finally ready to buy. Engage these leads through relevant content and make sure that you get your timing right.

Lead generation has moved beyond simply discussing TOFU. In order to have a holistic strategy, MOFU marketing must be included in all your strategic discussions to make sure that you have a good process for turning leads into sales.

LEAD GENERATION RESEARCH

Many marketing departments are allocating more budget to lead generation tactics. Inbound marketing spend in particular has been growing as companies need to find more creative ways to get in front of the customer and break through the noise.

“Life before Dental Lab Support was like being in the dark ages. Dental Lab Support has put us into the modern era of marketing and increased lead generation by 71% year-over-year and increased sales by 18%.” - James Park, Crowns R Us Dental Lab,

COMMON LEAD GENERATION METRICS

The best marketing programs have intentional measurement strategies planned in advance. So as part of the planning process ask yourself these questions: What will you measure? When will you measure? How will you measure? Here are some basic lead generation metrics that many companies track as part of their lead generation efforts:

• Marketing % of contribution to sales pipeline: The % of revenue in the sales pipeline (opportunities) that originated from marketing efforts
• Marketing % of contribution to closed revenue: The % of revenue in closed won deals that originated from marketing efforts
• Quantity of Sales Qualified Leads: The amount of SQLs sent over to your sales teams
• Quality of SQLs: The % of SQLs not rejected by sales
• Cost per inquiry: Total lead acquisition cost/ the total number of inquiries
• Cost per  lead: Total campaign costs/quantity of leads
• Inquiry to Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL): Conversion of initial inquiry to Marketing Qualified Lead
• MQL to Sales Accepted Lead (SAL): Conversion from MQL to Sales Accepted Lead
• SAL to Sales Qualified Lead (SQL): Conversion from SAL to Sales Qualified Lead
• SQL to Opportunity:  Conversion from SQL to Opportunity

Dental Lab LEAD GENERATION RESOURCES

See how you can increase effectiveness across all business functions by generating more qualified leads, amplifying sales pipeline velocity, and improving sales and marketing alignment through leveraging lead generation Dental Lab Support Lead Generation Services.

www.DentalLabSupport.com

1.888.715.9099