Dental Lab Guide to Sales Pipeline Stages and Management

A thorough and effective sales pipeline streamlines your sales process and allows your dental lab sales team to visualize where all potential customers live in the buying process. Keeping your pipeline healthy and controlled will boost sales velocity and revenue outcomes.

Think about it – if it takes three weeks for any given deal to make it through your sales pipeline instead of four, then by the end of any given period, you’ll have closed 33% more deals. The key is building out a successful pipeline and consistently managing it.

Although every dental lab has its own process that works best for them, in this article we will cover the basics of what a sales pipeline is, the fundamental steps required, and how you can best manage your pipeline. 

Sales Pipeline Stages

What is a sales pipeline?

A sales pipeline is the sequence of steps you lead a prospect through from the beginning to the end of a sale – the pipeline helps to visualize where prospects are in the sales process.

A sales pipeline helps your sales team identify which stages need more attention so your team can focus on improving those stages to increase sales velocity. Your pipeline also helps forecast results and revenue by viewing which stages the prospects are currently in and how many will make it through the pipeline by a given time. 

What are the main stages of a sales pipeline?

1. Prospecting
2. Qualifying
3. Demonstrate
4. Proposal
5. Closing

Prospecting

The pipeline begins with Prospecting (or Lead Generation). Prospecting is the process of identifying potential customers that your product or service will benefit, and then systematically communicating with them. Lead Generation is the process of attracting and engaging prospects through marketing activities such as campaigns, events, and content marketing.

Here are 7 techniques to get your prospects to say yes.

Qualifying

Before taking the prospect through the pipeline, make sure they’re a good fit. Through research and conversation – dig into their pain points, buyer persona, company size, budget, etc. This will also help establish who your high-value prospects are and prioritize deals based on the likelihood of them leading to a sale.

A sales technique for qualifying your leads is through BANT. This is a formula used to determine whether it’s the right time to sell to a prospect and helps to separate hot deals from time-wasters through a series of questions. 

Demonstrate

This is where you demonstrate the product or service to the prospect to make sure it resonates with them. This will differ according to your product or service, but it’s important to demonstrate all the features and capabilities, emphasize the advantages of implementing your solution, handle any objections, and answer all questions.

Proposal

Once you’ve qualified the prospect and demonstrated your solution, your proposal will be much easier to personalize and tailor to the specific prospect. Your proposal dives into the details of your solution such as price and length, all while staying personalized and directed towards their pain points and why your product or service will benefit them specifically.

Here are some fundamental elements to include in your proposal:

• Executive summary
• Personalization
• Outcomes
• Pricing
• Next steps
• CTA

Closing

Whether the prospect becomes a customer or you lose the deal, closing for both is important. If you’ve won the sale – follow up, get them the paperwork they need, provide onboarding steps if necessary, and make the transition as smooth as possible. If you have lost the sale – do your best to maintain a relationship for the future, ask for feedback, and reflect.

Tip: once the sale is closed, salespeople can still follow up with the customer to make sure they’re happy. This helps with loyalty but also remaining in contact with the customer for future sales. Loyal customers can come back to the sales pipeline by repurchasing additional products or services such as upgrading their accounts. 

Sales Pipeline Management

Keep your sales pipeline healthy

Always keep track of your sales pipeline and monitor its growth and health. Your pipeline should always be growing or at least staying consistent with new deals leaving and entering simultaneously.

Another indicator of a healthy pipeline is to consistently have prospects at every stage. Make sure these opportunities maintain momentum – don’t let a good lead slip through the cracks!

Prioritize top deals

Monitoring the length of the deal to estimate the closing period can help with prioritization and sales activities. Certain deals move through your sales pipeline differently than others. And some deals you need to prioritize.

A tip is to have certain qualification criteria for each stage to determine the top priorities you need to work on first. If you’re consistently monitoring your pipeline, you’ll begin to understand patterns of length and likelihood of dropping depending on the kind of deal.

Drop deals that aren’t progressing

Deals that aren’t moving and are stuck at a particular stage are in most cases not likely to make it through the pipeline. These are a waste of time – so make sure to clean up your sales pipeline regularly to avoid clutter.

When a prospect is at a standstill, either decide to remove them or focus on picking up momentum with this particular deal. A key indicator is if they’ve surpassed the average sales cycle length.

Monitor pipeline metrics

Monitoring your metrics is a key indicator of the growth and progress of your sales initiatives. Focus on metrics that indicate pipeline health such as the number of deals in your pipeline, the average lifetime of a deal, the average size of deals, and the percentage of deals that make it through the pipeline.

It’s also important to monitor your pipeline to identify opportunities or areas in the sales process that need improvement. Your sales pipeline can also indicate barriers and identify blockers that your sales manager needs to address.

Reflect and improve

Which sales techniques are working and which are not? 

What stages are taking longer than others? 

It’s important to regularly review your pipeline and the progress of your sales team. Indicate barriers and what is slowing down the momentum, then work on and improve your sales techniques accordingly.

Establish and execute

Establish your pipeline, execute, measure, and reflect.

Your sales pipeline is essential for growth in not only your sales team but your business as a whole. Establish what each stage of your pipeline entails and your team’s plan and techniques for each. Use the data and metrics your sales pipeline provides to improve your sales process.

From prospecting to closing – keep the stages in a sequence and maintain a process-oriented visual dashboard of your pipeline to avoid any opportunities from slipping through the cracks.

For more information about Sales Pipeline Stages and Management, call 888-715-9099. or visit DentalLabSupport.com

How Email Drip Campaigns Can Elevate Your Brand

Email marketing is an incredibly powerful way to connect with dental clinicians and increase your brand awareness. Over 3.9 billion people use email worldwide – more than 50% of the global population. That means that companies who aren’t using email effectively are missing out on an enormous potential to engage with their customers, scale their business, and increase revenue.

Most brands are familiar with the concept of an email newsletter to keep their subscribers informed. However, newsletters lack the ability to stay at the forefront of your subscribers’ minds and drive up engagement numbers.  

That’s because newsletters are focused on engaging with your entire email list at once. On the other hand, an email drip campaign can be designed to target specific types of customers. For example, if someone signs up to learn more about your dental lab product – you can initiate a targeted email drip campaign to introduce them to your business and get them excited to engage.

Email drip campaigns for dental labs present a great opportunity to engage with your customers, generate new leads, and ultimately convert more sales. Let’s dive into the details so you can see how impactful these campaigns can be for your brand’s success.  

What Is an Email Drip Campaign?

An email drip campaign is an automated set of emails that initiates when a user performs a certain action. All of the emails in a drip campaign are written beforehand, so once the user’s action is performed, the email campaign gets sent automatically.  

What sets email drip campaigns apart from typical email campaigns is that they can be highly targeted for customers at different stages of your sales funnel. For example, you can have one drip campaign for customers who leave items in their cart at checkout and another for people who’ve signed up for your blog.

This specific targeting is what makes email drip campaign engagement so high. In fact, companies that use targeted email marketing have seen up to a 760% increase in revenue.

Here’s a brief example of how an email drip campaign can be structured to entice customers to upgrade to a premium service after they’ve started a one-week free trial.

• Email 1 (sent on signup)
  The user will get an email as soon as they sign up to welcome them to the free trial.  
• Email 2 (sent 2 days later) 
  An informative email that tells the customer how to maximize their free trial.
• Email 3 (sent 4 days later)
  Introduce the key differences between the paid service and the free trial. The email should focus on the benefits of going premium and offer the option to upgrade.
• Email 4 (sent 7 days later)
  Alert the customer that their free trial is ending later in the day and make a strong pitch for the premium, paid service.

Email drip campaigns can be built right into the fabric of your business. That means that once a customer takes an action (like signing up for a free trial) the email drip campaign gets sent out automatically, according to a predefined schedule. But the real beauty of these campaigns is their flexibility to be implemented in a host of different ways (which we’ll get into below).  

Here’s an example of a drip campaign flow.

Marketing Benefits of Email Drip Campaigns

The short answer is this: the more often people engage with your site, the more likely they are to convert into paying customers.

Effective email drip campaigns allow people to build a better relationship with your brand while keeping your brand in their awareness. It’s easy for people to visit a website, sign up for a free eBook, and then forget about a brand completely. You have to stay in contact if you want to convert anyone from an interested lead to a paying customer.  

As mentioned above, email drip campaigns are a great marketing tool because they’re highly targeted for specific people, at a specific stage in your sales funnel. This is great for building trust because it allows you to provide more relevant, personalized content in your messaging.  

Personalized emails connect with people better and statistically increase engagement rates across the board. 82% of marketers have reported an increase in open rates through email personalization. And increased open rates mean more opportunities to sell someone on taking a specific action.  

When you implement them properly, email drip campaigns are an excellent way to consistently grow your brand. Once they’re set up, you can automate the entire process so your campaigns get sent out automatically without sacrificing a ton of overhead.  

The Best Ways to Use an Email Drip Campaign

The only way to maximize the benefits of an email drip campaign is to be extremely clear about a couple of things:

1. Which customers you’re targeting

2. Your goal for the campaign

Remember that each campaign is designed to connect with a specific group of people, for a specific purpose. The following list is not definitive by any means, but these are some of the best ways to run email drip campaigns. 

Lead Nurturing

As you know, not everyone who engages with your brand is going to make a purchase right away. The goal of lead nurturing is two-fold: guide potential customers toward making a purchase and develop strong relationships with them through your brand. Companies that neglect to run lead nurturing campaigns are selling themselves short.

The stats are clear: companies that don’t perform lead nurturing end up losing 80% of their leads – meanwhile, companies that implement a lead nurturing strategy generate 50% more sales while spending 33% less.  

Customer acquisition is a process. It’s rare that someone will visit your site for the first time and make a purchase that same day. In fact, a report by Marketo found that 50% of leads aren’t ready to buy the first time they engage with a brand. An email drip campaign is one of the best ways to nurture your leads, build trust in your brand, and ultimately, convert more paying customers.  

Welcome New Customers

Whenever you acquire a new email address — whether it’s from a newsletter signup, a product purchase, or an eBook release — it’s a great time to engage and keep your brand in their sights.

An email drip campaign provides much more value and engagement potential than a simple “thank you” email. That’s because an email drip campaign keeps the value coming over a longer period. It ensures that your new customers don’t quickly forget about their purchase with you and move on. In the long-run, retailers that send out an email drip campaign after a customer’s first purchase make 13% more revenue than those that just send one.  

Re-engagement Campaigns

These are for your long-time customers who haven’t interacted with your brand in a while. The goal here is to re-engage with your customers and win back their interest in your brand.

You can use these to showcase new products, discounts, or offers and entice people to revisit your site. Sometimes all it takes to get someone to come back is to send out a simple ‘We miss you!’ email.  

Abandoned Cart 

If you run an eCommerce brand, it’s bound to happen: a customer clicks buy, starts filling out their information, but doesn’t complete the purchase. In fact, the Baymard Institute found that 67.35% of online shopping carts are abandoned. That’s a lot of missed opportunities… 

Image source can use an email drip campaign to entice those customers to come back and complete their purchase. The campaign can be initiated automatically as soon as a customer leaves your site with an item in their shopping cart.  

Educational Campaigns

An educational email drip campaign is focused on providing actionable insights and value to your customers. They’re a great way for brands to increase their credibility amongst their customers and stand out from the competition.

For example, a fitness center could offer their customers the option to join a free six-pack abs course. Over a series of emails, the customer will be introduced to real ab workouts and tips they can use to improve their physique.

Although these campaigns aren’t directly focused on making a sale, they’re great for building rapport with people who’ve already shown interest. You’ll increase rapport, increase your brand’s reputation, and build the trust that people need to actually make a purchase down the line.  

For more information about dental lab email marketing campaifgns, call 888-715-9099. or visit DentalLabSupport.com

Happy Birthday Internet!

It's the 50th anniversary of the internet's predecessor. Where's the utopia we were promised?

The birth of what would usher in the internet began with a whimper rather than a bang.

On 29 October 1969, programmer Charles Kline attempted to transmit the message "login" from a computer at UCLA to one at Stanford, some 350 miles away.

The message was to be transmitted over a network funded by the US Department of Defense. The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, or APRPANET, was a project that would network computers together to share information. The machines at UCLA and Stanford were the first on the network, but would be joined by computers at UC Santa Barbara and the University of Utah by the end of 1969.

But on 29 October, ARPANET began its life with the attempt to send that simple "login" message. In a poetic foreshadowing of the frustrations that its technological successor would cause, Kline was only able to get the letters "lo" out before the system crashed.

But those two letters marked a turning point for human culture. Within 25 years, the internet would be mainstream. Within 40 years, it would have fundamentally transformed every facet of human interaction.

A tarnished utopia

In the early days of the internet's foray into mainstream culture, the landscape abounded with utopians who predicted that the online world would usher in a new age of openness, understanding, prosperity and peace. Twenty-five years after most of these predictions, it's fair to say they were largely off-base.

Even the techno-prophets themselves have had to concede that the internet utopia they envisioned hasn't come to pass. One of them, author Rick Webb, went so far as to pen a 2017 Medium piece apologizing for his role in promoting the utopian vision of the internet.

"I don’t think anyone saw coming that we’d have to actually be explaining to American children why racism and fascism are bad in the 21st century. Our digital prophets certainly left that bit out," Webb wrote.

But even in the midst of his regret, Webb acknowledges the parts of his utopian vision that actually have come true.

"A lonely transgender person in rural America who may have felt completely isolated before can now find a community of support. One could argue that the internet has hastened political progress, and helped topple oppressive regimes. This is all true," he wrote.

While the internet has no doubt given a voice and a platform to those opposing equality and peace, it's also fulfilled those old prophesies of creating a world without borders, of changing commerce, of connecting humanity. If the internet is deeply flawed, it's because it's a reflection of the humans who populate it. A platform can't usher in utopia. It can only give us the tools to do it ourselves.

And the tools it's given us are incredibly powerful. Fifty years ago, the thought of someone living in the American Midwest having a window into the life of someone living in Spain, in Pakistan, in Sri Lanka, in Australia, was unfathomable. Now we have the power to connect with people anywhere in the world in an instant. Yes, it's a power that's been used to spread hate and discord. But it's still a power that can continue to transform the world for the better, if we embrace the better parts of ourselves.

The internet has already transformed the way humans communicate. Now, we're in the midst of a new transformation: a transformation of the way humans work.

The future of work

For much of human history, the structure of work has remained the same. It's always been about the exchange of labor for compensation, but the way it's been carried out has been constrained for both parties. For workers, it's meant adhering to a specific schedule at a specific location. For employers, it's meant paying both for productive and unproductive hours, and being limited to the talent pool in a specific geographical area.

The same way the internet destroyed the constraints on human communication, it's now destroying the constraints on work.

Freelance marketplaces remove the constraints both for employers and employees. A worker can now exchange their productivity for compensation while dictating their own schedule. An employer can now hire for specific jobs at specific times, and only pay for the productivity they need.

And removing the constraints of geography may be the most revolutionary change the internet is bringing to work.

Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy once said, "the smartest people in the world don't all work for us. Most them work someone else." Taking this a step further, it's likely that, if you're a business owner, not only do the smartest people in the world not work for you, they don't even work in proximity to you or each other.

No matter what field you're in, it's unlikely that the top talent for any role you're looking to fill all live in your immediate vicinity. Instead, they're spread out across the globe. The transformation that the internet is bringing to work is that you're no longer bound to hiring from the talent pool in your geographic area. Now, instead of being limited to the most talented software engineer in Cleveland, Ohio, you can choose to work with the most talented software engineer in the world, no matter where they are.

Moreover, you can work with them for a specific project, for the specific period of time you need their skills. As an employer, you get the freedom to hire only the best and pay only for the amount of work actually done. As a worker, they get to determine their own schedule, their own location and choose only the projects they want to do.

This fundamental change to work is gathering pace. The recently released Intuit 2020 Report found that 80% of major corporations plan to shift more towards a freelance workforce.

It's not just major corporations that are embracing the internet workplace revolution. Freelance marketplaces mean starting a business is now within the grasp of more people. The Intuit Report claims that entrepreneurs no longer need large amounts of capital to start a business, as more efficient systems and cheaper manufacturing lower the barriers to entry. Relying on a freelance workforce removes another huge barrier startup founders face. Not only can they find talent quickly and less expensively, they can source the best talent for any project, from anywhere in the world.

This revolution would have been unthinkable if not for that simple, two-letter message sent 50 years ago today. When Charles Kline sent that message, it's doubtful he could have foreseen the ramifications of a fully networked society, both the good and bad. In the same way, the utopians of the 1990s didn't foresee all the pain and anger that open, transparent communication could bring.

But for the optimists among us, there's reason to hope. The story of how the internet changes society is far from over. We're still at the cusp of a massive shift in the way people work and get work done. And if we embrace it for the freedom it offers both to workers and employers, utopia could still be horizon.

Multi-touch Direct Mail Campaigns To Get A Better Response

I often hear from dental lab industry marketers that they want to “test direct mail marketing” and my first response is to recommend multi-touch direct mail campaigns.

What surprises me is how often marketers that are new to direct mail are thinking they’ll send out a single touch of say, 500 pieces to evaluate “whether direct mail works” for them. If it works, great. If not, they’ll plan to move on to something else.

That’s a shame because like so many aspects of business, especially with dental laboratories it often takes more than one send to generate the desired response.

And drawing broad conclusions such as “direct mail doesn’t work” from just one mailing results in plenty of missed opportunities.

Experienced direct mailers understand the need to use multiple touches to maximize the impact of a campaign, and are planning to implement a consistent testing strategy across each touch.

They know direct mail “works”. It’s a matter of finding the right audience, offer and creative.

You’d Fire A Salesperson That Gives Up After One Touch

Think about it this way: If you’re a salesperson, would you make one phone call, leave a message, and if you don’t get a call back just give up on that prospect?

Of course not. You’d probably try to contact that prospect a few more times because it often takes more than one attempt to make a sale. It’s always been that way and always will be.

Multi-touch marketing is at the core of the way modern business is conducted. Direct mail works the same way.

You don’t often see pattern of “single touch” in other forms of media. Whether running traditional offline ads in magazines or on TV or engaging with prospects online, do you run just one ad and call it a day?

No way!

Think about how long ads on a topic you’ve researched online follow you around — on Facebook, websites, and apps you use — for days, if not weeks.

So why should direct mail be any different?

It’s not, and you don’t need to take my word for it. According to Mike Schultz, President of the RAIN Group, says it can take an “average of 8 touches to get an initial meeting (or other conversion) with a new prospect” and in some cases it can take more.

Multi-touch marketing: Communicate with hot prospects again and again


I guess one silver lining is that because so many organizations give up way too soon, you can benefit from your competitor’s mistakes!

When you consider how direct mail pairs excellently with other forms of media — both online and offline — an integrated campaign can deliver results far more impressive than with one type of media alone.

In fact, many DentalLabSupport.com clients use direct mail in conjunction with their email campaigns. I consistently hear from our clients that there’s a combined lift when both are used.

Properly timed, email supports direct marketing campaigns and direct mail boosts email response rates. Consider these research findings:

According to a 2019 USPS white paper, The Future of Direct Mail Is Here and It’s Dynamic, 60 percent of marketers surveyed said that combining digital and direct mail increased ROI — with 68 percent reporting increased website visits.

A Target Marketing “Media Usage Survey” described a controlled study in which a print-only campaign produced a 6 percent response rate while the same campaign distributed through both print and email lifted that response rate by more than 25 percent — to 7.6 percent.

A DentalLabSupport Marketing survey reported that more than half of all small businesses use three or more marketing channels.

And with today’s automated tools, marketers can more quickly take action based on how prospects respond online — whether visiting a website, clicking a link in an email, or interacting through social media — using that information to retarget prospects with personalized direct mail that can be sent instantly to a printer/mailer for processing.

Multi-touch direct mail for the full buyer’s journey


How can you best use this integration of multiple communication channels?

One way is through pre-defined workflows designed to meet specific goals such as building awareness, generating leads, nurturing leads, promoting events, and more. But even using direct mail alone delivers better results when you don’t give up too soon.

Here’s a sample email/direct mail campaign designed to reactivate cold or dead leads. Which do you think has a better chance of energizing an old lead – a single direct mail or this multi-touch marketing campaign?




Whether you combine other channels or not, it’s important to understand that a successful multi-touch direct mail campaign requires more than simply sending out several mailings one after the other. When each is strategically timed to influence prospects along the buying journey, you can enjoy more successful results.

Attribution Makes Direct Mail Click

You see, what makes direct mail an exceptional offline media channel is that you get precise attribution you don’t get with mass media such as print ads or TV.

By using automatically generated, personalized URLs (pURLs), you can track online response (or non-response) across each “mail drop” or touch of a multi-touch direct mail campaign.. By using pURLs as the “bridge” between your mailings and the online experience, you get both the impact and high response of direct mail and the tracking and analytics you expect from digital marketing channels.

An example campaign: How multi-touch mailings multiply results

Here’s an example that shows how multiple mailings might work. Let’s assume that you sell an e-learning solution offering home-based tutoring in a wide variety of skills for students in grades K-12.

You might start a campaign with an initial sequence of three different direct mail packages (which could be sent along with email) each focusing on a different benefit — perhaps based on skills taught, age range, ease of use, etc.




A response to any of the three mailings would trigger another sequence of the multi-touch direct mail based on that specific benefit.

If there’s no response to the first mailing, you send another, and then another. If there’s no response after three mailings, you might give up on that prospect (for now, anyway).

If you do get a response, another sequence designed around the benefit that drove that response begins. These mailings might include a higher commitment offer — for example, a sales call. If there’s no response, that specific sequence might continue for another two or three mailings.

Here’s how these multi-touch marketing sequences look. First, you’d have three initial emails designed to segment prospects into specific follow-up mailing sequences:

Initial flow

No response Response

Offer A1 Offer A2 Responder Flow X

Offer A2 Offer A3 Responder Flow Y

Offer A3 Stop mailing for now Responder Flow Z

Then, each follow-up sequence can be structured in a similar way – but customized to the first offer the prospect found relevant:

Responder Flow X No response Response

Offer X1 Offer X2 Sales call

Offer X2 Offer X3 Sales call

Offer X3 Stop mailing for now Sales call

Responder Flow Y No response Response

Offer Y1 Offer Y2 Sales call

Offer Y2 Offer Y3 Sales call

Offer Y3 Stop mailing for now Sales call

Responder Flow Z No response Response

Offer Z1 Offer Z2 Sales call

Offer Z2 Offer Z3 Sales call

Offer Z3 Stop mailing for now Sales call

You can intersperse email into this flow, allow for special mailings to be sent if a prospect visits your website, a specific web page, or downloads a specific resource. Yes, this seems as if this flow would be complex to set up, but today’s automated direct mail platforms integrate with marketing automation tools to make this exceedingly easy and affordable.

Even just a few years ago, a multi-touch campaign like this would be far too complex and costly to execute. For example, sending a direct mail piece within a few hours of a visit to your website might mean sending only a few mailings per day. The fixed costs of setting up printing and mailing — which are the same whether sending 10 or 10,000 pieces — would have been prohibitive.

So don’t give up – at least not too soon. Because if at first you don’t succeed, that next mailing could be the one that triggers a profitable sale.

Automated segmentation for multi-touch marketing


Better yet, today’s direct mail tools are automated to segment your audience based on their response (or non-response) and send subsequent direct mail pieces with specific creative customized for each segment.


Each part of a multi-touch direct mail campaign can be scheduled to target these precise segments through simple campaign wizards — without the need to manually tabulate responses and build lists for each mailing.

For example, if you send a direct mail postcard and get a response to a specific offer, you may send another direct mail piece, perhaps a thank you letter, a week later with another offer.

If you don’t receive a response, you might send another postcard, perhaps highlighting a different benefit of the same offer.

You can even test various approaches as your campaign continues – so you can gain even more insights into what works and what doesn’t. For more information on best practices for testing, review my latest post here

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