Why Timing Matters in Sales Automation for Dental Labs

It's all about timing. Even the most well-intended sales automation strategy can fall apart if you don't reach your leads while they're most receptive to your message. And after reading this post, you'll understand just why this timing is so crucial, while learning best practices that help get you to better Sales Automation for your dental laboratory.

Timing Matters For Your First Email

Sales automation, as you might be aware, begins with the first email a contact receives from you after signing up and becoming a lead. And at this early stage, timing is already crucial: a study by the Harvard Business Review found that leads are no less than seven times more likely to become customers if they're followed up with in an hour or less. 

Unfortunately, most businesses do not take advantage of this fact. The same study also found that the majority of businesses don't follow up with their leads until at least 12 hours after the initial sign up. As you can imagine, this delay can result in a significant opportunity cost. But it's also an opportunity! If you follow up with your leads quickly and efficiently, you will not only increase the likelihood of turning them into customers - you'll also stand out from and make a better impression on potential customers than your competition.

Timing Matters Throughout the Funnel

Of course, the timing of your emails is not only important during the first part of your sales automation process. Instead, you should take special care that your automated emails are timed just right in order to optimize your lead nurturing efforts. That's true both in terms of the frequency with which you send emails, and the actual times at which your emails arrive in your audience's inbox.

There's a fine line between persistence and pestering. While most leads will welcome an email about once a week with dental industry and company updates, they will frown upon daily emails that keep pushing them toward making a sale. The best frequency will depend on your exact industry, but according to research firm MarketingSherpa, there is a clear correlation between an increase in frequency beyond once a week and a decrease in email performance. In general, once a week is a good goal to shoot for - as long as you have interesting content to share.

Timing Matters When Closing the Deal

Thanks to a fast follow-up email along with well-timed emails throughout the sales automation process, you're getting plenty of sales-qualified leads. As it turns out, timing matters one more time: when closing the deal. Put simply, you don't want to miss out on sales opportunities by missing the perfect window to make that sales call.

That's where lead scoring comes in, a process that allows you to determine which leads are ready to become customers based on their interactions with you. We've covered lead scoring extensively on this blog, but would be remiss not to mention it as a crucial mechanism to get the timing in your marketing automation just right.

Sales automation, in short, is all about the timing: from sending your first email to scheduling your lead nurturing efforts all the way to closing the deal, taking action at exactly the right time means increasing your chances of growing your customer base. And a good CRM can help with all of these efforts! Contact us to learn more. 

DentalLabSupport.com Sales & Marketing Platform Developed For Dental Labs 1.888.715.9099 - info@dentallabsupport.com

Frustrating and Avoidable Causes of Lost Sales Opportunities

Nothing is worse than forecasting your dental lab's sales for the month and then losing the sale you were most sure of closing. According to research from IDC, 85% of sales representatives struggle to meet their quotas. In this article let’s take a look at a few possible causes of lost sales and how getting past the first meeting is a big step.

Keeping the Meeting
Getting your qualified prospects to set up an appointment is one thing; actually having the meeting is a different story. Lets face it, dentist are busy! The appointments you set with your prospects could be getting canceled for several reasons. Let’s start with the basics.

The first aspect of canceled appointments I’d like to address is who. Job titles today can be misleading and provide the idea of more authority than the person holds. For example, secretaries are now Administrative Assistants, and many other non-managerial titles include “director.” These individuals are often just gatekeepers. Be certain that you’re talking with someone who truly has decision-making power to avoid lost sales.
Inviting too many people from your company is another deterrent and a possible reason for abandoned sales meetings. You risk scaring off your prospect by introducing them to too much too soon. If they have specific questions for IT, then invite IT to join in on a follow-up call in the future.

In the Dental Lab Industry, timing is another important factor that comes into play. Everyone is busy these days, and a thirty-minute meeting with a dentist is rare. When sending a calendar invite try to keep it under 20 minutes and show that you value their time by being prepared. How far out you schedule an appointment can also affect the likelihood of it being canceled. By allowing the prospect to pick a date more than two weeks in advance, you are setting them up to cancel on you. A lot can come up over two weeks, and a sales meeting will be near the top of the chopping block if they need to trim their schedule.

One way to avoid cancellations by a dentist is by clarifying what will be discussed in advance. Set expectations for the conversation so that when your prospect sees your appointment on their calendar, they think about securing a solution to problem ‘x’ and not just another sales call. You can do this by including a brief outline of your meeting in the calendar invite or simply mentioning it when asking for the meeting.

Qualifying Your Leads
According to Forrester, by the time a lead contacts someone at your brand they’re already more than 60% of the way into the sales process. This means they’ve already done most of their research and have been comparing your brand with competitors. Colleen Francis from Engage Selling says four stages make up most pipelines: prospecting, qualification, presentation, and closing. She points out that 75 percent of the time in the buyer’s journey is spent in the qualification stage. It’s also important to note that “90 percent of all sales start to fail in that qualification phase.” The probability of a sale increases as the seller invests more time into the buyer’s qualification stage. During this period, the buyer needs to ask the right questions and find out how their product addresses the sellers’ needs.

Tips to Avoid Lost Sales
Chasing unqualified leads is a major time waster for sales reps. Asking questions and reviewing company data will help to weed out prospects unsuitable for your product. It’s important that you invest your time wisely and qualify your leads before starting to court them. InsideSales.com reported that when a lead is called within five minutes of sending an information request, they are ten times more likely to respond and four times more likely to be a qualified lead. Sadly, the same report indicates that 71% of Internet-generated leads are not called. The presentations you give to your prospects should be efficient and brief. As noted earlier, everyone is busy, so you’ll want to keep your presentations short and to the point. If you’re using PowerPoint, try not to overload your slides with data.
And finally, be authentic when speaking with prospective clients. If you’re using a script, use inflection in your voice to avoid sounding like a machine. Showing your personality portrays your uniqueness and humanity. As Bryan Kramer says, it’s all about human to human (H2H) connections, not business to business (B2B) or business to consumer (B2C).

For more information visit DentalLabSupport.com or call 1.888.715.9099