Driving Sales: A Strategic Approach

I have written about asking for referrals and other mechanisms for acquiring new clients for your dental laboratory in past articles. This segment will be part of a three-tiered approach to creating a meaningful customer acquisition and retention strategy that you can implement.  First we will discuss the role of continuing education and training as a sales driver and retention tool. Second, we will create a framework for successful integration of that strategy by understanding the role of employee acquisition and retention through their education, training and engagement. In part three we will look at a significant new strategy for systemitizing these into a cost effective strategic plan that provides an appropriate ROI.

Part 1: Customer Acquisition and Retention

Every laboratory I visit and talk to or work with always has a similar request, more clients. It is rare to find a laboratory that is at capacity and is only available by invitation to new doctors. I have certainly seen labs that are at or near capacity that do not seem to need new clients, but on further investigation, they do indeed need more of the right kind of customers. When we apply the Perato principle to the client bases at labs we see that 70 percent to 80 percent of the revenue and often more of the profit comes from 20 percent to 30 percent of the customer base. So how do we get more in total, or more of the right ones and more importantly how do we keep them?

After an excellent product and service proposition is in place, finding the right value addition to attract and retain the right doctors is key. For this discussion, I will assume that the table stakes have been met. That is to say, product quality, service delivery and appropriate pricing is being served. Without these, the disconnect is too large to overcome and marketing strategies are less likely to have a sustainable impact.

Continuing dental education has always been and should continue to be a mainstay of this value proposition.  Formal lectures, presentations and meetings provide a mechanism for giving your clients something they need, and more importantly they want. Informal educational interfaces occur as well. When clients call the lab and discuss treatment options and material selection and application, we are educating them as well. It might not be in the traditional lecture format or by an important influential dental guru, but they serve to cement the bond and help the dentist and their team find solutions to their concerns.

Studies and surveys by JDT, LMT, ADA, AGD et. al. have routinely shown that the dental laboratory is considered an important source of dental continuing education. This source of trusted information provides an important avenue to both attract and retain customers. New doctors who are invited by colleagues to your programs may choose to accept this new source of practice development information and initiate a relationship. That does not mean they will desert their current laboratory on the spot, but over time you may be positioning yourself as an advocate to their practice success and growth. The premise here is that if we help the doctors solve their problems, they are likely to move in our direction.  This may not happen instantly, but over time, when they become dissatisfied with something in or from their current laboratory service provider, they will choose you. This choice will come because you have positioned yourself as a trusted advisor who has answered the question what is in it for them not for you. When we position the laboratory as a resource that helps them prosper, they will come.  Like in Field of Dreams, if you build it they will come.

Choosing the type of continuing education to provide is also critical. It should match your vision and mission for your laboratory as well as be consistent with your values. If you want to capture more of the big cutters doing large cases that provide stimulation and healthy challenges for your staff (as well as more revenue), then offer the growth and development opportunities that support that.  You know the drill. Kois, Spear, Dawson, Pankey, LVI, Hornbrook, Eubanks, Trinkner etc. will provide the sophisticated educational environment that attracts the right clients and helps retain those that you have.

Customer retention is key to long-term success. It makes little sense to have one coming in the front door while another is sneaking out the back. Matching the right continuing education programming to help existing doctors grow in both clinical and behavioral skills will make it difficult for them to consider other laboratory alternativesÖ.even for price. If a dental practice and team feel that you are truly a valued resource to their continued success, profitability and reduce their stress, they will consider you an unpaid team member. This trusted advocacy is a strong bond indeed. I always see these kind of relationships in laboratories that are prospering. They do not really compete on price or location, rather, they are a trusted resource that the dentist feels they could not live without.

When we meet next time we will take a look at customer employee engagement and the metrics associated with that. Research continues to prove out that to have a strong customer retention and engagement, it starts with internal systems that support excellent employee retention and job satisfaction. Their training and development is an internal system that supports customer attraction and retention. Finally we will look at continuing dental education and continuing laboratory technician and management raining that is on the horizon. New innovative designs in delivery mechanisms with the Web, i-pods and satellite technology make implementation of very sophisticated systems not only possible, but affordable as well. When the cost comes down as it has, the return on investment climbs and that is a good thing.