Why You Need To Exit the Implant Case Sales Game – Part 4
Fortunately, there is a new way to break from the failed past and approach sales in a way that’s far more predictable (at least with Big Case Marketing):
The pandemic was an economic boom period for implant practices who went into it with strong advertising already in place. Record months and two record years were on the books for many clients. But that gravy train couldn’t last. My gut said, ‘what goes up must come down’ and I believed things were going to get much harder as we would leave the pandemic as tons of practices would pile back into advertising driving up lead costs (yes, I was correct). What I didn’t count on was the staffing nightmares than would soon descend.
The Need for Change
They say necessity is the mother of invention and that has been exactly the case with our new Remote Sales Team support program which initially was in response to the staffing crisis our clients found themselves in and that our prospective clients were reporting.
In mid 2021, we found ourselves as an ad agency in the middle of a nightmare realization due to the following realities.
- Our clients were frequently missing staff who left during the pandemic
- A hiring nightmare had descended on the profession unlike anything in written dental history since the 1900s. There was a labor force shake-up that is continuing.
- Existing staff were overloaded due to short staffing and even the most sales adept among our client base were having major issues handling their advertising leads properly
- Task overload was going to impact even our 15% who are wired for sales success
- Patients now demanded more hand-holding to get into treatment compared to before the pandemic
- Universally, new prospective clients in sales discussions with us for advertising work were showing up with the same problems which means their odds of success were reduced even further compared to the pre-pandemic state of affairs
As a result of all the above, we were going to see our active client base shrinking quickly. Our business goose was soon to be cooked!
Our Pivot Options
My team and I went into discussion mode on what could we do to handle the labor issue.
- Option 1: Help practice’s hire/take over hiring by writing and placing the employment ads and then screening, qualifying, recommending prospects, etc? Good ads would find good staff. Well, in regular times yes, BUT we would be stuck with the same problem as the local practice with a non-existent labor pool to advertise to. It was clear this was simply re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
- Option 2: Acquire our own labor force (no local hiring needed) for remote sales, train our labor, and then supply it to our clients in need? BINGO! We had an idea and decided to figure out how to execute it. By January 2022, we were building it out and moving to shift to a ‘we sell the cases for you’ model of advertising.
The Recipe for Success
Our first a-ha with this was if we started providing some labor as part of our services that we would head off this issue of lack of staff for some practices. That was a given and this was the initial REASON WHY we embarked on this mission.
But then… a second and far bigger a-ha arrived and that was that by providing professional sales people being professionally managed in ways that practices never had the bandwidth we could remove the sales frustrations that we’ve seen with the vast majority of our client failures (the 85% who flame out). We were going to solve our headache AND we were going to solve the sales headaches of the doctors and teams AND as a result more patients were going to move on to implant care. It was a triple play.
We WIN. The Practice WINS. The Patients WIN. Booya!
Next time, we’ll go on into what, up until now, seemed liked insurmountable advantages that the leading national implant centers (Mr. Gorilla from Part 1) have had against all independents and small DSOs…UNTIL NOW.
Moving Forward
If it’s clear that you can see how lack of staff, lack of staff ability and desire, or inability to hire local sales professionals are barriers to your entry into the full arch case market, let’s talk 1:1.
The first call to discuss your goals with the number of full arch cases you can accommodate each month from advertising is FREE. To schedule, go to www.meetme.so/jamesmcanally
