Pop Quiz
Evaluating how you interact with customers
Mary Yakas
Editor’s Note: At The Dental Advisor, not a day goes by without our phone ringing from a customer asking for the "best." As a dental publication that was designed after Consumer Reports, over the past 25 years we have learned one thing - the best changes from day to day. Providing relevant and timely information to customers is something we strive for. This series of columns will focus on how dental sales professionals can sort through the hype, learn more about what makes a product stand out, and most importantly, learn to educate their customer.
In the last column, we discussed assessing how customers interact with sales reps. This month, we want to focus on a critical piece of that equation - you.
In order to thrive in a competitive sales environment, how do you set yourself apart from being just an order taker? Critiquing your own skills, areas of growth and opportunity, and level of dental knowledge is not always easy, but vital.
At The Dental Advisor, we have had the pleasure of working with dental distribution and manufacturer reps in our corporate training program. It is startling how sales reps can excel in a very specific area, yet have little knowledge of how it fits into the big picture of daily operations of a dental practice.
Dental sales reps typically do not have the opportunity to learn about the doctors they sell to, experience the challenges faced in daily dentistry, or interact with dental office personnel for a meaningful amount of time. Therefore, it is imperative that knowledge is gained outside of visiting potential customers.
Take the quiz
Assess your level beyond order taker by answering the following questions:
- Are you aware of what healthy practice overhead should be in terms of dental supplies, laboratory fees, and salaries? Do you know how these amounts affect a dental practice’s business? Do you understand fixed and variable expenses?
- Are you aware of the types of taxes that doctors may be responsible for paying in relationship to their operations?
- Do you understand new products and technology and how they will improve a practice?
- How responsive are you to your customer complaints and concerns?
- Do you understand how to intelligently answer clinical concerns of doctors, assistants and hygienists, without telling them how to change the way they work?
- Most importantly, are you open to change as you often request your customers to be?
Answering these questions honestly will help you identify areas where you need to focus on for growth, both personally and in your sales numbers.
Setting yourself apart means evaluating the way you do business. If your customers are asking questions, the answers you provide have to be more than rhetoric you overheard on a co-travel, at a sales meeting or skimmed in literature. Doctors will see right through that, and you will lose credibility. On the flip side, if you understand the reasons behind your claims, as well as how they affect a clinical situation, you will be revered as an expert. It is never wrong to tell a customer that you do not have the answer, but you have a resource for the answer. The key is following through to get an answer that is credible, instead of providing answers off the cuff.
In times when competition is steep, and prices are dropping, the value you provide as a well-informed rep will secure your business now and in the future. [FI]
We welcome sales representatives reading First Impressions to subscribe or utilize our free basic subscription to The Dental Advisor Online at www.dentaladvisor.com, just enter the promo code FIRSTIMP.
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