How Do You Sell Leads To A Dentist

Doesn't surprise me a bit. The medical profession has themselves built up to be above marketing. They are only fooling themselves.

I too am working on a similar business plan as you. I have even had software built to automate the process. I don't think I will approach Medical people first though. If I do I will probly leverage with a direct mail piece.

My 2 cents

Seb

Thanks for this report, but I'm not surprised. I've had dentists that offer some kind of gift if you refer a friend, but I've never heard of anyone set up to handle pay leads. I have a site that ranks for medical and dental terms but I don't know of any way to monetize it. I'm thinking that big hospitals might have affiliate programs.

Couple of things,

True that the medical professional thinks their sheet doesn't smell, try contractors, trades people.

Also, offer their first 5 leads for free. I guarantee you if one converts, they'll be calling you for more, that's when you hit them with the price.

Selling services to business onwers, what are you offering and what are you charging?

Peace

The medical area is tough. I know around here dentists are actually turning peple away so they don not need leads..

Check into LeTip or Business networking international. Those types of networking groups usually have a dentist and that dentist is at least doing something to market himself.

Might be worth a look.

Try some of these:

Plumbers
roofers
electricians
house painters
heating oil companies
home improvement contractors

the only thing in "medical" I know works is Chiropractors........I sell a couple of them leads from time to time

I will try some different markets than medical.I almost started with chiropractors,but figured they would be a tough sell.I know a couple of the local chiropractors and they are top grade a$$holes.

I am going to send some emails out to different people and then follow up by phone.This time I will make sure I have a few people interested before putting up a site.

The dental site didn't take much time,but it seems to be a waste now.With some very basic seo I had already got 1st page rankings.It would be nothing to dominate the terms in organic listings.

All in all it was a good learning experience.I got some phone time in and found out how easy I can enter a local market with basic marketing.

I was offering the leads for free as Frank mentioned above.That seemed to be the best strategy to get my foot in the door and build trust.As soon as I mentioned any possibility of future payments,that's went it all went south.

It is encouraging to see other people have experienced similar results with dentist and the medical field.I was beginning to think I was the worst marketer in existence when I couldn't even give away 3 leads.

What is your approach when you are contacting these dentists and offering the leads? Someone above mentioned offering some free leads. This is pretty common, and I have almost always negotiated free leads when I've bought them for my insurance agency.

If you or your leads don't have a reputation with dentists, it's hard for them to know what type of quality you're offering.

Additionally, the site you've created is not a waste. If you don't want to sell dental leads, why not sell the site that's generating leads to a local dentist? It's already proven to convert visitors into sign-ups.

Good luck!

On a side note... while targeting medical professionals can be lucrative, the downside is the ability to actually speak with a decision maker. Doctors, dentists, and other medical professionals seem to go out of their way to make it impossible to see them without an appointment.

In some ways, I really don't blame them, but it makes getting your foot in the door from a sales standpoint much more difficult.

I've had some of the same experiences with attorneys. In my case, I would give them the leads when they answered a simple legal question people asked on the website. Literally everyone who asked a question noted on the form they wanted to be contacted by an attorney. i can't even get the few attorneys I recruited to answer a damn question when it comes in. So these leads are basically going to waste.

I do have one rectangle adsense block and that pays out gangbusters for clicks, upwards of $2 or more every time. So they will pay huge amounts to advertise, but when you actually have a lead for them, they could care less. Oh, and I have the site ranking in the top 5 spots for the term: chicago attorneys

Actually what you are doing is technically illegal
It is ok to market, but not to 'birddog' (or ambulance chase?)
which is what it is called unless YOU are providing the service

It is ok to get a lead for a doctor
but not ok to get a lead and then find a doctor to treat the lead
(as it was explained to me anyway)

I am not a doctor, nor a lawyer
but that may be the reason?

Great point! Now for the OP and you, what you can do is start offering advertising space on your website to the dentists or whoever, let them customize the whole page to their business, there are many great selling points for this:

- it's not an online business directory, their competitors are not there, the only person the visitor can call is them!
- if they don't take the website someone else will
- low monthly rental fee on a subscription (paypal) to their credit card
- low management for you and them (don't have to qualify leads, chase up payments!)

Remember these guys pay $1500 and over for 6 months+ for an online yellow pages listing that does nothing for them.

So if you charge them $250 a month at minimum they will get their money back with 1 conversion probably! any conversions for the month after that 1 is profit for them, and that is another great selling point

$250 x 12 months = $3000 a year, for very little work!

you can always track clicks to the phone number on the website to see how many clicks they are getting to justify and increase in your price! Plus they won't mind if they really are getting business through your site they don't want to loose this to someone else!

You may think $250/month is too cheap, well it depends on how many targeted visitors your website is getting, even if you are getting 5 a day that's a nice 150 a month possible leads for them, however not all of them are going to call for various reasons, even the ones that call doesn't mean they will convert for your client. So if you are getting 30+ visitors a day, by all means charge more, but for 150 to 300 visitors are month then $250 is about right otherwise the client cannot make money off your advertising. You want to over deliver not under deliver by charging a lot and they only get 2 conversions from you, that's not very impression to them, if you over deliver they will love you and willing to trust you on anything that = $$.

oh and usually when talking to someone they understand about being on the first page of google, most likely their website is not if they have one! So once you tell them that 'my website is on the first page of google and I'm offering it to only 1 business to customize as their own so you get all the leads' they are very interested!

Another benefit is that these clients can turn into your SEO clients, once they start seeing it's working, they start thinking wait a minute I could have my own website ranking rather than paying a monthly rental forever!

The medical profession gets their leads by joining HMOs. Or they don't take insurance and they get their leads from word of mouth by high paying clients.

This is the process I was using and how it all went down.

1.Sent email to the dentists informing them that I recieve information from people looking to have dental work done.Provided my email and phone number to contact me if they needed more information.

2.Didn't recieve any calls but did recieve 2 emails saying thanks but no thanks.

3.Followed up by phone with the other 41 dentist.Out of these 41 only 3 actually got on the phone to talk.It seemed to offend them that someone would even consider selling fresh hot leads to them.

The other 38 consisted of me dealing with the gate keepers.

I would get put on hold and then told the dentist was busy with a patient.I had expected this to happen so I was not surprised by the run around.

At this point I began informing the gate keepers about the reason for the call at their request.

All is going well when I mention I have 3 referrals for the dentist.About half even get really excited and are more than happy to pass on the leads.

Then the business of how I got the referrals and why I would pass them on came up.After explaining this process and the reason behind my motives that was the end.

Here are some of the responses I got:

1.Dr. so and so doesn't pay for leads or referrals (every dentist I contacted did some form of advertising be it newpaper,tv,radio,websites,ppc,or several of these).

2.We are currently booked up or unable to take on new patients (at the beginning of the call I would ask if they were accepting new patients - and they all said yes).

3.We are currently doing our own advertising (I would then inform them that I was not an advertising agency nor was I selling advertising) but that didn't matter.

4.We already have a website to collect leads (I would then explain that I was not selling a website) but that didn't matter.

5.We are just not interested.

6.I even got a couple that said they had no interest in growing their business as David mentioned in his post above.

7.Regardless of the responses I got,at least 70% became down right rude.

So to sum up:

All were more than happy to accept all and any leads I could come up with for free.And all asked how I came about the leads and my motives for offering them for free (which I fully expected and hoped they would do).I was completely honest and a straight shooter with them about my reasons.Shows over.

None of them said anything about it being illegal,they just didn't want to pay.

Even after I told them the 3 leads were free,the thought that I may ask for money down the road for leads seemed to be an abomination.

My take away was that dentist will pay for newspaper,yellowpages,tv,radio,websites,ppc,and any other method,but would jump off a bridge before they would pay for hot leads ready to be closed.

As mentioned in a few of the other post,they seemed to be above paying for leads.So much so that they turned down 3 free ones.

If you are bored or would like to see how fast people can go from excited to absolutely rude,call some dentist tomorrow offering free leads but then mention the chance that money may change hands down the road.

This has been a good experience in that I learned many lessons in how I go about offline marketing and lead selling.

I enjoy reading all the post as well.I am always learning and looking for new insights to make the next time better.

It's funny that you should bring this up. I have a friend who makes a fortune selling hi-tech medical equipment. The most successful sales people on his team are pretty young women. You'd think that the looks of a sales rep would hardly matter when it comes to hi-tech medical medical equipment used to perform such functions as brain surgery, but it does. Try hiring a bunch of gorgeous sales female sales reps and see if that helps.

My dad was a private dentist for 40 years. In all that time he never advertised once and made sure he was ex-directory. Despite that he was always booked solid at least 3 months in advance.

Dentistry is a funny business. From talking with my dad I can understand why a dentist may consider advertising if things are slow, but I can't imagine them actively persuing a lead. Their whole business is based on reputation and sales vs ethics in dentistry is a lively debate. I could never convince my dad to advertise. He had a certain type of patient that he liked and his business was 100% referral based. He always said that if he advertised he would end up deluged with undesirables.

Why not create a system to collect the leads for the dentist and then sell the system to them.

You know why, because every marketer immediately thinks of these types of business: dentist, lawyer, plumber! I'm guilty of it too, but after putting in more research I've come up with gems, there's a big world out there, with thousands of different services!

I've done the obvious. It can work quite well. It is a matter of not being stereotypical salesy style, but just being more regular in delivery.

I was a dental assistant, front desk receptionist and eventually practice manager for over ten years. In addition, I've managed other unrelated retail enterprises and other types of healthcare establishmens (medical offices mostly)... now I'm selling to dentists!

In order to sell anything to a dentist, you need to know how their practice works. A dental sales rep will tell you that dentists are the most unique creatures in the world, and sales techniques used for anyone else will not work on dentists (and vice versa).

However, you need to get rid of the attitude - calling them "rude tight asses" isn't helping (even though you're not doing it to their face). If you're getting rude behavior from the dentists or assistants, you just don't know how to approach a dental office properly. They're not tight asses, they just come across that way if you don't know what you're dealing with.

When a sales pro comes from another industry into the Dental Sales Rep field, we have to un-train them and send them for new training. Selling to dentists is... well, different.

To help you understand:

- Receptionists in dental offices are busier than any other office - period. Dentists average 10 times the amount of emergencies in one day than medical offices, and they typically have less staff and more impact on their schedule.

- Dental practices oftentimes are so busy handling emergency patients, or difficult cases, that they work straight through lunch and after hours. It's easy for a dentist to put in a 12 hour workday, then come back at 3am for an emergency root canal.

- Receptionists and dentists are approached, on average, 3-5 times a day (although sometimes upwards of 10 times) by marketing reps in person. By phone, they average at least 5 + sales calls a day. They have to handle this while dealing with cranky patients, rude people who won't pay their bills, insurance rejection, and hectic scheduling of emergencies. Phones can ring nonstop, and answering while juggling schedules is no easy feat. Generally, when a receptionist rushes to answer the phone, only to find out it's ANOTHER salesperson, they get annoyed. They don't always mean to, but their jobs are hard... sales people make it even harder.

- Dental offices rarely have a problem generating new patients; in fact, you can basically count specialists (oral surgeons, endodontists, periodontists, etc.) out, because their method of marketing is completely dependent on referrals from general dentists, so as long as they accommodate emergencies and schmooze the dentists a bit, they generally have more referrals than they can handle. You may have a chance with general dentists though, but many are booked 6 months ahead, and are turning away new patients.

- Dental offices have EXTREMELY high overhead. They pay sometimes thousands of dollars for a disposable tip that goes on a handpiece, and needs to be changed for each patient. Even though they may be overbooked, in this economy they're lowering their treatment fees to avoid losing patients, while their overhead just gets higher. They're not going to pay for anything unless they really, really need it!

- Most dentists are working on patients all day and rarely have a few sacred minutes for lunch. Having your free time jeopardized by lunchtime salespeople, or sales calls at another inconvenient time will definitely cause them a lot of frustration. A dentist can't stop in the middle of a procedure; he'll risk contaminating the tooth. So if he comes out of the room for a phone call, thinking it's important, and finds out it's only a sales call, you bet he'll be annoyed! He has to backtrack and now that thirty second phone call just set him back a half hour! He won't care what you're selling, he'll just want to get back to his procedure or few minutes of lunch.

- Five, ten, or even fifteen new patients is nothing, unless you're promising them that many per week (minimum). If you're going to offer leads, try to give them an idea of how many they'll be getting per week, on average. If you can't supply them with at least 5 new patients per week to start (with the promise of increasing over time), they're not going to bother. Unless you're offering a one-time service - in which case they're not going to pay for anything less than probably upwards of 100 leads, depending on your pricing.

- And as far as offering free leads, I'd offer them at least 20 free leads within the first two weeks, if you can do that. Then they'll know you can actually produce results!

- You CAN sell to dentists. Dental sales reps have techniques that help put the receptionists and dentists at ease, and don't get turned away as much as general sales reps. Some helpful hints:

- Be extremely nice and charming. Make sure the receptionist (or dentist) knows you understand the difficulties of running a dental practice.

- Make SURE you talk to them at a time that the receptionist or dentist chooses - that way you guarantee they're not rushing you off the phone. Maybe start out with a phrase like "I understand how busy your practice must be, and how hard your job is - but I wanted to offer you something that could really generate new patients - is there a good time I could talk to you about it? I'm offering a free initial service". That gives them an opening to discuss it on their available time, and many will take your info, give it to the dentist, or call you back later themselves. Some will even stay on the line with you then.

- Target dentists who have already bad reputations, bad reviews, and are in desperate need of patients (look through reviews on Yelp, Yahoo, HealthGrades, etc.)
Again, try to target only general dentists.

- Put together a mini brochure, flier, or some sort of printed material; dental offices respond much better when they can look over information on their own time instead of hearing it over the phone. Make sure it spells out where these referrals are coming from and why they'll be a solid source of leads in the future - not just a one-time thing. Make sure the leads are local (within 20 minutes of the dentists location - many patients that travel more than that will eventually change to a closer dentist). Let them know your leads are local!

- Again: be charming. Be understanding of the challenges dentists face when talking with sales reps. Don't assume they're rude or "tight asses" - assume they have good reason to act that way. Try to get into the mind of a dentist, and you'll be able to sell to one.

Once the Healthcare Bill gets passed, there are going to be 60,000,000 new, regular patients enter the medical services market that previously weren't there.

All of the healthcare providers understand this, and what it represents to their income over the next few years.

Not all of the medical community is cringing over government healthcare - and a few ticker symbols in my personal investment portfolio reflect the forward thinking view of the market. These guys understand what's coming and won't have any problems getting new patients.

That's one area I'd run away from here in the US.

How did you decide to choose dentists as your target market in the first place?
Were you already in that niche doing something else or something?

You also have to realize that doctors are NOT business owners, not in the same sense anyways. They can't take on more patients than hours in the day. They are trading hours for dollars and I think people tend to forget that since they get compensated so well. The concept of leveraging is oftentimes lost on doctors.

Also, I think doctors and marketers like ourselves are about as opposite as can be. In all honesty most of their brains work differently than ours. They specialize in science and we specialize in emotion. We hone our skills to get the most result with the littlest investment of time, money, energy, etc. (leveraging) whereas doctors have a certain way of doing things like clockwork (I don't think I want a dentist doing a root canal to see if he can find a way to outsource it, do it quicker, split test it with another root canal, etc.). Doctors go to school for 8 years before they can even get started, many of us here couldn't wait 8 weeks to turn our first profit.

So it's no surprise that doctors don't "get it". I don't get them. I'm inclined to question the sanity of someone that would choose the life of being a doctor, I see no upside to the profession (other than I guess warm fuzzies for helping people, which no doctor I've ever known ever mentions). I'm sure doctors think there is no worse profession than sales/marketing. Most doctors I know chose that profession because it is high paying, prestigious, and secure. Marketers and doctors are both after a great lifestyle, but each chose a completely opposite way of achieving it which is very indicative of the personality differences and different ways of thinking. These two groups of people are destined to not understand each other (at least for the most part and especially without practice at it).

OP, I feel your pain and frustration. It doesn't seem to make sense. I don't understand it. This is why I'm so glad my business is to the point where everything is outsourced and right now I'm only in contact with clients of mine that were referalls from friends and pretty soon it's going to be phased out to where I will not have to have contact with any clients. To me that is being a true business owner.

You say it like this, "Hey dentist buy my leads". That should work!! j/j!!

It's all in your delivery. Start buy asking them about their current advertising efforts. Once you know what where they are advertising inquire about the success of their efforts, i.e., how many new patients they get off of each ad buy.

Then ask them how many 'guaranteed ads' they buy. When they ask you what a guaranteed ad is, explain ask them how often they buy an ad that they don't have to pay for until after they get the new patients. They'll tell you that they've never bought an ad like that. Then you start telling them about lead gen, but break into it carefully.

Start out by stating something like

'So you mentioned that you're buying a $500 ad in the Springfield Shopper every other month and you usually get 10 new patients from that ad. Based on that, what if I put together some marketing campaigns for you where you never had to pay upfront for the ads and were only charged $50 for when you got a new patient?

This method allows you to free up your cash flow for other things and at $50 per patient you're basically paying the same price as you would for your print ads, but without the risk. Does that sound like a good plan to you?'

Then start them on the first lead... "To show you how it works I'd like to send you a new patient today. This way you can see the quality of the leads I'm sending you and we can get the billing set up before I we get the campaign started. How would you like to pay for your first patient?'

Then just go from there.

It's not hard, it just takes practice and is going to take some work coming up with a script that simplifies the product offering into something that your prospects understand as a good value.

If you are able to get past the medical professionals ego...then maybe. Otherwise, selling leads to them is like selling snow to an eskimo. Not gonna happen.

you gotta edjumacate folks. They just don't get it until some snake oil salesman comes around and ripps em off. then they bad mouth the internet. Do presentations to the medical crowd. Show them what a client is worth to them and how they can get these clients for far less using the power of the internet. edjumacate em.

One of my first, actually he was the first, appointments I ever did with offline consulting was with an eye doctor (a friend asked if I could redesign their website and I used it as a way to get a meeting with the doctor)

Here's what I found out in my hour meeting with him:

1) He mostly marketed his practice by "traditional" methods like street signs, newsletters, and ads in the paper.

2) He had been practicing for over 30+ years and was BOOKED SOLID, but was marketing for new patients because he was bringing additional optometrists into the practice and moving to a bigger location down the street.

3) He was an extremely busy busy man, and eventually I (foolishly) gave up trying to schedule additional meetings with him after a month of having to re-schedule appointments and lack of returned calls (but then 2 weeks later I would get a call from a receptionist saying he's still interested?!)...so ya...eventually I got too pushy trying to schedule a time and I think I drove him away (hey...it was my first attempt at Offline Marketing at the time...I had to learn patience! haha)

4) When I began talking about how he could replace the $500/mo payment for a monthly newsletter that gets mailed out to his patients, with an email follow-up system that would allow him to BUILD A RELATIONSHIP and EDUCATE patients about eye health and new products...HIS EYES LIT UP!



Moral of the Story:

These medical professionals (and most business owners) are BUSY PEOPLE, so instead of INTERRUPTING their business with "another sales call" why not call and mention to the reception that you are a local business owner, and you are trying to HELP YOUR clients find a quality Dentist in town, and would like to learn more about their practice...

but instead of wasting their time, ask if there's an email address you can send your questions to...

Then Interview the Dentist about his business (how long he's been in practice etc) and then ASK HIM if he would be willing to take on additional patients if you were to refer new patients to him on a regular basis...

If he says yes...then refer him 5+ leads as a "trial"...

But here's the money maker:

You FOLLOW-UP with an email to see how the leads responded (do they convert?) and how he felt about dealing with them...if the Dr is happy with the business and thanks you for the referrals...

Let him know that your business is actually one that generates new leads and sales for local professionals (lawyers, etc.) and you'd like to work with his practice...

Ask if there's a time when HE IS AVAILABLE, to get together so you can learn more about what he does and how you could work together.

You need to take a more personal approach with (most) business owners and build a relationship of trust and understanding ( at least I do) which will land you results...cold calling and trying to get THEM TO BUY FROM YOU = Just another salesrep.

Be Unique =)

PS - I recently got a Dentist referred to me by another business owner that does Home Renovations (and works on the Dentists home)...why do I mention this?

Perhaps you need to find a way to NETWORK to get in touch with Dentists OUTSIDE of their "work environment."

Food for thought!

PSS - Social proof / testimonials always works wonders!

You might want to sell your leads to dentists who advertise in the local coupon pack. This shows that they pay for advertising and that they want new patients. Find out how much it costs to advertise in those monthly value coupon packs. Then approach them with your leads. Still offer free leads (at least 10 or so) so they can see that you are bringing them quality leads.

Also, you may want to approach dental associations.

I like the poster's idea about approaching dentists with less than stellar reps.

I am actually looking for someone to do lead generation for me right now. It is crazy that some business don't want any part of it.

Dexx is absolutely correct on how to market to dentists. Most dentists know very little about the internet and their own websites. They are flat out busy doing their practice and someone else puts up the website for them. They know very little about the value of internet marketing. What is the newsletter service you are speaking of?

Not sure if this would work but could you team up with a drug rep who already has the ear of the doctor/dentist/etc.?

You might want to target start ups rather than the ones who already have had a business going for a while already. Those dentists are probably already earning steady income from their returning clients on yearly checks, etc.

I've worked with many different Dentists' on stuff like this and my guess is that your sales pitch needs to be adjusted because when you position it correctly, it's hard for someone to say no.

That being said, some will still say no, but in my experience, the method you described works really well, even on Dentists, so I would adjust your pitch/angle until it starts converting.

Good luck. Glad to see you are actually taking action and emailing/calling people...most people don't like doing that so once you perfect your pitch, you'll be golden.

The original post was December 2009. If he hasn't sorted it out yet, he's in deep doodoo...

OK, do this one. Got to BNI - Business Networking International and join up. They trade leads and they have dentists and well as doctors and lawyers - basically, all kinds of professional services. Trade the dental leads for those you can sell for money.

My website Dental Implants India | Dentist in Mumbai is ranking well at Google.co.in for keyword "Dentist Mumbai". It is getting decent hits from search engine. So ranking is important for getting leads.