How would you describe 2009?

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Permalink Reply by Dental Sales Rep on November 4, 2009 at 6:48pm

Unfortunatley many companies have pulled in the reigns (and cut their budgets) this year. That certainly is not going to help out their sales.

Some companies have decided to offer unbelievable specials to get dentist to buy. How many companies are copying the "Cash for Clunkers" program that was used in the auto industry.

Who has done anything really innovative?

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Permalink Reply by John Schwartz on November 5, 2009 at 5:39pm

I think the perfect storm of the economy and technological innovation on the web and also through new devices has re-focused many companies (not just DHR!) on metrics--everyone I talk to wants to measure their inputs and outputs in one way of another. This is forcing efficiency in the sales and marketing channels. The question is whether companies will leverage this newfound efficiency when the economy cycles back up.

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Permalink Reply by Scott Mahnken on November 11, 2009 at 5:02pm

"Watch and wait" is a term that many dentists use when it comes to diagnosing suspected caries; yet in 2009 many manufacturers ebraced the very same philosophy as budgets were either reduced or put on hold. As a director of marketing and dental consultant I witnessed this first hand. Companies put a halt on spending and took aggresive measures to cut expenses in spite of knowing that someday the economic down trend must come to an end. There seemed to be a sense of fear and it seemed to affect the entire industry. As each company reported sales results, there simply wasn't any positive news to help reverse the negative trend and eventually everyone seemed to get caught up in the emotion of a downward spiral. Manufacturers - distributors and publications alike all made changes in the way they conducted business. The industry started pointing to 2010 hoping it would provide indications of a recovering economy and simultenously everyone surprisingly accepted that 2009 would be a year of suffering. Having followed the stock market for many years, I remember Joe Granville (Wall Street maven) saying that "Now is the time to buy stocks" after the stock market crash in October of 1987. At the time I thought Joe was out of his mind, but within days/months the recovery was in place and he was 100% correct. Sadly we didn't have anyone in the dental industry that took this stance and fear continued to grow and still exists today. Fortunatly for all of us I believe that the worst is behind us and indeed 2010 should prove to be less stressful. The manufacturers - the distributors - the publications and the sales people that regain their confidence first, will help lead the charge and benefit by being "early adoptors" of championing the recovery. In my humble opinion the time is NOW as products and promotions are aggressively priced and it's an ideal environment to market your product or company. To quote Tug McGraw......"You gotta believe!"

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Permalink Reply by Dental Sales Rep on November 11, 2009 at 5:21pm

I have to agree with anyone that quotes the late, great Tug McGraw. Many dental companies decided to hide in their shells this year, slash spending and didn't even attempt to grow their business.

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Permalink Reply by Ian Pryor on November 11, 2009 at 7:38pm

2009 will always be the year of change. A change in the way I did business, and a change in the way my customers ran their business. A lot of my customers are keeping less inventory on hand, and are purchasing in smaller quantities even if there is a "bulk pack special." Since I'm selling instruments which is what ever dentist uses no matter what the procedure, I didn't see as much of a drop in sales as say someone who was selling Cone-Beam machines. However, it took everything I had to just stay out of the red. I've picked through my customers with a fine toothed comb. I stopped calling on ones that weren't producing and started calling more on those that were producing. Just trying to add product lines onto ones they were already purchasing from me. 2009 has been a year of networking. I've joined more study clubs, sponsored more speakers, joined twitter, and DSP just to try to stay connected and meet some new people. I think 2010 will be the year to see the efforts pay off. We'll just have to wait and see what happens with health care reform in the meantime!

Ian
www.ianpryor.com

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