The Shelf Life of the Sales Model

Just like any perishable goods at the grocery store, any sales model or sales process has an expiry date.

The pandemic has not only stretched out debt levels of dental offices but also fueled the trend of dental offices filing for bankruptcies. As more and more dental practices operate on tighter budgets, often postponing their purchasing decisions for high end equipment – this has clearly impacted the sales cycles negatively.

While the Sales Rep is not dead, nor has he (she) been replaced by automation or e-commerce. However, with evolving purchase journeys, the impact of digital & social channels in pre-purchase is clearer than ever before.

The CEO of a large dental manufacturer recently posed a question: “Our organization’s field salesforce thinks that everything should be manual. In the previous decades, they’ve driven the sales on the field and expect the status quo to continue. On the other hand, the digital and e-commerce C-suite executives believe that all sales processes should be transformed into digital because that’s where the growth is. Who’s right?”

The short answer is, “Both.”

Considering that different verticals in the organization that have their own interests – not excluding the bonus payouts, the human-digital divide is expected to become further heated in the upcoming years.

Having field sales force who may accompany the prospect through the sales journey is often differentiator especially for products that are more complicated, customized or expensive and infrequently purchased. However, one this is clear - the future of dentistry is digital. The most important pillars in the dental services space are consolidators, insurance and growth, among many others.

According to our survey, US based dentists are now spending on an average about 15 hours researching intraoral scanners online. In the US, almost 80% of the equipment are purchased from the two largest dealers incl. PDCO and HSIC. Many buyers are now armed with not only product reviews but also pricing before they initiate the contact with their local equipment rep concerning the purchase.

We have already witnessed it in the Clear Aligner market wherein the DTC (direct to consumer) brands are disrupting ALGN’s business model by taking the dentist out of the value chain. Likewise, we expect that as intraoral scanner penetration continues to trend upwards, the dealerships & distributors will pivot towards only stocking, delivering and servicing equipment. On the other hand, as intraoral scanners don’t require frequent servicing (since there are no moving parts) and any software upgrades can be delivered via cloud, the dealerships may have to undergo equally important business transformations. In recent years we have already seen major distributors like HSIC re-inventing their portfolio with focus on Henry Schein One Project – that’s aimed exactly at transforming the company’s business in the dental space.

This article was originally published on Aug 27, 2021 at www.insightsZ.com