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How to Align Sales and Marketing for Dental Lab Growth

 

You’ve launched a marketing campaign for your dental lab, generated leads from local dentists, and now — nothing. The leads aren’t turning into new dentist clients. Your sales team says the leads aren’t good enough; marketing says sales didn’t follow up fast enough. Sound familiar? The real issue is that your teams aren’t aligned.

Sales and Marketing for Dental Lab Growth

This disconnect means missed opportunities for your lab. To drive real revenue growth, your sales and marketing teams need to work together more effectively.


Why Sales and Marketing Misalignment Hurts Your Dental Lab


Why Silos Exist

Silos between your sales and marketing teams often stem from misaligned goals, disconnected tools, and poor communication. Marketing focuses on lead generation and brand awareness through campaigns targeting dentists, tracking metrics like website visits or dentist inquiries. Meanwhile, your sales team is focused on closing deals, getting those dentists to send cases to your lab, and increasing revenue.


These different priorities and reporting structures naturally lead to isolation. Without shared data or common tools, like a unified CRM or marketing platform, your teams may be working with different sets of information, leading to miscommunication and frustration.


The Real-World Impact of Misalignment

Misaligned teams directly impact revenue. For example, businesses with strong sales and marketing alignment see 208% more revenue from their marketing efforts. If your marketing team is delivering leads to sales but there’s no clear communication or follow-up strategy, leads will fall through the cracks. For dental labs, this could mean losing out on potential dentist clients who need lab services like crowns, bridges, or implant restorations.


Without alignment, your prospective dentists will feel the disconnect. Poor communication or inconsistent follow-up from your sales team can confuse dentists and erode trust, making it harder to close deals and gain long-term clients.


Relatable Example for Dental Labs

Picture this: Your dental lab’s marketing team runs a successful email campaign promoting your latest offering — for example, a special discount on zirconia crowns. The campaign generates a lot of interest, but a few weeks later, the leads are still untouched. Your sales team says the dentists weren’t “ready to buy,” while your marketing team is frustrated by the lack of follow-up. The problem? There’s no shared definition of a qualified lead.


The solution is simple: collaboration and a shared lead scoring system. By agreeing on what qualifies as a hot lead — perhaps based on interest in specific services like implant restorations or response times — both teams know when it's time for sales to step in. This alignment helps prevent missed opportunities and keeps your dental lab on track to reach its revenue goals.


Shared Metrics: A Common Ground for Success

To create alignment between your sales and marketing teams, focus on shared metrics like pipeline growth and conversion rates. These metrics promote collaboration by showing how each team’s efforts contribute to your dental lab’s business outcomes. When marketing understands how their campaigns impact dentist case submissions, and sales recognizes the value of high-quality leads, you create accountability across both teams, which translates to growth.


For dental labs with lean marketing teams, shared metrics help prioritize efforts in the most impactful areas — like focusing on nurturing leads from dentists who have the highest potential for ongoing case submissions — so both teams can work efficiently.


Key metrics that both teams should care about include:

  • Conversion rates: Track how dental leads move through your funnel to see whether your campaigns are generating qualified leads and if sales is converting them effectively.

  • Lead response time: Quick follow-up increases the likelihood of closing deals with dentists. Monitoring this ensures fast action from sales and high-quality leads from marketing.

  • Pipeline growth: A healthy pipeline is a shared success. Your marketing team fills the pipeline with dentist leads, while your sales team nurtures and closes them.

  • Customer lifetime value (CLV): Focusing on CLV encourages both teams to attract and retain high-value dentist clients, ensuring long-term growth for your dental lab.


How to Implement Shared Metrics

  • Set up shared dashboards: Use tools like our LabCell CRM, a marketing software designed for dental labs, to track key metrics in real time. This keeps everyone aligned and informed.

  • Schedule regular reviews: Weekly or bi-weekly meetings help your teams review performance and plan next steps.

  • Create accountability systems: Tie incentives to shared metrics like pipeline growth or conversion rates to keep both teams engaged and motivated.


Using Technology to Foster Alignment

The right technology aligns your sales and marketing efforts by streamlining communication and providing shared data. Our proprietary LabCell CRM offers full visibility into the dentist's journey, eliminating any guesswork about lead status or follow-up actions.


Marketing automation tools like LabCell can also streamline lead nurturing and ensure timely handoffs to sales, boosting conversion rates by providing real-time data and lead scoring. For dental labs, this means smoother communication and a more efficient process of converting dentists into long-term clients.


Choosing the Right Tech Stack for Your Dental Lab

For dental labs, it’s crucial to ensure seamless integration between your CRM and marketing automation tools. This allows for a single source of truth when tracking dentist leads and nurturing them through the pipeline. Choose user-friendly tools that simplify tasks and encourage adoption, allowing both your sales and marketing teams to stay aligned and work more efficiently.


Using Data to Drive Collaboration

Real-time data sharing is key. With LabCell CRM, marketing can pass insights from campaigns directly to sales, enabling the sales team to provide feedback on what’s working and what needs adjustment. This feedback loop allows both teams to refine strategies and drive better performance. For example, if a campaign for free surgical guides generates a lot of interest but low case submissions, sales can adjust their follow-up strategy based on these insights.


Continuous Alignment is Key to Keeping Sales and Marketing on the Same Page

Maintaining alignment requires consistent communication, feedback, and celebrating shared wins.


  • Regular check-ins: Hold joint meetings weekly or bi-weekly to review metrics and align strategies for your dental lab.

  • Build a feedback culture: Encourage real-time feedback from both teams to continually adjust and improve marketing and sales efforts.

  • Celebrate wins together: Acknowledge shared successes to strengthen collaboration and keep teams motivated. This could be as simple as celebrating a large dentist account you recently won due to a coordinated marketing and sales effort.


By staying aligned through these practices, your sales and marketing teams can work together as a unified force, driving sustained revenue growth and long-term success for your dental lab. DentalLabSupport.com can help manage this entire process, offering your dental lab the infrastructure needed to run targeted marketing campaigns and close more dentist clients. We provide tools like LabCell CRM, marketing automation, and a sales team to make sure your lab stays ahead of the competition. Let us help you grow!

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