Carl Dunstan Talking Heads

Carl Dunstan from The Campbell Clinic joined our CEO, Neil for a chat recently about how DenGro helps support The Campbell Clinic.

Neil Stephen:

Thanks for joining me today Carl, you’ve invested a great deal of time setting up clear processes and training for the team handling enquiries at The Campbell Clinic, tell us a bit more about your set up.

Carl Dunstan:

Sure, here at TCC we have a marketing department with a marketing director and marketing executives and the language we use is very much marketing language. We have differentiated between an enquiry and a lead.

We’ve put filters in place, lead qualification for us is a serious thing. We want to root out the spam like a sales rep filling in an enquiry form who actually just wants to flog you some implants.

Once an enquiry has been qualified; there’s been a very definite expression of interest that’s then a lead.

Neil Stephen:

How did the need for DenGro come about?

Carl Dunstan:

We wanted to really define the front end of our business and wanted the team to really nurture and answer specialist questions and move patients brilliantly through the funnel.

We recognise the difficulty in buying dentistry, it is incredibly complex.

We first spent a good few years optimising our practice management system, Dentally. But a great PMS optimised for our practice still cannot function as a CRM at the front end of our business. We then wanted software that would help us define the front end of our business, we realised we needed a dental CRM, i.e. one that that understood dentistry and would help us deliver our product. And we really wanted one that integrated with Dentally.

Neil Stephen:

What difference has DenGro made for the team and to these front end processes?

Carl Dunstan:

We could see issues our Front of House faced. We had Excel spreadsheets and unanswered questions: How many times have we contacted this person? What stage are they at? Who referred them?

It was all Excel or paper or Post-it notes and we were trying to use our PMS to track which marketing channels were successful and all these sorts of things, and it just didn’t work that way.

And that’s the biggest impact of DenGro; instrumental in helping us to operationalize the entire front end of the business. It had a huge impact on efficiency, which has had a huge impact on the way everyone in the team can then do their jobs.

Neil Stephen:

That’s amazing in terms of how it’s delivering operationally. If you cast your mind back to when DenGro was first introduced, were any of the team struggling with starting to use it and leaving behind old ways of working?

Carl Dunstan:

Yeah, change is a funny thing isn’t it. For certain people it is empowering and exciting, for others, it’s upsetting and destabilizing. That resistance isn’t negative. I expect someone to ask why are we doing it? I’ve got to be able to answer that question by making it really clear , what’s in it for them and how it will make their lives better?

It was really about them identifying the inefficiencies in their job, the frustrations, the challenges and the things that take up too much of their time. Then recognising that these are the pain points of a traditional front end dental business.

We were able to show that DenGro is a frontend CRM that solves these problems for you, lifts the admin burden and structures your day.

Neil Stephen:

And how’s DenGro running today across the team?

Carl Dunstan:

Great, the entire frontend of the business, in terms of enquiries and referrals; everything is in DenGro, it doesn’t go anywhere else. It’s all handled there until the prospective patients exit the funnel either into treatment started or not proceeding – in which case we want to know why.

Neil Stephen:

Has DenGro helped the business to improve conversion and revenue as well to become more efficient?

Carl Dunstan:

Yeah, absolutely we now have a much more efficient, nurturing journey and ultimately really good pre-qualification before patients go into the treatment book, because that’s the only place you can make money in the dental business, isn’t it?

You don’t want people going in for a consultation who aren’t serious.

On average our conversion rate was 70%, since we put DenGro in and have this much more efficient nurturing journey, it’s now above 90% conversion. That is golden!

We’re no longer filling up the diary with people who were never going to convert. They’ve already been filtered out. Greater efficiency has meant more capacity to actually treat people.

Neil Stephen:

The business is referrals driven, is it 90% referrals?

Carl Dunstan:

It used to be, we’re intentionally changing that, it’s now more like 70%.

We’re looking at the growth opportunities and initiating digital strategies, putting together  lead magnets with offers and downloads. Until recently our biggest pull was word of mouth and referral from within the industry to our specialists.

Neil Stephen:

You’ve mentioned the importance of the integrations DenGro offers and the huge efficiency gains these provide. What one thing would you want from DenGro that it doesn’t provide today?

Carl Dunstan:

When it comes to enquiries there is no way of showing that I’ve called them and I’ll call them again at this time. Until they’re a lead, you can’t track that.

Neil Stephen:

Okay, to show that users are being productive: “I have actually tried three times to get hold of this person before I decide qualify them out”.

Carl Dunstan:

In a busy practice us humans are bad at remembering all the little things, never forgetting anything, doing everything right. DenGro enabled us to automate, this frees us up to do what we’re good at, which is be human and connect with our patients and each other.

And what’s more important than that at front end of your business, where people interact with you for the first time? As much as our digital channels are growing it’s those human interactions that become more priceless and important.

Neil Stephen:

What sort of feedback have you had from the team about DenGro?

Carl Dunstan:

They love the clarity it’s given for job roles and responsibility, i.e. I do the nurturing. I handle an enquiry to this point then I pass it on. It enables the team to more easily follow processes; “we now know where things go”. Referrals come in via various means, but they all go in one place. With DenGro the team uses one single system and pays no ‘switching tax’.

They love the reassurance it offers; you know who has been contacted, who hasn’t, where each lead is in their journey.

It’s the central point of truth for our marketing to sales funnel within the business. If you want to know where a lead is, you look in DenGro.

If you want to know who’s responsible for that lead, you look in DenGro.

I’m also interested in the ones that fall out the funnel and the reasons why. Because there could be some real low hanging fruit there.

Neil Stephen:

Indeed you can then reach out to a certain cohort of prospects based on the reasons they didn’t proceed. The barriers present 6 months ago have been removed or there’s an offer to overcome a previous objection on price.

Carl Dunstan:

And we can only do that because we’ve captured that data in DenGro. Two of the easiest people to sell to people who have already seen your brand and people who have already interacted with you. It might just have just been wrong place, wrong time or it might be that that the treatments have since evolved and meets their need.

Neil Stephen:

That’s fantastic feedback. Thank you for today Carl, it’s been a pleasure.

Carl Dunstan:

Likewise, any time Neil.