To Office Managers: How To Buy Dental Supplies From maxill Inc
Going Through Your Inventory
The most important task that a dental office manager needs to do is fill orders. By this we mean getting the patients in, and making sure the dentist has the resources to address them.
To fill those orders, you’re going to need to find out what supplies are required to meet the needs of the upcoming procedures. But it’s not just the procedure that you need to worry about, because the patient will or may visit several rooms in your practice. So the best thing is to have a checklist and to go around the entire office, marking off anything that might be getting low.
There are many different areas of the office that need addressing, and ordering for each of them at different times from different distributors is a big hassle. Why not just go to maxill.com and do pretty much all of it in one shot?
Reviewing The Upcoming Patient Schedule and Staff Preferences
You’re also going to need to know of any unusual materials or equipment for the procedures coming up. It’s also nice to know the volume of procedures scheduled, so you can make a good prediction of stock requirements. For instance, given 10 patients a day on average, with 2 operatories, how many pairs of gloves are you going to go through? Moreover, does each surgeon and assistant prefer the same type of glove? These are all things to factor in before reaching out.
Don't forget the bathroom and the sterilization bay. These areas are sometimes over-looked, but are extremely important.
Writing An Email
Once you have a satisfactory list together, it’s time to touch base with your sales representatives from dental supplies companies.
Email is still the number one most frequently utilized form of business communication, and rightly so. It works as both a quick and nimble messaging system and a heavy-duty distributor of long-form information. It’s especially great for contacting specific people with medium-sized requests (like a supplies order), and for delivering connecting links to information about products.
The reason it’s so great is that instead of relying on your rep writing down or entering your order correctly, you have a paper copy. Whenever a large or complicated set of instructions is being conveyed from one person to the other, having it in writing is key, as this could eliminate or at least reduce the number of missing items.
When you have an order, consider putting together an email with a list of your needs, and sending it out to a few reps from a few companies. Chances are, you’ll be surprised that certain products were available from certain companies; you probably had no idea they carried that! At maxill, we encourage our clients to get quotes from other reps, because it just cements the fact that our prices will always be the lowest.
Making A Phone call
Emails are great, but representatives love to talk to their clients to find out their challenges and solve them live. Phone calls can be a source of savings as well, since the reps always want to get you a better deal, telling you about up-to-the-minute promotions or clearance items. They can even give you the lowest catalog pricing whenever possible, so it’s a good idea to call them.
Timing It Right
Buying in bulk is always a good idea when it comes to cost savings. And often suppliers like maxill will have always promotions going where if you buy a certain amount, you’ll get a reward, such as a Tango Gift Card, or free items.
Stocking up When There Are Deals
Sometimes those deals are so good, it would be a mistake not to purchase a large quantity of the items. Non-perishable products that you go through in large volumes, like gloves, masks, prophy cups, saliva ejectors, and bibs, for example, are excellent candidates for large investments at the right time.
Try-Me-Cheap Deal
Sometimes, you’re not sure if you’re going to like the product in question. For example, gloves are a preference item, where everyone has their favorite. Often it’s more costly to the manufacturer to sample out their products or take back returns, so maxill needed to find a way to make sure dental pros could still experiment a bit.
The Try-Me-Cheap Deal allows dental professionals to purchase only one of an item at a reduced price, so it doesn't feel like a waste, even if the item doesn’t satisfy your preferences. This deal even applies to colours and types, so if you’ve tried something before for the reduced price, you can try a different colour of the same item as well.
Be a Reporter Deal (BAR)
At maxill, we vow to have the lowest everyday prices no matter what. So if you find the same product of equal value somewhere else for less, we can beat it by 2%. Our competitors can’t say the same of us because, being middlemen between you and the manufacturer, they’d lose money if they offered their supplies at the same price.
Bonus: How to Buy from Other Companies
Here’s a trick that uses the above strategy but in reverse. First, call or email maxill and get a quote. Then, take that quote to another supplier. Next, watch them squirm trying to convince you (falsely) that our products are lower quality, or that you’ll pay for it elsewhere. All of it is untrue, as you know very well from using our products for many years, and it will force you to realize that you just can’t beat maxill for pricing!
The worst thing that can happen is you get a lower price. Win-win for you.
Once You Place the Order
If there are no imprinting jobs to do, often the minute you speak with your representative, your order goes into our system and starts to make its way to you.
If there’s imprinting, the order goes directly to a real person, who makes sure that what the imprinting team has for images and wording is exactly what the client is going to want. You’ll have to manually approve the artwork, since we need to be 100% sure before running the order.
There’s also an order processing team, whose job it is to check that the warehouses have the items in the order, and to tell the warehouse team to put the order together.
Once your order is packaged, it’s placed on a truck (usually that same day) and delivered directly to your office, or anywhere else you want it.
