Sandy – My Personal Assistant

A few months ago I was trying to juggle multiple calendars, to do lists, clients and other miscellaneous tasks. I felt that I was out of control and was not as efficient as I could and should be. I started to scour the web for help and I came across…Sandy. It was love at first site! I signed up for an account and within minutes, Sandy was adding my appointments to my calendar and sending me reminders via email and text message to my phone about appointments or things in my to-do list. Every morning at 6am I get an email from Sandy letting me know what’s on tap for the day.

I found some other great features while exploring, one of which is that you can use Sandy with Google Calendar and with a little plug in, Sandy appears in your google calendar. Another feature that I find indispensable is a link to Jott. Jott allows you to call a special number, linked to your phone and email, leave a message, Jott then transcribes that message and it is sent to your email and a text message to your phone. This FREE service is invaluable to sales people, especially when out on the road.

For example…

While driving down the road, I get a call from a friend in the industry who informs me that he just found out that Danaher was making a bid for Dentsply and gave a few of the details he knew. Immediately, I hang up and call Jott and Jott myself and Sandy and leave the details of my phone conversation. Within minutes the message is transcribed (fairly accurately) and sent to my email. When I get back to the office, I can retrieve the message and review notes before posting on Dental Insider. (This was just an example)

Give Sandy and Jott a try, they are both free and are great time savers. I just wish Sandy could get me coffee…at least I have Kim at Starbucks for that.

DI

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SciCan Announces New Products

SciCan has announced 2 new products for 2008. The first is the loooooooooooong awaited Statis handpiece line and the other is the Statim 7000 autoclave.

The Statim 7000 is the largest member of the Statim family and is a highly intuitive autoclave which was designed as an alternative to conventional “round chamber” autoclaves.

The Statis line of premium quality handpieces with the world’s smallest head for unparalleled assess and visibility. Ergonomically optimized, and extremely quiet, Statis is backed with an industry leading 3 year warranty.

The Statis handpieces are available now and the Statim 7000 will be available in February.

You can download the press release here.

DI

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Anesthetic Shortage Update – January 2008

It’s been a while since we posted anything about the anesthetic shortage, so I thought we would give an update. Over the summer and fall, anesthetic inventories remained high with the exception of Astra brand anesthetics. As of now, we are under the winter shipping rules for anesthetic, and shipments may thin out a bit, especially in extremely cold weather.

I spoke with several dealers across the United States last week about inventories and rationing. All said that they ordered heavy going into winter and that they didn’t think anesthetic would be a problem through the spring. A couple of dealers are still rationing anesthetic to their customers, which might not be a bad thing for others to consider.

I think that we are in much better shape than a year ago with regards to this anesthetic shortage.

On a side note…Eastman Kodak is raising their prices on anesthetic 5% as of February 1, 2008.

DI

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Are You a Dental Sales Pro?

A few weeks ago I came across a new on-line community aimed at the dental sales professional, www.dentalsalespro.com. I signed up and have spent the last week or so checking out all of the features of the site. (Dental Insider Page) I like to think of it as Myspace for dental sales professionals without the 40 year old unemployed guy, living in his mom’s basement, pretending to be a 17 year old named “Jennifer”.

The site’s founder is a sales representative in the dental industry. I asked him a couple of questions and here are his responses.

Why did you start www.dentalsalespro.com?

Speaking with manufacturers (both reps and company management)
one of the most difficult things for them is communicating with the retail reps. I thought an on-line community would help. I get calls almost every week from headhunters looking for someone with dental sales experience. Again, I thought an online community would benefit the recruiters as well as anyone looking to make a job change. Overall, this is a small, tight knit community that people for the most part stay in for their entire career. I think an on-line community format will work for the dental sales community.

What are your goals for DSP?

I would like this to be the first place people in the dental sales community go to find out about products, meetings, industry news and just to have fun and stay in touch with peers and friends.

Membership is free for the dental sales professional. Manufacturers, dealers, and recruiters can post product videos/pictures/information, literature, press releases, company information, quarterly specials/meeting specials, trade show information, and just about anything else they want the dental sales professional to know for a small fee.

I really like the site’s motto…Know More, Earn More!

You can download the official press release here.

Sign up and personalize your page, add friends and have some fun. The site is still in it’s infancy, but has the potential to be the premier site for Dental Sales Professionals.

DI

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Goldman Sachs Sees Recession in 2008

As many of us are seeing our retirement funds slipping away day by day, Goldman Sachs is the first of the big financial companies to come out and say what many have thought for some time. This will not be good for the dental industry.

Goldman Sachs article

DI

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Well That Didn’t Take Long….

Here we are, a week into 2008 and we are already hearing some interesting chatter in the dental industry. Over the holidays we received a couple of emails regarding Progeny Dental and how they were starting to limit distribution by shutting down some smaller distributors. (Note: we were faxed copies of these termination letters by two dealers, so we know this to be true.) In both cases, these distributors claim that pressure from Sullivan-Schein and Patterson Dental were responsible for them losing the line and not lack of sales as Progeny had suggested. (Note: we discussed the number of units sold with both dealers, and while we agreed to keep them confidential, one of the two actually had respectable numbers.) I called 4 other Progeny dealers across the U.S. last week and asked 1) How many units they sold in 2007?, 2) Had they received notice that their Progeny dealership would be terminated? The responses surprised me….
All 4 dealers had sales much less than one of the terminated dealers, and about equal to the other. All said that they were still a Progeny dealer and that they had not received a termination notice. I have been a fan of Progeny for the last couple of years and have done a couple of posts about them in the past, (previous post, previous post)so this does not make me happy to hear this. More on this story to follow in the near future….

Remembering Paul Goldstein

We received an email from Neil Goldstein regarding the passing of his brother, Paul, a dental industry veteran. We thought we would pass along this information.

My name is Neil Goldstein. My father is Irwin Goldstein, former owner and founder of MoDent and MoQuip Inc, of New York, and one-time president of the DDA. Both of my brothers, Lee and Paul, and I worked for the family business and other Dental Dealers over the past 35 years. Lee is currently an equipment specialist with Schein. My brother Paul and I were working at Becker-Parkin Dental when it was taken over by Schein and Darby. I found work in the computer industry, but my brother Paul was fighting cancer at the time of the sale, and had just discovered that it had returned aggressively. He had to turn down his offer from a well-known dental manufacturer and resume treatment.

Paul passed away Saturday, December 22 from complications of Head/Neck cancer. He went quietly and peacefully with his family at his side.

Here is a link to the website I have set up in his honor. http://www.paulgoldstein.org It has a copy of the sad email I sent when he passed, some updates, a good picture of him, and a link to his obituary.

We have set up a trust fund for Paul’s daughter Stephanie, 19, who is in college to become a teacher. Anyone interested can email the site at remember@paulgoldstein.org

We are also collecting stories and other memories. Paul was quite a character and everyone seems to have a good Paul story.

DI