More than likely, your dental supplier is ripping you off. How can we be so sure? Well, let’s look at the mechanics of the marketplace. As a professional, it’s your job to keep your business—your dental practice—running smoothly. That includes remaining profitable. You want to keep costs low and income high. But that’s what your supply chain wants to do, too. If their profits can be improved by selling you something at an outrageous markup, but make you think you’re getting a great deal, then why wouldn’t they?
Every salesman has a long list of tricks to meet their quota and to earn their bonuses. Ripping you off is part of the equation. Pricing is a relatively murky subject with many shades of gray and very little actual black and white clarity. Prices are typically set at what the market will bear. If a product has competition, then you can compare prices from different sources. And this opens the door to your solution. To keep from being ripped off by your dental suppliers, you need to do one thing summed up by three simple words: “do your homework.”
Doing your homework to keep from getting ripped off is relatively straightforward, but it helps to have a few pointers. Have someone in your office do the legwork for you, researching prices from various suppliers. Naturally, product quality is always a concern, but you need to decide what is truly important and what is merely “nice.” If one product comes with an attachment you would rarely, if ever, use, then why bother? If a different brand or supplier offers the same product without the attachment, but at a substantial savings, then it would be smart to consider making a change to the less expensive option.
One trick suppliers sometimes use is to offer one version of a consumable product at a discount, while marking up a more attractive package. For example, a 5-pack might be offered at a discount, but the 10-pack is marked up. So, thinking you’re saving money buying in bulk, you may end up paying more.
You may know your dental equipment well, but sometimes you get hit in areas outside of your own specialty. That could be office supplies or computer equipment. Say, for instance, you purchase a computer for your front office and that it has the latest processor for fast computing and an HD screen for crystal clear viewing of patient records. Not doing your homework, leaves you open to getting ripped off. If your dental office software requires 8 GB of memory for optimum usage, but your computer system came with only 4 GB, then you’ll have to upgrade your memory. Quite often, systems have their memory slots filled with the existing memory, so you can’t merely add on more memory; you have to yank out the existing memory and replace it with a full-price upgrade. If you don’t shop around, or otherwise do your homework, your supplier could add a hefty markup on the larger memory modules.
The bottom line is that you have to realize that a supplier is naturally going to be looking out for their own profits. Any good salesman is going to want to make you think you’re getting a great deal that makes them lots of profit and helps them achieve their quota that much more quickly. Doing your homework is the simplest way to ensure your own profitability.
