Dental Billing Company Pulls The Plug On Bad Marketing

Dental ClaimSupport's Journey

There’s been a long-running joke around the Dental ClaimSupport office: Each month, somehow, they manage to have an even better month than the one before it. Every month sets a new record, a new benchmark they don’t think they’re ever going to be able to top. 

Then, one month later, they do it again. 

With each fresh page of the calendar they think, We can’t possibly top what we did last month. After all, it was our best month since we started the business. 

And sure enough, the streak keeps going. Month after month. Somehow, the team manages to set the bar just a little bit higher. 

What’s helped them reach these heights? If you were to ask any of the three co-founders, they’d say the same thing without any hesitation: They Ask, You Answer.

A business that helps dentists prioritize care

Ryan DeLettre, Davy Clay, and Josh Smith founded Dental ClaimSupport to solve an all too common problem: Dental offices spend too much time on insurance and paperwork, pulling resources away from patient care. 

The three friends developed a platform that could take the headaches out of dental office management, saving hundreds of hours of busywork each month. 

They knew they had a great product and a winning business plan. They just needed to figure out how they could scale.

Pulling the plug on bad marketing

For a long time, Dental ClaimSupport was like a lot of businesses out there. Each month, they’d pay handsomely for Facebook ads and Google Search ads to try to attract the attention of their ideal customers. 

“We put a lot of money each month into Facebook and Google ads,” remembers Davy, the CMO. The results were minimal, and the leads they did get only trickled in for as long as the team kept paying. If they didn’t pay, the ad would disappear, taking the results with it. 

They knew this approach wasn’t delivering the success they were looking for, but they weren’t sure what else to do. 

And then, they came upon a fresh approach: A business coach recommended Marcus Sheridan’s book They Ask, You Answer, and the leadership team tore through it. 

This was the lightbulb moment they’d been looking for. Suddenly, a new path opened up for them and they saw a future where they would no longer be stuck paying for dismal results.

“Once we started reading it,” says Davy, “it [felt like] common sense.”

They Ask, You Answer offered a new strategy. If they did it right, they wouldn’t have to pay Google to place an ad at the top of search results. Their content would be there on its own, bringing in a steady stream of organic traffic. 

The power of accountability

At first, the team tried to implement They Ask, You Answer on their own, but success was slow to come.

That’s when they started working with IMPACT, and the effect was immediate — and it was felt far beyond just the marketing department.

What they found was that They Ask, You Answer was more than just a marketing framework. The coaches and trainers from IMPACT helped Dental ClaimSupport improve its sales process, run better meetings, and establish alignment from top to bottom. 

“There was no structure before [IMPACT and] They Ask, You Answer,” says Josh, the COO. But with the IMPACT team of coaches and trainers, there was a plan — and there was accountability. 

The Dental ClaimSupport team was doing the work. They were writing the content, filming the videos, planning the email campaigns, and measuring the effectiveness of it all. But they weren’t doing it alone. IMPACT experts were guiding them every step of the way, celebrating successes and making plans for improvement.

“The coaching [part of the program] is the biggest asset,” says Ryan, the CEO. “IMPACT is holding us accountable, and that’s what I love.”

Now, looking back, he is able to see how far they’ve come.

“Our website traffic has gone through the roof, and that’s a testament to IMPACT.”

Building trust with clients

At the core of They Ask, You Answer is a simple premise: People buy from businesses they trust. To build that trust with buyers, the Dental ClaimSupport team committed itself to educating its buyers with honest, transparent content. “They Ask, You Answer has been very beneficial with building relationships with clients,” says Stephenie Neville, operations manager. 

The education content the team is producing means prospects enter the sales process more qualified than ever before. They already know the Dental ClaimSupport team members from articles and videos on the website, and they move more smoothly through the sales process because many of their questions have already been answered.

Today, Dental ClaimSupport’s website is full of educational content that answers buyers’ questions. If site visitors want to know about pricing, they can find it. If they want to know how different tiers compare, they can find it. 

All that information keeps good-fit prospects moving forward: Every question answered is one less obstacle standing in the way of a purchase. At the same time, these resources help weed out bad-fit prospects too. If someone knows upfront that Dental ClaimSupport is not the right choice for them, they’re less likely to enter the sales process or become an unhappy customer. 

The result is better clients and more content employees. 

Stephenie sums it up like this: “We’re attracting the right clients, and the right clients are attracted to us — which in turn helps our employee retention and happiness.”

‘We’ve all learned the better way to do marketing’

Today, Dental ClaimSupport is running like a well-oiled machine. Traffic numbers are through the roof, organic leads are pouring in, and happy customers are coming out the other end of the sales process. In the past, the company saw a lot of customers cancel in the first 100 days. That’s no longer a problem.  

Sales and marketing are in lockstep, and the only complaint anyone seems to have is that they wish they started They Ask, You Answer sooner. And they give this advice to anyone who will listen. They’ve seen firsthand how the framework — combined with IMPACT’s guidance — delivers amazing results. You just have to go all-in and trust the process.

“The biggest takeaway,” says Josh, “is that any business can use it. Any business can flourish by adopting They Ask, You Answer.”