Neodent

This field is just tragic, all of whats written here is somewhat true. Every rep in the dental field should know that the entire field is laden with overpriced, useless, non-innovative crap that any Dr. can get from any number of dental supplies distributors, i.e. Henry schein, Iq dental, patterson etc... Tony quit, left, was fired, who cares, the bottom line is there are less and less companies that can actually claim any innovation as everything is just a copy of everyone else with a little added twist or flare. Most Dr.'s don't actually give a shit about what implant they are using and care more about saving money. Enter the knockoff brands here. A simple sales model. Lets sell what they sell for less and take their business and customers. Brilliant. Enter Implant direct, korean implants, israeli implants etc...


Straumann has its group of followers that can afford to pay big bucks for the same shit everyone else is selling here because of the brand name which still means something to people. Straumann also knows how to "lead" by wining and dining their doctors with great customer service and fat steaks. This also means something to people, but that group is slowly dying. Enter the idea to gather a growing market space of Dr.'s who still care about value but are also price sensitive.

Neodent was a great idea pitched to the wrong actuators. It could have easily taken over the market had it been run properly, priced properly and had been as simple as the rest of the implants on the market. Unfortunately, it wasn't. Personally, I know a few reps that quit due to lack of supervision. The sad thing is, I helped them get into the industry and heard from them that it was awesome at first and people were taking to it, but then the massive ship hit the iceberg. Enter the bureaucracy that is Straumann. My personally verified information is that big brother straumann helped cause little brother needn't to fail. Internal issues were the cause of major problems and delays in product availabilities from brazil, shipping delays, back orders, lost packages, mislabelled returns etc. Sales are down although they closed the largest dental group in the US last year. New reps were hired to make up for those that left and from what I heard, some of the second shift left too. I'm not even really sure how many of the original reps are left but I'm sure they don't feel so secure. Apparently the new managers may not have the managerial experience (not sure, don't really know them) they need to weather this storm.

I wish them luck, although, I don't really care what happens to them since the few people I helped place are no longer there having moved out of the dental implant game.

My advice for anyone still in the field is this:
If you find yourself constantly doubting what you're doing, seeing competitors selling exactly what you are selling for less, and don't have brand name recognition, you should not waste your time anymore and move on. The industry is dying and believe it or not Dr.'s are smarter and started ordering supplies online without needing a rep. (They can find anything they want online, every company now has an E-shop, amazon and ebay too)

 

had a recruiter contact me regarding a position with Neodent. What are the pros and cons? Is this a good company to work for? Any info would help. Thanks everyone!

 

Same same but different. You will basically work for Straumann. Same BS org. runs the show behind the curtain. Talking value but living premium. If you don't care about integrity or such you should go for the gig.

 

No one should feel special being recruited for an implant rep job. In fact you should probably keep that info to yourself.

 

more shit talkers. and where do you work MR. know it all? I'm sure you have a very important job...haha

 

Who is the a&$ clown running around north Florida for Neodent?? Dude, just stop.

 

A recruiter contacted you to go work for Neodent? RUN and don't look back!! They have a General Manager who doesn't know shit about selling because he's NEVER sold. Whoever was the genius who put a Marketing guy in charge...nicely done! Then you have Managers who make better sales people than Managers Bc they have their heads so far up their asses and talking shit non stop. Perhaps they should back to their Nobel days of heading to the strip clubs and "making friends" with the employees there. It's basically a shit show that has more gossip going around than a girls locker room.
So RUN...just RUN

 

not sure who that is but the cowboy in south FL is a winner.

 

Couldn't agree more..this post was obviously written by a rep who actually worked at Neodent..very accurate picture of what's going on there..forcing reps to sell enormous implant packages with the promise of free marketing videos that turn out to be worthless..a general manager that has no idea what's going on..didn't realize hundreds of customers had never been invoices for major orders..what an idiot!..this ship will sink..just give it a little more time..

 

I agree with it all - lousy GM, billing issues and customers who are irate over backorders on these large packages which get them "free trips to Brazil". Pay all this money and you won't get product for MONTHS! What a joke! That's why I never even thought about switching! Peers around my area have filled me in on all of this info - and lucky for me I was able to meet a rep and their Manager who apparently was a former Nobel Rep. He should have stayed there Bc his foaming mouth, aggressiveness and nonsense was ridiculous. Straumann made a huge mistake with this one - I look forward to watching the ship sink.

 

The Straumann/Neodent story is like one of those bad 90's teen dramas where the popular guy bets his friends he can transform the "ugly duckling" into a swan before the big dance. The sad part is, this isn't high school, its healthcare. Buying Neodent a fancy booth at dental meetings and letting the reps refer to it as "Straumann's new system" doesn't change the flaws in manufacturing. They still weaken the titanium by over heating it during machining. They still have chipped and deformed threads. And they still have residual particles of aluminum where they shouldn't be. There are implant systems on the market that are far worse, so for the doctors buying Neodent instead of something of even lower quality it is a step in the right direction. But the idea that Neodent is somehow a high quality system because Straumann bought them is just lowering the quality of treatment.

Here is study from Brazil

"Characterization of the surfaces of dental implants commercial in scanning electron microscopy / energy dispersive spectroscopy"

http://www.revistargo.com.br/include/getdoc.php?id=7757&article=2089&mode=pdf

Lets face it, Straumann couldn't sell to general dentists without pissing off their specialists and lowering their ridiculously high prices. But they are losing out on the large number of GPs starting to enter the implant game. They figure, the GPs aren't actually going to research the quality of the product. If they have 5-10 failures in a year everyone will just assume it was because of inexperience or blame the patient. If it gets too bad they will just go back to referring the cases to the specialists.

Once the money stops rolling in Straumann will start downsizing Neodent until you can only order it online. Its the same trick all the larger companies pull, buy a smaller established company and squeeze the profit out of it. Straumann is just using their name to build a little hype around Neodent so the money lasts a little longer.

 

I am one of the docs that has been screwed by ND. I cannot tell you how unprofessionally I have been treated by the management. They sold me a package with a trip to Brazil for CE. Over a year and a half ago. No trip yet. The return policy says that I can't return if trip has been used. They insist, no return.

I bought a second package linked to marketing services. Joke of a guy to work with. No marketing services received. They wanted me to go live with the website that was designed but I refused because it didn't have the main elements that I requested. They pressured to go live and that they would change them. Yeah right.

I had a rep accidentally forward an email to me that included, "this guy is clearly delusional" to their corporate lawyer. I have never been treated so badly by a company.

The beef with leaving. Failure. Tons. I've been placing for 10 years and have placed 1000's of implants with a 90-95% actual success rate. My failures with them are over 80%. I was a lecturing and clinical instructor for another company and have personally taught over 20 docs how to place implants, but these failures have to be my own. Trust me, that's where I went first.

Where I'm at now: I have returned all product and had the credit card company dispute the $25k in charges. I spent another $15k by check that I still need to get back. Right now my lawyer is preparing to file to get my money refunded, compensation for additional surgeries and products, lost goodwill with patients, and legal fees. One of the marketing guys had the nerve to tell me that they could restructure the terms if I just couldn't afford it. My guess is, ND can't afford my return.

Run, don't walk away from Neodent.

 

Dewey!!

 

Wow I am 2,000 miles away and heard about him.

 

who?
Brock Hierlmeier

he was with zimmer before neodent.

 

http://www.drbicuspid.com/index.aspx?sec=ser&sub=def&pag=dis&ItemID=311794&wf=3372

 

I'm going to call Dr. Christensen tomorrow. I need his advice on some roofing materials and what snow tires to buy for my car.

Gee, I wish I knew everything like he does. He's really smart.

 

you don't have to be a genius to understand that over paying for implants is stupid. There are 10 companies out there now that can offer quality implants at half the price. But you can't fix stupid.