It is so exciting to see how Ultradent’s mission to “improve oral health globally” really does stretch to all areas of the globe. I am so appreciative of the opportunities Ultradent has given me to experience interactions with wonderful, caring and sharing people around the world.

In January and February I was in South Africa for 2 ½ weeks. While there, I had the opportunity to visit two universities and talk with approximately 75 fifth year students and 30 hygienists. I was in six different regions and had numerous meetings with about 200 dentists, mostly in small groups of 15 – 25. We had some excellent interaction with some very kind and interested dentists.

I just returned from the Ukraine and Azerbaijan in March; it is always nice to hear the sincere and loving thoughts our distributors have for our founder, Dr. Dan Fischer. Our distributor in Azerbaijan was proud to show me that his screensaver features a picture of himself with Dr. Fischer taken in Italy during a past conference. While I visited there, I was able to spend about six hours training the sales reps and on the second day, we had two discussion groups with dentists for about 3 ½ hours each. Our distributor from Azerbaijan will also be coming to Utah in April with a group of 18 dentists for our Russian Key Educators Conference.

Anytime I travel for these training sessions, I make everyone place the Treswhite in their mouths while I talk about our whitening product line. I have been having them leave it in their mouths for about 1 to 1 ½ hours! Out of the 12 salespeople, 10 had some whitening results during their first use -- FANTASTIC results! I made them commit to me that they all would continue to whiten only their upper arches for the next five or so days and then not whiten their lower arches for at least one year. They were ecstatic! In fact, during the break, one of the salespeople was down in their dental depot showing a dentist the difference between upper and lower arches -- after only 1 hour of treatment! You could see the excitement on his face. Many of the dentists had similar results.

In these tough economic times, I have been encouraging the salespeople to highlight the Treswhite to their dentist customers as an inexpensive alternative to custom trays. This allows patients an affordable option with some profit for the dentist, whereas otherwise the patients may walk away due to costs.

I will again leave this Sunday for a crazy trip to Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Croatia, Serbia and Zagreb. The main topics I want to share with the salespeople are:

• Product benefits in view of economy
• - Tips on how to communicate the benefits of buying premium products as opposed to cheap competitors
• - Demonstration techniques to help new customers feel comfortable trying our products