As a fresh 1988 Humber College marketing graduate, I landed a sales job with a wholesale pet supply company. This company sold everything from fish food to bird cages, and everything in between. It supplied pet stores from across Canada with more than 7,000 products. I was personally responsible for servicing 110 stores throughout the greater Toronto area.

During my sales visits I found myself not only interested in selling supplies, but also helping the business owners with their overall marketing and store layout.

I would help them;

• merchandize their store shelves to maximize sales
• coordinate their internal and external signage to give the store better visual appeal
• develop a database of loyal customers which led to the creation of successful direct mail campaigns

I thrived on utilizing all my newly acquired marketing skills to help my customers. My college education was truly paying off. My sales were constantly increasing as well as customer loyalty. Customers were thankful for all the assistance and realized that my intention was to help them with the long-term success of their business. This led to larger orders and more and more of our company's products being placed on their store shelves. It also had another benefit; by going the extra mile to serve my customers it gave me a distinct advantage over my competitors in an industry that was fiercely competitive.

During my eight years as a sales representative I began to realize two things about myself. First, that marketing was my passion. It never felt like work to merchandise shelves, redo the layout of a store's interior or formulate profitable marketing strategies. Time flew by when I was discussing marketing ideas and I often found myself looking down at my watch. Only to realize there was a few minutes left in the sales call, which was a problem seeing as I had yet to get an order. My clients would always thank me for taking the extra time, and I was usually rewarded with a generous product order being faxed back to the office before I returned from a full day of sales appointments.

The second thing I realized is that the entrepreneurial spirit ran thick in my blood. What I really wanted to do was help companies with there marketing full-time. So, in 1996 I took the leap and opened Proactive Solutions. I was so excited about the prospect of my new business, but I soon discovered that my pet store clients were not comfortable paying for marketing services. When I worked for the wholesale company as a sales representative my consulting fee as a marketer was included, whereas now it was an extra fee for this service. The suggestion of a marketing budget to most of these clients was difficult for them to get their heads around, and they found it to be a financial challenge to invest in marketing initiatives.

I needed to investigate other niche markets or I was going to be facing a wall of financial difficulties. The next day the solution appeared as I was driving to an appointment with one of my pet store client's. In a two mile stretch of road, I counted twelve dental offices in a town that only had one pet store. This observation started me thinking - there must be a lot of people going to dentists; the dental marketplace must be very competitive; and finally, how do all these dentists differentiate themselves?

In that moment it hit me like a ton of bricks - whenever I send out a relationship newsletters for my pet store clients that targeted their customer's different pets such as; fish, cats and dogs, I would always receive several calls from dentists. These dentists would be excited about the newsletter they received from their pet store and wondered if I did the same for dental practices. My response was always a "No" because I was not familiar with the dental industry and all the particular marketing challenges they faced.

In my efforts to serve my pet store clients, I was missing the answer that was right under my nose - dentists. It was this epiphany that thrust me into launching The Practice Marketers. Over the next few months, I began an accelerated learning quest - interviewing dozens of successful dentists, attending numerous conferences and seminars and reading just about anything I could get my hands on regarding the dental industry. The next step was integrating my previous knowledge and experience with the unique challenges which faced dental practices. All this coalesced to form the touchstone from which I developed dozens of innovative marketing tools and strategies that would allow dental practices to soar.

It has been a truly rewarding journey as I look back. Our company has helped hundreds of dental practices from across the USA and Canada improve their growth with marketing tools that build. We developed dozens of innovative marketing products and sold millions of direct marketing pieces. We've evolved from a one-man band to a team of innovative, entrepreneurial staff that gives each and every project their full attention and spirit. All of this born from a passion for great marketing, treating our client's practices like they were our own and the revelation of a two mile drive!

Thank you for taking the time to learn more about The Practice Marketers and I hope that one day soon our team and I will get the opportunity to learn more about you.

Dan Mount
President - The Practice Marketers Inc.