TTMC delivers high-quality appointments and market insight to support direct-to-practice growth for Cookson Dental

Cookson Dental is one of a small number of manufacturers globally producing dental amalgams and precious metal dental alloys. With more than 20 years’ experience serving the UK dental laboratory market, it has built a strong reputation within wholesale distribution channels.

The business operates as part of Cookson Precious Metals, a 270-strong organisation focused on the sourcing and manufacture of precious metals. Based in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter, the wider group has a trading history spanning more than 100 years and is part of the HM Precious Metals Group, which operates across Europe with companies in Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, France, Portugal, and the UK. Across the group, the focus remains on precious metal products and specialist applications, including dentistry.

Campaign objective

As market dynamics evolved, Cookson identified an opportunity to sell directly to dental practices, offering access to manufacturer pricing, next-day delivery and direct technical support.

Historically, Cookson operated through wholesalers, which limited direct engagement with dental practices and restricted visibility of purchasing behaviour. The company therefore decided to engage a specialist agency to deliver a campaign focused on generating qualified appointments for their sales team, while also building a clearer understanding of how practices buy, who influences decisions and what drives supplier selection.

The Telemarketing Company (TTMC) was engaged to build a targeted prospect database, engage decision-makers, qualify opportunities, and set appointments for Cookson’s sales team, while also capturing market intelligence to support longer-term growth.

Project execution

TTMC designed and delivered a fully managed outbound appointment generation and research programme targeting UK dental practices. Following a detailed briefing, the team sourced a targeted database of practices and key decision-makers, including dentists, practice managers and purchasing contacts.

A structured outreach programme introduced Cookson directly to practices, establishing credibility as a manufacturer while highlighting the commercial benefits of buying direct, including lower costs, reliable next-day delivery and direct access to technical support. With no established direct sales database in place, data quality and profiling were central to the programme. Every interaction was used to enrich records, creating a valuable source of prospect and market intelligence.

Recognising that many dental practices had long-standing relationships with existing suppliers, TTMC adopted a consultative approach, combining appointment setting with conversations designed to understand needs, challenges and buying habits. Alongside identifying and qualifying opportunities for the sales team, these discussions generated valuable insight into purchasing processes, order volumes, supplier relationships, buying frequency and barriers to change.

The programme was managed through TTMC's proprietary calling platform and real-time reporting portal, providing access to call recordings and complete visibility of activity, outcomes, and customer feedback. This enabled both teams to monitor performance closely and maintain a continuous feedback loop, refining messaging, targeting and strategy as the campaign progressed and their understanding of the market developed.

Closely tracking the performance of different focus lists, TTMC make incremental tweaks to the data strategy to further optimise results. Targeting was adjusted to focus on independent practices and regions with higher demand for NHS dental treatment, where amalgam use was more common. The team also tailored messaging to different practice structures and decision-making models, becoming increasingly effective at positioning Cookson against established competitors and securing engagement from qualified prospects.

This combination of appointment generation, market insight and ongoing optimisation helped Cookson understand the risks and opportunities of this new route to market, whilst establishing a feed of appointments to their team. Following a successful six-week proof of concept, the programme was extended.

Results

The campaign generated one qualified result for every 12 hours of calling, creating a steady pipeline of high-quality appointments for Cookson's in-house sales team. The activity provided a structured approach to engaging dental practices directly while supporting the development of a new route to market outside traditional wholesale channels.

Over the course of the programme, TTMC completed 1,583 conversations with decision-makers across the UK dental market. These interactions not only identified and qualified opportunities for follow-up by the sales team, but also provided valuable insight into purchasing behaviour, supplier relationships, and decision-making processes.

A key outcome was the creation of a clean, profiled prospect database. More than 11,000 database updates were completed through live conversations, resulting in verified decision-maker contacts, updated contact details and a clearer understanding of organisational structures and purchasing responsibilities within practices.

The programme also delivered a detailed analysis of responses to profiling questions, providing Cookson with valuable market intelligence such as purchasing frequency, demand for amalgam products, current providers, and barriers to switching. Combined, this gave the business a stronger understanding of its target market, a clearer view of the decision-making unit within dental practices and a robust foundation for future sales and marketing activity.