business 101

Retail Tips: Strategies That Work

by Bruce Mossman

These eye-opening, right on-the-money tips will help your dispensary operate at cha-ching capacity.

FINANCING

Set up financing for high-ticket eyewear or multiple-pair purchases. A financing company can set up the program, run it, and front the money to your business. The customer then pays the financing company.

Examples of successful financing in other retail settings are vehicles, furniture, and name-brand watches.

KIDS

Target the next generation of customers. Parents must bring them to the office for appointments, so you get multiple-person exposure to your practice that you can build on.

IDENTITY

Wear easy-to-read nametags in current design and colors. Do so whether you wear scrubs, a lab coat, or dress clothes as your office wardrobe. Nametags establish identity and build continuity by helping customers locate staff members visit after visit.

TAGLINE

Include your practice tagline with everything.

You don't have a practice tagline? Establish one now and use it on business cards, postcards, letterhead, envelopes, all promotional materials, signs, ads, and your website.

MARKETING

Be sure customers know that you have what's hot now. Take a cue from the big fish—if chains are marketing photochromics, AR, or a warranty service, and you have comparable product and services, get the word out. Their promos will help yours.

DESIGNERS

Mixing a designer frame with other frame products devalues the designer product. Each designer should have their own section with its own point-of-purchase materials and merchandise.

CATERING

Build business with your best customers by catering directly and exclusively to them. An example: a VIP shopping spree with 25 percent off, an event where only the best customers are invited to the store after hours, perhaps, or on a weekend morning or afternoon.

FREQUENT BUYERS

Establish a frequent buyer program. Offer purchase points for eyewear, sunwear, and other purchases. Give purchasers a card that can be stamped or punched. Better yet, present a card with five other cards attached with the purchaser's name on it. For each person who comes in to make an eyewear purchase and presents a card, the original customer earns a prize and/or discount of choice.

CONNECTIONS

Create and reinforce an emotional connection with customers. This means staying in touch with them via phone calls.

Questions: Inquire how new progressive lenses/frames/contact lenses are doing.

Reminders: Update patients on free adjustments, lens cleaning packages for one year, or other programs.

Surveys: Short surveys asking how you can do better make patients feel more involved in the practice.

SALES

Hold a blowout sale to help clear out unwanted, nonmoving stock. Make a point to offload old merchandise this way. Tagged as a seasonal sale, customers will have a feeling of getting a deal like they do in department stores.

WHAT'S NEW

Feature a "new releases" section near the front of the store/dispensary. In addition to new releases, feature a bestseller section and perhaps new trends and classics sections. Take a cue from how book and music stores label and market merchandise.

GIFTS

Promote gift with purchase. Gift with purchase is common, but also current, because it works. Partner with key vendors for this. Some examples in other industries include shampoo with free gift designer soap, power tool with free gift screwdriver set, and designer watch purchase with free gift duffel bag.

Bruce Mossman is education director at Charmant Group USA.