eyecare by the numbers

Driving for Results!

Alan Cleinman

The New Year is almost upon us. By now, you’ve finished your planning and (hopefully) worked through your budget for the coming year.

As I ask the question about the goals of my audiences and clients, I often hear, “We’re planning to grow by 10 percent next year.” Certainly, growth as defined by percentage increase in revenue is a goal. But, like all other goals, the key is not in the setting of the objective; that’s actually the easy part. What’s most critical is establishing the actions that will get you there.

But how do you do it? What actions will you take to arrive at your desired destination? Let’s take a look at a simple process to arrive at a growth target for the year.

UNDERSTANDING DATA

To understand your underlying data, don’t start with actual revenue. Like the score of a ball game, revenue is the measurement of results of a series of definable actions.

In this example, revenue comprises two elements: The first is units; the second is revenue per unit.

Your objective is to break down revenue into the simplest possible terms, something that your entire team can rally around and can be measured daily.

ESTABLISHING GROWTH PLAN

Armed with underlying historical data, you can now establish your Unit Growth Plan.

In this example, you’ve planned to maintain the same number of workdays and the same exam capacity per day. The change you desire to bring about is to increase your number of exams by one per day, or 200 for the year. What actions can you take to accomplish this?

■CALL PROGRAM. Institute a rejuvenation call program directed toward patients who haven’t been in for four years.

Yield Estimate: 100 exams

■FAMILY MEMBERS. Ask all patients making an appointment if there’s anyone else in the family they desire to have scheduled at the same time.

Yield Estimate: 50 exams

■CONFIRM UPCOMING APPOINTMENTS. Improve appointment confirmation process to reduce no-shows.

Yield Estimate: 50 exams

With this thought process, you’ve turned a long-term and largely subjective goal (200 exams) into a series of almost daily actions.

TEAM SPIRIT

Chart your progress for the entire team to see. This makes a goal easier to understand and maintains top-of-mind awareness. As a result, the goal is more readily achievable.

REVENUE PER UNIT

Using the same process as before, establish your Revenue per Unit Growth Plan.

■HANDOFF. Improve lens capture rate by five percent by improving doctor-optician handoff.

Yield estimate: $13 per exam

■AR: Improve AR percentage by 10 percent through packaging lens options and also by an improved script.

Yield Estimate: $8 per exam

Chart the average sale for each optician on a daily basis—that which gets measured improves.

Yield Estimate: $4 per exam.

YIELDING RESULTS

By using this methodology, each member of the team will more readily understand the actions necessary to realize the goal, and the monitoring progress is simplified.

Setting a simple percentage goal for your practice is not going to bring about that achievement.

But when you define, communicate, and measure the underlying actions that deliver your goal, you’ll more likely achieve the success you desire. EB

Alan Cleinman is the founder and CEO of Cleinman Performance Partners (www.cleinman.com), a business consultancy specializing in the development of high performance optometry practices. The information contained in this column is derived from the database of Cleinman Performance Network, the members of which are generally very large optometry practices. The information is not intended to represent national averages. The opinions contained herein are those of the author and do not represent the opinion of Eyecare Business or its publisher. ©2013 Cleinman Performance Partners, Inc.