last word

Sage Advice

Susan Tarrant

What do you get when you put four successful ECPs together and ask them what they did to get there? Lots of good ideas.

What follows are tidbits culled from the ECP Roundtable at the 2013 Transitions Academy with Marlee Organ, OD, and Isonelie Rodriguez-Torres, OD, Arizona Family Vision Center, Phoenix; Kim Manthe, Clarus Optical, Lacey, WA; and Eric White, OD, Complete Family Vision, San Diego.

STAFF IS EVERYTHING

Handpick staff carefully, choosing people who have the exact qualities you want. Don’t settle on just anybody. The right staff are hungry for training and education—give it to them.

TEAMWORK

Create team-led exercises and role playing to let your staff get comfortable talking to patients about lens options and new technology. If you have the same training, you will all have the same message.

SPECIAL EVENTS

Go beyond trunk shows. Offer special pricing or special events in your practice, choosing topics that are near and dear to your community. Near a military base? Try Military Family Day or Military Pampered Spouse Day.

SET A TONE

Treat each patient like family… through every step of their visit. If you truly understand your patients’ needs, that feeling will translate to the customers.

REVERSE EDUCATION

It doesn’t have to all come from the OD or MD. Optical managers can aid doctor-driven dispensing by supplying the docs with “cheat sheets” for easy reference about newer lens products and features for quick reference if they feel uncomfortable with a topic. Remember, you’re not upselling, you’re prescribing what the patient needs.

USE THE TOOLS

Lens manufacturers, frame vendors, and labs have marketing tools to help your business. Use them. The idea is to work smarter. You never know if a new tool will be helpful unless you try it out.

WINDOW SHOPPING

If you have a storefront, use it! One practice that utilized window displays and banners about new lens products saw sales jump more than 10 percent. EB

A Good Word

Looking to increase your social media presence and patient recommendations? Take charge of your Yelp rating. Eric White, OD, of Complete Family Vision in San Diego realized a 30 percent increase in new patient growth last year by asking patients to “Yelp” him.

At the end of each day, he sends every patient that he saw a message from his personal email account, thanking them for letting him serve their visual needs (it can be a cut-and-paste message) with a personal addition about what he recommended or what he discussed during the exam.

He ends the message by asking them to give him a review on Yelp, and provides a link.

The results? “My Yelp is off the charts!” he says.

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