It’s that time of year again where many pharmacists are in the market for new ideas and to update your knowledge.
Many of you conscious that Christmas trading will be upon us and that is excellent.
It’s a fertile hunting ground for opportunities to increase your efficiency, sales and professional practice.
Enthusiasm to see and learn and to identify new opportunities to succeed in your business and in your practice as pharmacists is of course vital to your survival and to your thriving in your local communities, providing ever increasing value.
But when you’re isolated in a small business by yourself or even with a partner, you often forget to take the financial hat off when looking at your marketing. And when you need to be focusing on sales, it’s challenging at times to remember to take off your clinician’s hat.
When you’re in marketing mode, you need to be fully in marketing mode. Being capable of wearing these different hats individually at different times is a challenge for many small business owners but even more so for pharmacists where there’s sometimes a question about the legitimacy of selling alongside professional service to customers.
But if you genuinely believe in the value of what you’re offering then ‘selling’ merely becomes a conversation with a customer about their needs and offering an appropriate solution.
And who are the pharmacies that I am seeing succeed and continue to grow? Yes, they exist. Even in these market conditions.
The continuing success stories are those who respect and value the practice of selling and marketing as much as they respect providing clinical services to customers- advice on medication and other beneficial complementary products, meds checks, HMRs. They invest in professional development for their staff and themselves to help them have those conversations with customers in a proactive, caring, ethical and professional way.
They’re not scared of selling.
Selling is in fact a major reason why they’re valued by their local community and why customers keep coming back to them. The local discounter or supermarket doesn’t provide a friendly face or someone who cares to take the time and effort to understand not just what they want but actually what they need as well.
The pharmacies who are forward driven in their businesses, who actively identify the customer’s needs and proactively ‘sell’ products as well as in their professional services (the two being linked of course. No surprises there) increase and sustain their profits and their loyal customer base, receiving referrals and being a trusted health advisor.
Filling scripts is the bread and butter of any pharmacy. But what else are you doing to understand your customer so you can offer more and diverse products and services to your customers and community? To do that you need to build rapport, listen and ask the right questions and then sell a solution.
There are many and varied wonderful opportunities on offer to increase your business as well as clinical skills and supporting those skills with innovative new products, services and information.
But are you going to learn and take lots of notes (and brochures) when you’re at conferences or are you going to get off the fence and join the winners in community pharmacy? These are the guys who take action on what they’ve learned or seen. By doing that, they benefit their customers and secure their pharmacy’s future as an integral part of their local community.
The opportunity is there.
It’s up to you whether or not you’ll grasp it.
If these comments have piqued your interest and you’d like to learn more about how to become a high performing pharmacy in these specific market conditions.
If you are really serious about supporting community pharmacy, and safeguarding your services and position in the community, and want to move forward with increased revenue and improved team performance.
Click >>BUSINESS ANALYSIS & REVIEW FOR PHARMACY OWNERS<< link
Meeting with PPS not only fast-track your results, it ensures you enjoy your business with the same passion and enthusiasm as when you first started.
Right now you can meet with our senior associate (a pharmacy industry specialist and world renowned business mentor) for a quick chat about your business.
We’ll cover where you want to get to, look at potential costly errors, and set some targets and goals together.
If we are a good fit we’ll help you create a plan for increased basket size, profitability, get you more customers and improve team dynamics.
>> FREE BUSINESS ANALYSIS & REVIEW FOR PHARMACY OWNERS<<
Don’t carry on reading other emails, dispensing scripts or talk to anyone else until you book in a time that is convenient to you, for us to speak.
This opportunity is here at present, and there’s no time like the present.
Click here now to book in your 15 minute discussion.
Go ahead you can do it, it will be good for your pharmacy, it will be good for you.
Linda Miller is a Pharmacy Business mentor and organisational psychologist with over 30 years’ experience in pharmacy. Linda reinvigorates and increases pharmacy profitability by transforming front of shop sales performance and profits through clever sales & marketing strategies and by motivating and teaching pharmacy staff how to sell with integrity. She uses proven systems uniquely designed for and suited to pharmacy staff and customers to ethically increase customer base, customer loyalty and basket size.