Increasing year-supply contact lens package sales
Does your marketing plan for selling contact packages need attention? The number of full year packages you sell very much depends on the strategies you adopt. It can pay off greatly to test a mix of selling strategies to find out what works best with your patients. If your long-term plan is to increase sales, you need to test the market to understand what customers want. Below are tips to get you started selling more yearly supplies.
1. Do not prejudge
Although not a fancy marketing plan, simply remembering that your wallet is not your customer’s wallet plays a huge part in selling year supplies. Just because you may not be able to afford a year supply of contacts in one transaction, do not assume that your patients cannot. It can also be a disservice to you patients prejudging in other ways as well. Dress and physical appearance are often poor indicators of a person’s disposable income, although we often rely on these things to judge a person’s income. You owe it to you patients, all of them, to recommend the financial and convenience benefits or ordering a year supply. Your prejudgment of a person’s ability to pay truly does impact how successful you will be in selling a year supply.
2. Show customers the math
3. What can you offer that your competitors cannot?
Customers are more likely to return to a business that gives them a unique experience. Look at what your competition is doing and try to make your experience more attractive than theirs. Discounts and rebates are great options, but the more creative you can be, the more unique the experience will be. Do what others are not doing. For example, we find offering a 30% discount on nonprescription sunglasses with a year supply contact lens order works great. This upsell offer doubled our orders for year supplies of contacts. Not only do you reap 100% of the financial benefit of the year supply order, but also add incrementally more profit from the transaction through the sunglass purchase. The patient is thrilled because they leave with a great deal on a pair of sunglasses they were not expecting and the UV protection benefits. There is no additional staff time involved since the nonprescription sunglasses are simply dispensed off the frame board and is written up at the same time as the year supply of contacts. Keep in mind certain premium sunglass manufactures do not allow their products to be discounted, such as Maui Jim. These lines would have to be excluded from this type of promotion.
4. Stock a supply of sellable contact lenses in your favorite brand.
If your patient purchases a year supply from you, they are out of the market for the coming year. If they purchase only a 3 month supply, studies show they will be more likely to over- wear their contacts, and when they do run out, suddenly you are just one of many competing places for them to buy their contacts. You owe it to yourself and your patients to discuss the benefits, both health and financial, of ordering a year supply.
More tips and training available from OpticianU.