Many optical dispensaries have seen their best days of profit and growth.  These dispensaries are lagging behind the industry norms and continue to lose patients to the highly commercialized and highly advertised optical companies.  Not to mention online competition.  The competition for your dispensary sales continues to grow which places an urgency for you to continue to push forward in growing your dispensary.  There are many strategies that you can observe from the retail arena that can turn your dispensary from mediocre to profitable.  Here are a couple of changes you can make today.

  1. Rotate through designer lines – Media advertising has programmed you to pay attention to what the latest phone is or which style of clothing will keep you in style.  In the optical dispensary it is important that you are not predictable.  Patients get bored with predictability and thus want to “shop around” to see what will catch their eye as new and fun.  Plus, your dispensary staff will sell what they are most excited about and a new look and style brings about excitement.  When working with larger frame companies you have the privilege of bringing in a new line in exchange for a line that has not been moving.  This results in minimum financial loss from exchanges.  Ask your sales rep about rotating frame lines in your dispensary.
  2. Prescribe in the exam lane – I know you are afraid of being portrayed as a salesman or woman in the exam lane.  However, patients come to you for your expert opinion and that includes frames, ophthalmic lenses, and contact lenses.  A dispensary fueled by a doctor that prescribes a specific frame and ophthalmic lens in the exam chair, is a dispensary that is far more profitable.  It is important to have integrity in this because you can take advantage of the patient.  Assuming your integrity is in check, take the time to prescribe patients a specific solution to their visual needs and watch your patient satisfaction grow along with the profits of your dispensary.
  3. Make Staff training a top priority – Many offices do not put much effort into staff training.  There philosophy is that staff will learn over time and that it is hard to measure the investment in staff.  Like a good investment, the payoff is usually not immediate.  And your staff will ultimately keep the patients in your dispensary or cause your patients to want to shop around.  Patients are very savvy today.  The internet has given patients a resource to utilize to learn about product and competition prior to the day of their exam.  Jobson research in 2010 demonstrated that 65% of patients will buy their glasses at the first place that they look.  You have a captive audience after the exam.  With training and good communication skills, your staff can keep 15% of those on the fence resulting in an 80% capture rate.  Many of the vendors you work with have training programs for you to use.  I would also highly recommend you meet with your dispensary a minimum of once a month, preferably once a week.

The optical dispensary can be your biggest frustration in your small business or it can be one of your most rewarding aspects of practice.  You are an eye doctor whom patients look to for advice and expertise in vision.  Patients come to you to solve their visual problems.  To practice in the 21st century successfully, it requires taking the time and initiative to be specific with patients regarding the best solution optically for their visual needs.  Your dispensary can and should be the most profitable aspect of your business and should be the area that patients are telling their friends and family about.  It is never too late to invest in your optical dispensary.