The title of this post probably made some of you bristle. You don’t want to have anything to do with sales. In fact, you went into optometry for the sole purpose of making a good living without having to sell anything to anyone.

Despite your aversion to selling, you and your staff are selling to your patients every day, and not just new frames in the optical department. How is this possible?

In basic terms, selling is persuading someone to your way of thinking. This happens all the time in the clinic. For example, you don’t want a patient who has signs of glaucoma to go blind from the disease, so you convince her through education and instruction that medicating her eyes with nightly eye drops is the solution. Compliance is the responsibility of the patient, but many times compliance can be improved by having a good sales person during the exam. You, the optometrist, are selling the plan to improve the patient’s vision.

Success is measured by action that patients take to improve their vision and eye health.

So why do we get so worked up about sales? Over the years, sales people have gotten a bad reputation for being pushy, self-serving, dishonest, and downright rude if you don’t buy their product. However, if sales people are highly skilled, you don’t view them as a nuisance, you view them as partners in your business.

Selling is a skill that the most successful optometrists have embraced and use to get positive results, like more patients using needed medications, ophthalmic lenses, lens coatings, surgical options, and specialty referrals. When selling with the highest integrity the result is a win-win for the patient and the practice.

It begins with you changing your mindset (which, by the way, is a great book) about what you do and how you do it. Success is measured by action that patients take to improve their vision and eye health.