Dr. Allard with his rep, Greg, from Essilor Labs. Dr. Allard says such partnerships allow his practice to offer the best products at the best prices to patients, enhancing both care and profitability.
By Tyson Allard, OD
April 5, 2023
Your practice’s vendors can be your greatest business friends–if you build mutually beneficial relationships with them.
These relationships can make a huge difference to your practice’s performance. Last year, we worked with reps to increase capture rate 5 percent and to increase the percentage of glasses sold with anti-reflective treatments by 35 percent.
Here is how my practice works with these individuals to better serve patients and create a more profitable practice.
Establish Mutual Objectives
Before beginning to work with frames, contact lens and equipment vendors, I always have a sit-down conversation with them to assess what they can provide to our business and what they expect from our partnership. My goal is to establish genuine, personalized relationships with each vendor, allowing us to get to know each other and understand our respective objectives.
I firmly believe that it’s essential to define the relationship upfront. Our vendors need to understand that we view our partnership as a collaboration aimed at enhancing our practice and providing our patients with the best possible care. By using their products and services, we can improve our ability to serve our patients and strengthen our business as a whole.
Communicate Frequently
Primarily we text our vendors. However, whenever possible, we like to meet face-to-face with them. We utilize phone calls as the last option since they are not as efficient as texting and yet lack the interpersonal benefits of in-person meetings.
Any lack of honesty from a vendor is a major concern that could potentially lead to the termination of our relationship. I tend to be straightforward and transparent, and when I believe a vendor’s service has fallen short, I make a point of having an open and honest conversation with them about it.
Tap Your Reps to Help You Stay on Top of Sales Metrics
At every meeting we have with reps I ask for sales metrics. I think it is vastly important to know where you are with your sales of each specific product you sell. For inventory, we always run our internal numbers before the rep arrives and then compare them to the vendor’s numbers.
The best advice I received was from a contact lens vendor: To be great at sales, understand the patient’s needs and then match the product to that need.
It also helps for vendors to double-check your numbers. They sometimes can figure out what the problem is when you’re not profiting as you should from your sales.
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I had one rep find a pricing problem with one of our products. Also, we had a rep help us with a capture rate issue. We had a different value than they had for our capture rate. That discrepancy allowed us to isolate and fix problems with our tracking system for determining capture rate.
Ask Vendors to Go Deep in Information Given to You
Here is what we ask each of our vendors to provide us with:
Frame vendors: How many frames sold, average frame price sold and any frame lines that have not turned over at least two times per frame.
Contact lens vendors: Annual supply percentage and daily disposable percentage and any changes to rebate programs.
Equipment: Medical reimbursement and any software updates and who the local key opinion leader is to ask specific questions about the technology.
Optimize a Vendor’s Market Knowledge
Vendors often have impressive experience in many different markets. I make a point of asking them how I can better prescribe a product or technology. They frequently have tips on what has worked for similar practices in selling more of their products or getting more patients to agree to testing or treatment using their technology.
Ask Reps to Assist in Staff Training
We ask our contact lens reps and ophthalmic lens reps to perform training once a quarter with our staff. They share basics of optics and how their products are beneficial for the patient. This allows our staff to understand the science and also understand why each product we sell is helpful to our patients.
Tyson Allard, OD, is the owner of True Vision Optometric Group, which has three locations in Oklahoma. To contact him: tallard@truevisionoklahoma.com
