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OK, so we have all welcomed back a sheepish customer, who went off to try one of the multiples and found it wasn't really the experience they wanted. But don't allow your judgements to be formed on the experiences of the few. The reality is that for most people, the multiples consistently deliver a valuable service, most of the time.
Most multiples have significantly higher turnovers and profit margins than their independent neighbours. Apart from great client acquisition and retention marketing, the key reason for that is the ability to be consistent. In order to thrive, it's what any business must do - identify what the client wants and deliver it brilliantly, most of the time.
According to its website, there are 1,390 branches of Specsavers right now across the world. In the UK, there are around 690 Boots Opticians/D&A, and more than 330 Vision Express stores.
As an independent practice owner, the idea of having thousands of people working in hundreds of locations might sound like a lot of stress. But the multiples have a methodology that allows them to duplicate successful operations quickly and easily. And it's a methodology that - once you understand it fully - you can use to improve your practice.
The methodology consists of three steps:
? Find the most powerful tactics to get new clients, get them to return more often, and get them to spend more every time they visit. These are the only three ways to grow a practice
? Work out the simplest, most efficient ways to deliver these tactics in a consistent manner
? Build a systemised franchise model that allows you to quickly communicate to anyone, anywhere, how to copy the way you do business.
Required reading
For small businesses, the concept of the systemised franchise model was laid out by American author Michael Gerber in his best-selling book The E-Myth Revisited (I believe there should be a law forcing every practice owner to read this book). It directly addresses the problem that most practice owners feel they have: if they're not personally there, the business is not run exactly how they want it to be.
This is the problem that forces practice owners to work 14 hours a day, six days a week. They believe they need to do all the work in the practice themselves because 'no one else can do it as well as they can'.
That's just crazy talk. Sorry to break it to you, but everyone can do everything as well as you can - but only so long as you can communicate it to them properly.
A systemised franchise model consists of an operations manual and series of checklists. It lays out, in a simple but detailed way, how you want your business to be run. What you want to be done, exactly how you want it to be done, and importantly, why.
When a practitioner joins a multiple, they are shown exactly what to do, step by step, at every point of the client journey. They are given a written guide to help them do things the right way consistently.
All the things that work in one practice are quickly and efficiently repeated in another practice. No wonder they do so well.
Is this relevant to your business, especially if you have just one or two practices? Absolutely! Because the process of creating a systemised franchise model - a method of communication so simple that you can teach someone else how to run their business just like you run yours - makes you work out exactly how you want your business to operate, then build a system to make sure it continues to work that way.
Your staff never feel they have to second guess what you want from them. They can see that it's OK to have great ideas about new ways of doing things - and their reward is the adoption of their idea by everyone.
This is exactly what I did in my two practices, which I recently sold for an undisclosed sum. Systemising the business meant that I could step away and focus on working on my business rather than in it. My team did what I wanted, the way I wanted it done, and the business grew. I was able to manage the staff by their ability to follow the systems that were laid out. It made a complicated business simpler.
And simple is good as it creates space to improve. Systemising your business - yes, treating it like a branch of McDonald's - does not damage your practice or make it a worse place to work. It makes it a stronger business that achieves more.
You only have to look at the multiples to see that in action. ?
? Richard Pakey is the author of It's Time To Fight Back, owned by more than 1,200 UK practice owners. You can get a free copy of his book at www.freeopticiansbook.com