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'You can hardly open a newspaper without seeing doom and gloom headlines,' said Ian Davies, vice president EMEA at The Vision Care Institute of Johnson & Johnson Vision Care. Davies told practitioners in attendance that, despite this, contact lenses still offered an easy win.
'Contact lenses appear to be remarkably recession-free,' he added. 'If you're a patient wearing contact lenses in the world of disposability then you are going to want to carry on wearing them.'
Optometrist Peter Ivins, who made his name running Scottish independent Black & Lizars before its sale, said: 'It is tough out there. Optics is not so buoyant, but that is not bad considering it is a recession. And the contact lens sector is fairly good, which helps the sunglasses market.'
Business potential
To get things started at Practice Made Perfect, the 29 workshop participants opened up about their business activities through interactive voting. It transpired that 90 per cent had computerised practice management, while the remainder were urged to put this in place.
Votes then revealed a majority of 42 per cent of practitioners in attendance gained 10-20 per cent of their turnover from contact lens sales. The next most common answer was 20-30 per cent of turnover, while even fewer earned over 30 per cent of their turnover from contact lens sales. These responses were broadly in line with a UK average of 16 per cent of turnover.
'You're sitting on big potential today here and it doesn't have to be at the expense of your spectacle business,' said Ivins. He dispelled the notion that glasses were more affordable, or that contact lens sales were too time-consuming, hard to fit or a loss leader. He added that four out of five contact lens wearers also had spectacles and estimated the lifetime value of each contact lens patient at £15,000.
Extra contact lens turnover by itself cannot transform the fortunes of a practice, of course. Market positioning, promotion, patient retention and staff performance were also on the agenda at Practice Made Perfect.
Practitioners were urged to work out what kind of service they should offer based on the local area, with services like ACORN (see panel below) able to provide statistics. Positioning in terms of service and price was also deemed essential.
Meanwhile, writing mission and vision statements was also advised, using powerful key words, such as 'traditional', 'trusted' or 'passionate' to promote the practice. 'The mission statement is going to define the look, feel and smell of your practice. Everything you do must support this,' said Ivins.
Further interactive voting in London showed 93 per cent of attendees had their own website. It also found that 85 per cent of the practitioners collected email addresses and phone numbers from patients.
Team effort
Practitioner Shelly Bansal, who is now Johnson & Johnson Vision Care professional affairs consultant, told the workshop how setting team goals could also help boost performance.
Applauding the service he had received at his local hairdressers, Bansal said: 'I went back to my practice and shared it with them because that's where I want us to be. Have a look at who's carrying the baton and where they drop it. It is your duty to acknowledge that and then put the training in place to create a dream team. Any team works best when it understands what your vision is.
'There should be objectives for each member of the team as well as joint objectives. Individually, they will focus on them. If you do that then you have a team that is committed to working together.
'Mistakes are not a bad thing as it is from here we work out where we are dropping the baton and where we can pick it back up.'
A final interactive vote established that 37 per cent of the attendees had monthly staff meetings, while 21 per cent admitted to having none at all. A further 16 per cent had weekly meetings, with 11 per cent quarterly and 16 per cent annually.
'It's important that you take some time out of the consulting room to see what's happening,' added Bansal.
Although extra revenue streams and mission statements could go a long way, much came down to simple regular communication. ?
