Building your practice takes a lot of effort and divided attention. You are managing a lot right now, and you are doing it well, from eye exams to prescribing, with a mix of marketing, training, and business operations. It’s a lot to tackle, and we believe you shouldn’t have to let operational success land squarely on your shoulders.
We believe a true ally will support your practice by providing the operational tools that empower you and your team to be your best selves.
Rely on Your Expert Reps
Your supplier reps should be experts you rely on. Great reps should know the product, the technology behind it, and how it all benefits, or doesn’t benefit, your practice. We know that trust is earned, so leaning on a rep might feel a little risky or even uncomfortable. An expert rep will earn your trust instead of validating your discomfort.
We believe reps are the first piece of providing operational support because they can be the ultimate problem solvers. Training materials can’t actively troubleshoot. Only humans can do that.
Benefits to a great rep:
- Product recommendations that fit your business
- A willingness to tell you what doesn’t fit your practice, saving you money and time
- Proactively brings you exciting new products, so you don’t have to be on the hunt constantly
- Unmatched expertise on the products and services they represent
Leverage the Sales Aids and Advice
The right sales aids and advice from a territory representative helps you and your team quickly understand what best fits your local audience, the use cases your patients face, and the downsides that may lead them to a different solution.
Benefits of useful sales aids and advice:
- Helps you and your team provide the best advice and prescriptions to patients
- Keeps you up to date on the latest product offerings
- Reduces the time it takes to onboard a new lens, coating, or technology into your product mix
- Gives you the sales points on how to talk to patients about a given product
- Helps improve prescribing and sales techniques
Don’t Tackle Training Alone
A great supplier partner knows that they understand their products the most; after all, they developed them! When a new product is released, you want to be prescribing it to your patients right away if it’s the right solution for them. Proper training materials means you don’t have to wait. Your team can learn a product quickly because you don’t have to learn the product first, develop training, and either present it or provide it to your team.
A great ally will proactively develop and provide training on new products that encompass their first-hand knowledge of the product and the challenges it was designed to solve.
Benefits of proper supplier-provided training:
- Built on first-hand information from the product’s development and testing
- Keeps your team going without downtime to develop your own training
- Reduces overhead on training, giving your team more time with patients
- Lets you start prescribing new products right away when your patients need them
Adopt Technology/Exam Tools
Exam and technology tools are placed together because it’s 2019, and they belong hand-in-hand. Technological exam tools are now the norm because they offer features the old analog tools simply cannot. Tools like Spectangle PRO offer augmented reality that lets users experience what a progressive lens might feel like before they buy.
Utilizing these tools is essential to your operational success. The tool creators should also be helping you use the tools with training and educational documents.
Benefits of good technology tools and followup:
- The biggest challenge to adoption is education. The right materials help your team adopt new tools into their process quickly.
- Technological tools provide extra value to your patients and enhance your exams
- Technological tools help patients feel confident in their prescription
Attract Customers with Marketing Support
Marketing takes a lot of time and energy while being essential to any business. Whether you are tackling digital promotions or in-store promotional materials, it takes time and expertise. A great supplier relationship will come with the marketing materials to help you succeed, and don’t stop there. Training materials and enablement guides are essential to utilizing any marketing support effortlessly and correctly.
Benefits of great marketing support:
- You can focus on the exams and face-to-face time with patients
- Helps you attract new patients without breaking a promotional budget
- Enables you to get started on marketing that you can expand upon as needed
- Gives your team a framework they can implement easily
Growing Your Practice with Operational Support
Growing your practice is always the top priority for you, and it should be for your supplier partners. You shouldn’t settle for anything less than a partnership that supports you by reducing the operational effort you have to exert. We’ve decided that the word partner doesn’t go far enough, which is why we strive to be THE ally of ECPs.
We work closely with practices from around the nation to help them be their most successful, not only from the products we create but through the support we offer along the way.