Rons Optical: Quad Case with mirror and cell phone
Normally I love ‘Out Of The Box’ thinking, but when looking to increase your sales and profitability, ‘Look Inside Your Box’. As we come up to the end of the year and tax time, many offices will start to review their average transactions, in reality it should be done at least monthly. Why would you wait a whole year to correct a problem or evaluate how to increase your eyecare business at the end of every year? Tracking sales has many benefits, the least being a better understanding of your overall business.
One of the most important figures to track is average transactions. Sales per Transactions (sales per customer) tells you what the average transaction is in dollars. Are you getting the most out of your current patients? What opportunities might you be missing? It is a very easy calculation that can be done daily, weekly or monthly.
Gross Sales ÷ Number of Transactions = Sales per Transaction
Example:
- Gross Sales= $20,000 month
- # of Transactions= 200
- Sales per transaction= $100.00
Imagine this- if you increased your average transaction by $10, that is an additional $2000 in gross sales per month or $24,000 a year in gross sales.
Is it easy To Increase Average Transaction? Yes and No.
What is easy:
- Pointing your patients to ‘what’s in their plan’ frames
What is not easy:
- Changing habits, Greeting each patient and telling them they deserve the best, sitting them down and you doing the shopping for them.
What is easy:
- Showing them the product you think they can afford.
What is not easy:
- Making it a habit to show the best first and stop pre-judging their pocketbooks.
What is easy:
- Selling them only your ‘lens add on package deal’
What is not easy
- Getting into the habit of demonstrating premium coatings, AR coatings and various tints and discussing the performance capabilities of each.
What is easy:
- Giving them them their eyeglass case that comes with the frame.
What is not easy:
- Stocking colorful, fashionable eyeglass cases, contact lens cases that they may want to buy and or upgrade, and placing them in eye-catching ways all around the office.
- Denise Solay Designs: Trois Feuille, Amethyst, Green Aventurine, and Sterling Silver
What is easy:
- Not stocking or making an investment in necessary items such as eyeglass repair kits, eyeglass jewelry, retainers, microfiber cleaning cloths. Leaving these crucial sales to drugstores , department stores or online e-tailers.
What is not easy:
- Stocking a full assortment of beautiful, functional accessory items, that not only showcase your products but can easily lead to small add on sales.
What is easy:
- Letting them purchase their readers from the drugstore
What is not easy;
- Investing in a full assortment of quality readers.
The bottom line- if you want to increase your average sales per transaction, you have to 1.) stock the product 2.) Change habits and ask for the add on sale.
Similar Posts:
- How to Upgrade Your Inventory mix
- Tracking Sales Per Square Foot
- Inventory Management- Analyze What is Selling
- Retail Math for the Optical Retailer- Learn to Grow Your Businesss
- Optical Profitability- Appointment Setting
In your article “eyecare profitability” you stated that” letting them purchase there readers from the drug store”. Have you been in drug store lately? They sell readers, contact lens solutions, cases, cords and all sorts of accessories. Make more sense to have a very nice small display of readers to choose from at $29.95. It is poor retailing to send someone out of your store for something you could easily carry and make a good profit on. Look at all the large and successful chain retailers, the ALL carry readers.
You are right, and is should have read ‘ NOT’ letting them purchase readers from the drugstore. Thanks for the catch!
Cathy
Great article, this would make a great seminar.