The Optical Vision Site

FREE Stuff- Google Call Phone

I just used the new Google Voice ‘call phones’ that works with our gmail account. It was great! Clear voice, no static, went through just find and for business, it might save money. We use google apps for business as well. Free calling in the USA and Canada, International calling will be starting at 2 cents/ minute to Japan, Britain, Germany and France.

Should You Hire An Eyecare Practice Management Consultant?

Photo: Intersectionconsulting.com

First I want to preface this, I have a love-hate thing about consultants. Some are very good and some are very bad, there have been times when I have walked out of offices screaming about consultants and other times I have made suggestions that they should hire a consultant because the office was so messed up. I will say this, being a consultant is very hard work even though it may seem easy. The advantages of consultants is they have a broad perspective of overall business trends and can offer a variety of services from start-ups to marketing to financial analysis, teamwork building, human resources, partnership agreements and more.

Because there are many types of consultants before you hire you should weigh in what you are looking for. If your finances are good, but staff management is an issue, maybe you need to hire a human resource consultant, maybe you need a social media consultant or just need a partnership agreement. The first thing is to write down what your issues and trouble spots and your goals. The next is to do your homework and check out consultants get references, check out their blogs and websites.

Still not sure, there are plenty of free resources on the Internet, software and through blogs. But some people are better to have a physical person guiding them through the maze of running a business and keeping them on track.

When You Should Not Hire A Consultant

1. You know everything
2. You hate people telling you what to do.
3. You will not implement anything anyway, so what’s the point.
4. Your staff will sabotage anything a consultant tells you to do.
5. You hate criticism- When you hire a consultant you have to let the ego go.
6. You think your accountant/spouse/staff has all the answers.
7. You think consultants are overpaid and it’s easy work anybody can do it.
8. You consistently step over a dime to pick up a penny.

When You Should Hire Consultant

1. You are working harder than ever and not making any money
2. High staff turnover.
3. Disorganized and can’t seem to get systems in place
4. Want to retire and sell- need to get office in working order
5. Want to bring on associate and need partnership agreement.
6. Need direction and benchmarking stats
7. Need leadership and management skills.
8. Staff is unresponsive and not doing the job to best of their abilities.
9. You are out of control.
10. You want a shortcut to business planning and don’t want to take the time to make your own mistakes.
11. Your way is not working and you need new ideas
12. Losing patients
13. Hard time making decisions

Listed below are some eyecare consultants. These are not all the consultants in the optical industry and if we missed someone apologies in advance.

Eyecare Consultants With Blogs

• Al Cleinman
• Art Gennaro’s Blog
• Eyecare Marketing Information- Jeff Lewis OD- Online marketing via email, advertising, blogs and online
• Gale Stoner
• Karlsrud Company - Selling, Teaming, Leadership
• Silkin Management Group
• Donna Suter Consulting – No blog, but good articles
• Vision Practice Management
• Waugoo Consulting Group
• Eye Coach- Robert Bell
• Consulting With Vision; Ally Stoeger

Eyecare Consultants Without Blogs

• CB Consultations- Crystal Blaker, will set an eyecare office up on social media programs.
• Gailmard Consulting
• Gil Weber
• OD Excellence
• Power Practice -
• Professional Vision Group-
• Rollins Consulting-
• Teamwork Marketing -Patrick Dundas
• DND Consulting
• Resmark Consulting
• The Williams Group

Online Sites For Benchmaking

• ODStats- $19.95 Month

Buying and Selling Practices

• Practice Concepts- Scott Daniels
• Practice Consultants- Gary Ware
• MedPro Consulting and Marketing Services
• Transition Consultants

Resources

• How To Hire A Business Planning Consultant
• 10 Reasons To Hire a Business Consultant
• Practice Management Consultants- Who Need Them (American Academy of Ophthalmology

WOW Of The Day! Thank You Vision West

Sometimes people do the most incredible ‘WOW’ things and I just had to share this one. In the day to day routine of life, we slog (as Shirley calls it) our readers flog it and isn’t it wonderful, when something happens so good, you want to shout it from rooftops! Heres our shout today. Vision West who was our first sponsor and trusted us enough when we were only getting 10 hits a day put us in BIG on their website and on their statement.

Vision West Front

Huge thank you to Vision West for supporting us the little guy and putting us on their site. This made our day!

Vision West Statement

For those who don’t know who Vision West is. They are the best optical buying group with great discounts and a huge selection of vendors and the nicest people!

Eyecare Forums- Education, Problem Solving, Resources

Eye Coalition A New Site For Optical Professionals

When we ran our post Comments are Important, we realized that there were many topics that our readers wanted to know about and we may not be always the best resource as much as we try. That is where optical forums come in. Optical- Eyecare Forums are a give-take discussion on all sorts of topics relating to the optical industry. The biggest advantage is you can post a specific topic i.e. a contact lens complaint and up to 30 people can answer you with 30 different choices of how to deal with the problem and get an immediate response.

Before you think- UGH one more thing- Forums are easy- patient comes in needs a Dive Mask with prism- you go on OptiBoard and post the question, have contact lens troubleshooting question, post on a Forum, have a question on technology as related to testing and eye exams, post on forum, want to know something about edgers, post on forum and 99% of the time you will receive at least 1 response if not more within 24 hours. Most of your questions are not new, someone, somewhere has answers, that is the beauty of forums.

OptiForum- Buy and Sell Equipment, Forum, and Lab Rats

Optical Industry Forums

• OptiBoard- Forum based blog for opticians, although quite a few optometrists and ophthalmologist are on the forum. Free to join, jobs, speakers, forums, dispensing tips and classifieds. This is one of the oldest forums with alot of active members who are not shy about participating.

• Eye Coalition- New Forum, Free to join – another connection for the optical industry professions, jobs are posted, resumes uploaded. We encourage everyone to become a member and start participating.
• Optical News Daily Community- New forum as well. Community Forum for optical industry professionals.
• The Optom- Forum based site in the UK , free to join.
• ODWire - Forums and classified ads
• SOVOTO- Website with forum for Vision Therapy.
• Laramy K Forum- Sponsored by Laramy K (Lab) offers everything from education to business development.
• AOA Connect- American Optometric Association new forum for optometric professionals
• OptiForum- Old Forum which has several categories. 1.)Buying and selling optical equipment, 2.) General discussion, 3.) Lab technicians 4.) Industry News

Consumer Forums

• The Sunglass Forum – Want to know what the consumer is asking about- check out this forum .
• Style Forum- Consumer Forum on Eyewear
• Contact Lens Forum-
• Forum Contact Lens (UK)

We try to answer all questions and try to provide solutions and ideas on sales and marketing for eyecare professionals, but our readers and other optical professionals are founts of excellent tips and information we recommend networking with them as well.

OWA Presents an ABO/NCLE Event Featuring Curtis Zimmerman

The Optical Women’s Association (OWA) will host a POWW (Professional Optical Women’s Workshop) event at the upcoming ABO-NCLE National Education Conference in Cincinnati, OH. The OWA is pleased that Curtis Zimmerman, a fascinating speaker and author, will be the keynote speaker. Curtis will address the general session on Saturday, September 18th at 11:00 am with a dynamic program which will inspire participants to ignite their ultimate potential. The presentation, Living Life at Performance LevelTM will be a FREE CE course for this session.

The 2010 conference will be held at the Duke Energy Convention Center and runs from September 16- 19. The ABO-NCLE National Education Conference is the premier optician conference in the USA, offering training and education in spectacle lenses, frames and contact lenses. Visit the ABO site www.abo-ncle-conference.com for additional information and to register now for the OWA event. All ABO/NCLE attendees, OWA members and non-members are invited to attend Living Life at Performance LevelTM. Advanced registration is required.

Curtis Zimmerman

As a speaker and author, Curtis Zimmerman has impacted over one million people throughout the nation with his life-changing messages and award winning programs. Audiences connect with Curtis through his interactive style and approachable manner. He incorporates the skills he gained from over twenty-five years in the entertainment industry into powerful programs, cleverly balancing the connection between education and entertainment. Curtis transforms organizations by inspiring individuals to live their life at a higher level of performance.

Grady Culbreth, OWA board & program committee member and a past president of the OWA, spearheaded the effort to bring this acclaimed speaker to the ABO-NCLE conference. She says “this event is the third year in a row that the OWA has sponsored a speaker at the national conference and is an example of OWA’s ongoing commitment to education and development in the industry”.

Zimmerman is the author of I Believe…What do you Believe? Keys to Success in College and Life, and a contributing author to Pillars of Success and Lessons from the Road. He was honored to share his message with more than 14,000 Airmen for the United States Air Force and received the prestigious National Leadership Award for outstanding service from United States Congressman Tom Reynolds and is a member of the National Speakers Association.

9 Tips On Charging For Services

Photo:Damian Yerrick

One topic that has come up over the last 20 years, is what to give away and what to charge for in eyecare offices. Today with the consumer increasingly shopping online and coming into the office and wanting free adjustments, free nosepads, free advice, the question always arises- Should you charge?

OptiBoard had some some great tips on how and when to charge for nosepads, adjustments and all the little things that can nickel and dime an eyecare office. (Thanks all Optiboarder’s for these great ideas)

Tip #1

• Let’s say you sold a pair of nose pads for $5. You made $5. You are ahead of the game by $5. You sell 10 pairs of nose pads and now you are at $50. So now you have some money to buy a pizza for the staff. Isn’t that nice? Now, some clients (and we are talking about clients getting the nose pads for glasses they bought from you) may not like this and they may go somewhere else. That client spent, let’s say, $300 on glasses from you. That means you have to sell 60 pairs of nose pads to make up for that one client who left you. And that is if no others leave you for similar reasons. Now, thinking that if this client buys a new pair from you every 3 years at $300, then over a 30 year span, that is 10 pairs of glasses = $3000. So now you have to sell 600 pairs of nose pads to make up for that one lost client.

Tip#2

• If a pat. has purchased eyewear from us, we don’t charge. If a pat. has not purchased eyewear from us, we charge. The only exception to the latter is adjustments. Here are some opinions on this topic: http://www.ecpmag.com/1webmagazine/2…e-services.asp

Tip #3

• Another solution is you could record the name of the person getting the freebies. If they come in three times (non-customer) and never buy, or if you recognize a different frame in between, you can mention that the other times were freebies and this time you are charging. Also, always tell them the fee before you do the service, not after.

Tip #4

• We price our frames and lenses to include essentially a lifetime of nosepads, temple tips etc. We let our patients know this so that they don’t even think twice about where they are going when they need anything at all remotely having to do with their eyes or glasses. We MUST always be the only place they think of going to for help.

Tip#5

• You would be surprised how many people come back to lay down $500 because of a free pair of 50 cent nose pads and a good cleaning.

Tip #6

• We live in a tourism area and charge a $10 donation to our charity. We do get a few per year that want me to do it for free and they then need to wait until they get home. Our clients we don’t charge but they put in more money than anyone.

Tip#6

• I work in an ophthalmology office. The Drs. stress customer service, and every couple years, they have us watch the video “Give em the pickle” (you can watch it on youtube. It’s from Farrell’s ice cream parlour). We don’t give away the store, but we make sure we keep the patient happy. Our giveaways usually consist of nosepads, adjustments, and an occasional frame case.

Tip #7

• In this day of “discount” chain & Internet customers you have to teach your patients and those who are not the value of their purchase. you charge for your SERVICE & TIME for non-customers, explaining that it is a free service only to your customers who have purchased the glasses from you for as long as they have those glasses. MAKE SURE your own customers are informed at time of dispensing of this valuable lifetime service, which is included in the cost of those glasses. They have paid for your service, make sure they know it. We all like to get value for our money spent!

Tip#8

• Ultimately I started using a method that Chris Ryser brought up some years back, we would do the repairs and charge it to an account that we set up in the system and then I would zero it out. The Majority of patients would look at the receipt and be perplexed sometimes they would complain that they shouldn’t be charged anything. I would tell them that the service costs money we just choose not to charge them for it as a courtesy. You would be amazed at how well that worked. I think Chris said it came from a jeweler that would do that with watch batteries. I like Craigs idea of having them donate to your favorite charity as most people won’t complain about it and the charity gets money so it’s win win for everyone. It’s always nice to let people know that it’s not FREE, and that you don’t think they should pay for it if you do provide it at no charge.

Tip #9

• This problem came to my attention about a year ago when we started having many patients from other local optical stores come in for adjustments and what I refer to as consultations. I decided that since these other practice owners were not paying the salaries of our well educated staff, we would start charging non patients a $10 optical service fee. This fee applied to any glasses not purchased in our office and included taking PD’s, adjustments, minor repairs such as nosepads, temple tips and screw replacements. We also charge this fee if we have to analyze and troubleshoot glasses filled elsewhere. This fee covers 1 year of these services and we give them a business card with the expiration date and $20 coupon towards their next eyewear purchase in our office. This policy lets patients know these services have value, but the discount rewards the person that is going to be a loyal new patient to the practice.

Optical Facebook Fans – Meet Iris from the OpticalVision Site

Iris

Over the last few years the growth of internet marketing, specifically social media and search engine optimization has accelerated. We are continuing to focus on our Optical Facebook presence, utilizing the new format of the Facebook Fan Page. Cathy and I still have our personal Facebook profiles but are now directing most of our “optical” communication through our official Facebook Fan Pages for the Optical Vision Site and Optical Vision Resources. You might come across Iris on Facebook, she is the official keeper of our social media.

The modular format of the Fan Page allows businesses to tailor applications including video, images and testimonies to the business, creating a community of followers. For us Facebook is a key tool that we use to communicate with our target market(s), promote our Optical blogs and drive traffic back to our sites.

So what are the benefits of Facebook to a business:

1. Providing a portal to communicate with your target market(s), plus more focused communications with segments or individuals; Facebook can help segment your target market(s) based on demographics.

2. Back linking web addresses and including the name of the business in the Fan Page name has huge benefits for search engine optimization – we all know how important it is to get on the first results page of a Google search!

3. Facebook, like Google is being used for searching out business locations and information.  It has become the preferred “word of mouth” tool for millions of people.

4. Facebook provides free ‘insights’ into the performance of your Fan Page, including demographics and interactions. These allow you to manage and monitor what your target market wants in ‘real time‘, what they like and dislike, to ensure you are using your resources to their optimum.

5. Finally and probably most importantly it is all free and pages are accessible without needing to log into Facebook, or even have a Facebook account. What it will cost you though is time.

So the question is… to Facebook or not to Facebook…

Social media platforms have facilitated the consumers’ desire for two-way communication with their favorite brands; social media has given the consumer a voice and this adds value to the consumer. However, the growth of citizen reporters, consumer generated content and the increasing trend of two way communications between businesses and their customers equates to a power shift and a lack of control. This lack of control means risk! However, is the risk of not having a presence putting you at greater risk of being left behind!

Please “like” i.e. become a fan of The Optical Vision Site and Optical Vision Resources Facebook Pages. Resources for help with your Facebook included Transitions, All About Vision, Duct Tape Marketing

Deducting Optical Business Bad Debts

If debt collection is a problem for your optical business, deducting uncollectible (bad) debts from your tax bill may somewhat lessen the sting of simply writing them off. Here is some basic information on deducting business bad debts.

First, the debt must be legitimate. A bona fide debt arises from a debtor-creditor relationship and is based on a valid and enforceable obligation to pay a fixed or determinable amount of money. For debt creation, the business must be able to show that it was the intent of the parties at the time of the transfer to create a debtor-creditor relationship. In other words, the optical business must be able to show that at the time of the transaction, there was a real expectation of repayment, and there was intent to enforce the indebtedness.

For most businesses, it is common to incur uncollectible or worthless debts. Two types of bad debt deductions are allowed by the IRS: business bad debts and non-business bad debts. Business bad debts give rise to ordinary losses that can generally offset table income on a dollar-for-dollar basis. Non-business (personal) bad debts are considered to be short-term capital losses. Because there is a limitation on deducting capital losses, distinguishing business and non-business bad debts is critical.

Optical business bad debts generally originate as credit sales to customers for eyecare goods delivered or eyecare services provided. If a business sells goods or services on credit and the account receivable subsequently becomes worthless, a business bad debt deduction is permitted, but only if the revenue arising from the receivable was previously included in income.

Optical business bad debts can also take the form of loans to suppliers, clients, employees and distributors. Additionally, a business bad debt deduction is allowed for any payments made in the capacity as guarantor if the reason for guaranteeing the debt was business related. Here, the guarantor’s payment results in a loan to the debtor, and the taxpayer is generally allowed a bad debt deduction once the loan becomes partially or totally worthless. Worthlessness can be established when the optical business sues the debtor, and then shows the judgment is uncollectible. However, when the surrounding circumstances indicate a debt is worthless and uncollectible, and that legal action to collect the debt would in all probability not result in collection, proof of these facts is generally sufficient to justify the deduction.

Source: Tax and Business Alert – July 2010