Your staff can’t execute if you don’t set them up for success. This is an essential mindset shift every doctor needs to make when trying to become a top performer in their region. Your staff have no ability (or obligation) to perform if you haven’t provided the proper guidance, expectations, and support.
As discussed earlier in the guide, whenever you implement a new supplier and set new goals, you should:
- Communicate the changes being made, and why they are being made, with your staff.
- Create new workflows for selling the new products, implementing improved sales strategies, or ordering from new suppliers.
- Create and distribute training, as necessary, even if it’s only what was provided by the new supplier to train your staff.
- Set reasonable performance goals and clearly communicate them to your staff; increase as goals are achieved and further optimizations are made.
- Stay in close communication with your staff throughout the day (see 9.2) and remind them that you want to set them up for success as best as you can.
If you REALLY want to set your business up for success, allocate a small percentage of the increased profits towards a desirable, performance-based commission structure. If you’ve followed even half of this guide’s recommendations for alternative frame and lens sourcing, or if you’re a Pivotal Group member working with any of our official partners, you have at least 30% – 50% more profit margin than the average independent optometrist.
Piece a little off and put it to good use. You’ll create a fun sales environment, significantly increase your overall profits, and make your optical staff happier. It’s a win-win-win proposition, potentially removing a lot of the management burden from the process.
Top-performing practices sometimes take this one step further and implement a tiered commission structure based on total sales. For example:
- 0-10 pairs of lenses submitted to your new supplier commissions the staff $3 per sale.
- Selling 11-20 pairs of lenses earns the staff $4 per sale (retroactively applied to all sales that month).
- 21+ pairs of lens jobs sold commissions the staff $5 per sale.
That’s potentially $100+ in extra monthly pay for key staff members from full-service lab incentives alone.
Implement similar compensation models for high-profit frame lines and lenses edged in-house and staff members could increase their take-home pay by 10% – 20% per month while boosting your business’s profits by 10x what your staff is commissioning.
With the right team members, a program like this can completely overhaul your optical revenue and dramatically reduce your overall COGS if implemented correctly.