TO BETTER YOUR sales relationship you must be honest about how you measure up. Knowing where you are will allow you to maximize what you’ve got. To fully optimize, you must use metrics. Your inventory is a massive investment and should be tracked.
Spexy monitors data for hundreds of independent opticals. I find there are two main attitudes regarding data: 1. The “we’re just a small business” mentality — since they’re not a big chain or corporate office, running actionable analytics requires more manpower than they have. 2. The opticals who feel they’ve maxed their data out. They proudly pull overly detailed reports from their EHRs or third-party system, but have yet to create an action plan with it. This is 2022! All businesses should be creating plans from their unique sales analytics.
There is a massive amount of bad information being shared about optical analytics and using it for inventory management, specifically with frame turnover. Frame turnover is a metric used to monitor returns from the inventory you carry. Traditional frame turn is a ratio of the quantity of frames sold in the past 12 months divided by the quantity of frames currently held in inventory.
There are four major misconceptions regarding frame turn analytics:
1. It’s enough to know your total frame turnover. Wrong! Running a frame turn for the entire inventory is completely pointless. It offers no metrics to build on. At minimum, frame turn should be calculated by brand to better utilize the data.
2. Frame turn ratio doesn’t give enough insight. Incorrect again! By strategically calculating frame turn, your assessment will give insight on how to:
- Make better buying decisions
- Optimize your retail pricing
- Track inventory ROI
- Flag stagnant inventory
- Capitalize on your sales trends
3. Every optical’s ideal frame turn is the same. Nonsense! Size matters in every way. It is ludicrous to think a $400k office will have frames turning at the same rate as an office pulling in $2.5 million. We’ve identified the typical sweet spot based on annual revenue. We can demonstrate multiple factors for businesses to determine their ideal brand frame turn, and have reduced it to its simplest form, available for free download using this QR code.
4. It’s not that hard, I will do it. Listen, “nobody got time for that.” Your team is already busy. Using tech to run data lets you spend that time making decisions. There are many systems that can get you access to data. Pretty graphs and a bazillion data points can look thorough, but if it lacks a plan-of-action, it’s not helpful. Choose tech that allows for a routine assessment of your data and includes a plan for how your team can improve.
In order to sell, you have to carry what sells. If you’re not using data to make decisions, you’re using emotion; that’s bad business. See how you measure up and start making sparks fly with your optical sales.