GET RICH QUICK. An intense diet and workout plan. A magical pill to fix everything. We want dramatic changes and we want it now! This happens in the optical world too. You read an inspiring article or return home from a conference ready to implement all the brilliant strategies. So, you host a training session to get the team on board but when you look back three months later not a damn thing has changed! Why? Same reason that the diet and exercise plan failed. If you try to change too much at one time it’s not sustainable. Changing too quickly only creates temporary results because the habits have not been put in place to sustain the change. We all revert to old habits.
I work closely with hundreds of independent opticals. There is a clear line between opticals that are thriving and those that are hungry. Those thriving teams have a methodology of successfully implementing change. It is simple. Notice I said simple, not easy. Simple because they have a plan and every day make small efforts to get their teams closer to their goal. That continual mindfulness of the plan takes effort but it creates massive success. Think of a piece of printer paper. That paper alone is thin, insignificant, and not remarkable at all. However, if every day you add a piece of paper and stack it upon the paper from yesterday, before you know it, you have a ream of paper a few inches thick, heavy, and super sturdy. The offices presenting a ream of paper at meetings are creating chaos and struggling to get changes to stick. The successful offices have team members make paperthin changes that individually might not seem dramatic enough to matter, but these paperthin changes are allowing these teams to thrive in sales excellence.
Advertisement
Here are two paperthin changes you can begin implementing to produce massive results in a few months:
Paperthin Change #1: Prepared Responses
At your next office meeting make a “Patient’s Say the Darndest Things” list of the objections patients have to purchasing glasses or limitations they have when purchasing eyewear. Have each team member choose an objection they hear often, write it on the top of a page, then create different responses to that objection. Encourage each to make an entire list of responses, then keep rewriting and restructuring the responses until they have a response they are proud of. Ask the team to adapt and memorize their responses and use them with patients every time they hear that common objection.
Paperthin Change #2: Set Brand Allotments
Prepared expectations of brands and the quantity of frames that are planned for each brand is a clear standout of top performing offices. Having a clear expectation for your team and your reps when ordering frames will set a precedent for your team to be more aware of numbers and sales data. If you have a plan to allow for brand X to have an allotment of 35 frames, do not order more than that. It does not matter if there are new releases, or something you just must have, do not exceed the 35 frames. However, if the brand is selling well and you plan to increase from 35 to 45 then great! Because it was planned beforehand, it limits impulse buying.
To get deeper insight to successfully implementing these paperthin changes in your optical see video below.
Though it might not seem that paperthin changes like these are significant enough to make a difference. These types of changes are what sets top performing opticals apart from the rest. The key is small, compounding change. Many opticals try to commit to dramatic changes but fail, then they revert to old habits and nothing changes. I challenge you to implement paperthin changes. Give your team have time to adapt and create a habit before challenging them with another paperthin change.
