When was the last time you reviewed your eyecare practice's sales messaging? Whether it's through marketing material, online content, or face-to-face interaction, your entire staff is responsible for keeping optical dispensary sales high.
We've found that a good first step to innovating sales tactics is developing buyer personas for your common patient base. Tailoring your sales messaging for specific buyer personas can lead to an effective increase in your second pair sales, patient recall, and optical dispensary sales overall. Keep reading to find out how to build personas that generate more optical sales.
Buyer Personas Help Focus Sales Tactics in Your Optical Dispensary
When it comes to personalizing your sales pitch, buyer personas can organize your tactics by age groups, buyer needs, buyer preferences, and more. This way, your entire staff understands which sales messaging and methods work for patients as soon as they arrive at your practice.
You should be able to group together your patients based on a few common traits and tendencies. In order to help you build your personas specific to your patient base, we've included a few personal aspects to consider below.
Title
Your buyer personas shouldn't have actual patient names, but something neutral like "Budget Brian" to showcase the customers' needs while being anonymous.
Age, Gender, and Location
Although demographics aren't always indicative of buying personality, they can help you consider the patient's medical needs. For example patients above the age of 40 most likely require reading glasses or have the financial means to purchase designer frames. Similarly, patients whose visions are still changing need a new prescription every year and probably prefer budget-friendly frames. Also, if your patients live or work near your practice, they're more likely to be long-term customers who return year after year so you can invest in building a relationship with them.
Work and Hobbies
Do you have patients who lead active lives outdoors who might be in need of polarized lenses, prescription sunglasses, or transition lenses? Patients who are experiencing eye strain or even headaches from looking at a computer screen all day could benefit from lenses with blue light filters. Grouping patients with similar lifestyles can make it quicker and easier to pick out products specific for patients' needs.
Taste
Do some of your patients gravitate towards trendy, colorful frames while others choose practical, neutral frames? You can usually tie taste to age, gender, and lifestyle easily. For example, "Millennial Molly" could apply to patients aged 21-35 who look at a screen for over 9 hours a day due to school or work, have a $200 budget, and prefer quirky frame styles or colors.
Buying Motivation
The reason that your patient would want to browse your dispensary is one of the most important parts of your personas. Think about why they would choose your practice or products over online retailers or other optometry practices. Are they looking for excellent customer service and your opticians' expertise? Do they want to purchase quickly after their exams instead of waiting for online shipping? Do they want to try all of the possible frames in person? Maybe they want the option of adjustments? Zeroing in on why customers choose you helps make sure you're delivering what they came for.
Buying Concerns
Lastly, you should recognize your patients' pain points. Do they have a tight budget? Are they experiencing discomfort with their current frames or lenses? Do they want something customizable? Identify what would stop your personas from buying from your practice and develop responses to ease their concerns and answer their questions.
Once you have developed as many personas as you need, you can create a sales techniques "cheat sheet" on Google docs for your staff to reference. Here is where you put buyer personas to good use with quicker on-boarding and savvy sales messaging. Your cheat sheet can include persona-specific methods that encourage patients to buy frames or contact lenses from your practice, interest them in a second pair, purchase accessories, and return the following year.
For more tips on how to improve your sales messaging, check out our new OD Handbook: Small Business, Big Profits.
