Here’s how to increase skin care sales, and your patient experience.
At Victory Media, our social media and marketing efforts centre around showcasing your products and services to your ideal audience. It’s our passion and expertise. While newsletters and social media strategies are essential to reaching your patients and gaining new ones, these efforts work best in concert with best practices in your clinic. In this post, we’re focusing on one such component of your cosmetic practice–retailing, and how to increase skincare sales.
Retailing: Why it’s important.
Have you considered the opportunity for passive income that the retail side of your business provides? Once an initial sale has been made–based on a professional recommendation matching the client to an ideal regimen–the repurchase of that product month after month, requires little labour expense to you and your business.
While retail sales may not seem like such an important part of your business compared to the revenue derived from surgical procedures or cosmetic treatments, if nurtured, it is in fact a vital part of the service experience for your patients, as well as a substantial source of revenue in its own right. Arguably even more important? Retail sales result in repeat visits by patients who may not have reason to come back into your clinic otherwise, such as after cosmetic surgery or a series of laser treatments. As your patient’s resource for skincare, with every repeat visit you are afforded a new opportunity to educate them on other services you offer.
If patients leave your clinic without the necessary tools to take care of their skin and extend the benefits of their treatment at home, it’s a lose-lose scenario:
- Your lost sale is the pharmacy or department store’s gain
- Retailing offers a great opportunity to build trust and loyalty with your patient. Without it, they are left without solutions for their skin and looking elsewhere to find them.
Establish a sales to service ratio.
In order to get where you want to be, you need to set a benchmark. This is where establishing a sales to service ratio comes in. With regard to your lower ticket services, a healthy sales to service ratio to aim for is a 30/70 split – meaning 70% of your final ticket sale will be derived from service revenue and 30% will come from retail sales.
Having this standard ratio to aspire to is an excellent way to monitor how your retail sales are performing. Are your staff meeting this goal? And if not, how can you support them to boost skincare sales?
Training is key.
Set up regular training sessions with your business reps to keep your staff informed and up to date on any new products, as well as to give them a general overview of the line(s). If there are SKUs that are not moving on your shelf, ask your rep focus on them during the training. It’s not uncommon for staff to focus on selling their favourite products, but training can reinvigorate their appreciation and excitement for the full scope of the brands you carry.
Set goals and create incentives.
Work with your rep to set up goals and staff incentives to keep your team inspired. Find out what motivates them–do they work well with healthy peer competition? Or do they achieve goals better as a team?
A little bit of attention and intention towards the retail side of your practice can have very positive outcomes for you, your team and your patients. If you have this aspect of your practice in the bag, good on you! For everyone else, don’t let another month go by without cultivating this underrated revenue stream, and contact us if you need a hand!
