Pharmacy Daily | Changing The Mix

With 01 April fast approaching, all pharmacies need to explore and exploit all opportunities to grow the total business. It is now more critical than ever to look at your mix of business ratio. Is your pharmacy a 90/10 split? (90% dispensary, 10% front of shop). The opportunity for pharmacy is to change your mix of business ratio, whilst still growing your dispensary. If you are a current 90/10, the challenge to you and your staff is to change your mix of business and move your ratio to 85/15. The four key consumer drivers in order of importance are: Convenience, Range, Service and Price It is business critical that you understand these key consumer drivers and evaluate your business to understand them and maximise your opportunity. Convenience: This is not made up of location alone, although this is a major part of it. How is your parking? How is the internal layout of your store? Is it the traffic flow for your customers such, that they will have an enjoyable shopping experience? Range: This is the single biggest opportunity for a pharmacy to gain incremental sales. New products excite consumers, and if merchandised and ticketed well, new lines will always sell. The hidden opportunity with new lines is, every time that you bring a new line into your business, this is an opportunity to review your existing range and remove dead stock. Dead stock is a sales killer as it is sitting in the place of something that should be selling. Service: It goes without saying, to ensure that your customers have a good experience your staff need to be friendly, approachable and knowledgeable. Price: Notice how price is the fourth most important consumer driver? Whilst it is absolutely fundamental to have a strong pricing strategy, this is NOT the most important to your customers. If you maximise the four key consumers drivers, convenience, range, service and price, you will go a long way to changing your mix of business. This week’s contributor is Darren Dye from Pharmacy Alliance.

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The above article was sent to subscribers in Pharmacy Daily's issue from 21 Nov 11
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