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Animals and chain stores
What can your business learn from animals?
‘When the bear gets into the water with the alligator, the alligator usually wins’. My father told me this many times as we discussed how to market and operate our family business.
It is so easy for us, and for customers, to see all the advantages that the chain grocery, big box, mass merchant, or other store has over our pharmacy. It is easy because they all shout so loudly through their advertising what they can do for the customer.
Because all of these other pharmacies are shouting the same message, you would think they must have done their research and know that what they offer is truly what the customer is wanting.
If your pharmacy, the bear, were do decide to go ‘head to head’ with these businesses, you would surely lose. You cannot be open all the hours the pharmacy department of their store is. You cannot spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to create a drive-thru for your pharmacy. Nor can you add thousands of square feet, if not one hundred thousand square feet to your pharmacy to offer all of the items they do along with the low margins they operate on.
Part of the reason you cannot, is your not having that amount of money. Your community could not financially support another business that is similar to theirs. More importantly, it is not likely that it is your nature to operate a business in a similar format.
To succeed, you have to be yourself. Much like the t-shirt that states, ‘Be yourself; everyone else is already taken’, this is good advice for us.
The majority of customers that leave a business do so because of the perception that the business does not care about them. As an example, the independent pharmacy this writer does business with stays in touch with their customers only by way of a newsletter that is inserted in the monthly statement they send. The newsletter is a preprint from one of the major wholesalers with only a minimal amount of personalization for the pharmacy on it.
If I do not do business with the pharmacy over the course of a month, I will not get the newsletter because there will be no statement to send to me. The prescriptions that are taken daily are refilled only when the pharmacy is called. While the competition already offers a service to automate refills, there is nothing they could offer that could compete with someone I know calling me from the pharmacy to confirm a refill or offer to call the doctor’s office when a prescription is to be renewed.
Knowing the person who is calling is another component. This writer knows these individuals only because of my efforts to exchange names. What if their staff were wearing name tags? What if this local pharmacy were to create an ongoing staff education program to teach all of the pharmacists, technicians, and front end staff how to interact with people?
The response of, ‘our people already know our customers’, is understood, but what about any new customer?
A pharmacy in another town gives their customers a number to call when they have questions outside of regular business hours. The pharmacy has a schedule of rotation among their pharmacists as to who answers the call. They even come to the pharmacy after hours to fill a new prescription for a customer having that need.
Another pharmacy gives to customers a small container of hand sanitizer with the pharmacy name and contact information on the bottle. They offer free refill year round to all customers.
The answer is that successful independent pharmacies do not compete with the chain grocery, big box, mass merchant or other store that has a pharmacy. Knowing what they cannot do that these others can do, they begin to understand, and make an action list, of what they can do that these competitors cannot do.
They stay ‘out of the water’ and stand their ground. Simply said, and with a bit of humor, this is ‘beary good’ advice for any independent pharmacy.
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This article is copyrighted by Tom Shay and Profits Plus Solutions, who can be reached at: PO Box 128, Dardanelle, AR. 72834. Phone 727-823-7205. It may be printed for an individual to read, but not duplicated or distributed without expressed written consent of the copyright owner.
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With over 25 years of frontline experience Tom Shay is America's leading Small Business
Management
Expert. He's a "Must Have" for your next event.
The May Small Business Advisory is titled "Planning for a successful accountant" and is appropriate for many with the April 15 tax deadline having passed.
Did you work with your accountant? Or, did you just give them a bunch of papers and wait to receive a completed tax return?
Successfully working with an accountant requires a partnership. This month's Small Business Advisory gives suggestions of how to make this happen in 2024.
We see that many small business owners have too much of a focus on the "top line" of their income statement.
Increasing revenue is great, but it is not a cure all for any challenges your business is facing. And sometimes, incresing revenue can create a challenge.
Article of the Month
Who is your customer? Some small businesses have no focus. Their customer is whoever calls or walks in the door.
And some small businesses have determined which customers, in sufficient numbers, they should spend their efforts to attract.
The article of the month shares an old Southern rhyming couplet about business; "The bertter you niche, the more you get rich."
Book of the Month
Lean Startup by Eric Reis is our suggested book for May.
As the title suggests, the reader of the book would be someone that is starting their business. However, we see more value than just that.
Perhaps you have been in business for many years. We think this book could give insight to items, and methods, that a small business owner should think about with their business today.
