By Rachael Click, OD
Access a powerful–and free–staff education resource: invite frame and lens representatives and other business partners to join staff meetings and share their expertise.
Ensuring that my staff can give patients the information they need about our products and services is a priority for me. For that reason, I invite frame and lens representatives and other business partners to our staff meetings. In discussing the differentiating characteristics of their products and services, they give our opticians the information they need to provide patients with details that can make a successful sale.
We have weekly staff meetings, and once a quarter, we use that regular staff meeting time to invite one of our reps or business partners to attend and offer insights on their products or services.
[Click HERE to Download a PDF of the worksheet Dr. Click uses to organize staff meetings]
Decide Which Reps to Ask
We have weekly staff meetings, and once a quarter we ask a rep from one of our vendors to participate in our meetings. A rep fromEssilor attends meetings twice a year because they are the vendor that has the most rapidly changing products, but they also are excellent at helping the team understand how to most efficiently meet our patients’ needs. The other top attending reps are from CooperVision and Transitions, but we have had Bausch & Lomb host a meeting too. Our most recent meeting was with a local cataract surgeon’s office. This was an excellent meeting because they educated the staff in what our patients should expect for their surgery consultations. They also answered post-surgical billing questions, and showed us a video on new surgical techniques.
In December, we are having a rep from Safilo host a meeting on frame board management for our optical department. I am especially excited about this meeting because it will help us make good decisions in our Executive Review, a day-long business meeting that allows us to create our goals for the year. We close the office for the day and each staff member covers a topic and has a plan of action. We try to strategically plan the reps to coincide with the plans that were created at the Executive Review so that we can meet our yearly goals.
Work with Reps to Map Out Meeting Agendas
Vendor reps typically have many presentations already prepared within their company, but the rep and I always discuss beforehand and decide on an agenda. For instance, at our last meeting with our CooperVision rep, we discussed annual supply sales and strategies to maintain and increase our current sales rate. I also always inform the staff about which rep is visiting and the topic of discussion. There is always a time for questions at the end, and we do always have questions because we have strategically planned the meetings to coincide with questions we have or challenges we are facing. Everyone’s time is very valuable, so there is never a meeting that isn’t current to our needs.
Typically, the rep creates the materials. Most of the large vendors already have materials created for their reps to use in educating offices, but reps will also customize printed materials for us. For instance, some of the contact lens reps have customized charts demonstrating the financial benefits of annual supply sales.
Another benefit of inviting reps into staff meetings is they can go beyond detailing their products and discuss trends in what is selling and let doctor and staff know how other practices have succeeded at promoting their products.
State Objectives for Meetings
We are very good at stating what the objectives are for the meeting. I don’t allocate times for topics within the meetings because I want everyone to feel comfortable to ask questions. We tend to only have one or two topics that we are concentrating on during the meetings. I make sure that the topics being discussed are addressing questions or concerns that keep coming up within the practice. Since these are topics that are coming up within the practice, we discuss them at length at our weekly meetings. However, it is always amazing to me that I can lead the discussion and talk about the same things at our weekly meeting, but when a rep leads the discussion, the staff takes more away from it.
Balance Focus with Freedom for Discussion
I don’t have a written agenda for these quarterly meetings because they are already based on recurring questions. However, I do have a written agenda for the weekly business meetings. Typically there are more points to discuss than what we have time for in our one-hour session. I have not yet designated times to these weekly meetings because the best brainstorming comes when there is no pressure to think. If one of the points isn’t addressed or resolved, it will stay on the agenda until it is. The points that remain on the agenda the longest are typically the ones that reps address in quarterly meetings.
Thus, the structure or agenda from the quarterly meetings is truly based on our needs. I think this is a good approach because the staff has invested their time during past meetings in brainstorming and, thus, welcome a different line of thinking. While staff brainstorming is great, after a while we tend to learn how each of us on staff thinks or what we are going to say, so the vendor rep is a refreshing point-of-view. Once the spoken agenda for the quarterly meeting has been addressed, the rep will either provide videos, role-playing, PowerPoint slides, questionnaires or whatever they think is most valuable for us to get our needs met. I know this approach requires a lot of trust in the rep, but only the reps with a desire to help us are asked to host these meetings. I don’t ask the reps who are only interested in sales pitches to attend as it tends to be a waste of time.
No Cost and No Added Time Needed for Meetings with Reps
No time is lost that would have been spent working as we have built rep presentations into our regularly scheduled meeting times. There really isn’t a cost involved as this time has already been accounted for.
Invite Vendor Reps to Staff Meetings:
Tips for Success
If you don’t already have staff meetings, start now. Take an hour away from patient care time; it will pay off in increased efficiency and added profits when your staff understands practice goals and the plan to reach those goals.
Ask the reps to come in. Listen to what is being said in the meetings with reps, take notes and notice points of confusion or concern from staff.
Have an agenda. List topics you want covered and control sales pitches.
Micro-manage a little. I’ve sometimes struggled with micro-management in staff meetings with reps because I don’t want to come across to my staff as demeaning, but, at the same time, they want direction from their boss. If you work together as a team they want the same success as you.
Focus on areas for improvement. For instance, if you have a frame rep visiting and you feel strongly about having opticians serve as fashion consultants, have the rep give similar advice. Sometimes people need to hear the same message multiple times to have it reinforced.
Related ROB Articles
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Regular Office Meetings = Opportunities to Connect with Staff and Inspire Them
Rachael Click, OD, is the owner of Preferred EyeCare Center in Mount Pleasant, SC. To contact her: drclick@preferredeyecarecenter.com.
