Contact Lenses

Price CLs for Profitability

By Michael J. Zucker, OD

SYNOPSIS

If you don’t update your CL pricing regularly, you’re leaving money on the table. Compare your pricing with market prices with resources like the ABB OPTICAL GROUP Price Monitor and ABB OPTICAL GROUP Business Review.

ACTION POINTS

DESIGNATE A CONTACT LENS MANAGER.Assign astaff member to monitor contact lens pricing and inventory.

CHARGE ENOUGH TO PROFIT. Use tools like ABB OPTICAL GROUP Price Monitor and ABB OPTICAL GROUP Business Review to ensure you are not under-pricing CLs and sacrificing profitability.

SHOW PATIENTS THE VALUE OF ANNUAL SUPPLY PURCHASES. Use the ABB OPTICAL GROUP tear sheet to show patients their savings with the purchase of an annual supply of contact lenses.

Don’t leave money on the table by not keeping up with pricing increases from contact lens manufacturers. Your contact lens pricing must follow suit for profitability. Two key tools keep my staff and I informed of current pricing benchmarks: The ABB OPTICAL GROUP Price Monitor and the ABB OPTICAL GROUP Business Review newsletters. The ABB OPTICAL GROUP Price Monitor provides eyecare professionals with the retail pricing structure of brand-name contacts charged by private practitioners and online retailers. The ABB OPTICAL GROUP Business Review helps ODs establish sales benchmarks to maximize profitability. My staff and I review these two publications at least quarterly to determine if our contact lens pricing is positioned for profitability.

Designate Staff to Concentrate on CL Sales

In optometric practices, so much profitability stems from the sale of eyeglasses, that it’s easy to forget there also are contact lens sales to manage. I stay on top of managingCL sales and profits with the help of two part-time contact lens managers. These two staff members review the ABB OPTICAL GROUP Price Monitor and ABB OPTICAL GROUP Business Review. It is their job to monitor average pricing on the contacts we sell and then recommend pricing adjustments. They also inform me, based on the ABB OPTICAL GROUP Business Review, of how much we should be selling of each brand of contact lenses to be in line with average sales benchmarks so we can be profitable. These two employees, along with my ABB OPTICAL GROUP representative, Andrew MacDonald, serve as my contact lens sales advisors, and then I make the final decision on pricing.

Charge Enough to Profit

The ABB OPTICAL GROUP Price Monitor informed us that we were under-pricing AIR OPTIX Night & Day. We increased our pricing on this popular brand of contacts by 9 percent and experienced a 10 percent increase on profits on this brand.

You Can Increase Pricing Without Losing CL Sales

Many, if not most, of my patients purchase annual supplies of contacts, and don’t remember what they paid the previous year, so raising the price on a brand of contacts by less than 10 percent often goes unnoticed. Our policy is not to bring up the price increase unless the patient inquires about why their contacts are slightly more expensive than the previous year. In that rare case (I can’t remember if it’s ever happened even once!), we would take the honesty-is-the-best-policy approach. We would explain that, like everything else, the cost of goods on contact lenses is increasing, so, as a small business, we need to raise prices slightly to keep up.

Like many independent practices, we treat our patients well, giving them more attention than they would probably receive at a corporate-owned optometry chain, providing them with free replacements if a two-week or one-month contact lens tears and free contact lens kits and sample solution bottles.

Related ROB Articles

Increase Annual Contact Lens Sales: Show Patients their Savings

Minimum Pricing on Contact Lenses: A Win for Independent ODs

Promote Annual CL Sales–But Capture ALL CL Sales

Michael J. Zucker, OD, is the owner of Accent on Vision in Tucson, Ariz. To contact him: mzucker8@comcast.net

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