3 Ways to Increase Pharmacy Profits through Customer Education

One of the best ways to show your value in the marketplace is to educate your customers, not just sell to them. If you want your customers to purchase more vitamins from you, it may not be enough to mark them on sale, you need to educate your customers about why they need vitamins in the first place. Soon, your pharmacy will be thought of as a friendly place to go for advice, answers to questions and not just another business trying to take their money. This can be easier than it sounds:

Seminars and Classes

Hosting a seminar or class with an expert speaker at your pharmacy is a value-added benefit for your customers. Base your seminar topics on commonly asked questions or certain subjects  that you know will be useful to a lot of people, such as helping Baby Boomers understand their new Medicaid plans. Customers who attend these short classes or seminars will gaining valuable knowledge about various topics that matter to them, meet others in a similar situation and have a great feeling about doing business with your pharmacy

Disease Management Programs

Costly chronic conditions, including diabetes, coronary heart disease, depression, and arthritis can be difficult to deal with alone. People with these conditions will benefit from a disease management program. Since people who struggle with these diseases typically need more health care than others, building trust with patients like these can be extremely beneficial to you. Implementing a  program around chronic conditions in  your pharmacy is a great way to help people with these illnesses and as a result create more customer evangelists.

Staff Product Recommendations

This can be a fun way to not only educate customers, but can also create a relationship between your staff and your customers. Your customers will appreciate someone who has actually used a product telling them it works, so they don’t feel like they’re taking such a big risk in purchasing it. A staff recommendation can be presented two different ways:

Informally, more like an upsell. If your employee sees a customer purchasing diabetes medicine they can ask if they also need a correlating product that has received rave reviews.

Formally. This can be a physical bulletin board, email, blog post, or any other way to display the staff picks for a particular period of time. Get creative! If it’s the beginning of summer, the staff pick for the week may be sunblock or weight loss supplements.

Your customers will greatly benefit from the knowledge base that you and your team possess. Providing health education on a variety topics, is a great way to differentiate your pharmacy from the others. If someone is learning from you, chances are they will  buy from you as well. For even more ways to stay competitive, download our free eBook 3 Innovative Ways to Compete in the Pharmacy Market.