We had a client appreciation event last week and a bumper week for sales and it inspired me to share this dispatch from the archive with you. Consider it a refresher!
…Yesterday at Jones And Co. was our second-best day ever, missing out on best day ever status by just a few hundred pounds. Let me walk you through the stats and tie it to the principles that made the numbers possible. Because it’s all too easy to chalk things up to fluke occurrences and lucky circumstances rather than the persistent application of proven strategies that are perfectly aligned with sound principles. Napoleon Hill, author of Think And Grow Rich, listed persistence as one of the essential steps on the path to riches saying “There is no substitute for persistence! It cannot be supplanted by any other quality! Remember this, and it will hearten you, in the beginning, when the going may seem difficult and slow.”
Sales for the day yesterday were £17, 225. (That’s over $24,000 for our US members.) All from one day. We had six staff in the building. One optometrist. Five dispensing opticians. Team leader Kathryn was on holiday. I was working from home on preparations for the upcoming Advanced Team Leader Bootcamp event. 9 clients were dispensed six of whom opted for multiple pairs. Average dispense value for the day was £1913. And we had our first trunk show in over 18 months with Theo’s collection and ambassador by appointment only.
We sent a small gift to our US members earlier this year, a mug, that said: “Change Your Dispense Maths. Change your business. Change your life.” That really sums it up. I don’t know any way that a small team can achieve big numbers without creating a high average dispense value. The only other way to hit big numbers is to go for volume which means you need to add a ton of staff, space, cash, and clients while trying to compete with the big boys and beat them at the game of low prices. That is not a game you are likely to win. At best, you’ll struggle along just surviving on depressingly low profits and too much stress and effort for not enough return. For illustration, to hit the same numbers, with an average dispense value of £200 we would have had to dispense 86 clients rather than 9. Which do you think is easier to achieve? The principle of dispense-maths and (relatively) high transaction values are essential for independent practices to achieve top-tier of industry results.
The flywheel concept (below) that I shared at last year’s Be World Class conference highlights everything that goes into creating the results that put your practice in the top of the independent sector. What an average practice owner writes off as luck, a smart practice owner like you learns from because you take the time to explore all the factors at play.
And it’s all about persistence. Jim Collins who came up with the flywheel analogy is really saying the same thing that Napoleon Hill said a hundred years before him. You have to keep turning the flywheel, slowly building momentum, one turn at a time, until your business achieves a breakthrough point where it’s own weight and momentum propel it forward with an energy of its own and everything feels easier.
Persist. Keep turning the flywheel!
