IcareLabs Blog

Have you considered selling Prescription Safety Eyewear to grow your optical business?

Savvy optical industry businesses capitalize on the prescription safety eyewear segment. According to the 2014 Vision Council ECP Report, only about two-thirds of independent eye care practices offer the ANSI-rated Z87 safety eyewear.

When asking questions on occupation, daily activities, lifestyles, habits, hobbies etc., safety eyewear may apply to your patient. Take a couple of minutes to inform and educate them in eye safety. Even if their employer does not mandate that they wear safety eyewear, you are in the position to recommend it. They may listen to your recommendation more than their employer’s.

Introduction

Last time, we looked into the advantage of “speaking human” to our customers. We learned that an informed customer would be more likely to purchase than a uniformed customer would be.

Our industry has grown expeditiously over the last 10 to 15 years with more products and add-on goodies than we can keep up with. While we have more products than ever, studies have found that eyeglass unit sales are flat once again while dollars are up a bit. With this knowledge, you know we can expect to see about the same amount of customers this year as we did last year. To increase overall sales we have to increase the sales average per customer.

Looking to grow your business? You might want to consider focusing a portion of your selling floor to the millennials. After all, in a few years they will be the majority of the population and more of your target market.

Let’s look at how millennials, a.k.a. ‘Gen Y’, shops and buys today and what you can do to sell to them.

Let's start with a definition: people born between 1981 – 1997 who have grown up on the Internet. This represents about 75-80 million young people, nearly one quarter of the total population of America.

Optical Sales Coach: Speak Human!

As part of my position here at IcareLabs, I enjoy visiting with many of our eye doctors, opticians and optical store staff. Often, I am asked for advice in improving optical sales while balancing professionalism. We are a medical-driven industry and how we handle sales is important.

At IcareLabs, we get many questions from our eye care professionals about how to increase their bottom line. We’ve been providing quality prescription lenses and eyeglasses as an independent optical lab since 1968. Here are some basic ideas we’ve observed over the years on how to increase revenue in your optical store.