Inside: Don’t let a lack of focus on your pharmacy business strategy slowly bleed precious profit from your business. Refocus on your core strategy with these tips.
Is your pharmacy business strategy slowly bleeding precious profit from your pharmacy without you even knowing?
With ever-increasing competition in an ever-changing industry, if you lose focus, your pharmacy business strategy can quickly turn outdated and ineffective.
RELATED: 17 Powerful Pharmacy Business Ideas That Get Results
It’s easy to get caught up in the whirlwind of running your business. And, as a result, you lose sight of your strategic direction.
So, think back. When’s the last time you took a long look at your business strategy?
Refocusing your pharmacy business strategy will help you keep up with the competition, preserve your profit margins, and make sure you’re exactly where you want to be.
Use these six steps to get your strategy back on track.
Step 1: Refresh your vision for your pharmacy business strategy
A business strategy refresh will help you refocus who you are as a business—and who you want to be.
Work backward.
Ask yourself some key questions to better understand your business:
- What’s your identity? (What are your core offerings? What sets you apart?)
- Who’s your target market? (Who’s your ideal customer?)
- What’s the competition in your target market doing?
- How can you fit your identity to your target market in a unique way?
From this, you can write (or rewrite) your vision statement, which summarizes the purpose and the values of your business.
For example, a vision statement may say something like, “Smith Pharmacy will be a recognized community leader in patient care services.”
Step 2: Set strategic goals
Use your pharmacy business strategy to establish your overall business goals and lay the groundwork for your everyday business practices.
Successful businesses often use the SMART approach when creating their goals.
Set goals that are SMART:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Realistic
- Time-related
Then, ask again whether those goals utilize your unique offerings and serve your target market.
From this, you can write your mission statement.
A mission statement is similar to the vision statement, but it’s more specific and actionable. It should state how you plan to meet the needs of your target market through your pharmacy’s products or services.
Step 3: Make tactical plans
Tactical plans are how you execute your pharmacy business strategy.
Think of tactical plans as short-term goals that meet your long-term goals.
What daily, weekly and monthly practices do you and your employees need to do to make sure you’re meeting your strategic goals?
Clarify your priorities for your pharmacy and ensure your decisions align with your business strategy by creating a bulleted list of your most effective tactics.
Tactical plans can include:
- Personnel
- Pricing
- Ordering
- Policies
- Promotion
- Etc.
Keep in mind, every tactical decision should contribute to your overall business strategy. If it doesn’t align with your business strategy, drop or adjust it.
Step 4: Measure success
How do you know you’re meeting your goals without measuring your progress?
Now that you’ve refreshed your overall goals and set a tactical plan, make sure you have metrics in place to objectively measure if you’re on the right track.
These metrics should include the major considerations, like cash flow, costs, expenses, sales, and profits, but they can also include your GDR, front-end inventory and repeat customers.
Also, defining clear milestones that serve as markers to your long-term goal can inspire action.
Milestones put an achievable goal in your employees’ sights that you can celebrate after accomplishment, which spurs motivation toward the next milestone.
Step 5: Review your marketing approach
Does your marketing align with your goals and present the version of your business that serves those goals?
You should continually evaluate your marketing to make sure it represents your core identity and appeals to your target market. Marketing without your key business strategy in mind can waste resources and fail to reach the patients you want.
For example, if front-end sales are a major growth goal, does your marketing emphasize that?
Or, if millennials make up part of your market, are you using digital marketing, like social media and mobile apps, to reach that age group?
Step 6: Reassess your tools
As a business owner in a complex industry, you have to keep track of a lot.
Are you using the tools to make your life easier?
What do you use to manage payroll, finances, inventory and purchasing? To name a few.
Poorly designed tools or not using tools can add significant time to your workday and can produce unreliable or imprecise results that will cost you money and impede your pharmacy business strategy.
If you need help managing the purchasing side of your business, take a look at ProfitGuard® by PBA Health. ProfitGuard streamlines the primary wholesaler contract negotiation process to secure independent pharmacies with the best overall cost of inventory possible.
ProfitGuard also provides proprietary purchasing tools that maximize wholesaler rebates and item-by-item savings automatically. ProfitGuard members have averaged between $70,800 and $212,400 in annual savings on their cost of goods.
“It’s the industry game changer for the independent pharmacy owner or operator,” says Huy Duong, owner of Dale’s Pharmacy in Colorado. “There’s nothing out there like it on the market.”
In the case that your primary wholesaler doesn’t have what you need, you’ll need a reliable secondary supplier waiting in the wings.
BuyLine®, an NABP-accredited secondary supplier, offers a full line of brands, generics, OTCs, and controls at the lowest prices in the secondary market. In addition to having low list prices, BuyLine also rewards purchases with cash rebates and significant discounts on brands. Earn up to an additional 10% cash rebate on generics and up to WAC -4% on brand.
With online ordering and next-day shipping options, shopping with BuyLine is quick and convenient. There are absolutely no commitments with BuyLine — no fees, no contracts.
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