Most of your pharmacy’s profits come from your back end, so it’s important to continuously work to improve sales.
You can try to increase your prescription count, but it’s not always easy to get new customers.
Luckily, there are other opportunities out there.
If you’re in a rut and aren’t sure how to give your sales a boost, here are five high margin back-end opportunities you might be forgetting about.
1. Suggesting related front-end products
You have many opportunities to suggest helpful front-end product add-ons with prescriptions. Make sure you always take the chance to recommend complementary front-end products that can help patients, and boost your sales.
For example, you can point out your selection of probiotics to patients who are picking up an antibiotic prescription, and make sure diabetic patients know about the diabetic socks that will go well with their diabetic shoes.
2. Recommending vitamins and supplements
This strategy can boost your profits while improving patients’ overall health at the same time. As you know, many common medications deplete essential nutrients, so try to recommend vitamins and supplements from your front end that can help combat this effect. Many of these products can even enhance prescription effectiveness at the same time.
For example, recommend vitamin B6 for patients on diabetes drugs, or co-enzyme q-10 for those on statins. (Here’s more information on drug-induced nutrient depletion, if you’d like a refresher.)
3. Flavoring medications
Flavored medications tend to be one of those pharmacy services that patients don’t know about, but the potential for this service to boost your back-end sales is huge.
According to a 2012 study from WilsonRx, a health care information and consulting company, a community pharmacy could gain 16-24 new patients and $51,000 to $78,000 in revenue by consistently promoting its medication flavoring service. The study also found that flavored medication services could increase patient satisfaction with a pharmacy.
The key is to make your patients aware that you offer a flavoring service. This can be as simple as asking when the prescription is dropped off, “How would you like your medication flavored?” Once you incorporate this question into your regular routine, you’ll see how easy it is to increase your profits.
(If you don’t have a flavoring service yet, here’s some advice on how to set one up.)
4. Providing specialty care
In 2014, prescription sales amounted to more than $300 billion in the U.S., and specialty drugs accounted for almost a quarter of that.
The specialty market is booming, and it presents a unique and important opportunity for pharmacies to boost back-end revenue. Specialty drugs have a higher dollar profitability compared to other drugs, and they create new ways to increase sales by attracting specialty patients who can bring in other medications and health needs.
(Here’s more information about starting a specialty program for your independent community pharmacy.)
5. Offering compounding services
Compounding is a long-standing pharmacy tradition, but it’s not well known in many communities today.
If patients in your community don’t have access to custom medications through compounding, then they could be missing out on the opportunity to experience the best possible health outcomes, and you could be missing out on profiting from a unique, in-demand service.
Compounding is a profit-generating service, especially if you don’t bill through insurance. If you offer compounding—or want to start providing the service—be sure to let the physicians in your community know so they can start referring patients.
Your pharmacy’s back end is the hub of your business. Incorporate—and promote—these high margin back-end opportunities to increase sales.
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