Ten strategic suggestions for the optician-entrepreneur

I recorded these ten points in a video in 2017. I am offering them again because they have remained valid, and because the opticians who took them seriously back then went through the Covid hurricane with far less strain than the others. Read them, re-read them from time to time, keep them in your diary as a reminder.

1. Decide who you want to be

In a complicated market, well-defined positionings win. Decide who you want to be, who you want to talk to, what makes you special, and then do everything consistently with that choice. It is strategy, before everything else.

2. Put the customer relationship first

It is your greatest wealth: more than the practice, the assortment, the fittings. A group of people who trust you is the safety that keeps you on course even when the waters get rough. Take care of every aspect of that relationship, before the sale itself.

3. Design your loyalty system

Loyalty does not exist unless it is managed in a structured way. Being a good communicator or a friend of your customers is not enough: you need a database, rational methods, periodic and continuous contact. There has to be a plan behind it: it is the optical practice CRM.

4. Create value beyond the product

Betting on the product will never make you win: products can be found everywhere, and differentiating on that alone means competing with everyone. The difference is made by intangible values: relationship, competence, service.

5. Do not give professional services away

What costs nothing is worth nothing in the customer’s perception. Itemise the value of your service and charge for it, instead of hiding it in the price of the product. The product is comparable; your service is unique and cannot be replaced. I discuss it in Pricing for the independent optician.

6. Communicate professionally

Relationship, service and loyalty are mute if you do not communicate them. Make sure all your work on the relationship exists and is visible, in the practice and outside it, so that customers always know what service they are entitled to by choosing you.

7. Build your personal brand

People want to talk to people, not to a sign. Put your face on it: when you communicate at a distance, social media, WhatsApp, SMS, they have to recognise you, just as when they walk into the practice and look for the person they have a relationship with.

8. See yourself as the cause; do not blame others

"It’s raining, blame the government" does not work. Railing against the state, the associations or the rules changes nothing: the rules are the ones you play by, and your strategy has to make you win within those rules.

9. Ask yourself every day why a customer should choose you

"Why should I buy from you and not elsewhere?" Give a clear, honest answer, every day. The day that answer leaves you with a doubt, stop and start again from the beginning.

10. Embrace continuous change

Bauman spoke of liquid society; I speak of a liquid market, in a world where the only constant is change. You move forward by trying, measuring, correcting, without taking for granted that what worked yesterday will work forever. The one thing never to lose is focus on the goal.

Why should I buy from you and not elsewhere? Give a clear, honest answer, every day.