Streamline your flea product offerings and win back sales
Give your hospital focus and strengthen your recommendations to veterinary clients.
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Why do we find ourselves losing sales on flea preventives? Are we carrying too many options? Do our clients have a skewed perception of risk because we don't offer education and recommendations?
In the last few years, the veterinary market has become saturated with a variety of prevention products, and practices aren't shying away from selling them. Instead, many are adding these new products to their inventory to provide a convenient route for clients to purchase them. What practices don't realize is that they're increasing their inventory costs and losing revenue and clients are still going to other sources, like online pharmacies, to purchase these products.
Veterinary professionals have an amazing power to help clients choose the right products for their pets, but our recommendations have become counterproductive. The products we recommend and sell should fit your clients' lifestyle needs.
Look at your inventory. How many products do you carry that do the exact same thing? We're giving clients far too many options, which devalues our recommendations and leaves customers unsatisfied. As a result, we lose the opportunity to sell in-house recommended flea preventives. It's important to help clients decide what's best for their pet by guiding them to targeted product recommendations. It's also vital to educate them about the method of action and proper product use.
Eliminating duplicate products will help reduce your inventory costs and allow opportunities to offer only the products your doctors recommend. Then educate your veterinary team on the products you carry. It's important to have these discussions to unify your team and create continuity in recommendations and conversations. Once the team is on board, you can educate your clients more effectively.
Using this approach in our hospital, we increased our total parasiticide revenue by almost 10 percent-an extra $14,000 in profit-compared to the year before. We realized it's not about how much you offer. It's about offering what you have and believing in it that makes the difference.
Roger L. Zinn, CVPM, is an ER administrator and partner at Animal ER of Northwest Houston.
