Is Your Optometry Practice Operating Like a Ferris Wheel?

In particular, a Ferris wheel can symbolize happiness, fun, and excitement when we are young. George Washington Gale Ferris Jr., a bridge builder from Chicago, created it in 1893. His creation is still in use today. Looking at the globe from a higher vantage point can evoke a serene experience. At the fair, we usually spend the day with loved ones. Although frequently disregarded, a Ferris wheel ride consists of several stops and a mix of clear and constrained views. At a particular time, your vision and experience are constrained by the wheel’s circumference and direction as it moves around it. No matter how often you ride, the view is the same from all angles around the wheel. The original Ferris wheel was built when its builders were competing against Eiffel Tour in Paris proving that its American technological prowess rivals that of Europe in general and France in particular.

We often build our practice on the model of a Ferris wheel. Trying to compete with another practice, we build the practice that we believe to be providing a different service, however, it ends up competing with others in providing the same services. We believe that a bigger practice that is highly advertised can be relevant to all patients just like a Ferris wheel is seen from every corner of the town. We chose the most visible and attractive location downtown, or in malls, and high-traffic areas. We also fill our practice by scheduling appointments one after another similar to how the seats of a Ferris wheel are filled with passengers. In the waiting room, people wait till someone leaves the exam room to enter to see the practitioner. In the same way, people at the fair wait until someone gets off the Ferris wheel to fill his seat. The cycle continues until everyone in the chairs has left and new ones have entered. So we end up turning like the wheel and staying in our place without moving forward.

If you focus on finding and understanding the needs of your patients and customers you will discover that consumers have a buying process. “SPIN”, the world’s leading sales methodology, as outlined in Neil Rackham’s groundbreaking book ‘SPIN Selling’ first published in 1988 explains that effective sellers focus on the customer’s buying process, not on their own sales process. The major steps buyers take when determining whether or not to purchase are described in the buying cycle. Customers may or may not reveal their wants, therefore we may need to actively discover them through inquiries, depending on where they are in the buying cycle. The SPIN method for selling employs four different sorts of important sales questions, each of which fills a specific purpose in the sales process:

• Situation: questions about the customer’s current situation
• Problem: questions about the customer’s difficulties or dissatisfactions
• Implication: questions about the consequences or implications of the customer’s problems
• Need-Payoff: questions that explore the importance to the customer of solving a problem

Every customer has different needs, therefore, the only way for every patient to enjoy your ride, is for you to provide different diversified rides. In essence, the questions in the SPIN selling method give the Optometry practice manager or the Optometrist a logical structure rather than a predetermined order, enabling them to improve dialogue with their prospects, add value, and complete more deals as a result. They change the subject from the salesperson to the customer and their requirements.