Pharmacy Owners Need Better Strategies in this Changing Marketplace

The market place is rapidly changing. You can no longer make a decent living filling traditional scripts alone.

The Independent pharmacy’s future needs to be rethought. Any look at what’s happening should be rather apparent. Chain stores are gobbling up larger numbers of scripts. As such they’re getting patients inside their doors, not yours. What remains is no longer profitable. They buy their drugs cheaper, therefore make more money on each. Surely one of the most cynical reckless acts you could now do is to maintain the status quo.

Neither your colleagues nor associations are replete with promising alternatives.

Yet, such options do exist. Serving your patient better by spending more time with them and providing them with more information and advice on healthier living, is where your golden opportunity lies. Otherwise known as a wellness store.

Better Opportunities Abound

Our society and our institutions are going through dramatic changes.  Today it’s not the one who fills the most prescriptions who’s going to enjoy the best income and leave the greatest legacy, it is the pharmacy that can positively affect the health outcomes for a select number of individuals for whom that pharmacy can provide the maximum health and healing information and products.
Think about it. The opportunities are spectacular if you focus on doing business with the one segment of the population that can afford to pay you for your high-quality products, your customized scripts, and especially for your advice.

Cannot Be All Things to All People

No longer can you be all things to all people. That is a prescription for disaster. Today you must define the marketplace that you want to serve and the products and information with which you will serve them.

In today’s world, there is business that you want and business that you do not want.

You need to strategize how you can obtain the business that you do want. At the same time, you should shed those activities that no longer produce the results that you desire so that you free up valuable resources that can then be reapplied to your future opportunities.

Only by analyzing internal data, can you determine current trends vs yesterday’s bread winners. Yesterday’s bread winners need to go. They are sapping your cash flow and profits.

As such, you will more and more divest yourself of traditional scripts—also of those items in your front end which your customer can buy cheaper or more conveniently, in favor of those items that will more closely align themselves with your health and healing protocols for your newfound patients. And, you begin to create a business model that embraces your newfound Wellness Pharmacy. The successful operating business model today is built around the following:

• Compounding
• Natural Medicines
• Fee for Expertise
• Concierge Service
• Marketing

You get rich by selling healing, not by selling sugar.

As a pharmacy owner, your most important devotion is to become a life-long learner. That includes learning about business as well as your profession. In this age of acceleration, the nuclear set is an agile mindset that values learning over knowing.

Only by creating an open mindset can you develop the new successful business model and provide a select group of patients the sort of health they want in exchange of the type of wealth you want.

This is not a good time for procrastinators. It is likewise not a good time for those who close their minds to the possibility of a better tomorrow. If you don’t have the tools or don’t even know what those tools are that will help you create that better tomorrow, seek them from someone who does. 

It is impossible to ignore the effects of today’s decisions on tomorrow’s results. As such, the future belongs to those who will move boldly, not to the meek. 

​What changes are you making to secure the future of your pharmacy? 

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