Dropping davis

[Andrew Weiss]

Curious though.. how much money do you need to be making on an order for it to be worth your while?

Cassandra

Cassandra, Enough to pay a living wage that reflects the quality and experience of our optician(s), provide health insurance at least and hopefully some retirement contribution, cover the overhead (rent, lights, etc.) and have some left over for profit for my boss. I'd say the amount will be different for each office.

What volume of Davis do you do to make that work for you?

Andrew.

[Jubilee]

Rough estimate is that Davis is a good third of our business. We have several hubs for a large national account near us, and my understanding is that we are _the place_ that gets mentioned when discussing the vision benefit.

It also helps when you have some key decision makers near you, and Davis knows that if there is an issue, they will be dropped from this employer. (They messed up really bad on a particular person's order. Not getting glasses for over a month when they recently had a major rx change due to a retinal detatchment is not a good show. This is one of the times Davis sent me a check to have the glasses made at _my_ lab.)


Cassandra

[Johns]

Rough estimate is that Davis is a good third of our business. We have several hubs for a large national account near us, and my understanding is that we are _the place_ that gets mentioned when discussing the vision benefit.

Cassandra

Jubillee:

Why not use that great relationship you have with these employers and show them the light ?

Have them sign up for a program that you can both benefit from?

[foureyes]

we have decided to drop davis. perhaps someone that has already done it can advise me what steps i need to take.

will they pay for shipping for the tower/frames, etc?

[HarryChiling]

What type of discount are you giving to these people?

At times up to 50% off of our retail, we don't do it very often and we make sure it is on those frames that we get great deals on, but it works. We also take the time to explain to the patient the amout they have paid into their plan over a 2 year period for the coverage and then we usually take our retail cost minus about 30% (highest discount) then subtract the amount they paid into their insurannce over a 2 year peiord and give them the break down. Pretty easy to do especially once you get the hang of it (plus I'm a math dork so any extra math for me is no biggie). Thats when I end it with the wink wink nod nod "Plus we treat our cash pay customers better". I know I am not supposed to be saying things like this but it makes sense to people and we have actually had a few large businesses in our area drop their coverage for a set 30% off for all their employees. One of the companies still took and collected the same amount from his employees and just cuts a check out to us when the employee wants to purchase glasses. It doesn't work for everyone but so far we have a 8 companies total that have done this with us and one of them has 100 employees. Include their families (2.5 average) gives us 250 potential customers, figure about 1/2 of them will need prescription eyewear and you get the drift.

[cocoisland58]

Our office takes some of the plans, but we refuse to deal with the tower (or at least thats the case I always make). I would just as soon be rid of the whole lot of em.

What is the "tower"? We don't have one and no one has heard of it.