Can anyone point me to articles/figures of what an optician is supposed to generate in yearly revenue?
Can anyone point me to articles/figures of what an optician is supposed to generate in yearly revenue?
"A bargain is something you can't use at a price you can't resist."
Franklin Jones.
4 Times their salary.
Usually this is contolled by the doctor or number of doctors referring work to him especially prior to his having established a local reputation for his good or poor work. All other factors are relatively insigificant unless the optician is established and hires the doctor.
Chip
Interesting question- The key is to start benchmarking sales per person/optician, sales per square feet and put in products/services and systems to allow increases per square foot. http://theopticalvisionsite.com/mark...r-square-foot/. Start with sales per square foot, the rule of thumb for measuring productivity and income.
For other retail math formulas: http://theopticalvisionsite.com/mark...il-strategies/
Sales per optician can be all over, depending on products and services offered.
I agree: 4x their salary is a good benchmark.
B
Forgive my ignorance, but is revenue basically defined as production? Like, I sold $XXX,XXX worth of frames, lenses, add-ons and sundry items last year? Would the profit then be Production (dollars for materials sold) minus Invoices (cost of frames, lab supplies, cleaner, sundry items, etc)? I'm pretty green as far as the business side of Optical goes. I do my best to keep my spending down, and I can appreciate that the office does well when I have good sales. Otherwise I wouldn't have a job, right?! I'm seriously not one to "sell" anything, though. I'm not going to push a feature if the patient doesn't need it.
Thanks for walking me through this. I'm trying to figure out if I ROCK as an optician, if my revenue is as much as I think it is. . . ;^)
It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice.
Yes, you do ROCK as an optician, and you are NOT compensated enough for the same....Originally Posted by Striderswife
B
Anyone concidered that the standard above says: The more you pay them they will earn 4 times as much. Maybe all opticians should start at $ 200,000 then the employers could look at $ 800,000 per optician at the start.
Chip
I generate my yearly salary in net sales every month. Am I underpaid or overworked?
Both
This is totally office dependent. I do not like standard formulas for determining this sort of thing, nor valuing a practice. Each one is different and operates different. I think a better gauge of this should be your capture rate, not total sales. If the average sale is 1000/pt, then it better be a lot higher than an office pushing junk at 200/pt. You capture rate should be based on full glasses exams, outside Rx and plano sunglass sales to CL pt among other things.
Don't forget to be kind to the technicians and the doctor in the back. They can make or break a sale WAY before the pt ever gets to the optician. Its a total TEAM effort, don't take all the credit for being a GREAT optician. Give a little to your tech team too, and may a little of your SPIFS while your at it.
After you determine capture rate, then figure out where you want to be in terms of A/R, Hi-Index rates and average frame price - those sorts of metrics. Once you get all this done, and obtain goals for the office, then you can determine what your yearly revenue you should be generating. There is no single formula - of course, that's just my opinion as an employer.
We also weight things like if there is only one optician, how many sales are we losing because they are busy with a pt and someone walks out the door. Add a 2nd optician and then sales per optician are gonna go down. So those are other factors that are going to come into play. Do we want 3 opticians to provide outstanding customer service at the expense of near term profits in order to eventually get the word out on how awesome we are and that will eventually bring in more biz? Add three and capture rates and average sales better go up from when you had 2, or there is a problem.
There are just so many factors that I really feel a single formula is doing an injustice to the optician.
Last edited by AustinEyewear; 05-05-2011 at 11:23 AM.
I HATE the term "capture rate"....
B
ya - I can understand that, but it does get the point across. Do you have a more politically correct word?
Yeah, it's called "Here is your prescription. Why not take a few minutes and look over the terrific offerings in our dispensary" w/o the "hand-off"
It just smacks so much of entitlement, and violates the spirit of the FDA Rx release law.
B
I hate the terms "spiffs" and "commissions" in addition. How about trying to offer the best products, the best service, and the best environment you can, while at the same time offering that at a fair flat rate for ALL of your patients. Patients do notice and appreciate that sort of thing.
Barry, I'm gonna have to respectfully disagree with you on this one. Handing off the Rx has nothing to do with this thread - that is a totally different topic. We've been in business long enough to know that some opticians are just plain better at selling eyewear to patients. Not only does it require knowledge of the optic, but a command of the frames, designers and other items that are being sold to the pt. It also takes a great personality, patience, and other skills they don't teach you when you get your ABO. Unfortunately, not everyone is equal in these other skills. If you happen to possess these other intangible skills, along with a mastery of optics, then you simply should command a higher salary. Capture rate is one way to determine that salary. Patients not only want to see, they also want a good experience when they visit - at least our patients do. We get plenty of outside Rx's because someone left another office because the optician was rude to them.
If all we care about is getting someone to see well, then we may all be well selling the same big metal ugly frames. Its a lot more than that as I'm sure you know.
Capture rate is an indirect measurement of these different characteristics that the optician posses and also a measure of how other staff in the office are interacting with that patient. If you capture rates suddenly go from 80% to 40%, then something is wrong. If you want to be in business for yourself, you better be prepared to measure these sorts of metrics, or you may not be providing the best possible customer service possible because you are missing a component of the feedback loop.
And ya, we got rid of the commissions a long time ago. But a lot of offices utilize them and some opticians seem to feel "entitled" to them. I only mention it because its not just the optician making the sale, its the whole team, and if there are commissions to be given out, then maybe the entire team should share it.
Disagree back: Handing off the RX is part of the whole "capture scenario" paradigm, IMHO.
How about: "How many patients choose to buy eyewear from our office" Metric.
Better: "How many people buy eyewear from our office and DO NOT get their examinations here."
NOW that would be a telling metric...
B
Last edited by Barry Santini; 05-05-2011 at 01:47 PM.
Well, you definitely have me thinking anyway about it anyway, honestly I didn't realize some opticians find it offensive. But I do think people come into our office for a reason and when they need eye glasses, and don't get them from us, we need to try to understand why so that maybe we can do it better next time. We didn't invest our life savings in this business to sit around and 'wonder' what happened and 'hope' that we can pay our bills and the optician's salaries. Of course not everyone is ready to purchase that particular day, or is ready for new eye wear, but we should have a broad enough selection for most any budget so that they don't need to seek elsewhere. I hope that any optician would be thankful their business owner puts enough energy into understanding their business in an effort to make it profitable so they don't need end up playing games like cutting hours back, laying people off and other horrible things like that.
I don't think this is accurate at all to be fair. There are a lot of us who aren't in it for "the sale". Although our superior product knowledge, fitting/dispensing skill and experience, and patient educational capabilities elevate many of us here well above the 'average' optical dispenser. I think I'm safe to say that here, as most of us do aspire to a higher level of proficiency - and achieve it. While any optometric/ophthalmologic practice needs to stay solvent, this can (and often IS) easily be done without a constant "sell sell sell" mentality with your patients, including spiffs, commissions, capture rates, or any other used car terminology. [/rant] :)
Cheers!
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