Pharmacy Owner’s Guide To Find High Paying Customers
India, just like the rest of the world, saw a very high number of Pharma Businesses coming up after the onset of the Covid pandemic. This was a result of the abnormal surge in the demand for pharmaceutical goods.
Although the large number of Pharmacies coming up can be seen as beneficial from the Healthcare point of view, it has also led to the rise of intense competition among Medical Stores, each one trying very hard to attract as many customers as humanly possible. The friendly neighborhood Pharmacies were thrown into competition with the much larger retail chains such as Apollo, Medplus, etc.
With the increased number of options, customers today are expecting a lot more from their pharmacy buying experience besides a wider selection of products and attractive discounts on offer. What they look forward to the most is the ability of a pharma business to provide them with a ‘Personalized Service’.
As high as 76% of customers have agreed to buying more from businesses offering a personalized service
A Pharmacy requires you to do much more than what one can accomplish in a day. So, engaging with each one of your customers is not possible. Hence, the best strategy is to focus on who matters the most. Now you may ask me, how do I make out such customers from the rest of the crowd?
Acute or Chronic Disease Patient
Acute diseases are the ones that come and go away rapidly and last for a shorter period of time such as Stomach Ache, Common Cold, etc. On the other hand, Chronic Diseases are the ones that remain for a longer period of time or have long-lasting health impacts such as Diabetes, Hypertension, etc.
Chronic Disease Patients have a much higher probability of coming back as repeat customers and hence, higher should be their importance
While most Pharmacists are already skilled enough to make out the Chronic Disease Patients by looking at their medications, you can also take the help of technology if you don’t wish to lose any customers
Recency, Frequency, Monetary Analysis
To measure a customer’s potential, you can run a ‘Recency, Frequency, Monetary (RFM)’ Analysis on him.
First, check his recency by finding out the number of days since his last transaction. Lesser number of days means a higher ‘Recency’ Score.
Second, count his total number of purchases and the average number of days between his two subsequent purchases. Higher the count and lesser the number of days mean a higher ‘Frequency’ Score for the Customer.
Third, calculate the Total Purchase and the Average Purchase Value. Assign a Higher ‘Monetary’ Score to the customers with the higher values
Lastly, take an average of each customer’s Recency, Frequency, and Monetary scores to find their actual ‘Importance’ Score.
A Chronic Disease Patient usually scores very high on Importance in the Recency, Frequency, Monetary Analysis
Customer Referrals are a great indicator for identifying your best customers.
Not only do Customer Referrals help reduce the Customer Acquisition Costs but customers who are referred to your business are 4 times more likely to make a purchase with you.
It is a widely accepted fact that a satisfied customer will only make 4 Referrals on average in his lifetime whereas a disgruntled customer will share his experience with at least 10 of your potential customers
So, the number of successful referrals a customer makes is a strong indicator of how valuable they are to your business.
Now that I have told you my 3 secrets to identifying your best customers, you would be wondering how frequently you would have to carry out this exercise. The answer is simple. It is an ongoing process and the earlier you start, the better it is for your Pharmacy business. Technology can prove out to be a panacea in this case. Ciao
