Protecting your Business

Protecting your Business

“Disruptive times call for transformational leaders with a knack for addressing complex problems. To navigate effectively, we must learn to let go—and become more complex ourselves.”

This is the lead paragraph in an article in the March 2018 edition of the McKinsey Quarterly that caught my attention. The further along I read the more I realized there is an acute need in companion animal health industry for what the McKinsey article authors referred to as Leadership with Inner Agility.

Whether or not you want to admit it, companion animal health is in disruptive times. Our top 5 manufacturers control 62% of the market. Our top 4 distributors have a market share approaching 90%. And that consolidation is evident in the retail market also with more than 15% of our Companion Animal practices having more than 500 employees.

On top of that consider the big box and online retailers excursion into the companion animal health market. Recently Chewy’s owner, PetSmart, announced “Chewy Pharmacy, a full service online pharmacy for pet owners to shop for prescription medications as well as receive helpful information about pet care, health and wellness from certified and licensed pharmacists.”

These are disruptive times for more than 80% of our practices and that translates to disruptive times for most of our distribution representatives. You may not think so. Your year over year sales are up single digits. Increased dollars breed complacency. How much of a price increase did you experience this year?

In many cases the price increase has accounted for all and more of your dollar sales increase which translates to a flat at best and most likely negative unit sales. Those missing units are going to those retailers who are causing the disruption.

So, let’s use some of that Inner Agility Leadership that I referred to earlier and develop an effective strategy to protect your business – more specifically your pharmacy business which will in turn protect your professional services business and your ancillary products business.

Our strategy involves answering two questions: What? Who?

The What

In a nutshell a wellness plan. Now I know the negative of wellness plans is they are difficult to develop and even more difficult to implement. On the plus side, according to John Volk from Brakke Consulting, an effective wellness plan will increase visits, increase revenue, expand and improve patient care, attract new clients and most importantly add stickiness to the practice-client relationship.

Think of that stickiness as loyalty. Again, according to Brakke, clients want a health care plan, clients want a monthly payment plan for routine services and high client interest is not being driven by income. With an annual contract there is no need to price shop products or services. There are fewer financial discussions preventing gold standard medicine. The pet gets what is needed and that increases client satisfaction.

The Who

Brakke identified the 5 leading providers of wellness plans and preferred the Premiere Pet Care Plan for one competitive advantage – an experienced in-practice implementation team. They eliminate the difficult to develop objection by working with the decision-makers on a customized pricing plan that is unique to each PPCP practice. They also solve the implementation negative with in-practice training based on the best practices of their highest performing practices across the United States and around the globe. These benefits plus a laundry list of others insure your practice’s success and successful practices mean successful distribution reps.

I get that no one wants to be first but no one wants to be last either. I believe it’s time for you to exercise some of that inner agility leadership in your practice or in your territory. Find out what the Premier Pet Care Plan can do for you and then you can make a well-informed decision whether to proceed.