“They Cost What?” – Projecting Value
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You’ve heard the customer, haven’t you? They’ve been through their eye exam and have now come to you to get their eyewear
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You ask them the questions about how they use their eyes most and have recommended the lenses that the doctor has talked with them about. You have listened carefully to their needs and have now come to the price. That’s when you see that look in their eyes. It’s a cross between abject fear and misunderstanding. “They cost what?” “No way!” “Oh, my gosh! That’s way too much!”
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What do you do next?
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Start to apologize for the cost?
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Start to give them a discount?
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Stare at them?
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Punch them out?
Actually, I don’t recommend any of the above. When you or your patients go to the grocery store and see that a certain meat costs $17.00 per pound, we either put it in the basket or leave it in the meat cooler. It’s a choice. Your patients have a choice, too. Having heard the cost of what they need and what they have told us they want, they can choose to continue and hand over their credit card or make changes. How can we help them make the best choice for their best vision?
Knowing what factors contribute to the costs of lenses today can help understand why they have sticker shock. I recently saw a poster one ECP has in his practice that tracked the variety of processes and costs associated with the production of lenses and delivery to the consumer.
Behind the lenses, are such things as multimillion dollar lens generators, billion dollar development and advertising, research and development costs, sales, warranty costs and so on. To bring a new lens to market so that patients can see better than ever costs staggering amounts.
Of course, to stay in business, the ECP must take the cost to obtain those lenses and add his overhead and profit or there would be no ECP there to service the patients. Yes, the consumer can go online and get frame and lenses in a single vision prescription for under $10. Those lenses are also of inferior quality and any frame that can sell for $2-3 cannot be expected to last very long or take any of the treatment most patients hand out. Having a store where the patient can conveniently come to get a repair or adjustment is much better for them than to have to send those online glasses through the mail to who-knows-where.
So, what can we do to ease the pain or help them understand the value of what they are getting? That word value is probably the key. Most people want to know they are getting their money’s worth for any major purchase. The economy being what it is today, many households are getting by on less than what they had the previous year. Also, if they are earning the same, they are finding that price increases are diminishing their buying power.
How about breaking down the cost of their eyewear into smaller bites? Your patients come to see you every one to two years for the most part, so take that number and divide it into their prospective purchase. If they’ve selected lenses and frames totaling $480, for example, then doing that every two years breaks down the cost into about $0.67 per day. That’s not bad for excellent vision every day, particularly if they need to wear those glasses all during their waking hours. At seventeen hours per day of wake time, that breaks down to about four cents per hour.
Stress the value of their purchase by emphasizing their improved vision, ease of computer viewing and good looks with their new frames. You might also want to place some print pieces which illustrate the cost of a variety of items your patients buy. Remember, as you listen and respond to your patient, you are building a relationship with them that may well last your entire career and go on to cover the eyewear needs of their children and grandchildren. Take the time to build here and it will pay many types of dividends in the long run.
At $5.00 per day, five days per week for specialty coffee, they could cover the cost of their new eyewear in only a little over four months but their vision would be great every day, not just the weekdays. By the way, their coffee doesn’t make near the fashion statement that their eyewear does.
Another cost factor that must be factored in is the protection their eyewear offers. Polycarbonate, Trivex and other higher index materials offer shatter resistance that helps protect their beautiful blues (or greens or whatever). These qualities make these lenses have more value for the customer. Yet another value addition is the protection from ultra violet rays. It has been projected that, if young children would wear ultra violet filtering lenses, the incidence of UV damage could be cut to almost nothing, preventing UV burns to their eyes. That is added value.
Educate the patient about how good vision enhances their quality of life. Since we know that eighty percent of what a child learns by age twelve comes by vision, good vision is essential for a high quality of life for children. By the time children reach the teen years, they may develop reading difficulties if they have undetected vision problems. When parents understand that the money they spend for good vision for their children is an investment in their future, spending just a little more for high quality is a good investment.
As patients reach the time of their life when they begin to need assistance in reading the fine print, good visual acuity become one of those things they truly need. Presbyopes get frustrated with poor vision so educate them about the value in a more natural vision lens, usually called a no-line bifocal or a progressive lens. I prefer to call them natural vision lenses because they allow the wearer use their eyes more naturally than with lined bifocals or trifocals.
At this point, the lens choices become very numerous. There are standard plastic lenses that are surfaced in traditional ways (analog) all the way to free form, digitally designed and driven, back-side surfaced lenses. That’s a mouthful that you probably don’t want to dump onto the patient. You can, however, educate them step-by-step about the lens choices that will improve their vision to unheard of quality in past years. Patients who come to your practice with the notion that progressive lenses are junk, should be educated gently about the improvements in the design and manufacture of the current stock of progressive lenses.
When a patient wants the best vision they can afford and after you have clearly understood what their vision needs are, that’s when you can lead them to choose a better lens than “just what the insurance covers.”
Insurance coverage to many patients means “I get my glasses without having to pay anything.” In most cases, that is a misunderstanding of their insurance plan. To help them get over that, come to the final cost of their eyewear and present it in such a way that they can see the value, both of their eyewear and of their insurance. It is particularly helpful to present their total cost and then add something like, “Your total cost would normally be $648.00 but, with your insurance, you pay only $178.” In this way, they see value in both areas.
Another factor in causing sticker shock is the way we come to the total cost, before insurance coverage. Most people hear the cash register sound when they see or hear you figuring ‘add-ons.’ Taking the cost of the lenses and adding non-glare, edge roll and polish and others will probably make your patient start to get very nervous. See if your practice can develop some reasonable packages which represent value at different levels. Automobile dealers discovered this long ago. They now show all the things that are included in the basic price and then show the ‘options’ chosen to come to a total cost. Hearing one price, even if it is higher than they expected, is much better than hearing one cost plus this add-on and that add-on until, finally, you come to the total.
Buying frames and lenses can be costly. Some of your patients don’t care because they have enough income that it isn’t an issue for them. That isn’t the case for many, though and, for those, we need to do a lot of listening, some relationship building to build trust and some education about their choices. Those things can help them and you come to a value-packed decision.
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