Difficult decisions should be broken down into their simplest form.
I firmly believe that most people make life way too hard. Over the years I have learned that simpler is better, faster, easier and much less stressful.
Research has shown that trying to cover too much material in a lecture leads to less understanding. Too much content, too fast leads to superficial memorization rather than deep understanding.
At the end of the day the most important points to get across get lost when we try to cover too much material.
Just think what it is like to counsel a new patient on a new drug therapy. If you sit there and list all 28 potential adverse effects their eyes begin to glaze over and they won’t remember any of it.
But if you say here is the three big things I need you to remember;
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Take this medication every day in the morning
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Take it right with your breakfast.
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In three days give me a call and let me know how you are doing.
The patient will understand and be more likely to take action.
Our Profession is about solving problems
In any business you are eventually engaged with solving problems for your customers. If you solve those problems, quickly, efficiently and accurately, your business will be successful. If you are not quick or not efficient or not accurate you risk losing the customer and eventually losing your business.
I can’t tell you how many times my wife and I have gone out to dinner and decided to try a new restaurant. When we go out to dinner we are looking for a few simple things. We want the food to taste good, be reasonably priced, and be served quickly and efficiently. That’s the big three for restaurants, If the food is good, the service is good and the value is there for the money then we will choose to spend our hard earned money there again. If any one of the three is missing, then we will never go back.
So What are the Big Three Things you need to know to be capable of solving problems for your pharmacy customers?
Just like restaurants I believe there are three things that customers are looking for when they enter your pharmacy. In my opinion these are:
- I want the staff to recognize me and acknowledge me right away.
- I want then to actively listen to what I want.
- And I want them to figure out how to get me what I want efficiently.
If you can do these three simple things well you stand a good chance of building a successful community pharmacy.
Essentially what I am talking about is that far too often we get caught up in insurance billing and purchasing and contracting and legal compliance and marketing and we forget that the core of our business is about solving a paying customer’s problem. If too much of your daily efforts stray from this core function you will negatively impact your growth.
So as a person charged with guiding the business down a successful path the most important thing you can do is to identify and codify the three core things that crystallize the essence of your business mission. Once you agree on what these three things are then you need to emphasize those three everyday. You need to teach your new employees these three principles and you need to frequently remind your exiting employees what they are. When someone ignores these three you need to immediately correct their behavior. When someone refuse to follow these principles you need to fire them. If you do that you will build a successful team that meets your goals.
But life frequently provides too many choices and it can be difficult to decide what to do from within that list of choices. In this case once again, the big three can help you decide what to do.
The Big Three options when deciding what to do are:
Is the action I am about to take going to:
- Make the situation better
- Make the situation worse
- Or have no impact
If it is going to make it better then do it. If it is going to make it worse, don’t do it. And if it really doesn’t matter, give the patient the option and help them evaluate whether it worked.
Don’t make business more complicated than it needs to be. Find something that people need done, Figure out how to do it better than anyone else, and then did it well. That is all you need to do.
The way you make your business valuable to others is by constantly helping your customers solve their problems that are within your purview. If you are not adding value to their day why do they need you?
