Ancillary Revenue Lines, What Can You Include In Your Commercial Strategy?
In tough economic times we need to really consider your commercial strategy for your healthcare Practice. All sources of revenue for our Practices should be considered. Ancillary revenue lines should be part of your hearing healthcare commercial strategy. Ancillary revenue lines are just that, ancillary or additional to your main revenue flows. Traditional ancillary lines in our profession would of course be,
- Batteries
- Cleaning & care equipment or supplies
- Assistive listening devices
These ancillary lines can drive revenue, but they have been traditionally ignored because of low profitability compared to our core offerings. However, profitability is profitability, any revenue at this time is not to be ignored. There is also clear strategic reasons for offering ancillary product or indeed service lines.
So ancillary revenue lines can serve both a strategic and tactical purpose in your Practice. Strategically they not only feed into the perception of your brand, help drive your online audiology marketing strategy, but also help fill your long term sales funnel driving lead acquisition.
Tactically it can boost revenue and through flow in your Practice. Through flow or footfall if dealt with properly will drive heightened core sales opportunities. How bad is that? I am sure that most of us would appreciate heightened sales opportunities.
This strategy should bring new business into your Practice therefore offsetting the normal attrition rate on your database. The cost of the strategy is relatively neutral, you include the new stock lines or services on marketing channels that you are already deploying. Your Practice is already in place, it exists and the overheads are hopefully being covered by your core business offerings.
In true retail business they consider profitability and costs by square foot of display. Perhaps it is time that we introduced this concept to our Practices, use space to display product lines from the new products you decide to deploy. In order for this to truly be an effective strategy you will then have to assess the impact of these products on an ongoing basis.
What products and services would you consider deploying to boost your ancillary revenue?
Regards
Geoff
