Will These 10 Retail Secrets Increase
The Profits Of Your Nutrition Practice?
by Dr. Bill Hemmer
ucts on-hand limits impulse purchases.
Popular items cannot grow in popularity if patients cannot see other patients
voluntarily purchasing nutritional support products from your practice.
Even if the nutrition side of your practice is almost all special order, you
could still grow by keeping products in
stock for immediate purchase.
2. Optimize Your Check-Out
Space
Do you know the most expensive real
estate in most grocery stores? For many
retailers the area around the checkout is the most desirable location. The
next time you run to the store for a few
items, slow down and really look at the
closer to where your patients pay?
3. Up-Sell Before The Visit Ends
The up-sell is one step beyond the
optimized check-out, as your employees actually ask if your customers are
interested in a product on special offer.
We all know that fast-food restaurants
are notorious for offering “super-sized”
items for just a few cents more. But
keep in mind that this is not just a tactic
that sells more burgers and fries. Every
type of retailer from the very elegant
to the very simple can encourage their
employees to ask their customers if they
would like to try “something new.”
Occasionally you may give your
patients the opportunity to try some-
If your nutritional practice includes a
stable of items that you recommend to most
people, then why not move them closer to
where your patients pay?
Are You Walking Away
From Nutrition Profits
because you’re thinking like a
chiropractor, and not like
a supermarket manager?
Every year people in your practice will spend hundreds of
dollars on mass produced vitamins from big box stores.
Many will make those purchases based on impulse buys
created by nothing more than store architecture and sales
displays. Wouldn’t you rather have your patients purchase
quality nutritional products from you instead of some other
retailer? Believe it or not you can create a larger nutrition
practice using only the nutrition information you know
right now, simply by thinking like a grocer instead of
like a chiropractor.
Inside this article you will learn 10 different secrets that
retailers use to improve the passive purchases of the products that you recommend. Greater patient compliance and
larger purchases of the nutrition you support will be the
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area around the register. From discount
DVDs, to gossip magazines, to candy
bars, to gift cards for other retailers,
you will be offered as many as twenty
different products in the few feet it
takes to pay for your items.
side-effects. Find one or two of your favorites to implement
in your practice this week, in order to see that “how” you
offer nutrition can make a difference.
On one hand, there is nothing wrong with the special
order practice. The patients have usually committed to the
products before the order even takes place. Therefore the
special order practice limits overhead expenses by limiting the purchasing of non-performing nutritional products.
There are no products that just sit in your office.
The science behind the check-out space
is pretty simple. Your money is about
to come out of your wallet or purse.
You have already committed to at least
one purchase, which increases the
chance that you will commit to at least
one more. In fact, if the sum of your
purchases seems like it is a lot larger
than the relative cost of the item being
offered, it may increase your chances
of buying again. For example, if you
are about to spend $35.00 on a copay for a chiropractic visit, a months
supply of vitamin D supplements for
$9.00 or even $15.00 may seem like
a good value — a natural conclusion
to your visit. This is especially true if
your chiropractor just finished telling
you about the prevalence of vitamin D
shortages in our population.
On the other hand, keeping few products in stock limits
passive nutritional sales. The greatest performing retailers
know that shelf-space equals sales, and not having prod-
If your nutritional practice includes a
stable of items that you recommend to
most people, then why not move them
1. Create Shelf Space
There are two kinds of retail centers: those that emphasize
the special order and those that keep products in stock for
immediate sale. Likewise there are two nutritional practices:
those that place orders for specific patient needs and those
that sell items in stock. How you practice nutrition, specific
testing and nutrition protocols versus general life-style support, will probably influence how much you keep product
in stock.
thing new to support their nutritional
health. It is a strategy that you can use
with everyone on the same day, or just
with a certain patient population in a
certain time-frame. For example, you
may want to offer women over fifty
nutritional supplements that support
bone health. However you stage it,
and whatever you offer, the up-sell is
simply a numbers game, and the more
you offer, the more you will sell.
4. Track Your Sales And Know
Your Flagship Products
It is no secret that retailers are in the
business of selling as many goods as
possible, which means knowing their
flagship products. Most retailers have
software to track which products sell
the most and offer them the best profit.
Even though your chiropractic practice
is only a part-time retailer, the principle
behind knowing what sells and the
profitable profit margin still stands.
There is no sense in continuing to offer
a nutritional support product that very
few purchase, or does not offer you
enough profit.
The key to knowing your flagship
products might be the use of simple
April 2015 • Chiropractic Products | 11
4/16/15 11:48 AM
product inventory software — one that
is either free or low-cost. Tracking what
you sell, how much you sell and when,
might help uncover some trends in your
patients’ nutrition related purchases
that can help you plan what items you
will keep in stock, or help you invest in
educational products for the purpose of
supporting your sales.
Even if you do not have tracking
software, you probably have a good
instinct about what products sell and
what patients like. Or what products
see more compliance with repeat
purchases over the long-term. If you
are the kind of chiropractor who only
keep non-performing items in stock.
Good nutrition practices will do the
same. You need to get rid of what is
not moving to dedicate more of your
sales space to the products that inspire
your patients to make nutritionally empowered purchases. Greater margins
of nutrition profits may simply be a
matter of discounting and removing
stagnant products, and ordering more
of what your patients already love.
6. Use The Psychology Of
Numbers
If you are a nutrition practice that
keeps items on display, then you are
going to be a retailer that publishes
You need to get rid of what is not moving
to dedicate more of your sales space to the
products that inspire your patients to make
nutritionally empowered purchases.
sells what you take yourself, then you
may only have a few products on
hand. In that case your only products
are your flagship products. The question is, are they really selling as much
as you would like or as much as you
think they are?
prices for the products you recommend.
Take advantage of the psychology of
numbers, just like every other retailer
does, and lower the first number of
your products. The more items you
have to display, the greater the influence the lower number can have.
The only way to know which products are your flagship products, and
how much they are actually selling is
through accurate tracking. If you are a
chiropractor in the business of nutrition,
then you are in the business of retailing
nutrition products. It might be helpful to
put on a “retailer hat” and do what all
retailers do and track your sales.
What is the psychology of numbers?
It is the natural short-cut the mind
takes as it stores information. It works
especially well when faced with
multiple pieces of similar information,
like product prices. Intellectually we all
know that the price of $9.97 is only a
few pennies shy of ten dollars. However, when we are scanning prices nine
is the only number that tends to stick.
We feel like the product is cheaper
than $10.00. When it comes to the
impulses that create sales, feeling like
a product is less, when it really isn’t,
offers an advantage to the retailer.
5. Know What Moves And Move
What Doesn’t
Once you know your flagship products
and you have specific numbers about
units sold, then you have an opportunity to grow. Retailers know that the
products that move or are popular
are more likely to grow in popularity
than the products that tend to sit. The
difference between good profit and
better profit on popular items might be
the number of units on-hand.
Good retailers would rather give more
shelf-space to popular products than
12 | Chiropractic Products • April 2015
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7. Create A Power Display
Like the psychology of numbers, the
psychology of the power display is
based on the natural patterns of human
behavior and perception, and it encourages spending. Study after study of
shoppers in stores shows that consumers often look or turn to the right when
entering a place of business. Whatever
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rotating displays in size, color, and
location in order to interrupt the familiar. You can use the same principle in
your practice to interrupt your long-term
patients, and re-excite their interest in
your products and services. If you have
been using the same location for your
nutritional display for months or even
years, then perhaps it is time to shift
things around. Move the furniture and
you might find that you move more
nutritional products.
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10. Use Down Time
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the reason for this behavior, retailers
that don’t have a “right-handed entry”
can still take advantage of this by
creating a power display to the right of
the door. Place a display of your most
important and recommended nutritional products to the right of your clinic
entrance. Or if you don’t have product
to display, place the educational materials for your top nutritional products
to the right. In fact, the concept of a
power display can be used to feature
any important practice information that
you want to share with your patients.
8. Use Repetition
Maybe you have heard the statistics
on advertising that say your audience
needs to hear your message repeatedly
to recognize you, trust you, and trust
your message. Where you often feel
like you’re repeating yourself for the
eighth time, your patient, or your perspective patients, may just be hearing
you for the first time. This is true in your
patient education about chiropractic,
and in your education about nutrition.
14 | Chiropractic Products • April 2015
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In-store repetition of information is a
common strategy that retailers use in
order to influence purchases. Stop and
notice the next time you are in a big
box store how often the same messages and images appear. True, you have
less space and design resources than
a large retailer, but that doesn’t mean
that the principle of repetition cannot
be used in your practice. Instead of
one brochure location, try two. Instead
of one poster, try three similar posters
with the same message. Instead of one
nutritional product display, split your
products up into two different locations.
You might find that your patients notice,
learn, and retain your nutritional education more easily.
9. Shift Things Around
The new and the novel always gains
attention. A new hairstyle, a new suit,
a new arrangement for your living
room all provide visual interruptions
that make us take notice of the things
that have grown familiar. Retailers
create the same effect by changing the
It is hard to find a seat in a retail
space, and when you do, it is usually
facing the merchandise. Retailers offer
very little down time, and when they
do they take advantage of it by encouraging passive observation of more
products. Where do your patients look
when they are sitting and waiting for
you or someone else in your practice?
What are they doing with their down
time? You can take a page from the
major retailers and offer patients every
opportunity to see, read, or notice your
messages about nutrition or your nutritional products. So turn some of those
waiting room chairs around and start
educating while they are waiting.
Think Like A Retailer?
The size of the nutrition side of your
practice is dependent on more than
your expertise or experience in
nutrition. How you are showing the
products you support influences passive
purchases and improves your nutritional sales more than you might realize.
Instead of allowing patients in your
practice to spend hundreds on questionable nutrition in big box stores, you
can encourage them to buy the brands
that you support and trust by thinking
like a retailer, instead of just like a
chiropractor. You can use one or more
of these ten secrets that retailers hide
out in the open to encourage better
compliance of your nutritional recommendations, and increased purchases
of the products you offer.
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About The Author – Dr. Bill Hemmer is a
Logan graduate and practices in IL. Email
him at [email protected].
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