Your own customers don't know what you do

For three weeks we've been talking about the customer who comes in with a question instead of a prescription. We counted them, then we priced the conversation.

Now the awkward part. Most of them don't know what you can actually do for them.

And neither do the ones who never come in.

When UK adults who were unlikely to use a pharmacy were asked why, nearly a third gave the same answer: they didn't know a pharmacy could help.

Not "too expensive". Not "I don't trust it". Not "too far".

They didn't know.

That's the cheapest problem in your business to fix, and the most expensive one to ignore.

Reach for advertising. A leaflet drop. A Facebook page. Something in the local paper. A banner.

All of it aimed at strangers, and all of it costing money you'd rather not spend on something you can't measure.

Think about who walks through your door tomorrow.

If 150 people come in, that's 150 chances to say one sentence. Over a week, it's around 900. Over a year, more than 40,000.

Those people have already chosen you. They're already standing still, waiting. And most of them have no idea that you can help with the thing they went to the GP about last month.

You don't have an audience problem. You have an audience you're not using.

In rough order of cost, from nothing upwards:

What your team says when they hand over the bag. One sentence. "Next time that happens, you can come straight to us." That costs nothing and it's the most persuasive marketing in retail, because a person said it to another person.

The bag itself. Every prescription goes home in one. A printed line on the bag, or a small card inside it, is seen in the kitchen by the whole household.

The queue. People stand there for four to eight minutes with nothing to read. Whatever is at eye level at the counter is the best-read advertising space you will ever own.

The window. It faces a street full of people who already walk past you every day.

Those four reach the people most likely to act, and they cost a fraction of anything aimed at strangers.

Same reason as last week: nobody decided what the sentence is.

So the team says nothing, because saying nothing is never wrong. The bag is blank. The counter has a cardboard display from a supplier about something you don't make any money on.

Write one sentence. Not a campaign.

It needs three qualities:

1. Plain. The way a customer would say it, not the way the NHS writes it.

2. Specific. Name one thing. "You can talk to us about that" is weaker than naming the actual problem people come in with.

3. Repeatable. Short enough that your team will say it forty times a day without feeling awkward.

Then put it in three places: on the bag, at eye level at the counter, and in your team's mouths when they hand the bag over.

One sentence, three places. That's the whole job this week.

Anything you print or say about a service has to be accurate, and anything clinical is your professional judgement, not a marketing decision. Keep the sentence about what people can come in and ask about, and leave what happens next to the consultation.

Pick the sentence. Say it out loud to one member of staff and see whether they could repeat it to a customer without cringing.

If they can't, it's the wrong sentence. Try again.

Hit reply and send me the sentence you'd use. I'll put the best ones in a future issue so other owners can borrow them, because this is one of those problems where seeing someone else's words is worth more than any advice I can give.

Next week: the simplest number in your business, and the one almost nobody calculates. What the average customer spends with you, and what happens when you change it by 50p.

Pollyanna