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The more we’ve worked with pharmacies, the better we’ve been able to adapt in a way that better serves the Pharmacy Sector.

As our team has grown, so too has the way we work.

Pharmacists at the heart of our restructuring

Two of the major changes we’ve made directly impact the way we work with our clients. And our clients are actually our source of inspiration for one of the changes. We’ve adopted a clinical approach to our service, treating our marketing like medicine. We know it’s going to improve the service. But we hope it also helps pharmacists understand the way we work better, too.

Diagnose & Prescribe

First off, we’ve changed the name of our Sales Division to “Diagnose & Prescribe.”

“Sales” never really fit the way we worked anyway.

Why Diagnose & Prescribe fits our ethos

Communication is all about speaking the same language. Using healthcare terms for our processes helps our clients intuitively understand what we’re going on about. Naturally, pharmacists and pharmacy owners don’t always have knowledge of marketing, so the more we can bridge that divide, the better.

Sales has a tainted reputation, mainly because the practice is rife with bad habits and behaviour. Diagnose & Prescribe is really just how Sales should be. Assessing what the problem is, and recommending a solution. Patients can’t be prescribed medication without having a consultation. The idea of selling a service to someone who doesn’t have a need is equally unthinkable. So, until salespeople clean their act up, we’re not salespeople. We’re consultants.

Fran, one of our Pharmacy Growth Consultants, working hard on developing digital strategies for pharmacies

How does our Diagnose & Prescribe service work?

Our new Diagnose & Prescribe division operates in a way that will be familiar to pharmacists too, as there are several key components to our service with inspiration from inside the pharmacy.

New Marketing Service

A bit like a New Medicine Service, we want you to understand exactly what you’re signing up for. When we’re sending out proposals now, we include links to the in-depth articles we’ve written about the services. These are our Pharmacist Information Leaflets (PILs), meaning you always understand the general benefits and potential side-effects of any services we recommend.

JP, creating the articles we use for our Pharmacist Information Leaflets.

In addition to this, our MUR service conducted by the Diagnose & Prescribe team makes sure your service is going as expected. Our Pharmacy Growth Consultants check in every 3 months with you to make sure your service is running the way it should, and that the desired outcomes are on track to be met.

Quarterly MUR’s (Marketing Use Reviews)

Just like how medicine works differently for every patient, marketing works differently for different pharmacies. This is something we mention to pharmacists a lot. Your reputation, your infrastructure, your location, all these things affect how well your marketing works. Just like a person’s overall health would impact how effective a treatment is.

And so, again, ethically, we feel a responsibility to keep our eye on your pharmacy’s marketing health. Our Diagnose & Prescribe team is beginning to review all our clients’ marketing strategies on an ongoing basis. This is important for two reasons. Firstly, similar to medical tolerances, as your pharmacy grows, (from all the marketing you’ve been doing!) the dosage may need to increase. As an example, a starting budget of £150 for your Google ads may work well when you’re introducing a service, but the more capacity you get to deliver that service, the more you can advertise it.

This is a consultative process throughout. Our team listens to the symptoms of the problems you’re experiencing, and diagnoses accordingly.

Introduction of Dedicated Account Executives

Another essential part of our restructuring has been dedicating a team specifically to communicating with you. As our team has grown, we’ve developed specialist divisions to deliver our services. With more clients joining us, having the departments communicate directly with clients began impacting the delivery of the work. With so many clients, communicating with them became a full-time job.

Our Account Executives giving a presentation on their department

So, we created a full-time position. Two, in fact. Dedicated entirely to communicating with and being an ambassador for clients. This works so well because it means as a client, you only need to speak to one person, no matter what service you’re talking about. Need your website amended? Want a specific social media post? Need to talk to someone about your blog, or advert? All one point of contact.

The Account executives understand your history and your objectives and act as your ambassador to our team.

Our rapidly expanding Web Division

At the dawn of the pandemic, when it became apparent just how poor most pharmacies’ online presence was, there was an explosion of demand for effective pharmacy websites akin to the Big Bang for our Web Team. And, just like the Big Bang, we’ve been expanding ever since. Our Web Team and division is now the biggest in our Company. We’ve built over 200 websites of varying complexity, from the brochure-style pharmacy website to online prescribing clinics and custom-built pharmacy back end solutions. Consisting of front end developers, core PHP back end developers, UX designers and project managers, this innovative division is allowing pharmacies to build their entire operations online to streamline work and drive revenue in new ways. Watch this space.

The evolution of our Marketing Division

Our marketing team used to handle way too much, being full range marketers who would deal with client communications, advertising, organic social media, graphic design, blogging and copywriting. In the last couple of years we’ve been evolving to specialise each of these skills, which delivers better and more efficient end results for our clients. We now have a specific SEO, Paid Ads, Graphic Design and Social Media sub-team within this division, meaning that each arm of our marketing is stronger and more specialised than ever.

Co-ordinating our entire team

After trialling different solutions, we also discovered ClickUp, which has completely revolutionised the way that everyone in Pharmacy Mentor works. This has again massively ramped up efficiency, and reduced human error by introducing robust procedures and SOP’s.

Clients are already happier

The image shows a TrustPilot review. Pharmacy Mentor have been great to work with over the last 18 months, however the recent changes with Lewis as a dedicated account executive and JP working on Strategy has been a more seamless and efficient way of working.

We’ve already heard good things about our new approach, but we won’t rest on our laurels. We’ll continue evolving and adapting to client feedback. With where we are now compared to where we were two years ago, it makes the next two years an incredibly exciting prospect. We hope you can join us on the journey.

A message from our CEO

Saam Ali, a pharmacist by trade and our Founder, gives his two cents:

“It’s been an incredible journey for us so far. As with any business, there have been great highs and many lows. But, what makes us stronger by the day is continuously listening to our client’s feedback, our passion for digital innovation and a thirst for helping the most accessible healthcare points in our communities, pharmacies. We’re on a really important mission and we’re going to do what it takes to get us there. I’d like to thank all of our clients, partners, team and everyone else involved in this great story.”