JANUARY 2014
social media advisor
Holding Firm To Your
New Year's Resolutions
one-to-one with
I ALLUDED TO the importance of planning in a lead-in to our December
OPINIONS
03
04
05
06
gould on labor
in the lab
steve zwerman, chief operating officer, dynamic labs
FEATURES
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shining a light on anti-refective lenses
the independent lab's competitive edge
RUNDOWN
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CONTENTS
lab news
new for the lab
EDITORIAL STAFF
BUSINESS STAFF
PROFESSIONAL EDITOR Jim Grootegoed
jg@visioncareproducts.com
EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT Shawn Mery
sm@visioncareproducts.com
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Carol Gilhawley
cg@visioncareproducts.com
EASTERN SALES REPRESENTATIVE Sean Slattery
ss@visioncareproducts.com
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Ana Montoya
am@visioncareproducts.com
WESTERN SALES MANAGER Marie Welsch
mw@visioncareproducts.com
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Jeanne Muchnick
jm@visioncareproducts.com
VICE PRESIDENT, MARKETING Debby Corriveau
dc@visioncareproducts.com
VICE PRESIDENT, DESIGN Jane Kaplan
jk@visioncareproducts.com
VICE PRESIDENT, OPERATIONS Sharon O'Hanlon
so@visioncareproducts.com
VICE PRESIDENT, EDITORIAL Beth Schlau
beth@visioncareproducts.com
PRESIDENT/CEO Frank Giammanco
fg@visioncareproducts.com
SENIOR ART DIRECTOR Diane Cuddy
diane@visioncareproducts.com
PRODUCTION & WEB MANAGER Anthony Floreno
af@visioncareproducts.com
WEB CONTENT MANAGER Steve Curry
sc@visioncareproducts.com
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Andrew Gould, Robert Lerose,
Steven Warfeld
totallyoptical.com
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issue of LABmail. One great method is to call it New Year's resolutions. Our
industry was formed by risk-takers who had a desire, a passion, to provide a superior
product and greater service to eyecare professionals (ECPs). How you survive is
dependent upon how you actually achieve those goals and differentiate your
business from your competition.
Goals, or resolutions, are critical to your success. The following are general
suggestions you might want to consider:
1. Defne your business, your culture, your strengths. OLP ran an article several
years ago in which I interviewed several successful labs. The number-one factor
in their success was that they all had defned who they were, their strengths, their
objectives, and communicated those to both their customers and employees.
2. Identify and defne your resources, both monetary and personnel.
3. Generate more success with fewer ideas. It's critical to identify a priority of goals
and then dedicate maximum resources to executing them.
4. Meet less and do more.
5. The Internet and social media are the future. Devote some time to developing
your web page and Internet ordering for your customers. Also, adopt some
interesting programs for your ECP customers. Consider something as simple as
asking them to share a phone image of a patient wearing their new eyewear with
a message such as: "Here's my new eyewear/glasses. I got them at Your Name
Optical and I love them!"
6. Encourage creativity that involves everyone on your team.
At Walman Optical, employees have developed a formalized "Suggestion" program that has resulted in improvements to everything from changing shipping carriers to
sales initiatives.
7. Probably the most important point of all is to commit to
your resolutions. Hold yourself accountable to your goals
by evaluating your progress weekly or monthly and make
JIM GROOTEGOED
sure you break up your goals into reasonable action items
Professional Editor,
Optical Lab Products
that you can make progress on every day.
january 2014
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