5. Selling skin care requires ongoing education
Properly recommending and retailing skin care involves physician, staff, and patient education. Unfortunately, most practices rely on training from the cosmeceutical sales reps who obviously have a brand bias. There is minimal unbiased “brand agnostic” skin care training for dermatologists and their staff. In fact, the AAD meeting has only a few skin care lectures in the program. Plastic surgeon Gaurav Bharti, MD, of Charlotte, N.C., explained that “motivating staff to help with retail skin care can be challenging. The first step is to get the staff familiar with the products with open discussions with the representatives. The next step has been to have the staff actually use the products and believe in them. Once they believe in the product, we have used an incentivization model that’s simple, transparent, and predictable.”
We are all too busy to spend adequate time with our patients, so it is critical that our staff be able to properly recommended skin care for us. We have to ensure that our staff is taking an ethical and scientific approach to skin care retail rather than a financial one. Rigorous staff training on how to match skin care products to skin type is the key to improving outcomes with skin care recommendations.
Dr. Leslie S. Baumann
In a similar sense, Cincinnati plastic surgeon Richard Williams, MD, commented that “aestheticians often succumb to the desires of our patients to carry too many products in inventory, for which they do not have enough knowledge of the product’s benefits. This can be a very frustrating challenge.”
Conclusion
Although there are many obstacles to retailing skin care in your medical practice, the benefits that it provides to both your patients (improved outcomes) and your practice (increased profitability) far outweigh the challenges. I solved these pitfalls in my own practice by developing a standardized staff training program and skin care diagnostic software that is now used by over 100 medical practices. If you want to start retaining skin care, my advice is develop a training plan and a methodology for the recommendation and patient education process before you spend a lot of money on the required minimum product order. Feel free to contact me for advice. Alternatively, if you already do a great job of retailing skin care and want to provide tips to include in my American Society for Dermatologic Surgery course, contact me on LinkedIn or DrB@skintypesolutions.com. You can also find blogs I have written on skin care retail advice at STSFranchise.com.
Dr. Baumann is a private practice dermatologist, researcher, author, and entrepreneur who practices in Miami. She founded the Cosmetic Dermatology Center at the University of Miami in 1997. Dr. Baumann wrote two textbooks: “Cosmetic Dermatology: Principles and Practice” (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002) and “Cosmeceuticals and Cosmetic Ingredients” (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2014); she also wrote a New York Times Best Sellers book for consumers, “The Skin Type Solution” (New York: Bantam Dell, 2006). Dr. Baumann has received funding for advisory boards and/or clinical research trials from Allergan, Evolus, Galderma, and Revance. She is the founder and CEO of Skin Type Solutions Franchise Systems.