How our purpose helped us to grow a market-leading audiology business

12 months ago, we set up The Hearing Care Partnership. It allows independent opticians to add a hearing service to their optical business. In just 12 months, we established a service with over 40 practices in 14 counties. Throughout them, thousands of optical customers have benefitted from the same kind of rigorous care, clinical excellence and personal service for their hearing, as they’ve enjoyed for their sight, for many years. 

What’s helped shape our success? We think it’s all about being purpose-driven. Here’s how we built our new business model from scratch, with purpose at its core. 

Start by listening. 

What do independent opticians want from a third party hearing provider? What do they value most? 

We spent a year listening. We talked to independent business owners, customers and our own hearing team (we’ve run a hearing care service at Leightons for over 12 years). What we learned was so valuable that it defined the hearing care service we decided to create.  

Our hearing care service for independent opticians would offer: 

• Rigorous care 
• Clinical excellence 
• Personal service 
• Family focus
• Latest technology
• Premium quality 
• Independent expertise

But, right at its heart, would be our purpose. 

Our north star. 

I’m sure every aspiring business owner has watched Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk: “Start with Why”. The power of purpose is transformative to a business. 

Our purpose is to help people live life to the full. By helping our customers see and hear to their body’s fullest potential, they can get the best out of life. 

Our purpose acts as our North Star. It keeps us focused and moving in the right direction. 

It helps us to employ the right people, choose the right business partners and make the right decisions. It shapes our culture, values and simple philosophy of working in close partnership to provide the best possible care. 

Ultimately, by helping our customers live life to the full, we aim to create customers for life. To do this, we stay true to a deeply embedded DNA of listening, empathising, educating and delighting. 

Creating a culture of care and learning 

The Hearing Care Partnership unites many successful independent businesses with a shared purpose at its heart. But our purpose isn’t the only thing we share.  

We have created a culture of care and learning, which enables everyone in the Partnership to share insights and grow. 

Working together as one team sounds so clichéd, but we truly believe in it. We encourage our Hearing Care partners (and our own team) to listen carefully and communicate honestly. 

For example, our team at Leightons Opticians have shared information with our Hearing Care partners on: 

• Stock choices and brand insights
• Clinical enhancement and fee structuring
• Training and development of staff 
• Advice on which OCTs we favour and why
• Customer insights and marketing tactics 

The insights flow two-way – we’ve implemented a number of customer service innovations from our partners, too. 

And this is exactly what we wanted to create: a truly two-way partnership with hearing and optical synergising to create advantages for all. 

A community of like-minded business owners seeking to develop and improve together. 

Great idea, but what’s the progress? 

Well, exactly one year ago, on the 3rd July, we launched our first hearing clinic with Brian Tompkins at his state-of-the-art optometry practice in Northampton – Tompkins Knight & Son. Brian and his team have been so helpful and were the perfect partner to help launch the new service.

 Since then, we have carefully expanded with the right independent opticians and groups, taking care to make sure that our purpose and values align. We are now providing the "optician-only" audiology service in over 40 practices across 14 counties, helping thousands of customers to improve their hearing and live life to the full. 

The growth of the Partnership has certainly exceeded original expectations and here’s why.

What is your business case?

As with any B2B business, there must be value creation levers for the partner business, through time efficiencies or cost saving and/or customer experience improvements, customer retention or customer creation to name a few. 

We built our case for the “right audiology service” to complement a clinical, high quality optical service proposition. And one that should deliver all of the above.  

In the UK optical market, almost all the major chains offer a hearing solution. So how much does it cost an independent optician not to have a hearing service? 

For Leightons (based on 2017 actual numbers) the cost of not having a hearing solution would have equated to ￡13,000 of lost optical revenue per practice. This is based on the combined cost of not having created new optical patients (see new patient acquisition. hearing. below); plus the cost of lost optical patients to competing national rivals who were drawn away for a hearing solution and the converted into an optical customer. 

Is that a compelling business case if you have optical sales of say, ￡500,000 a year? 

On the face of it, maybe not. But what this headline number doesn’t take into account is the cost erosion that derives from a depleted patient base:  

• Less people coming in for eye examinations means less people to deliver a fabulous experience to. 
• Compounded by less people recommending us to their friends and family. 
• Plus, there’s less connected-family spend and lost repeat purchasing, so the lifetime value cost is considerably higher. 

Over 5 years, without even factoring in the connected family, recommendation value and the repeat repurchase cycle of each lost patient; the number of patients lost or not gained would be 220 (based on Leightons 2017 numbers), with a value loss of ￡66,000.  

So when viewed through the 5-year lens, the business case becomes much more compelling, in fact it could be a considerable proportion of lost of optical sales. And it will be even greater, when delivered in the right way.

The commercial benefits go further still, as we also have a revenue share with our Partners based on hearing sales. With zero cost, there is a profit improvement benefit that can be utilised to reinvest and help establish a stronger business with a higher enterprise value. 

Remove the pain points

What we learned from our initial research helped us to shape our approach to a new way to deliver audiology services for independent opticians. 

We pinpointed 9 key “pain points” that customers experience with our competitors. We removed these from our journey. 

Instead, we would: 

• Stay focused on the patient’s best interests. 
• Have an open and transparent approach to the business, a proven structure and a commitment to work closely together as one team.  
• Understand the nuances of each independent optical practice and use our learnings to allow for a seamless integration of hearing. 

Seeking that uncontested space

Next, inspired by the thinking in "Blue Ocean Strategy" (Harvard Business Review Press), by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, we considered what we could do to move this business and service into the “uncontested space”. In other words, how could we redefine the approach to the market, or change the game, so that the old rules didn’t apply? 

To do this, we would use our “unfair advantage” – our experience of optical and audiology (at Leightons). And our objective was to provide a quantum leap in value to independent opticians.  

Here’s how we went about it: 

1. Be ultra-focussed

To create “uncontested space”, we had to create a solution that didn’t exist before. For us, that’s about being ultra-focussed. We designed a business model to integrate solely in existing independent opticians. That means you won’t see one as a standalone audiology practice, or in a day-centre, in GP practices, pharmacies or other health-related spaces. It also means that the model has been fine-tuned to be the right turn-key solution for independent opticians, making the entire process to going live with hearing seamless and efficient.  

2. Unlock the power of partnership

We believe that by unlocking the power of partnerships between us and other independent opticians, we can provide a better service to customers (and help them live life to the full) and unlock added value for our partners. We felt this was so important, we included it in our name!

Where we push out into uncontested waters is by drawing upon our unfair advantage of optical and hearing experience to help partners with information to drive optical success and growth. 

3. Spread the word

This partnership theme also extends to the marketing that we produce. This not only educates, informs and creates demand in the hearing customer base, but it gently cross-sells optical services, too. Oh and our marketing support is all completely free of charge, so not only high quality and differentiated from our competitors, but also zero cost.  

4. Harnessing our people power

We know that we are in a people business, and helping our customers to live life to the full means we absolutely have to work with caring and professional hearing aid audiologists who share our values. 

For our audiologists, helping people to live life to the full doesn’t just stop at their hearing. They are also trained on the optical journey as well. In this way, they can add value to the independent opticians’ optical business, too. Plus, they extend their reach into the community, often giving presentations to community groups and more. 

Putting it all together: purpose driven + business need + pain points = uncontested space. 

In summary, once we’d done our research and listened carefully to our customers’ and our Partners’ needs, we followed these four steps to create a new kind of audiology business, in an uncontested space:  

1. Define the business case, grounded with a need or demand. 

2. Being committed to a purpose of helping people live life to the full. 

3. Removing the pain points against the existing providers to be able to add real value to our Partners. 

4. Drawing upon our unfair advantage of 90 years in optical and 12 years in audiology at Leightons, to provide additional advantages to our Partners that cannot easily be copied = The uncontested space. 

So, in turn, this provides several areas to our Partners where they will create value, sustainable profit improvement and therefore enhanced enterprise value. 

The future beyond our 1 year anniversary  

Research proves that companies built on a central core purpose have outperformed the stock market by a factor of 12 since 1925 (Harvard Business Review 1996). We don’t aim to go public but we do plan to follow proven success model of being purpose driven to help drive growth. A great book by Jim Stengel, in his book GROW (https://www.jimstengel.com/grow/overview/) he explains how brands built on an ideal of improving lives grow at a rate three times faster than their competitors. 

As of today, our 1st birthday for The Hearing Care Partnership, we are proudly working with 40 practices. And with many more Partners signed up to go-live, there will be no summer sabbatical here, as we actively look to recruit the right audiologist to join our team. 

Where next? 

It’s very much our objective to continue the considered growth and expansion, partnering with market-leading independent opticians across the UK. For us the success of our growth will be defined by the strength of the partnerships we can build. And ultimately by staying true to our purpose, we will help many more people to live their lives to the full.  

Want to learn more about how a purpose-driven audiology service can help you grow your independent optical practice? Please email me at: [email protected]