Soft Skills: A Key To Rx Success

As "The Road Trip" guy I get to visit a lot of super successful pharmacies. The purpose of all my road trip visits is to see first-hand things pharmacy owners are doing that help them succeed and then write about them to share with others. And I get to see a wide variety of pharmacies; big, little, well merchandized front ends, clinic style, compounder, etc.

Despite the differences in format there is one thing all successful pharmacies have in common. The warm, pleasant feeling I get when I walk in. Somehow you can just tell the people working there like one another, like serving patients and go out of their way to keep the pharmacy clean, neat and orderly.

Managment books refer to as; soft skills. Part of the reason for this name is because it is really hard to measure. There a few, if any, metrics for this type of things.

What I can tell you is that when you visit a pharmacy, or any retailer for that matter, you can tell by the way team members interact with you if the store has it. If are looking for a few suggestions tto improve your soft skills here are a few examples that have been articulated to me by successful pharmacy owners.

First: you can't fake authenticity. If you want your team to care about people, you need to care about people. Then you need to articulate your vision and when a team member does something that exemplifies what you are looking for you need acknowledge it in front of others.

Two: some people just don't have that skill. If a team is a good worker, interacts well with other team members but just doesn't connect with customers then you can find a place for them in a non-customer facing role. If you can't do that you need to find a way to invite them to work someplace else and then replace them with a person who does. If you only have average employees, how do you expect to run an above average pharmacy?

Three: if you, the owner or manager, don't have the skill, and many pharmacists don't, that's okay. But you'll need to find someone who does and have them be the assistant manager, operations manager, marketing manager, or be given some other title and have them be the face of the pharmacy to the outside world.

This person will greet first-time customer's, do the doctor detailing and coordinate activities that call for someone to meet and greet patients, practitioners and work with community leaders.

This reminds me of like the little magnet sign my wife had in the kitchen for years. "Do you want to speak to the person in charge or the one who knows what is going on." You can be in charge, but the other person will find ways to ensure the pharmacy is a pleasant place to work and shop.

Like it or not, soft skills are one major attribute of super successful pharmacies. Good business skills are essential too. Still, my observation, based on nearly 200 pharmacy road trip visits is, if you focus on improving your soft skills first, your team will help you achieve all your other goals.