Frame Purchasing Success Plan

The purpose of the frame purchasing success plan document is to properly prepare any frame buyer to confidently handle meetings with your different frame reps or vendors. This document is just one piece of the puzzle in creating proper procedures within your dispensary to ensure the practice maintains the control when dealing with external vendors. This document should also help us with reducing and controlling money spent on cost of goods and reduce the amount of time that you need to spend on brand reps when they do come into your practice, so we have as much time as possible for what really matters, being available to our patients. The frame purchasing success plan document is something that you should complete at least one day prior to a frame rep coming into your practice so that you’re properly prepared for when they do show up. At the top, we complete the information about the brand, the date of the meeting, the name of the brand rep, and any pertinent contact information should we need to make any last-minute changes to our appointment.

In the next section, we should be able to fill out the expected order amount. If we’re setting a proper frame buying budget, we should know how many frames we’re planning on purchasing and the average amount of those frames so that we can calculate how much we're planning on spending prior to them coming in. 

We also want to fill out what the current brand turn rate is, so that we can discuss that with the brand rep, whether it’s good or bad. Don’t forget that we can’t calculate the turn rate until the frame line has been in your practice for no less than twelve months. We should also be putting the number that we currently have on hand on our boards and if there are any minimum requirement amounts so that we keep that in mind so we don’t have to over-purchase if we get too low. There’s also a spot for the next appointment that we can fill out after we deal with the frame rep.

In the next section, we fill out the aging frames. In your practice, it's important that you discuss what frames are aging and what expected aging times would be in your practice so that you know when it's time to replace frames. That way, you have them set aside and ready for your frame rep when they come in. 

In the next section, we put the total number of frames that were planning on returning as well as the applicable return authorization number that should be provided by your brand rep or that you can get online if you have to place it yourself. Next, we put the number of frames that we need and the date that we ordered them and the number of frames that might be on backorder, if that's applicable. Finally, we put the estimated time of arrival from our frame rep so we know when the frames are going to show up so that we can properly plan to have enough time to enter them into our practice management software and get them priced, tagged, and on the board, so that we can hurry up and get them back out the door and on our patient's faces. The rest of the section is left blank for any applicable notes, new product, any POP (Point of Purchase or merchandising materials) that you may have ordered or training opportunities, so that you can discuss the frame line with your staff and the rest of your team, in order to have them help you talk to the patients about the different frame brands that they might like.