Enhancing Internal Pharmacy Culture | Patti Mara, Principal Trainer and Author

This transcript was generated automatically. Its accuracy may vary.

[00:00:15] Mike: Patti, for those that haven't come across you online, Introduce yourself and tell our listeners what we're talking about today.

[00:00:23] Patti: I'm Patti Mara. I'm a business coach. I have been a business coach for well over 20 years. I work predominantly with retail and service businesses brick and mortar.

 Focusing pretty exclusively with pharmacy owners. To help you know why your customers, your patients choose you and you can clearly communicate.

 Why drive by all the other pharmacies in town to choose our pharmacy? And that their team understands how to create the value of your pharmacy, that they understand their role, a purpose led role, that they get to have an impact every day. 

[00:00:58] Mike: It sounds to me, Patti, like you almost have to plan for that in your hiring or at minimum put that into your job description because a lot of times you'll get somebody in and then they'll go and they'll listen to Patti and they'll come back and they'll say, all right, we're all going to be, the ultimate, relationships, selling and things like that and the person says, I didn't sign up for this, I just want to do, this and that, it almost seems like you have to plan for that in your hiring and if not, you have to plan for that. It seems you're gonna get some people that either don't want to do it, or they're cynical.

They hate all the teamwork talk and all that kind of stuff. Is it critical to hire that , or can you say, No, Mike, we can turn that ship around wherever it's going.

[00:01:43] Patti: There was a great book, a number of years ago, Brad Smart, I think top grading,

 He talked about whether all team members are A players, B players, or C players. Players are people that have the right skill set, the right. temperament and they want to win so you just have to really put them in the role and they'll figure it out and they're gonna show up to win and B players they have the right skill set but you have to manage them

You have to manage them to produce results and C players are disengaged either because they're not the right fit Or because they've become disengaged and they can be passively or actively disengaged.

Is a little bit more destructive than the other, but both are not a good fit. So coming back and answering, yes, you want to understand, I think we all take for granted our culture. A pharmacy's culture is really the core values of the owner because whether they've been defined or not, that's in the background.

of who you're hiring and how you're training and what's most important, what are you reinforcing, so yes, I love doing a core values exercise, but really it's already there. We're just defining what's already there. And we can take it for granted, so we take it for granted and we hire for something and we're missing what we take for granted.

So yes, know what it is you're looking for. One of my business mentors, the entrepreneur behind strategic coach, Dan Sullivan. It's like he always wants to hire batteries included.

They show up and 

you're not trying to engage them. They show up, how do I do this?

What do we do? We're looking for this. However, if you don't have the structure in place, To set your team up to win. In other words, they're guessing all the time how to win . Everyone wants to feel like they're winning in their role. If they're guessing all the time, it hits your productivity.

It hits their job satisfaction. You're always feeling like you're correcting things. So if you don't have that essential structure, I talk about the four pillars of a team, setting your team up to win. In place, you can hire A players and they will not stay,

Because they can't win in their job either because the team's not held accountable. They won't work with people that are disengaged and you're not doing something about it. So yes, it's good to know and include that in the hiring process.

And at the same point, you may be hiring for the right person, and you don't have the structure set up, and they're not set up, so you're losing them.

If people you don't want to lose, chances are you don't have the structure in place to set them up to win.

[00:04:15] Mike: For a pharmacy to be successful this is so important. It's cliche, you've got to have the business and the personality. Now there's some that can hire that maybe at a different level, but it seems you have to have that.

But I think there's a lot of us that, Don't know how to communicate that well. And we might not communicate it at the hiring time. We know we want them to do that, but they don't necessarily know that then count how many steps you want. What if you put it in your.

Package and what if you do a good job of promoting this, but you don't know how to manage it. You don't know how to Get the person Enthused about it so I imagine we pharmacists suck all around at

[00:05:05] Patti: First of all, every pharmacy owner has their own talent, if they're not great with people and they don't want to spend most of their time with people, they, and they want to still own a business, they'll own a research lab, or they'll own a closed door pharmacy, there's always a fit, 

saying that you're spot on. Okay, I'm going to say this in two different ways. The first is, I think this is Izzy Sharp who started the Four Seasons Hotel, I think this is a quote of Izzy Sharp. You want to systematize the routine so you can humanize the exception. None of it should be left up to memory, or it won't happen consistently. So 

Yes, it needs to be... 

[00:05:43] Mike: break that down a little bit, Patti, say that one again. You have to systemize the,

[00:05:47] Patti: Routine.

[00:05:48] Mike: In that case, does the routine also include the smiles and using names doesn't include everything. 

[00:05:56] Patti: Everything. 

[00:05:56] Mike: You don't just mean the cash register. You systemize a routine, but then. The exception. What do you have to do for the exception?

[00:06:05] Patti: Humanize the exception.

[00:06:06] Mike: Alright, now I don't know what the hell that 

[00:06:08] Patti: ha! Well, So if you don't have good systems in place... 

[00:06:12] Mike: Okay. 

[00:06:13] Patti: Then everything is an exception. So you can't actually deal with what's unique. 

[00:06:18] Mike: Oh. 

Problems or 

[00:06:20] Patti: yes, 

yes. 

[00:06:21] Mike: You don't know what's the standard and so you don't know how to handle somebody outside of those boundaries.

[00:06:29] Patti: Correct. And you don't have any time or attention to do it,

All growth happens from fixing something that didn't work.

There's a certain amount you're just humming along, but in order to continue to innovate beyond where you are today, most of the time it's fixing something that doesn't work, and you don't have any time or energy to do that if you don't have good structure in place.

[00:06:49] Mike: So that gives you time to massage the edges a little bit because the rest of it, it's hopefully humming along, but not just humming along at a mediocre level. It's humming along at a system you set up. All right. So what's the second thought then?

[00:07:03] Patti: Actually we can dive into that because

I created an ebook just a downloadable ebook on the four pillars, setting your team up to win. Because when I was going and working with a pharmacy and their team, What I found is I'm going in to do the experiential training.

I'm going in so that teams know how to communicate, to hear the message, not just the words, how they handle complaints, how to set them up so they feel empowered and purposeful. And what I found is that a lot of the time I had to do backfill, that they didn't have these four pillars. And so we can dive into that.

But the other piece I was thinking about was the E Myth Revisited. 

[00:07:40] Mike: Michael Gerber? 

[00:07:41] Patti: Michael Gerber, 

[00:07:42] Mike: That's a great book.

[00:07:43] Patti: Sure, because most business owner, including pharmacists are an owner because they're good at the technical part of the technician role in a pharmacy is the pharmacist,

Then you also need a manager role who's running the day to day and you need an entrepreneur role, which is building the business, growing the business.

[00:08:01] Mike: The hats that we're wearing.

[00:08:03] Patti: it. The hat that you're wearing, one of the things I liked and of course what Michael Gerber talks about his book is structure.

You have to have structure in place. Michael Gerber's book systematizes a routine so you can humanize the exception. I think he takes it too far, like we don't need a franchise model in a pharmacy unless you have five stores, but you do need some basic structure.

[00:08:25] Mike: All right, Patti. The four pillars. 

[00:08:28] Patti: Mm 

hmm. 

[00:08:28] Mike: one.

[00:08:30] Patti: Number one is regular team communication. It's that simple. I want to see at a very bare minimum a 15 to 20 minute weekly huddle.

[00:08:44] Mike: Patti, I'm glad you're on the show and I know you have experience with this, not only experience, you're a pro. But. I don't do those I don't like. I've got ways around it. And I think a lot of it, if you're going to get a naysayer like me, the first thing they're going to say is. The schedule, how are you going to get 15 minutes because you can't do it mid day because the store's going and you can't do it in the morning because you've got people that aren't there till the afternoon.

So I just pretended that I wanted to find out more about this, because if you just came into my store and said, I'd say, get out of here, but we've got to cover it because it's on the show. Now we've already said it. So Patti, Why in person and how do you get around the different schedules with that?

[00:09:38] Patti: Yeah, so it's a great question because it's the number one pushback I get.

and it's the number one pillar because without it. The rest don't have the same impact.

First of all, I want to talk about the why. Why is this so

and the other piece I get is, okay, I'm a pharmacy owner.

I have a tech and a clerk. We're talking all the time. We don't need a weekly meeting.

You still need a weekly meeting. 

And the reason you need a weekly meeting is because conversations happen. It has to be structured. You want to have everyone report what they were committed to working on and what's an update.

So there's an accountability piece. And then, what do you want your team to know about? What are current projects? What's the focus of the week? What do you need people to know about or update them on? And then everyone's saying what they're working on and are going to report in the next meeting. So it's like the Oreo cookie of 

reporting, updating, and setting up, focus for the next week.

And if, even if you're talking all day, if you don't have that, the team members don't feel that they're in the know. 

Things will be happening because you're thinking about it. But if you haven't talked about it, or you haven't talked about the importance of it, or set up how it's going to go, they're guessing, even if you're talking all day.

So that's the first thing. And there was, I can't remember the company that did this. But they studied businesses and compared ones that had regular team communication, just basic weekly

huddles, and ones that didn't. In over a five year period, the companies with regular team communication had a 47 percent higher output than the companies that didn't.

The importance and power of your team members feeling in the loop and that they know what's going on. It's like the backbone of everything. Ha

[00:11:22] Mike: Okay. I've got the why, but I've got some things I want to say about the why, but I'm going to hold my tongue, Patti. Now how. All right. So let's talk about the how then.

[00:11:33] Patti: And you're right, with pharmacy it's definitely doable. Because I'm working with pharmacies that are doing it. , so I'm going to give a whole bunch of nuts and bolts. And the whole thing is you want to customize it to your circumstances . so let's say it's a one store pharmacy or smaller teams.

Some do come in half an hour early, one day a week, one day a week. Have a 15, 20 minute huddle, and then they go about their day. 

[00:11:55] Mike: That's assuming Patti, that someone works then because some of our listeners might be open till nine or 10 PM and someone's coming in at one o'clock.

[00:12:05] Patti: Yes. So it doesn't work often. And if it's a larger team, then that really works for the leadership team and then the leaders are having their team. 

I will say, if you have a larger team, you're probably not going to pull the whole team together.

In which case then the owner with the leaders.

The managers will be reading and they'll set the tone like everyone else there's still the same structure. What did they accomplish? What does the owner want all the leaders to know about to communicate with their team? What is everyone committing to working on and reporting back at the next meeting?

So then it's just that's happening and you can choose, it doesn't have to deal with store hours. And then The leaders that are meeting with their team. Generally, you want a team that is like six to eight people anyways. So you might have you might have a front of store team, you might have a pharmacy team, you might have a compounding team, 

You might have the delivery drivers. So you can break up the team a little bit, given that the leaders have a meeting and then they meet with their team. 

That's 

fantastic. 

And then maybe you have eight people in one store and you still have split schedules like that.

I've also seen what worked by breaking it up into two meetings. 

So maybe Tuesday at 10 a. m. and 

Wednesday at 2 p. m. or Tuesday at 10 and 2, if the whole team's on Tuesdays,

and in which case, have somebody take notes and put it on a bulletin board so the key points are covered,

The key is that you start on time and end on time. If you don't, Start on time and end on time, you're training your team to ignore what you say, and they'll start puttering in five minutes later, and then the meeting starts ten minutes later, and then it bleeds, and then it's not focused, 

you want to keep them on point. Hold them standing up. It's not getting comfortable with the coffee.

Keep them crisp. If a conversation comes up that needs more detail, or you have to talk it through with a couple people, then set up to meet after the huddle. Or set up a different time.

Keep those huddles focused, sharp, and clear. Start on time, end on time. And that will be your backbone without it bleeding over and taking up more than you need.

[00:14:12] Mike: One of my pet peeves, Patti, is a coach that yells at the kids, you got to be here on time and you're not on time.

So run a couple of laps and things like that. And then we parents get there at 5: 30 when practice is supposed to be done and the coaches keep the damn kids until 10 minutes to six. And I'm thinking, what does that teach the kids? And how are the parents supposed to reiterate that to their kids when the coaches are making the parents late, all right, that's my beef on them, but Patti, I know I probably could do the meetings all of ours is done through basically Oh, we use one called crew, but 

What's one of the S's? They don't snap, but what is slack? Those kinds of Team communications, but I suppose in person I'm not going to say better right now, but I'm going to say it's really good. Some of those, Patti, if I'm going to have that meeting, I might as well go to the high school drama club 

isn't there a lot of drama and I don't know if we are skilled enough as business owners to put up with all the drama and bitching at one of those meetings.

[00:15:34] Patti: So a couple things. I'm going to go back to the weekly huddle. That's the backbone. And that has to be in place. there's actually Three different levels of meetings, if you will. There's the weekly huddle. There's a once a month team meeting. That's more like an hour long, and 

that's really training and deeper in

depth. I've companies that do it once a year or twice a year. 

Retreat and that's more goal setting and maybe team bonding and a

picnic

But, the whole piece with the weekly huddles is that they have to be crisp.

[00:16:05] Mike: They gotta be crisp.

[00:16:06] Patti: They have to be crisp. And you made a really important point, I think, with the sport coaches.

I have to say if I had a sports coach doing that, I would say, we will honor being here on time, which is what you've said. We want the kids on time and we count on you to honor that you end on time or else we're teaching the kids to ignore it. I love that

example because it's true for 

businesses. 

[00:16:32] Mike: guess what? kid's gonna be riding the bench then, Patti. No, it's 

true with 

businesses.

Everybody all around should be doing that.

[00:16:40] Patti: We train people how to show up and how to treat us.

We train for it. and I don't mean, give them a hard time. Listen, you, if you show up on time and you start on time and if people show up late, then they missed it and you talk to them afterwards about what happened and how important it is.

But if you start late, you train them to ignore what you say.

and if drama comes up and it's like, well, that's an interesting point, Mary Sue but 

[00:17:06] Mike: Patti, I did not say it was a woman.

[00:17:09] Patti: Okay. To be fair, my most pharmacies teams that I work with are female, so 

[00:17:14] Mike: I can't say I wasn't thinking about it. I just said, I didn't say it for the record.

[00:17:21] Patti: Okay, frank, that's a 

a really good point, but we're not going to spend time on that in this meeting.

If you want to talk to me after, just in a nice way, keep it on target. 

I will say, so this is almost the measure of success in the Up Solutions training I do.

About halfway through that 12 week program, I want to see a fundamental shift that the team shows up to those weekly huddles and they're driving the meetings. Because they're stepping into that purposeful role and they feel empowered. It starts off that you're, as the owner, you're pulling that everything out and what did you do and what was your update but I want to see that the team shows up, but they want to start owning that.

What do they need to know?

[00:18:02] Mike: And that's where that in person helps. That's where the in person can flip that, where you're never gonna flip that with Slack or Microsoft whatever.

You're not gonna get that flip. So that's cool.

[00:18:13] Patti: slack. That's exactly right. So that's the first pillar.

it's the one I get the most pushback on for exactly the reasons you said. 

And yet, you're losing people you don't want to lose because A players won't stay in an environment that they don't 

feel productive. 

So retention's a big deal. I worked with one pharmacy owner and his estimation is that his team was guessing 85 percent of the time.

What he wanted.

And that's what we have to eliminate. Because talk about a hit to productivity.

[00:18:41] Mike: All right, Patti. Number two.

[00:18:42] Patti: Pillar number two are position agreements. It's a step beyond a job description. A job description is really describing the tasks of a role. 

And a position agreement talks about who they report to, what's the result statement of that role? In other words, how does that role contribute to the success of the business, the pharmacy?

There's a spot for the tactical work listing, the tasks, but then what are the position specific standards of success and what are the company wide standards of success? The company wide is the same for everyone. You wear name tags, patients are greeted within three steps of being in the store, show up on time, you need to be at your workstation at the beginning of your shift, no cell phones.

And here's the play, here's the piece. If you're going to have it in as a rule or a standard, especially company wide, you have to be willing to reinforce it 

because if you say no cell phones at your workstation during your shift, then you have to reinforce it or you teach your team to completely ignore everything.

[00:19:44] Mike: Absolutely. Or if you do it with some and others, there's favors and all that stuff.

[00:19:48] Patti: Absolutely. And that will completely destroy your

culture. again, you're really just talking about your core values, but put them 

down into your measures of success and for each of the work listings, for, let's say a technician role filling scripts. So what's the standard of success?

filled within what timeframe? Accuracy, customer patient interaction. Take the guesswork out. Customers calls are returned within two hours or within a business day, 

or

emails or since they interact in all different ways. So those position agreements are really just taking up the guesswork in whatever they're responsible for in that role.

And it doesn't have to be onerous. I actually have a ton of templates I've collected over the years. It really doesn't have to be onerous. And ideally you create a draft. The owner would create a draft. 

Or use a template to edit the draft and then you hand it out to your team members to live with for a week and have them edit and input.

If you have three technicians, you take all the three technicians' input, come up with the finalized position agreement and you live with that for the next year. But that also helps you. That gives you interview questions because now you have specifically what you're interviewing for, not just the task, but the standards.

It's a checklist for training 

and it's one to go back to, when you're giving performance feedback, you can go right back to the position agreement.

[00:21:10] Mike: See, that was easy, Patti. 

 I don't bite. That was easy enough. It goes to show that these are universal skills. They're universal skills that everybody, every retail store service across the world can use these. Okay. What's number three?

[00:21:30] Patti: Number three is regular feedback. You've set up the expectations and standards of success and now you need to be providing regular feedback. How is the team doing?

And I like to see... My personal recommendation is a five to one. You want to be acknowledging and appreciating five things that are working to one correction that you're dealing with.

It's like you want to fill the bank.

The rule of thumb is that wherever you put your attention, that's what expands. 

And, especially as owners where our natural is to deal with what's not working,

and we need to also pay attention to what is working. It's not just exceptional, it's that people are doing their job well and they're hitting the standards.

You want to 

acknowledge and appreciate that. 

[00:22:13] Patti: I will give a secret here, because my methodology of giving corrective feedback I start with acknowledging what is working,

specifically, not fluff, what can you count on this person for? Why are they part of your team? And if you can't answer that, you, that's a whole different conversation.

But I start with what is working specifically. And then we say , what isn't working specifically. Again, not fluff. People can't deal with an overview, they can't make any change. And then, what's the improvement action? What's the... Outcome that you want to see.

For example, Frank,

[00:22:49] Mike: all right Frank, problem is Patti, our listeners can't see this, but you did it in quotes 

[00:22:55] Patti: oh, did I, 

[00:22:56] Mike: No, I'm just kidding. Now. You're still talking about the women. Okay. All 

[00:23:01] Patti: okay, Frank 

So Frank, you're a valued team member with us you're fast, you're accurate when you're filling prescriptions, you work well with the team, you're an important part of our pharmacy. And, you've been late twice in the last three

weeks, and here's the thing, you're on the schedule because we need you in the store, and you're letting your whole team down because they have to compensate we can you can go into a conversation, what is going on, can I help you figure out a structure, what needs to happen that you're here on time, and on time means you're at your station for the start of your shift, not walking 

in the door, And then setting clear expectations, what do you need 

to see, by when, how are you following out? 

So be specific. 

[00:23:43] Mike: One of our newer technicians, she lives like 45 minutes away from the store. The other day I'm coming into work and she's out in a different car with someone else. It was her mother that dropped her off. And she came in and she showed me a picture of a deer that had jumped through her windshield. I said to her, and I said to my wife, I probably told two or three people this, and I said aloud in the pharmacy, I said Sam, we don't always see that. I've had employees in the past who have stayed home because there was a snow drift in their driveway, which would take a few minutes to shovel out of, I said, we don't always see that.

And just today I said to her, she did a nice job waiting on a customer. I said, Sam, right there. I said, you do a really nice job on that, well done. So I'm picking out these things. It's not, in stone , but I'm trying to look for one thing a day where I can pick it and say, that was a good job on that call to the doctor.

Way to go. Then it makes the, you've been late or, you didn't give that one customer the nice thank you whatever, 

[00:24:53] Patti: you were 

focusing on something else 

[00:24:54] Mike: That's five to one. I think of that almost like a week's worth of work.

[00:24:59] Patti: And, the 5 to 1, it's like always having that on your awareness, that you're looking for things to acknowledge and appreciate. I like the idea this actually came from Chris Cornelison, what you saw. Why you're acknowledging it, how it makes a difference for the business 

and the patient, 

so, you know, like why is this so important? 

So just 

flesh it out and when you have corrective action feedback to give I still start with Acknowledging and appreciating and it's like the secret weapon because if you start with saying, okay, you're late again We have to deal with this. They're deflated like they're a bad person.

If you start with saying Listen, you have, I just count on the interactions you have with patients. I just heard you with Mary Smith yesterday, patient,

and you relate again this morning, we have to talk about it. If you start with acknowledging specifically what is working, they engage with you.

Like they're not wrong or bad. It's just, we need to work on this.

[00:25:51] Mike: Patti. I've talked to some people and this came about, I think, God bless them in the Steve jobs era where the CEOs kind of had to be a little bit of a hole. Everybody picked up on that. But. Don't fall for it. Even if people know they're coming in for the sandwich of good, bad, good.

And I know there's some things in there that we shouldn't do. If you're going to say something that you think is bad, say it. So they don't walk out not knowing what the hell happened. Say all you want to as a hard ass CEO. People want that sandwich and it's human nature people need to hear that.

 It looks good in print. That you can be a tough person, but it's not true in real life.

[00:26:33] Patti: It has to do with you engaging people to be their best?

And my only pushback on the sandwich thinking is I find people get into fluff. And you must be specific. You must be specific on what you're working on, how you can get it . And you must be specific on what's not 

working. It can't be, I heard this from so and so . None of us can change something. If it's not specific, then it feels like they're bad or wrong, how are we setting your team up to win? And if you're not investing the time to set your team up to win, should they be on your team?

[00:27:06] Mike: I think in life I heard this from a psychologist online the other day, but anytime you have to talk to somebody about something , the smallest you can make that, as long as it includes what you want to say, the smallest you can make that, the better.

 If someone's late, Hey, you were late this morning and yesterday, instead of going in it seems like you don't have respect for this, you know, all that stuff. nail the smallest you can.

[00:27:34] Patti: Number four is to be clear on why you choose your pharmacy, the value proposition.

I find most business owners and teams think about and talk about their business, their pharmacy, based on what they sell, so in pharmacy, that's filling prescriptions, selling prescriptions. And I want everyone to consider that whatever you sell is just the vehicle for creating value.

For pharmacy, it's what brings your patients in the door, 

 And once they come in the door, how are you helping them? How are you helping them live better lives, be 

healthier? And that'll be unique to your pharmacy. I worked with a pharmacy owner and she kept trying to build a diabetes program.

 It's almost like you think that every pharmacy should have a diabetes education program. Because so many other patients, any pharmacist here is going to be diabetes and helping manage diabetes. And I'm not saying don't do that. But, they had gotten diabetes certified.

They had gone all down to do this whole massive program. And when they actually looked at where they're putting their resources based on how their patients were engaging with them. It was a family with young children. She had done a phenomenal job. Her pharmacy was phenomenal dealing with families with young children. 

And they were connected to all the pediatricians.

They had a waiting room with toys and fun things 

for kids. 

TV at kid level. They gave balloons out. They did free flavoring. And that was their target market. And so they just put that full focus on that. If you had a young family, 

That's the pharmacy you went to. That was their big win. 

They still had diabetes patients and they could find ways of supporting and helping the diabetes patients, but they didn't need a full blown diabetes education structured program to do that.

Their effort was better on creating events for families with young children.

[00:29:30] Mike: I think a lot of times... In business, maybe we're bored with what we do or we take it for granted and we want to sometimes do something different to see if the entrepreneur in us is correct. Can we build this little part and so on? The problem with that, though, is. Sometimes you still have the pieces that are connected that you're trying to get away from. Let's say you're sick of the PBMs. You're trying to get away from it. So you're trying to prove your entrepreneurship in this little piece of the business. In the meantime the stuff you're doing well suffers and the entrepreneurial project you want suffers because it's still attached to the...

Bathwater, and it almost seems like we should do more freely as an entrepreneurial project that's not even connected. Maybe it's a website with a different name, or maybe it's some other, maybe not even in pharmacy. a lot of times we lose our focus with these little trips we want to take.

[00:30:38] Patti: Listen, I have a whole new start up and I'm in process because it was a... It was a sidebar idea that I thought, Oh, that's very good. And actually it's the second one, the first one I parked because it involved using VR, virtual reality technology, and I don't think we're ready for it yet.

I still like the idea, but it's parked for now.

So some of it is relevant, but some of it's also, I agree, Mike. We need that entrepreneurial piece in there. But you have to have your current business like that running, tickety book. That's the back to systematizing the routine so you can free up enough time to be innovative and grow.

[00:31:17] Mike: One of the companies that spends the most money in the world on advertising is McDonald's.

 You got McDonald's and you got their apps and, they want people to come in and work there and they send them to college, you know, and Ronald McDonald houses and new products and all that kind of stuff. They were the pioneers with fast food. Food and all this kind of stuff.

I went to a McDonald's a couple of years ago. I was going to get a cup of coffee because there was no one in line. And I waited for like three minutes and I left. . I left. And so here you've got , the biggest machine you can imagine based on people still, and I couldn't even get a damn cup of coffee, because that part wasn't going, in the pharmacy, that's what can happen. You get some of these projects and it's 5 percent of the business, but it takes up 50 percent of your effort and everything starts to suffer. If you're doing something different, it's got a, lend itself to something, but if it's not lending itself that closely to something, at least it has to be a big part of your business.

So you can get into the economies of scale so it starts its own 

momentum train going.

[00:32:29] Mike: Patti. All right. So now what are we doing within those four pillars now that we have that fabric of communication?

[00:32:38] Patti: Fabulous. Then the next piece really, Mike, is your team set up so they understand the importance of their role, that they get to step into every day a purpose led role that they have an impact on. They feel proud of what they're doing. They love coming to work, and there's a partnership there, 

There's a partnership there and everyone's important. Delivery drivers. are often the full experience of the pharmacy for patients that never go into the physical store, it's a crucial role. Do they know how to go out and have that impact? I call it the UpSolutions Team Success Training.

And it's having team members understanding the winning mindsets. Like anyone who's worked in your pharmacy for three months or more, you're an expert compared to your patients, 

And also the awareness that your patients don't even know the questions to ask to make an effective decision.

They have no idea what you know. So if you're not paying attention to who they are, what they might need, asking questions, and sometimes the questions are just helping pull out the information that the patient needs to consider to make an effective decision. 

Just helping them make effective decisions.

And if the team understands that's their role and they're not selling, but they are educating. It's like the only way we can rip patients off is if we're not talking to them and finding out what they need and making recommendations.

So when the team members understand that and Hearing the messages being conveyed, not just the words, with customer communication.

Just the tip here is that anything a customer says to your team, they're telling the team what's important to them.

That's the underlying message. If they're saying thank you for something, they're telling you what they value.

If they have questions, they tell you what they don't know how to navigate.

And if you have common questions, like nobody can find where the cold and flu medication is, or the cold and flu products, you don't have good signage or you need to change it.

So paying attention, handling complaints, I like the complaint as a gift formula from the book, A Complaint is a Gift. For me, complaints are probably the most important form of customer communication, but they're very uncomfortable to deal with.

And yet if you can train your team to handle complaints well, using this complaint as a gift formula. Which sets the patient at ease, it sets the team at ease, and really starts to hear both problems solved, but also use what they're learning to make improvements. It becomes a competitive advantage because most companies fail miserably at this.

[00:35:14] Mike: People forget all their complaint skills training. It goes out the window. Once someone challenges you, your lizard brain awakens and all that stuff.

[00:35:23] Patti: It's an interesting thing, all the studies I've seen is that raving fans are almost always created because something went wrong, 

and how it was handled turned that patient or customer into a raving 

[00:35:34] Mike: absolutely. 

[00:35:35] Patti: they're literally out marketing you.

[00:35:37] Mike: Absolutely. 

I think in their head, they say, they solve this. And now they're gonna solve everything. They've proven to me that anything that happens, they can take care of.

[00:35:47] Patti: They felt hurt.

Most people want to be heard. 

And just doing that, even if you can't solve what the issue was.

 So a couple of other things. I just liked the idea of a couple of frameworks that are powerful for teams that have a front stage of your business and a backstage of your business.

The backstage is everything that happens behind the scenes behind the curtains, really important, 

but hopefully ideally that your patients only ever see the front stage, which when I walk into a pharmacy.

Most pharmacies have a pharmacy counter, and nine times out of ten, they've got mail stacked or boxes stacked on the 

pharmacy . That's front stage,

 So you want to manage your backstage behind the scenes, ideally your customers never experience your backstage.

But I have to have good systems.

There's another framework I like from the book, Branded Customer Service, which is on brand, off brand.

An on brand experience enhances or reinforces the

value of your pharmacy, and off brand takes away.

For example, if whoever's answering the phone is focusing, cause there's nobody in a pharmacy that's sitting by the phone waiting for the phone

to ring, Filling prescriptions or helping other customers or they're doing something, and the phone rings, and how do you give that person your full attention so 

they don't feel like they're interrupting you?

It's nuanced, but it's important, 

 So I like on brand, off brand. task versus result.

We think of most team members and us really as the owners too, we train our team to be good at the tasks they're responsible

for. When you start looking at what's the result, you start focusing on how they do their tasks.

One of my favorite examples of that is if you've ever been in a store that there's somebody stocking shelves,

they're front stage.

But it's a backstage activity. But if you're doing it when customers are in the store, it's front stage.

And you can see there's going to be some people that think their responsibility is stocking the shelves, unpacking 

boxes and stocking the shelves.

But if you're in the front stage of the store and there are customers in the store, they're customer service.

So now you're talking about paying attention to that, 

not just the tasks.

[00:38:05] Mike: When you're in the pharmacy, you're on stage, and you don't get the liberty to not.

Treat some people well and other people you treat well. Here's a case in point. Obviously in a pharmacy, we know a lot of people. Every pharmacist does every pharmacy . I'm careful when somebody comes in that I know very well. And there's somebody else in the store too, one or two people.

I'm very careful not only to say hi to those people, but also to give them some of the same animation I'm giving to the person that I know. So instead of just saying hello, Bob, we'll be right with you. And then 

 going over to somebody, give them a big hug, and this and that. I'm not saying you have to give Bob the hug. But you do have to give him a good handshake and a slap on the back, and then go over to see your person. Because you can make him feel like an outsider. Not because you've done something wrong, but relatively speaking to what you did to the person that you're welcoming more.

[00:39:11] Patti: You have to feel, have people feel included.

And that's a great example, Mike, that it's almost like you want to treat people for the future you're creating together, not just what you do now.

 I started working with pharmacy owners in 2007, at that point, you could still make a decent income 

not run a good business.

You could be a pharmacist and not run a great business. Now, you really have to run a great business. You have to understand your role of being an entrepreneur, 

as well as, a manager, and, producing the work of your business well.

And there is a little bit of a shame to that because I'm sure some of them were good community pharmacies, but they weren't able to manage the scale. 

That is the squeeze of D. I. R. fees and decreased reimbursements and the hoops you have to jump through and, unfortunately, because I talk about, having healthy local businesses is what determines a healthy local community.

And the cornerstone of that is pharmacy, because you just aren't going to get the health care support 

from a chain. Their whole focus in the chain is transactions. Whereas, in a community pharmacy, it's about patient outcome, being, relationships.

[00:40:30] Mike: Who would be a decent customer for you?

[00:40:33] Patti: So the pharmacy owners that I generally work with, I said, were our industry transformers. And when I say that, I don't mean to throw out a big term. It's the pharmacy owners, they're passionate about pharmacy. They're passionate about community pharmacy. They invest in their team.

They see the value of their team. And obviously they're coming to me because they want to have their team step up to another level. And be that partner in delivering the value of the pharmacy. But they're often trying new programs. They've got a good SYNC program, or they're developing clinical services, or they've got a really unique way to talk about supplements , they're always pushing and learning and growing.

What you were saying, Mike, is like your passion projects, because you see where the need is and you create a solution for the need. That's what I mean by an industry transformer. Most of the pharmacies that I work with have multiple locations. They've gone beyond the one store. I do have a group program for the single store, if that's a better fit.

 So generally who I'm working with are the ones that are You know, they're often leaders in their state pharmacy association or

they're very involved in the community. I'll give you an example. This is a pharmacy that the owner that I work with. There was an experience where a patient went through a drive thru for an antibiotic prescription and the pharmacist went through the drive thru and made a recommendation to take a probiotic and why.

And it's so impacted that patient. Turns out she's the HR director for a company, a local company with 700 people. And she knew the importance of taking a probiotic, but no one had ever said it to her.

And that. led to this company creating a whole health well being program for this 700 

employee locally owned company.

But it's paying attention to that.

And listen, we all get into periods when we're frustrated. It's that people that are committed to growth don't stay there long.

[00:42:31] Mike: It's good when the drive thru people are nice, the people at McDonald's taking your money and that kind of stuff, but I like to give back to them, at least a smile, how you are doing. So I was coming home from up north a year ago, and I pulled up at Burger King, and I said I'd like an ice cream cone.

So I pull up, and this lady hands me the ice cream cone. And... I go to hand her my credit card and she brushes it away. And I'm like, boy, I made her day. And she just thinks the world of me now, I gave her a charming smile and all that stuff. She didn't even want to charge me for this thing. I go home and I tell my wife, and she's like, That's because you're a senior citizen now.

[00:43:20] Patti: Broke the magic!

[00:43:22] Mike: Only the wife could tell me that! Everybody else would have just kept their mouth shut and just said, You're right Mike, but she keeps me straight and narrow.

 Patti I'm going to put this in the show links, but where's our listeners going to find you?

[00:43:35] Patti: Pharmaciesuccess. com is my website, and please connect. Absolutely, please connect. There's also a media tab, a blog. I was on an ABC morning show in Las Vegas. There's some great content on there, including the Four Pillars eBook to download.

[00:43:51] Mike: Patti, I appreciate you joining us. It's fun to have somebody that is outside of the industry officially because you're not a pharmacist, but really in the pharmacy because you have the heartbeat of what's going on there. keep doing what you're doing.

[00:44:08] Patti: Thank you, Mike. What a privilege to be on your podcast. Thank you.