Physicians

1) Patients come to you for answers. When your $50 answer to Plantar Fasciitis is also found on Amazon for less than you are selling it, an erosion of confidence begins. Even if you are priced the same as Amazon the erosion of confidence still begins. As a doctor, your patients put your answers on a pedestal. When your answer turns out to be a generic answer they can get anywhere, they may find confidence elsewhere. And if they find them on Walmart.com (which they can), I don’t know what to tell you…

2) “My patients don’t shop online….” BS!! They sure do. The thing is, little Mrs. Havenkamper isn’t going to come bouncing through your office yelling, “Whoo Hoo! I just found these inserts online for half price and I’m not buying them from you any longer!” No, quite the contrary. She is going to sit in your waiting room in relative anonymity, basking in the superior knowledge that she just cut out the middle man and that middle man is you!

3) The cumulative effects are mind boggling. If you have been dispensing an insert available online for 10 years, you have lost an incredible amount of repeat purchases. It’s entirely conceivable that there are 500 of YOUR patients out there buying inserts on Amazon every year. If you are profiting $40 per pair (which you should be) that’s $20,000 in profits lost every year. That’s real money…

4) “The inserts I buy are the cheapest on the market…” Yes, they certainly are. And for every $40 in profit you lose when a patient buys online, you can rest comfortably knowing you “saved” $2 when you introduced your patient to that wonderfully cheap insert plastered all over the internet.

5) “Hey doc, why are you selling these for $55 when I can buy them on Amazon for $32???” If you or your staff are being asked this question, then we really need to talk. We can absolutely fix this problem for you.