Once your customer has decided on their purchase, there is an opportunity to make a further sale with a linked product. This helps keep your pharmacy profitable and the linked sale should also be made from the perspective of providing good customer service.

Link selling is where an additional product or products are sold either to enhance the first product or linked to the reason why the first product is being purchased. For example, a customer has just purchased some cough medicine. The cough medicine can only be taken every four hours, so what happens when your customer suffers symptoms between doses? Just imagine they have settled down in front of the TV for the evening and they keep coughing, spoiling their own and the rest of the family’s enjoyment. If you had suggested that they also purchased a pack of cough sweets with a nice soothing effect as a complementary purchase to take between doses, this scenario could well have been alleviated and you would have looked after your customer a little more. Just imagine them sitting there and thinking ‘I’m so glad the pharmacy suggested these cough sweets’ - sell the benefits!

Another example could be where a customer is travelling abroad and asks for some medication for diarrhoea. You have a great opportunity to explain the features and benefits of re-hydration products and can then move onto other items such as insect repellents, sun creams or travel sickness products.

In addition to selling linked products, there is also the opportunity to sell linked services. Are you aware of the additional services that are provided by your pharmacy? Once you have opened the dialogue with the customer you have the opportunity to build on the relationship by letting them know about these services and how they could benefit from them. It could be as simple as letting them know about the repeat prescription service rather than risk losing that business to another pharmacy. This could then lead on to an MUR or other services. Just because something may not have a price it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a value, so can still be ‘sold’. This ‘added value’ will play a key part in keeping the business profitable and the customer happy.