If you are planning a journey, you need to be clear about where you are starting. The same applies if you are taking a different approach to promoting your services. You need to be clear about the services you offer and the customers you will be promoting them to.

Understand your services

Before you can promote your services, you need to have a good understanding of what they are. So much focus is given to the supply part of the dispensing service that it is often difficult for pharmacy teams to recognise the other services they offer. These services can provide great value to patients and customers, whether they are supplied on behalf of the NHS or privately.

Once you have identified all the services you provide, you should identify what value these services offer customers, focusing on benefits rather than features:

• Features are the things involved in the process
• Benefits are what you get from the service.

Using a simple example, people do not generally take NSAID tablets to reduce inflammation (a feature). Rather, they take them to reduce their pain or to allow them to undertake day-to-day activities (a benefit).

Similarly, patients do not want to undertake an MUR with the pharmacist because they value someone going through their medicines with them and want to use their medicines more effectively (a feature). Instead, they want to reduce their risk of another heart attack, have fewer asthma attacks or be in less pain (the benefit).

If you only promote the features of what you offer in community pharmacy, you rely on people already having a clear understanding of the benefits these features will bring to them. Benefits are important for initially engaging customers with services, and features are important in converting a customer’s interest into a commitment to undertake the service. People will want to know the detail of what they are letting themselves in for, for example that it will take 10 or 15 minutes of their time.