Customer service, knowledge, and marketing savvy are critical if you want to tap into the lucrative hosiery niche.

Medical compression hosiery and fashion support socks have been targeted as having tremendous growth potential and good profitability, so it comes as no surprise that they have become one of the industry's hottest meal tickets. Proof that there is certainly room for increased sales comes from statistics citing that one in three Americans over the age of 45 is affected by vein disease, and of those, only 4% are being treated.

Now take the estimated 20 to 25 million people suffering from some type of vein disorder—most of whom are not being treated—and add the fact that Medicare rarely covers compression hosiery. Factor in that hosiery is not part of competitive bidding, and you have a good recipe for increasing revenues.

As with any high-interest niche that is singled out as a lucrative cash market, the playing field can soon become flooded, and the competition more intense. Distinguishing your company from the competition and gaining market share become more difficult. There are four key ingredients needed to put your company in the blue ribbon category: superior customer service, a comprehensive inventory, strong relationships with referral sources, and a solid marketing plan.

USE THE BEST INGREDIENTS

If you are going to host a special event and want to impress your guests, you won't serve fast food made with bargain ingredients and serve it on paper plates. You will use the best quality ingredients, take the time to prepare each dish properly, and serve them on good dinnerware. Well, that philosophy holds true with selling compression hosiery too.

Superior customer service begins and ends with your sales staff, and one of the most important elements in building a successful compression therapy business is education. Take the time and money necessary to train and educate your staff. Comprehensive training is offered by many manufacturers. Fitters should understand the basic physiology of the circulatory system, the major diagnoses for which compression hosiery is used, the appropriate compression class for proper treatment, indications and contraindications for use, and correct measuring and fitting techniques.

It is also important to provide training to improve customer service skills such as handling difficult customers, overcoming customer objections, and resolving customer complaints. Keep your fitters abreast of new product developments by regularly inviting industry representatives to your facility for in-services.

The first visit sets the tone for the ongoing relationship. A bad first impression may end the relationship before it even starts, erasing the potential for repeat orders every 6 months—most of which would be cash sales. An experienced, trained fitter will know that the actual fitting should go beyond instructing the client on proper application, removal, and care.

Thorough customer education is the key component to repeat sales. Employ good listening skills to determine customers' needs and to effectively resolve problems and overcome objections. It is important to offer options whenever possible, which allows the customer to make a choice instead of feeling powerless in the decision-making process.

Providing product information and related educational materials helps reinforce your commitment to educating consumers. Explanations and personal demonstrations will go a long way toward earning the customer's trust, and will promote understanding, acceptance, and compliance—all of which promote customer retention. Remember, people work with people they like and trust, so put your energies toward building those relationships.

SPICE IT UP

When you're in the middle of preparing a meal, you don't want to be short on ingredients. Keeping a variety of spices on hand to complete the recipe as required without substitutions makes the process easier and more efficient, and yields the best results. The same concept holds true with the inventory you keep on hand for the fitting process. Stocking a comprehensive merchandise mix to meet the diverse needs of your customer base is necessary if you want to be a leader in the compression therapy field.

Your inventory should include both medical-grade and over-the-counter fashion-based compression stockings and socks, and all the related accessories. Specializing in compression therapy includes providing custom-fabricated hosiery for patients with special needs. The more all-inclusive your product offering, the less likely customers and referral sources will need to look elsewhere for specialty products.

Carrying multiple brands is ideal, but if that is not an option, at least be familiar with the brands you do not carry. Knowing what alternatives are available is necessary in the event you need to special-order a product that more precisely meets the needs of a more challenging customer. While special-ordering hosiery in nonstandard colors is acceptable, carrying a full range of styles and sizes will ensure that in most cases you can complete the fitting process in one visit, making it convenient for customers and practical for you. To inconvenience your customer as little as possible, offer to ship—free of charge—products you do not routinely supply.

To stay competitive, you need to stay abreast of current product trends and innovations. Manufacturers offer a wide variety of fashion-forward products for both men and women, making compression hosiery more cosmetically appealing and more acceptable to the user. Today's options include sheer, opaque, and patterned fabrics; trouser, athletic, and casual socks; fashion pantyhose and stockings; diabetic and sensitive-feet socks; and maternity pantyhose.

Carrying an array of styles, colors, and fabric selections for immediate use is important because the more educated and fashion-conscious Baby Boomers are demanding choices, making most of the purchase decisions for themselves and their aging parents, and are always in a hurry. Therefore, ease of transaction and convenience are strategic elements in safeguarding customer loyalty and repeat sales.

TASTE TESTING

When you want someone to try a new recipe, especially for a skeptic, one way to win them over is to entice them with samples. You see taste testing as a marketing tool at food stores all the time. When reaching out to referral sources, think along the same lines. One of the easiest ways to encourage physicians or other health care professionals to prescribe hosiery is to let them sample the product for themselves. Give them a free sample.

But free product is not the only way to hook them. The best way to ensure referrals is to share your secret ingredient with them—your knowledgeable, trained staff. Show them how you can make their jobs easier by explaining how well you will take care of their patients. Position your company as expert in the field by promoting your qualifications—your training, experience, certification, and accreditation status.

Developing lasting relationships with physicians and therapists is necessary for your success, but it is dependent on first gaining their trust and confidence. Demonstrating your product and diagnosis knowledge, and your ability to select the most appropriate compression and hosiery style based on the diagnosis, will help earn you that confidence.

Your dedication to thorough patient education promotes a better understanding of how the hosiery works and why it is necessary. This ensures better patient acceptance and compliance, which leads to better treatment success for the physician—the ultimate goal. Physicians want to work with providers who support them and make their jobs easier. Building long-term, win-win partnerships guarantees continued referrals and keeps patients compliant and happy.

Cindy Ciardo

Being a full-service compression therapy provider makes you more indispensable to referral sources. In addition to measuring and fitting prefabricated and custom compression hosiery, consider supplying other related products such as compression bandaging, ulcer management supplies, compression pumps, limb containment compression devices, and in-elastic compression binders.

Special accessories are also important—not just as aids to help the customer—but as add-on cash sales for your business. Many items will help boost your bottom line while benefiting customers at the same time: lingerie bags, cold-water wash, application aids, donner gloves, specialty creams and lotions, garter belts, and body adhesive are some examples. Providing a broad range of compression therapy products keeps the referral sources from seeking other providers for the more specialized items and potentially switching providers to make it easier for them.

A MARKETING PLAN

You keep your favorite foolproof recipes in a box and have cookbooks to consult when needed. They guide you, give you meal ideas when you are stumped, and hopefully keep you from disaster when trying new recipes. The equivalent here is a good marketing plan that will help you stay focused, implement your advertising and promotional ideas, monitor your progress, and hopefully exceed your projections for growth.

To become a prominent player in the compression therapy field, you need to get the word out about your services. Your marketing strategy should incorporate ways to differentiate your company from the competition, gain community exposure, and increase public awareness of the value and need for compression hosiery.

Start by creating a database of all your compression hosiery clients. Communicate regularly with your loyal customers using direct mailings, promotional flyers, and company newsletters. These can serve to introduce new products, offer special sales and buying incentives, and remind them of the limited product life expectancy. Be sure to emphasize the need to replace hosiery every 6 months to maintain optimal therapeutic benefit.

Obviously, direct mailings only help you sell more products to your existing client base, so you will need to grow that base by reaching out to gain new customers. This can be done by advertising in your local newspaper and/or community newsletter. Using coupons is an excellent way to gauge the ad's success. Radio and cable TV ads can also be effective and are not necessarily cost prohibitive.

For more information and articles on compression hosiery, visit our free online archives. HME Today profiled Cindy Ciardo last month, and her feature article can be found in the Aug 2007 issue. Other articles authored by Ciardo can be found in the June 2006 issue and the Oct 2005 issue.

Develop and distribute a company brochure to hospitals, clinics, long- and short-term care facilities, and neighboring pharmacies to advertise the products and services you offer and emphasize your qualifications. Get out in the community and offer to address lymphedema support groups and in-service health care professionals with whom you would like to generate more referrals. Attend local trade shows and exhibit at health fairs for increased community exposure for your company and the products you sell.

Ultimately, the most successful (and, ironically, free) marketing tool is word-of-mouth recommendations from satisfied customers. This circles right back to employing the best and ensuring that your employees make your customers feel important.

Cindy Ciardo, CO, is CEO of Knueppel HealthCare Services Inc, Milwaukee. She is a board member and education committee chairperson for the Wisconsin Association of Medical Equipment Services, and can be reached at .