Bausch & Lomb trains opticians to increase category penetration

Bausch & Lomb (B&L), the category leader in the eye care segment in India, has taken it upon itself to drive consumer penetration. Since a research conducted by the company showed that 59 per cent of the opticians find it 'not easy' to convince spectacle wearers to adopt contact lenses, B&L launched a training programme to equip them with medical expertise and soft skills.

However, the initiative is far from being limited to a training module. B&L is also lending its name to optical shops by branding the shops which become a part of the training programme. Sunil Gadgil, general manager, marketing, Bausch & Lomb India, says, "The key influencer in this category are the opticians and this fact was the starting point of our initiative. We launched this training module to help these opticians, who will indirectly help the company as well."

The study also found out that 74 per cent of the opticians want to know more about the kind of eye problems that can result from using contact lenses and how to deal with them. In this respect, 60 per cent of the respondents suggested that training on contact lens could be valuable in recommending the product to their customers.

The training programme, called Mastermind, consists of six modules, both online and on-ground, where experts interact with the opticians and not only work on improving their technical skills, but also give them tips on being better salespersons. "All these opticians are technical experts but don't really know how to convert a visitor to their shops into a customer. Therefore, the focus of the programme is not just to increase their technical abilities but also to convert them into better salespeople," informs Gadgil.

Towards that end, B&L has also associated with National Institute of Sales to provide this aspect of the training to the opticians. As for selecting the opticians, Gadgil informs that the company looks for high footfall shops as well as the interest levels of the opticians before inviting them for the training sessions.

The company has also launched a Mastermind Plus programme, which is an upgradation of the already existing module. Both the modules are working with the second batch of opticians, with 300 people having already completed the modules. The company is working on branding 140 shops in the initial phase and will gradually complete the branding of all the shops of the trained opticians.

B&L plans to spend more than Rs 1 crore annually on the training programme, with an additional investment of Rs 50 lakh devoted to the branding exercise. Asked how the exercise will help the brand, Gadgil says, "This will help us in increasing brand salience of our value added products. Apart from immediate value addition, the exercise will create a good word of mouth campaign for us, which will further help the brand."

As for the competition gaining from the exercise, Gadgil says that there is hardly any competition for the brand in the market and therefore, B&L would get benefited by default.

The company has also collected the pre-training and post-training data of the shops which were a part of the training programme, and it claims that it saw a 15-20 per cent increase in the sales figures of all these shops.