In this episode, Cameron is joined by Ben Hahr, aesthetics industry expert, and they discuss product launches, inventory management, and the importance of understanding patient preferences. The conversation delves into the challenges practice owners face when navigating the market, the role of discounts, and strategies for optimizing inventory purchases to ensure practice success.

Cameron and Ben talk about the importance of understanding the demand funnel for practice owners, particularly in the context of making informed purchasing decisions. They explore how to maximize savings through effective marketing strategies, the significance of cost per lead and patient acquisition, and the need for practices to analyze their inventory management. They also emphasize the importance of data-driven decision-making and understanding patient lifetime value to enhance practice growth.

Transcript

Cameron Hemphill (00:01.052)
Hey, everybody. Cameron Hempfield here, your host for Medical Millionaire. Hey, guys. Thank you so much for taking the time to tune into the podcast. Our goal is to give incredible value and insight for practice owners. So if you own an aesthetics or wellness practice or you’re thinking about getting into this amazing industry and specialty, all of these episodes are 100 % designed for you and to help you take your practice and business to the next level. So today, guys, I have an amazing guest, friend,

colleague, somebody that’s been in the aesthetic industry for many years and carries a tremendous amount of experience. This guy has been involved in launching Jouvaux at Ebalus, as well as Daxify and the RHA collection at Remance Aesthetics. He’s now at Growth99, running head of product, and has helped practice owners grow and scale their practices for years. I’m honored to have Ben Har with me today. Ben?

Welcome to the show, man.

Ben H (01:04.578)
Thanks so much, Cameron. Really happy to join. Looking forward to our discussion.

Cameron Hemphill (01:07.772)
Thank you so much. Yeah. I know that you’re super busy and I want to jump right in. think it’s like, you know, with your industry background and knowledge, I would love for you to just lean in on that a little bit, obviously based upon just like the bio and intro that I know and what we know together, but give it the audience and the listener just, you know, leaning on that, tell us more about your background and, you know, with the experience, I think it’s really cool. You’ve obviously been at Juvot and Evelis and,

Daxify with your RHA collection, Revance, it’s, these are some big brands and names and products, man. So talk to us about that.

Ben H (01:44.078)
Sure. Yeah, so it’s interesting. My background is actually more like, you know, before moving into aesthetics was largely in technology and working with sort of venture backed and real estate startups. And when I joined Evolus, the sort of pitch, I guess, or like the vision for the company was that, you know, there’s a lot of competitors coming into the space and largely Allergan had, you know, for better or worse, like a very monopolistic.

a view of the world and, over 76 % of market share on toxins, fillers and everything else sort of sat in allergens camp. And so was a little bit of like an underdog story coming in to say like, what can we do with technology? What can we do to help customers or prospective customers of Evolus do better and have an easier experience and be more profitable, grow, et cetera. at Evolus kind of had this unique experience of

coming in, leadership was super receptive to try to have a different kind of launch, a different kind of company. so, especially for those listeners who interact with Evolus or, you know, especially if you were part of the JET, it was called the Javeau Experience Trial launch, I think probably have this in their head of like, wow, that was a really unique launch. And my time there was centered largely around this theme we had, which was how do we make it frictionless for doctors? And so our goal wasn’t about P &L, our goal wasn’t about

Cameron Hemphill (02:53.466)
Mm-hmm.

Ben H (03:09.39)
wasn’t about how many reps talk to how many people. It was literally, let’s open accounts, let’s make it frictionless, let’s make it frictionless to work with us, frictionless to buy, frictionless to get qualified to buy, and frictionless to know how much it costs per vial. anyways, so lot more to talk about there, but was deeply involved sort of in the digital side, ran the digital team there, and worked really closely with our chief marketing officer and everybody else.

Cameron Hemphill (03:12.37)
Okay.

Ben H (03:33.688)
to come up with largely the strategy to launch Gervais, launch our rewards program, launch Evolux, which is the volume purchasing program. So we can kind of dive into some more of those things. Revance did the same kind of thing, but when I joined, they were in the midst of launching our RHA collection, which is their filler collection, and a different strategy for better or for worse. They really wanted to go after this prestige branding, which was like, our products are medically better or higher performing.

And so it was a little bit different than Avalos, which was very much like, let’s make it easy for everybody. was like, fancy and let’s try to attack the market in a sort of prestige oriented way. Quite different, but largely my role remained the same, which is like digitally, how do we wrap that whole experience together to try to have, allow practices have a good experience as well as a commercial launch that made sense. So everything from like how net terms get set up to like how we sell the product, the e-commerce portal that you buy it in.

Cameron Hemphill (04:03.842)
Mm-hmm.

Ben H (04:29.1)
All the tooling that reps use was sort of under by purview.

Cameron Hemphill (04:32.876)
That’s interesting. I’ve never been on that side of the business. And so it’s very fascinating to me. I’ve never really dove too deeply into understanding inventory purchasing. And I know it’s such a potential pain point for practice owners.

When should they buy? How much should they buy? Is their patient base large enough to know exactly how much bulk purchasing should they have? Those are some of the things that just hit home with me. But did I hear you right? You also helped build the back end e-commerce platform to help practice owners actually make the acquisition. So purchasing terms, products show up to the office. Is that?

Ben H (05:19.254)
Yeah. so the interesting thing about this industry, it’s probably unlike most these days is it’s still largely rep centered. So for most of the practices that they’re listening, you know, you’ve got reps coming in every week and if they’re not coming in every week, they’re certainly texting and emailing and calling. They’re dropping off cookies, bringing lunch. They’re doing everything they can to connect and try to help. and sometimes it’s helpful. Sometimes it’s a little bit chaotic.

Cameron Hemphill (05:27.612)
Hmm

Cameron Hemphill (05:39.878)
Right.

Ben H (05:46.07)
And so actually like the e-commerce side for a lot of these companies takes the back burner. Like a lot of times it’s less used than you would think. It’s not like Amazon where folks just jump on and buy a new, you you know, set of business supplies for their business. It’s a lot more like a text to a rep to say, Hey, I’m running low on X. you, know, what’s the latest deal or Hey, can you help me place another order? or just depending on the company. So, it’s a, it’s a, there’s a higher degree of touch than usual. and I think that that makes it easier and harder.

Cameron Hemphill (05:58.674)
Mm-hmm.

Cameron Hemphill (06:13.139)
Yeah.

Ben H (06:16.236)
because it’s easier because as a small business owner, it’s nice to be able to just kind of have maybe some people that you trust that are helping you. What’s harder though is like you, everybody has different motivations and all of these brands, they all have good intent. Like I think most practices would probably say most of their reps, especially the ones they’ve worked with in a while for a while have good intent and like many would call them friends. That’s a true statement. I think the challenge though is that they all are

Cameron Hemphill (06:38.942)
Sir.

Ben H (06:44.13)
sort of incentivize have quotas to meet for each of the companies they work for. And one thing I’ve always thought of and I’ve told friends who’ve sort of opened med spas, like what you have to remember is even with good intent, they’re not trying to like do anything wrong, but it’s a lot easier for the market to take customers from each other. Like it’s a lot easier for them to chase market share. Like, sweet, let’s take 5 % of filler from Jupiter, try to get it over to our business. Let’s come with the promotion and coupons, the whole deal.

Cameron Hemphill (07:11.362)
Yeah. Yeah.

Ben H (07:12.206)
It’s a lot easier to do that than it is to say, let’s like grow the market. Let’s get new patients in the door for Dr. Cameron. And so it tends to go that direction. And really quickly, the practices could end up in the midst of this. But what they’re really doing is just switching patients around. And then like, if they really sat back and they’re like, am I getting new patients out of this? That’s really the challenge. That’s what’s hard to know. And so then all of sudden they’ve made these large, they’re making large, these large purchases that can somehow kind of.

not grow the business. And think that’s sort of the challenge.

Cameron Hemphill (07:45.159)
Yeah, I think that, you know, just to build on that, wouldn’t that create kind of an inventory issue? Let’s just say you have Botox, you have Juvo, you know, let’s say you have some, you know, Galiderma neurotoxins and the various others. I think Binev is coming out with one actually this year.

Wouldn’t that create kind of confusion with your patient base in a way where you have all these neurotoxin options because you’re trying to like take market share? think that that would have, I don’t know, I’m not a practice owner, but I think that it would be interesting for a practice owner to have to manage the efficacy of all these different neurotoxins that are sitting on their shelves and knowing which one to put into the right patient.

I’m not speaking from expertise on that. guess I’m just more curious and I can see how that could be an issue.

Ben H (08:43.084)
Yeah, I also obviously can’t speak to this from like a clinical perspective, but I can speak to it from just like, you know, hearing from a lot of practices, seeing what happens in field and looking at data of like how products get sold, where we did well, where we didn’t. I think that the way that extrapolates itself is there’s like a couple of different ways to evaluate products, which is there’s like products and product categories. If you’re adding another product,

Cameron Hemphill (08:47.921)
Mm-hmm.

Ben H (09:09.336)
to a product category you already offer. So let’s just use toxin as the example that you gave. I’m looking for, like the first thing that matters to a practice, at least that I’ve heard, is what’s the pitch to the patient? Because practices don’t typically obfuscate the product, meaning they don’t just say, hey, let’s relax wrinkles in this area. Now that’s the outcome the patient wants, but they do typically actually tie it to a particular brand of product that you’re getting. Like, hey, we’re gonna use Dysport on you because it’s a more natural, softer result.

Cameron Hemphill (09:13.586)
Mm-hmm.

Ben H (09:37.186)
Hey, we’re going to use Botox because it’s worked on you in the past. It’s tried and true. It seems to last a good duration on you. We’re going keep doing it. So patients are like aware. And there’s a trust there that the right products are being sort of used on them. I also think that like patients don’t really know, like they don’t go out there and research each brand of product and go, I think I want X product. That’s also not typically true. So a lot of it comes down to the clinician, like the injector, basically.

Cameron Hemphill (09:50.716)
Sure Yeah

Ben H (10:04.92)
their experience with each product, how comfortable they are, how different or difficult the technique it is to inject. For example, like is the reconstitution like wildly different from what I do with other products for a neurotoxin, for example, is the injection pattern that this brand is telling me that I should be using or has trained on, is that like widely different? Is it more painful? Does this product create more stinging, right? So all those things come into play.

And then the bottom line though, underneath all of that, after the clinicians like the technicians, the injectors like, Hey, this is probably the right product. It’s really just like comes out at cost as well. And what I’ve heard from the market is a lot of times it comes down to cost relative to like different segments of people. they’ll go like, Givaux, for example, does really well for folks who are a little more price sensitive because the product itself is a little bit more affordable for most practices.

Cameron Hemphill (10:40.449)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben H (10:56.59)
And so for them, like, actually it ends up being a lot of practices in their heads go, you know what, for younger patients, new naive patients who are entering the market, like they’ve never gotten a neurotoxin or they’re going from just doing here to like delving to the upper face, for example, like that might make more sense because it’s less of a hurdle on the financial side. It’s reconstituted and injected just like Botox. There’s nothing different about that. So it kind of ends up being like a nice transition. So every product has to find its place, like clinically, like what do I tell the patient that does better?

Cameron Hemphill (11:22.422)
Yeah.

Ben H (11:25.078)
And then what segment in terms of cost does it fall into? another really good example, sorry, this is like long winded answer to your question, but like it’s Daxify, right? So when we were working on that, it’s a product that was supposed to have longer efficacy in some people it does. And so that’s like the value prop. It was like, okay, people who don’t want to get needles, you know, poked in their faces often can get this and they can get a longer result, which sounds like it’d be a really great thing. but the problem is if it doesn’t work in everybody.

Cameron Hemphill (11:41.586)
Sure.

Ben H (11:55.424)
You fall into an issue on the second part, which is, well, is the price like, is the price then? And so if it costs more, but 30 % of people don’t see a longer duration, you’re, you’re, end up in this weird spot of like practices to go, I don’t know how to position this, where I don’t set the wrong expectation and, like drive, drive some unhappiness in my practice. So all those things like play a role in inventory and how a practice has to like find a product’s place and a product and the OEMs that are all out there, like manufacturers.

Cameron Hemphill (12:05.704)
Okay.

Ben H (12:25.784)
That’s the key thing. Like when they launch a product, I think some focus so much on coupons, coupons, coupons, push this, do that, discounts. When in reality, they’re like just commoditizing the space in some, if you think about it, what they really have to think about is like, how do I connect really closely with the injectors and people who want to use this product? So they really come to understand its benefits and in juxtaposition with its cost. If they, if you can get your practices to really understand that, and if practices who are listening to this focus a lot on that.

Cameron Hemphill (12:28.562)
Yeah.

Ben H (12:55.278)
there’ll be a lot more successful with the implementation of new products than just thinking the OEMs like, hey, if I just run through all these coupons they gave me, if I just keep buying however much they keep telling me, this product’s gonna land in my practice, that’s not always the case. So I think there’s sort of like, know, pros and cons to both sides here.

Cameron Hemphill (12:58.354)
Yeah, and I think it could land in the practice, but just not for a long period of time. I think it would be, I kind of look at this example as like, focus on your area of expertise, be selective, and then lean into that with discovery.

clinical trials, like going in and working on cadavers, right? Kind of seeing the benefits. I’m not a clinician by any means, but if I was a practice owner and I had like five toxins to pick from and they’re all sitting on the inventory shelf, if you will, it would seem to me it would be extremely hard to identify which one to use for which patient to get the best result.

And maybe you’re just hearing from the OEM and you haven’t dove it in to do all your research. I don’t know. It just seems like I think you’d be better off to just be selective and then to lean in. I think this kind of comes to the branding aspect too. Know who you are and what you represent.

Ben H (14:08.727)
Yeah. What I would do, like let’s say, Kim, let’s say you and I had a practice and I was like your, your office manager, right? So I’m probably the one that’s like interfacing with this rep and this rep comes in and is like, Hey, let’s add your fifth toxin to your practice. Right. I think like if I, if we were to practice together, I think what I would challenge each of these, each of these companies to do, some of these are established. The other four at this point, we figured out what we say to people and how we position it.

Cameron Hemphill (14:22.95)
Yeah, you’re right.

Cameron Hemphill (14:35.452)
Mm-hmm. Okay.

Ben H (14:35.49)
What I would challenge with new internet is like, who is your market? Like who am I supposed to be converting that’s using another product? Who do you think should be switching to your toxin? And then secondly, who’s out there in the market that’s never gotten toxin? What are you doing to drive those people here? And what am I saying to them? Ask the brand then. And they should have a position. And if that position is one that you resonate with, where you’re like, you know what, there’s a population of people here that may.

Cameron Hemphill (14:45.17)
Mm-hmm.

Ben H (15:02.568)
I get that, that position could make sense for my audience and my customer base. The next round is like, especially if you’re a multi-injector practice. What I’ve seen happen a lot is things fall flat where the cost of goods makes a lot of sense. For example, let’s say Banev’s toxin comes out and everybody’s like, my gosh, it’s so affordable. That’s sort of like, think the projected disposition is that it’ll be more affordable. It’s easy to pull the finance cap and be like, yeah, let’s just buy a ton of this. Supposedly it works just as good and it’s cheaper.

Cameron Hemphill (15:14.906)
Store. All right.

Cameron Hemphill (15:24.05)
Mm-hmm.

Ben H (15:31.564)
Not to say that everyone will do that, but that could be a gut reaction, right? The downside is like you go to all your injectors, if they’re not convinced, you’re going to have this like stockpile sitting in your fridge and then your injectors who are still having conversations, introducing people to other products. And so you do have to like almost vet it yourself, like, okay, that audience, that position you’re telling me to go after makes sense, brand. Let me go check with my injector base or my injectors that work for me. Let me go check with my community and say like,

What are you seeing success and does that make sense? Do we see a world where we convert people from this port to this based on this position? If the answer is maybe it’s probably worth a shot, but like try it on your staff, which is what most people already do. Try it on your VIP patients, see the results. know, like there’s always that saying like trust, but verify. And I think what you see in this space is people want to deliver good outcomes. Like I bet every listener on this, this call, like that’s their most important thing, deliver good outcomes. I’ve never met a practice that’s like.

Cameron Hemphill (16:17.09)
Yeah.

Cameron Hemphill (16:26.969)
Yep. Right.

Ben H (16:28.938)
money over outcomes, it’s never happened. So if you know outcomes are there, like people are doing this, like what I’m saying is not things I think that people aren’t doing, just trying to give the brand the side of like the color just based on coming from the brand, which is brands, brands very well know that they need to deliver those things to you as well. But I would say if I was a practice, I would challenge and say on that second one, what are you doing to grow the market? Like don’t, I don’t want to just see coupon, a coupon is, is, is a conversion mechanism for you to take one of my patients I already have and move them to your product.

Cameron Hemphill (16:59.4)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Ben H (16:59.502)
could be beneficial, but it largely benefits the brand, like if we’re being honest, right? So I would always say if I was, I’d be pushing hard. Like every time they come in and say, it’s time for quarterly business review, I’d be like, great, where are the patients, dude? Like I want to see, did you give me 10 patients? Even if you can’t quantify the patients, what programs are you running that like my name is popping up, traffic, people are seeing me. And I think that’s gotta be like, go forward, the differentiator here on like what makes sense.

for a practice, especially as gets tight, like more and more competition comes into play for each product category.

Cameron Hemphill (17:34.61)
Yeah, I agree. I mean, well said, It could be interesting to take the discount, right? It sounds great on the surface. Yeah, cool. Discount coupon. Cool, I’ll take it. We’ll bulk up. We’re going to have a busy season. Let’s go do it. Yeah, think gut check. Check if you have multi-injectors. I think that’s really important because all you’re doing is just buying discounted product that’s not going to go anywhere. That would be a bad purchasing decision.

Ben H (18:05.134)
Think about bundles too. Like a lot of these companies have like… What’s that?

Cameron Hemphill (18:05.308)
Quick question for you. Yeah, how much would someone purchase on that? Just curious. In your experience, and this is why I really wanted to have you on there, getting deep into this stuff, how much would someone would have practiced on or typically spend on that new product coupon that could potentially be stored in the fridge? Obviously, that could change based on demographic and patient base, but just trying to get an idea so we could look at a framework.

Ben H (18:12.419)
Yeah.

Ben H (18:31.222)
Yeah, I think it’s going to vary. Here’s this, think maybe what I could do is, because there’s going to be practices who are listening who are really, really tight. Like they understand the volume. They understand what’s happening in their practice. Some practices that I’ve known, they try to buy on demand. A lot of these products offer like free overnight shipping, right? So it’s like Amazon Prime. If you knew you had free overnight shipping always, shoot.

Cameron Hemphill (18:48.102)
Mm-hmm.

Cameron Hemphill (18:53.094)
Yeah. Yeah. Easy. Yep.

Ben H (18:55.926)
I could do just in time inventory. If I know I’m doing 60 people this week, then I should buy just enough for 60 every single, you know, place the order every Sunday night, get it by Tuesday morning. Right. some practices do that. Some don’t. and, and some are more like, Hey, let’s check the inventory every Friday or before our staff meeting. And so it really varies. I think all of those are like, honestly, probably right for the practice in terms of how they’re checking inventory. What I think is maybe a useful formula to think about is.

Like, I buying the right amount? And is there, is there an optimized way that doesn’t involve a bunch of headache and tracking and counting and all this stuff at a very precise level that at least allows the business owner or the office manager to make good procurement decisions when, when reps are coming in. So again, let’s play that scenario. Reps are coming in every week, sometimes multiple times weekly smiling, happy, but they’re obviously trying to make a sale. Right. And so.

Cameron Hemphill (19:32.818)
Sure. Yes, that’s their goal.

Ben H (19:55.188)
The challenge is, it’s not like you get to sit down on Fridays and be like, how much should I buy? Someone’s sort of artificially making you think about deals and like what to buy all the time. So it’s kind of like almost like advertising, but like they’re walking in, right? So it’s just like deals be flying in front of you and you’re trying to evaluate it all together, but you’re hearing about them separately, right? In that environment, I think the easiest way.

Cameron Hemphill (20:05.99)
Interesting.

Yeah, yeah.

There’s probably a timeline on it.

Ben H (20:19.746)
This, this won’t work for everybody, but in my opinion, like the easiest way to be like savvy about this is try to think about like, if, if you can match your demand funnel, like if you have a good understanding of your demand funnel and what you, I’ll dive in a little deeper on this, but like generally speaking, like what do I, what’s the throughput of a product in my practice on a monthly basis? And on the other side, I go, how do I get to that throughput? Right. I get to it by, by looking at how many leads am I getting in that same timeframe?

What’s my conversion rate on those leads? So these are like new entrants, not naive patients per se, they could be naive, meaning like people who’ve never gotten treated before, but just new people to my practice, new patients. And then add in repeat patients. How many repeat patients do I typically have per month? And evaluate that like over the last 90 days is probably like a good period and then divide it by those three months. So what you end up with is like a monthly throughput. What I would do is if, you know, sales rep Cameron comes in and says, Hey,

Cameron Hemphill (21:01.293)
Okay.

Cameron Hemphill (21:18.096)
Hmm.

Ben H (21:19.564)
you could upgrade to platinum and get an extra 8 % off this product, but you need to buy today, you know, 80 boxes. That’s it. And for the next three months, you’re going to be at this better price. It’s easy to get caught up in the like, if I got that 8 % off, then that’s straight up off cost of goods. Maybe I can increase 8 % and then it’s easy to extrapolate and go, how much more can I make in three months? A really savvy, like easy way to think about it.

Cameron Hemphill (21:23.707)
Yeah.

Cameron Hemphill (21:31.878)
Mm-hmm.

Cameron Hemphill (21:42.865)
Sure.

Ben H (21:45.902)
is if you had a handle, like imagine you have a spreadsheet that just did that calculation I just talked about. Like here’s your throughput generally for all your main products. Most practices probably have like 20 SKUs, 20 to 25 SKUs of consumables they’re typically running through. So if you knew that, you could easily just go, what are my net terms with you, Rep Cameron? Oh, have net 90 terms, which means if I spend a dollar with you today, I don’t have to pay you back for 90 days. Well, the savvy thing you do would be like, all right, how much could, what’s the most I could buy based on my

Cameron Hemphill (22:01.266)
Yeah.

Ben H (22:15.822)
throughput for your product, where I don’t actually, I get paid back before I have to pay you. Right? That’s like the best possible scenario. And you’re not like worrying too much about like how much is in your fridge as much. You’re just like generally roughly going like, all right, I roughly go through 45 boxes of Botox a month. That’s actually pretty low. But let’s just say that’s what it is. 45 vials of Botox a month. Then when, if I have to buy 80 boxes and I have net 90, net 90 terms,

It’s it’s a, it’s a, it’s a guarantee. I’m going to literally pay myself back and save 8 % all next quarter, all before I ever have to pay you back. And so that’s like a really simple mental math. Now, if they’re asking you though, like, Hey, you’ve got to increase, you’ve got to like change, like, Oh, you had to, you have to buy 250 vials to get there. And often the stretch goal is that high in these, in these conversations, that’s where you have to do a little bit separate calculation, which is go, you just calculate the discount. What is 8 % off?

Cameron Hemphill (22:47.566)
Yeah, go for it.

Cameron Hemphill (23:04.988)
So.

Ben H (23:15.598)
next quarter, what does 8 % mean when they say I’m going to get a better price? Calculate that dollar value and then just think about your throughput again. Go back to your Botox funnel and go, okay, if I took half that money, the savings, let’s just say your savings was going to be, I don’t know, $15,000. If I took half that savings, 7,500 bucks and dumped it back in my demand funnel today, could I drive more leads or increase my conversion rate with that money? And therefore,

Cameron Hemphill (23:19.122)
Yeah.

Ben H (23:45.198)
cover it. Like that’s the easiest calculation is like if the answer is yes there too, or you understood your demand funnel, you talk to your marketing company or your in-house marketer and go, Hey, if I gave you a $7,500 budget for the next three months, could you go from driving 20 new leads a month to 40? In which case that growth is possible for you, right? And you know it and you’ll still make another $7,500 on top of that. So it’s like, if you just plan around throughput of your demand funnel, you

Cameron Hemphill (24:01.282)
Right.

Cameron Hemphill (24:12.466)
It does, and it’s very, I mean, it makes sense to me, like completely, and I hope for the listeners, you guys really listen to what Ben just described. It’s a seamless way to really look at understanding your purchasing power, and if it makes sense to make that acquisition now or later, right?

Ben H (24:15.266)
You give yourself a lot of like really clear cut decisions where you don’t really have to worry about it. Anyways, does that make sense?

Cameron Hemphill (24:41.752)
And it’s a great way, instead of getting distracted by the coupon and getting to the next level or whatever that looks like, take a gut check, run some mathematics. the devils are in the details guys. And if you run the math, then you can actually make a very sophisticated decision. And it could be a great decision for you or not a great decision. But I think coming back to your point, like, let’s talk about understanding your demand funnel for a minute.

Right? Cause this is an area of expertise that, that I really enjoy to talk about. And I think for most practice owners, at least that I’ve engaged with, they may not even know what you mean by demand funnel. They, you know, understanding what their lead volume should be, what it is, how much does a lead cost? How much does a patient cost? What does a conversion look like? Like that’s where I think it could get confusing. I think they could easily go pull this data from their EMR.

In the last 90 days, X amount of patients came in. Here’s how much Botox was used, for example. I think that they could pull that pretty easily. I would hope so. NEMRs and EHRs, I haven’t explored the inventory side, but I would assume that’s in there. I hope it is. To understand that. Well, if you’re going to do a bulk purchase and plan for the future, you’re absolutely going to have to understand your cost per lead and your patient acquisition costs. That’s absolutely critical.

Right. To understand, if I go take, let’s take your example, the $7,500 in excess of discount that you’re going to get in your example there, and you’re going to go put that back into the demand funnel. If the practice owner can’t immediately forecast what that could bring in, then they’re going to have an interesting conversation with themselves because they’re like, well, I can go put it into marketing. I can go put $7,500 into Facebook ads. I don’t know what it’s going to do. And that’s where, yeah.

Ben H (26:30.542)
Right? Yeah, it’s about control. It’s about control where if you, let’s say you had no idea your throughput demand file, nothing. And, and, and rep camera comes in again. What happens is you get strung along a little bit because human nature goes, I could save money. That’s the first pitch in your head. I could maybe increase lower cost of goods, therefore increased profit. They’re telling me they have a coupon program to pair with it. So they’re going to sell it for me. Those three things are like,

Cameron Hemphill (26:47.312)
Yep. Of course.

Ben H (27:00.206)
that like traps. And again, they have good intent. Like none of these people, none of these reps are trying to like, there’s nothing malicious here. It’s just, are the marketing tools employed to try to convince you that their product is worth buying, right? And the hard part is again, you’re seeing these in isolation, these conversations are happening and then you have to sit there and go, yeah, I’ll make the purchase or let me think about it. you know, you sort of have to defend against your thought process right there and then.

What’s hard is it’s really easy to get convinced, but really the way I would challenge people to think about it. The coupons are great. It’s real. Those are real dollars. If a brand says, I’m going to give $50 off to everybody who gets an affiliate. That’s actually, it is great. It is a real $50 that brand has to spend to pay people in your practice to get that discount. And you get to be made whole. Those are real discounts. The challenge is you have to just understand the dynamic, which is what are they asking you when you get a coupon? They are literally asking you to switch people.

Cameron Hemphill (27:48.22)
Mm-hmm.

Ben H (27:58.734)
from another similar product in the same product category. Do you think new people are walking through the door for $50? Maybe a few, but that’s like, unless they have a solid plan or a way of showing you, here’s how people I’m sending through your door for that coupon. You don’t know that. So you could safely assume that that’s a minimal number, unless they, again, unless they have some amazing plan. So if the ask is to switch, there’s an opportunity cost to that too, right? Your injectors have to be willing to switch.

Cameron Hemphill (28:24.007)
Yeah.

Ben H (28:27.468)
So you got to like get them on board. But the bigger thing is if you switch them, let’s say you switch them from Juvederm to RHA. Now you’re buying less Juvederm or what if you accidentally just made a bulk purchase of Juvederm last week? So you end up in this weird situation where like, shoot, now I’ve got like, what do I do? I’ve got like all these coupons that want me to switch it from somewhere else. I’ve got inventory of this other product. So you see what I mean? Like you easily get into this rut where you’re like, I’m holding inventory and it’s not moving as quickly as I’d hoped.

And there’s not new patients coming through the door. Everybody sold me and they said they would sell it. They, hey, I’m giving you coupons to sell your product off the shelf. Why is it not moving? And the real answer there is like, it’s because it’s all about, it’s like shuffling dollars. It’s like, you know, you you’re just paying. It’s all, all, you’re just switching patients around in your same practice. So you have to look at it like true throughput. Those are your patients. Those are people that you earn their business. You’re delivering outcomes for them.

Cameron Hemphill (29:04.018)
Yeah.

Ben H (29:25.55)
Your injectors have made choices about the products that are delivering those outcomes for them. That’s the real data. You have to look at that and say, based on that, what am I buying? What could I burn through? The coupon, but really a secondary mechanism to say, if I was to switch, does your 8 % cover that opportunity cost? That’s the separate discussion. so I would, I would challenge people to think about it, like in those two parts, rather than easily getting caught up in that three part narrative of like, it’s cheaper. You’re lowering cost of goods. You’re going to increase profitability.

Cameron Hemphill (29:34.254)
Mm-hmm.

Cameron Hemphill (29:44.656)
Yeah.

Ben H (29:54.734)
and by the way, we sold it for you because we gave you coupons. Coupons don’t necessarily do it.

Cameron Hemphill (29:59.476)
Yeah, run the math, run the conversion rate, understand what the product is, have conversations with your injectors to make sure they’re going to take it on. I think another thing too would be maybe you could do a survey, a subset survey to your VIP customers and see if they’re willing to explore that opportunity potentially.

I think the practice owner or injectors would have the best understanding of that. think, I mean, to the point, you want to make smart inventory purchases and not get held up in the coupon of the discount and also understanding your funnel. Because I think before you get distracted, let’s just say by the coupon or discount, right? To your point, if you understand the metrics, the demand funnel, is this makes sense for my practice, the opportunity cost to explore, you can make

really, really amazing decisions and get yourself in a position to where, especially if have like 90 day terms and you understand that you’re gonna go through that inventory and then the discount makes sense, your profit’s gonna go way up. you’re gonna have like, and again, I don’t know the total shelf life of each individual toxin. You probably know that better than me, but I know there’s a shelf life to any of these products. You gotta be careful on the demand, your current base, new base.

and how to shuffle that around.

Ben H (31:19.468)
Yeah. mean, quick note, mean, practices know this just as well as I’m going to say this, but you’re most of these products have really long shelf life. Just a quick note on that. But, if, you’re buying a bulk order that is large enough to make you question whether it will expire, would argue you probably fell for that three point narrative and didn’t, didn’t, didn’t think it all the way through. it’s, it’s, it’s coming from working over there and looking at the data and seeing who’s successful with our products.

Cameron Hemphill (31:42.94)
Mm-hmm.

Ben H (31:50.158)
I would say that the folks buying giant bulk purchases have incredible throughput to where like those giant bulk purchases aren’t giant for them. They have the utility to just like treat the number of people that are coming through the door. So for the practices who are maybe like sort of more new trying to consider how much they should be buying, if you’re stuck in that place where that’s literally your consideration, which is like, it expire? I would argue you’re probably overextended.

Cameron Hemphill (31:56.284)
Yep.

Ben H (32:18.862)
That’s a general blanket opinion, but that would be my argument. The other thing I wanted to touch on for a sec is what can make this hard is a lot of brands bundle stuff and they get, know, hey, buy some of this and you get to this level. And then if you also buy filler, it adds more points. And so you can get a higher level. There’s bonuses, multipliers. Sometimes they give you a bunch of free product and another SKU. So then your brand, go.

I didn’t really pay $400 for this. was like less because they gave me free stuff. It’s really hard to understand cost of goods sometimes. I would say when you think about this formula that I just gave, you actually don’t have to know exactly like how much you pay. Cause that actually is kind of hard to evaluate. And that’s why I kind of think that’s a decent method. It’s like, it’s literally just like saying you’re just evaluating on demand and the price is the price. It’s like, as you noticed that formula, the price is not even

Cameron Hemphill (32:54.22)
Yeah, I could see that.

Ben H (33:17.526)
a part of that, because sometimes that’s actually really hard to deduce. But if I know that A, I’m already profitable in treatment, whatever, I know my demand funnel supports it and I have net 90 and I could do it, I’ll basically make whatever that profit margin is before I have to pay you back. We’re probably pretty good. More sophisticated practices, like for the folks out there with like four bedspas or four locations, you guys are thinking like, this is, this is rudimentary. Like there’s a far more, like you could go a lot deeper on inventory.

Cameron Hemphill (33:33.254)
Yeah.

Ben H (33:46.168)
But just as like a simple blanket rule, especially for those getting started, single locations, those who are expanding into more and more products, easy way to kind of just think about it is all this was meant to be.

Cameron Hemphill (33:56.594)
I think it’s really interesting, going back to the demand funnel, your current base, how many people can you bring into the door? Having the net 90 terms, it back before you actually have to wrote the check, I think is super important. The cost of goods, that could get extremely challenging just to lean in on your point there. If there’s this whole gamification aspect of multipliers and bonuses, that’s all going go back to their P &L.

And if they have a really hard time understanding their cost of goods and they’re like over complicating the process because discount here, discount there, multiplier there, versus just like, here’s the blanket of what I spent on this specific product for this 90 days, let’s call it this quarter. That’s a much easier way to define like, where’s your profit? How does the inventory work? What makes sense? Right. So I think that a practice owner

You know, and you made a comment to this before we hopped on the call here, but understanding treatment by product by month, right? Which is really important. But if we’re just on this, this toxin type of example here is, you know, I would look at it in a way and I’m not, you know, no finance guru or guru or major or anything like that. mean, but what I would do as a practice owner is I would have each product.

on cost of goods. And I would understand exactly the revenue that was brought in that was serviced that product at cost of goods. And then therefore you can get like a net income based upon how much product you purchased, cost of goods, the margin, and then understanding what’s making the most sense. that’s how I would look at the formula.

Ben H (35:38.542)
For sure. Yep. think that’s, that’s a good way to do it. Just to, just to kind of build off of the demand funnel piece of this. I actually think like if I was to probably just guess for folks listening, that’s actually probably the part that’s the biggest gray area. Like repeat patients, people know it’s like, okay. Yeah. Usually people come back one and a half times a year, 1.6 times a year for Botox. You could extrapolate that one. Loyalty I think is

Cameron Hemphill (35:55.762)
Mm-hmm.

Ben H (36:06.05)
there’s a subset of patients that most practices have a good understanding of what the retention looks like on certain treatments. It’s really like through that lead conversion rate is probably where folks would be like, I don’t know what those values are right now. And so maybe we could talk a little bit about that, which is like, how do you, how do you get those values? And then maybe like, if you were doing that exercise of like, Hey, if I invested some portion of the savings into marketing, what does that deliver?

Cameron Hemphill (36:11.643)
Yeah.

Cameron Hemphill (36:33.369)
Mm-hmm.

Ben H (36:36.332)
Yeah, maybe it’s worthwhile to talk a little bit about that.

Cameron Hemphill (36:38.81)
I think, yeah, I agree. mean, understanding the man funnel, I think is like one of the biggest areas that practice owners struggle with. And really guys, this is like leads coming into the bucket, leads coming into the practice and how to convert them and where they came from and how long it takes to convert them, those types of things. the data that I’ve seen out there and some of the benchmarking reports that we’ve actually pulled recently.

And, you know, show that the national average cost per lead is right around $132. That’s national. That could obviously change based upon demographic. And, and I could get way more specific on a, on a cohort or an example. Um, but you know, 132 bucks is a CPL and you know, the average patient acquisition cost is right around 500. Right. So, and the national average per visit based on AMSPAS data and kind of matches with our data as well.

shows that it’s 527 bucks a visit. Okay, so if you have, back to your example of 7,500 bucks, and you’re going to go push that into marketing, right? Let’s take that $7,500. And again, this obviously can change based on demographic, right? You take 7,500 divided by 500 bucks, that’s going to get you 15 new patients, right? And those 15 patients spend, and again, I know this could vary based on practice, but times that by 527,

That’s going to get you roughly eight grand worth of top line revenue. Right? So those are some of the things that practice owners really, really need to understand is, and if you’re working with your marketing company or your in-house one or agency or whatever it is, really start to understand your data guys. You’ve heard me talk about this pretty heavily on the last episodes that we’ve recorded. Understand your CPL.

And I would love for practice owners to really understand the lower you drive your CPL, your cost per lead, the lower you drive your patient acquisition costs. Like it opens up a world of profit for you. mean, imagine if you just ran, then that exact same calculation with a patient acquisition costs of 250 bucks, right? You take that, you times that by 8,000.

Cameron Hemphill (38:56.402)
Um, you know, it’s, it’s, uh, it’s, it’s a much different scenario. Let’s just take the 8,000. Sorry to buy it by two 50. Uh, what is that?

It does.

Cameron Hemphill (39:17.49)
You’re basically you’re you’re you’re doubling your your overall top line revenue in that case. So, you know, it’s just which is really interesting. So you guys are working with your agencies. What I want to what I want to kind of lean into there is just make sure that. One of the metrics you should be watching is is lowering that CPL and it’s hard to do, you know, it changes like obviously based upon treatment, based upon service, based upon season, based upon demand. You know, you’re never going to actually have an exact.

Ben H (39:25.079)
Yep.

Cameron Hemphill (39:46.834)
tag the CPL, but at least have a benchmark of people to be south of 100 and at least south of 300 when it comes to patient acquisition costs. So then what I would do if I was a practice owner, understand what is your average patient pay per visit? How many times do they come in per year? If they come in three times a year, four times a year, how much are they spending over the course of that year and how long do they stay with you? Because what ultimately you want to know is your patient lifetime value.

And so if you understand your patient lifetime value and your patient retention, and you could be above average, that’s what puts you in a position to have a very successful practice. And then back to Ben’s point, once you understand your demand funnel, you can then make very sophisticated purchasing decisions. So hopefully that helped.

Ben H (40:36.47)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think I learned a little bit from that too, which is like, think like, yeah, I think either in that formula that I gave earlier, it’s like, you could go the route of the leads and conversion rate. I think you could also go the route of like just your average lead and cost per lead and or cost per acquisition, honestly, would probably be the better route. So it’s like your average like number, so for over the last 90 days, like how many new patients did you get? What was your cost each, your average?

Cameron Hemphill (41:02.7)
Mm-hmm.

Ben H (41:03.66)
You could kind of get to the same thing, whether you had the metrics I provided or whether you had those. and I think what’s, could be like, if you’re a practice where you’re like, I don’t have any of these numbers, even just using that 500 as your benchmark, guess, the camera was saying, that could be an easy way to at least get a rough calculation in your head of where you’re at. In terms of like what you could do, what you can invest, how much, how much you, what your levers are basically to pull. one other thing I’ll just mention that might seem obvious,

Cameron Hemphill (41:29.114)
Yeah.

Ben H (41:35.598)
excuse me, just had to clear my throat, is I think a lot of practices don’t have, especially ones that are starting out, they get entry-level terms. And I just wanted to call that on this, because if you’re a newer practice, you’re just getting started. It’s sort of like credit limits, right? Where you just have to keep kind of like pastoring American Express, and OK, cool, now you’re going from $30,000 to $42,000 limits. Really take advantage of those.

Cameron Hemphill (42:02.102)
you

Ben H (42:03.47)
of those, especially with like interest rates on credit cards and things. Like if an, if a manufacturer does in fact offer terms, most offer net 90, some offer net 120 for certain clients. Like really push for those. And I just, just calling it out to this audience, which especially if you’re push your rep for those. See if you can get there. The, the free, it’s like basically like free lending to you to give you the cashflow you need it. So if you’re sitting, if you’re currently sitting in a position starting out new or

Cameron Hemphill (42:15.366)
Mm-hmm.

Ben H (42:31.438)
you’re purposely limiting the amount of inventory you’re mostly based on cashflow or you’re limiting what you can spend on marketing mostly based on cashflow. Like that’s definitely an area to push on. It’s like, see if you can get more terms and then you, it’s not just like, oh, I don’t want to go into more debt. It’s literally like free money that these OEMs are offering. So if you can get those all of a sudden, it’s like, cool, I can allocate my cashflow to actually getting more patients on the demand funnel side.

because I basically have like this window of time to pay back. So I think that getting that flywheel started when you’re early is, it’s really easy to just focus in on cashflow, cashflow, cashflow cost of goods. And that’s how a lot of OEM are gonna come in too. They’re gonna come in hard and be like, hey, we have a really great, this special tier just for you. If you buy this, you know, bundle right now, then we’ll put you at this level next quarter. Those all could totally make sense. They totally could, but.

Cameron Hemphill (43:11.162)
Mm-hmm.

Ben H (43:27.32)
just look at the basics, right? Which is if I could just get more time, improve cashflow, invest in my demand funnel, you can be a little more in control then of what’s happening in your practice versus like, I’ve got all these boxes of stuff, I’ve got all these coupons, okay, where are the patients? That’s like quite honestly, probably the most challenging position to be in. And when I was at these different companies, this would happen. There would literally be accounts that are like.

Cameron Hemphill (43:43.169)
Yeah.

Cameron Hemphill (43:51.921)
Mm-hmm.

Ben H (43:53.772)
I’m sitting on all this stuff, your coupons are expiring next month. What’s up? Like how am I supposed to get through this? And I would always have a lot of empathy for those situations because the rep is obviously incentivized to like make the deal. But the practice probably made that decision again, based on those three points, that narrative versus like, who could I actually service? And like, does this make sense for me? So yeah, just to reiterate.

Cameron Hemphill (44:13.692)
Mm-hmm.

Cameron Hemphill (44:17.874)
choose that almost like, yeah, I can have my head spinning a little bit. Like, it’ll almost be interesting instead of doing a discount, the OEM, I’ve never worked for an OEM, but, hey, we’ll deploy 10 % to marketing on the net 90 towards your demand funnel. Cool, I’d take that too, because then you’re putting yourself in a position, if you control it, I would make sure that that campaign set up, you know, accurately, you’re working with the industry specialist.

Ben H (44:44.141)
Yep.

Cameron Hemphill (44:46.234)
Then you’re putting yourself in a position to win because you’re never going to see those dollars. They’re never going to come into the actual practice. think where I’ve seen practice owners struggle with net 90, it’s all of sudden they get hit with this big bill. And they’re like, shoot, we sold all the stuff. There’s no cash. How are we going to pay this bill? I’ll just go use a credit card. And that’s where they can get to a debt issue.

carrying bad debt is that type of situation. I would really understand your net 90 terms guys and make sure that the cash you’re bringing in from that acquisition, putting back into the funnel, putting back into marketing. And this kind of goes back to some conversations and talks that I’ve had last year, just at the end of the year when I was in Fort Lauderdale with Terry and her team at 4S and kind of looking at a lot of the industry data.

our data that we’ve collected is, you know, it’s really interesting how the, how little these practice owners actually invest in, marketing. It, it’s, it’s actually mind, mind boggling. you know, I have a stat that shows 35 % of all practices spend less than a thousand dollars a month on marketing. Like that’s a lot. Like that’s, that’s a big percentage and very, very little spend. So if you’re, if you’re not spending enough,

You’re never going to feed the demand funnel and you can have these 90 terms and go sell the product. You’re not feeding the demand back. And then you’re just going to blow through the inventory and hopefully those, you know, that Gucci bag and the beautiful Chanel shoes, you know, sidetrack you by the next conference. You know, all of sudden you have this big bill and you’re all you’re doing is just building up this snowball over the course of 12 months to like get yourself in a pretty gnarly situation. I would like, you want to take a

Ben H (46:31.416)
Yeah.

Cameron Hemphill (46:45.084)
percentage of those sales guys from the inventory purchase funnel it back into the demand, capture the demand. And the data shows these patients are gonna stay with you for three years. Like that’s the typical lifetime value. Once somebody goes to a practice, that’s what the data shows on a nationalized basis. So, but you know, I could see like net 90 attractives. I want it. Who doesn’t want that? Who doesn’t give me my inventory now I’ll pay later. Who doesn’t want that? Right? Like totally. But you can get yourself into an issue. If you,

Ben H (47:09.304)
Yep. Yep.

Cameron Hemphill (47:14.608)
you know, don’t actually have the discipline and accountability to be cautious about that cash and then funneling that back into marketing. And the ones that do then, the ones that understand that and do, they’re the ones that take the demand from the market. They’re the ones that crush it, crank it. They delay, you know, instant gratification because they’re thinking long-term.

Ben H (47:35.552)
Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Another thing I’ve seen that’s actually kind an interesting variable too. If you’re a practice that does like open houses, or if you do like, you know, Botox nights, or if you just have like events at your practice and many do, and I think they’re quite successful. A lot of times like the target there is like, Hey, my patients are going to come get a great price. They’re hopefully then going to bring family, friends, et cetera. those are also worth considering when you’re making these bulk purchases, when these promotions are going on coupons.

Like timing that can also have it be a huge win for your practice. That is a different kind of sort of demand funnel. like you, you it’s anecdotally, you know how those events go. So I would say if you’re like, just another thought, like if you’re a practice and you’re like, yeah, I have an open house every year. It’s always our most successful event. We sell a bunch of gift cards. We treat a lot of new patients. We get a lot of new patients. that might be a good time for you to make a lot of these sort of a little more outsize purchases.

but, basically, cause you know, all right, those coupons now, instead of it just being switching costs. It’s like, no, I’m going to use them at that event. And like all that’s how I’m going to close all these like referrals basically. So just something to consider, it’s not always just this digital marketing game. Like you could tie it back to, you know, physical events that make a lot of sense, for you as well.

Cameron Hemphill (48:42.322)
You just blow it through them.

Cameron Hemphill (48:46.354)
That’s a great point.

Cameron Hemphill (48:55.154)
Totally. I’m glad you brought that up. I was actually talking with a practice owner that’s around the road for me. They started the practice about a year ago to private equity, very sophisticated group, but their events, they have a national event. One day a year, it brings in, think, right around like 1.2, 1.3 million, you’re just in that one day. I think that would be a great time to take the discount and just blow through that stuff. Totally agree.

Well, Ben, I appreciate your knowledge, your experience, your expertise. I learned a lot on this conversation that has to do with inventory and obviously looking at the demand funnel, how to make very sophisticated decisions around purchasing. So thank you so much for time. know you’re super busy and I’ll leave it at that. And for the audience out there guys, if you found this episode valuable, if you find this content valuable,

My biggest ask right now is just share it. Share it with your colleagues, your friends, anybody that would benefit from this episode specifically. And ratings are also great. We want to make it a goal this year to assist as many practice owners and new potential practice owners as we can by delivering just top quality content that’s going to enhance and really level up your practice. So thank you guys so much. Until next time, happy injecting.

Ben H (50:23.256)
Thanks for having me.