What a landmark event! It’s easy to get caught up in the planning and details to forget the achievement a grand opening is for a practice and the owner. Months of planning, construction and outreach go into bringing a TSO to the community that will serve the surrounding families for years to come, so it’s only appropriate to put in the time and effort to have a successful grand opening.
It started the same way we start any major task, by relying on the experience of the network and their guidance. John, Robin, and Brittni made it simple for us by giving us a ‘master’ checklist with deadlines and assignments for us to complete. We found that getting to our end goal was easy when our team was able to check off tasks along the way.
That teamwork would become the most important aspect of our planning, there are too many moving pieces for one manager or doctor to do on their own, and so we presented our team with a difficult question: How do you get people to take time out of their Saturday to come to an event at their doctor’s office? Our manager contacted each of our vendors and was able to have over fifteen different sponsors that gave either food, money or giveaways. By having our catering done by Chick-fil-A we were able to have the cow show up and take pictures with everyone which was a huge draw. We felt that was an amazing job and really allowed us to do as much as we could to entice people in. Our patient care coordinator and techs made sure to not only give flyers to everyone that came in but call each individual patient in our system to invite them. Our two doctors went to the surrounding optometrists and pediatricians and made sure to invite them and their staff to our Business 2 Business mixer, of which we saw a great turnout. Brittni and Robin made sure that we were fully stocked with TSO presentation materials and decorations along with making sure we had everything on track. We use EyeCarePro’s Digital Marketing service and their team helped us get advertising up on our social media sites.
All of this to say that there were months of advance planning and work that we felt was necessary to have a grand opening we could be proud of. If we could go back and improve on outreach, we would’ve worked with the local high schools to invite their staff and try to have their mascots attend. Further, we would’ve done even more with social media and online advertising as we’ve learned that there really is always more you can do.
We had a lot of fun, we’re thankful for the help provided by TSO and we hope that if you haven’t got a chance to come to see our place, you find a time to stop by!