The term 'point of sale materials' encompasses anything which you have displayed in the practice which serves to highlight your products and services: posters, leaflets, dummy packs and other display items.

Usually, you will have to prepare your own point of sales materials to highlight services available in the practice, whereas veterinary suppliers will often provide their own, professionally-designed point of sales materials to promote products sold in your practice.

There is perhaps more opportunity to use effective point of sales materials in practice than in many other retail outlets. Why? Because where a supermarket may have but a few seconds to grab the shopper's attention as they move down the aisle, you have the pet owner sitting there, often twiddling their thumbs, sometimes for quite a few minutes!

So make sure you use those minutes. Make sure that your clients learn something new about you every time they wait to see the vet.

Benefits

• Interest generated by a point if sales display can be acted on immediately, and in person. That makes it easier to turn interest into a sale.
   
• Point of sales materials make use of the time that clients might otherwise be doing nothing!
   
• Clever use of effective point of sales materials need not be expensive. Often, such materials are offered free to practices by veterinary suppliers.

Using point of sales effectively
Point of sale materials should follow the same rules as any other type of marketing materials, whether used to promote a product, or one of your services.

• Make sure they're attention-grabbing.
  A text heavy, bland poster will do little to stimulate interest in anything. The same applies to leaflets.
  
  
• Ensure that they make a clear point and, ideally, a simple call to action 
  Conversely, a dramatic picture without proper explanation may well get attention, but fail to convert that attention into an enquiry. 
  
  
• Position them carefully
  Pretty obvious, but pretend to be a client for a moment. Follow their journey from the moment they enter to the moment they leave the practice. Think where they'll spend the most time looking. Is it a point at eye-level when seated in the waiting room? Is it by the reception counter? Note that it is probably not effective to display marketing materials in the consulting rooms. That's the time they will be looking at their pet, or their vet, but certainly not at what is displayed on the wall! 
  
  
• Make sure that your display is cohesive.
  In other words, if your point of sales materials are just a jumble of disparate information, they will only serve to confuse. Try and used clearly defined areas to display information on different subjects. If you are running a special offer, for instance, you might like to display a range of materials relating to that offer at the reception desk. Perhaps a poster, some leaflets, and a give away. But don't confuse the issue with information about anything else.
  
  
• Make sure that all staff know how to answer questions about a displayed item.
  The main purpose of a good point of sales display is to generate an enquiry form a waiting client. Don't let that opportunity go to waste.

Example
Novartis Animal Health commissioned a fist-sized sculpture of a flea sitting on its eggs, mounted on a plinth with the message "Program - Kills the eggs you can't see before they hatch into the fleas you can", for use as a point of sale tool.

Fleas are ugly things, of course, but that's why this sculpture is so effective as a point of sales tool. Placed in an obvious spot (such as the reception desk), it prompts clients to go: "Urggh, isn't that revolting", which gives veterinary staff the perfect introduction to talk about how pets get infested, and how Program prevents that.