In order to be effective in ergonomics, you have to be efficient in your job, especially when you’re working with a bigger workforce. In this blog, I’m going to share a valuable time-saving strategy that will help your clients make decisions faster. Setting up an Ergonomic Showroom is the same strategy that I love to recommend to bigger organizations and Ergonomic Consultants. This is where you showcase trendy and useful ergonomic equipment for your clients to try out either in the showroom or for a few weeks in their workspace. It’s a method that encourages your clients to want to work with you by handling a common objection— will this work for me? It's a simple but valuable solution to ergonomic challenges.

Ergonomics Showroom: A Strategy to Help Your Clients Move Forward With You

Before I jump into this post, I want to tell you first about my program called the *NEW* Accelerate: The Business of Ergonomics. At the end of March, I'm going to be doing a couple of valuable webinars about why it's never been a better time for HCPs to add ergonomics as a service in their practice and then how to grow their business via marketing and sales. I’m also going to be sharing why having a really good foundation and framework of ergonomic support is essential and the ways that we can be selling our system more effectively. If you’re interested to learn more of my training, scroll down to the bottom of this post. The reason why I wanted to introduce my program first is because what I'm going to be talking about below is something that you can use in your marketing and sales strategy and help you be on top of your game. 

What is an Ergonomic Showroom?

One of the things that we want to do as Ergonomics Consultants is to manage expectations and handle objections when we’re conducting an ergonomics assessment. And one way to do that is to consider what's holding our ideal client back from moving forward with us. Now I always recommend doing research with your ideal client before moving forward in your messaging.

One issue I've found holding potential clients back is when we’re recommending a piece of equipment. Let’s say your client requires a keyboard or mouse, but there's just a bunch of options available. Of course, we want to make sure that they get the right type of mouse or keyboard, but we're not too certain which one they're going to like best. Well, one way to save them the returns to the manufacturer is to have a showroom. 

How I like to think of ergonomic showrooms is very similar to car showrooms. So you go into the dealership and check out as many cars that you like, and maybe even test one out. This is the same strategy that I like to recommend to bigger companies as well as to Ergonomic Consultants. That's right, friends. You and me doing ergonomics assessments. This is something that you can build out yourself with equipment and let your clients try them out. This way, they don't have to return the equipment back to the manufacturer every time they want to try something new. 

Building Your Own Ergonomic Showroom

If you’re doing an outbound type of service, you can start to build your own showroom. What I suggest that you do when you set up your own is to get a variety of alternative keyboards, types of mice, or types of chairs. Anything that you feel there's some confusion around, you should definitely get that in your showroom. There are two ways you can build your own showroom: you can either build relationships with manufacturers, or it can be a business expense. I’ve seen a lot of consultants develop relationships with manufacturers or local vendors and they would get samples of equipment and then they distribute it to their clients. 

The reason why a Showroom is so useful is that it can handle your client's objections before working with you. It can be difficult to determine the quality of the equipment just by looking at the pictures and reading the reviews. Of course, we want our clients to avoid purchasing equipment that is expensive and would only cause more harm than good to our clients. Purchasing an incorrect item and then returning it because it’s not fit for your client is an incredible waste of time and money, and it deflates your process. In most cases, a trial period for a couple of weeks is necessary to get the right piece of keyboard or mouse suitable for the user, and that’s where the value of the ergonomic showroom lies. It’s a really neat way to help your clients get a good understanding of whether or not that piece of equipment is suitable for them. 

The other option that you can do when you have your own showroom is to lend out your equipment to your clients or even take it with you when you do an ergonomics assessment. This is really useful when you’re conducting an ergonomic assessment because they can try out each of your suggestions until they find the one that fits their needs. It’ll make your process a bit more streamlined and save you a lot of time.

Recommending equipment from your showroom shows that you’re a reliable resource and self-assured in your field. So using an ergonomic showroom will help convince your clients and prospects to move forward with you.

Having an In-house Showroom

For the bigger clients that you work with, you can teach them how to start their own showroom. This is something that I also built out when I managed my own in-house ergonomics system, where I had more than 10,000 employees that I was responsible for managing. For that type of basis, I had an in-house showroom. I had various products in the showroom where clients would come in, take a piece of equipment that they need back to their office, and try it out for a couple of weeks. Sometimes it's a decision that they know immediately, whether or not it's going to work for them or not.

Setting up an in-house Ergonomic Showroom is beneficial, especially when working for larger companies with thousands or even hundreds of staff, because it can make your process more efficient since your clients can just return and try out another equipment for a trial period.

Using Ergonomic Showrooms to Deal with Accommodations

Ergonomic Showroom is really useful for accommodations! This means when someone has a compensable injury (their work has either contributed directly or indirectly), and the Workers’ Compensation Board is adjudicating whether or not that's related to the responsibilities of work. The value in having a showroom, especially for the bigger employers, is it can reduce the accommodation period. So if someone has a soft tissue injury and they can no longer use one aspect of their body, or they need to have some sort of modified work, you can bring in that alternative piece of equipment for that employee right away. It’s very convenient to lend ergonomic equipment to employees for them to borrow until they recover from their injuries. In case someone else requires the same accommodation, you can just recommend them to use the same equipment and you can guarantee that it’s effective. And I used to do this so often. Recommending the products from an Ergonomic Showroom to manage accommodations so the worker can return to work faster will save your company a lot in compensation fees.

The Value of Ergonomic Showroom

In summary, Ergonomic Showrooms are such a useful method that can set you apart from your competition. It can give you a really pain-free way to serve your clients as it handles their objections. They won’t have to fret about returning pieces of equipment to the manufacturer. With an ergonomic showroom, you can guarantee that you can deliver the right piece of equipment to them, so they're not working with that pain and discomfort. Likewise for bigger clients, they can make their own in-house showroom and bring a variety of equipment to help their employees. This strategy can help with work accommodations, too. 

I totally understand that with COVID, there are many people who are still working remotely, so some sort of variation of this system is needed. However, it’s incredible to say that this is available in a way that'll handle your clients’ objections so you can work with them, make a bigger impact, and essentially, build a schedule that you love to work with. That's really what we're looking for. You want to be fully booked and making an income doing what you love. 

It’s Happening This Month

If you’re interested in learning more about modern ergonomic equipment and marketing techniques to build your ergonomic business, I encourage you to join the training going down at the end of March 2021. We will be conducting webinars. The week after the training, I'm going to be opening up my program called the *NEW* Accelerate: The Business of Ergonomics for enrollment. So if you want to know what other healthcare professionals are doing to grow their ergonomics consulting business, head to this link and sign up for the waitlist. I'm going to let you know as soon as this training gets set. It's really never been a better time to learn and get these tools in your tool belt.