Sight Care enjoys business conference success

Over 400 practitioners attended Sight Care’s annual business and networking conference for independents on Monday (2 March), which celebrated Sight Care’s 25th anniversary.

The event, held at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole, had the theme People: purpose: passion and featured eight speaker presentations, including a workshop on Selling with integrity. The keynote address was by the executive editor of The Times, Lord Daniel Finkelstein (pictured), a former political adviser to John Major when he was Prime Minister.

The success of the event delighted Sight Care’s chief executive, Paul Surridge. He told OT: “In this new era of social media, the tweeters are twittering like mad about this year’s Sight Care conference. We’ve been inundated with positive feedback about the organisation of the event and importantly, the content of the speaker and workshop programme.

“Any ‘live’ event organiser will tell you that an enormous amount of time and resources are invested in running such a large event and you can never guarantee that things will go exactly to plan, but I’m pleased to say they did this year.”

Mr Surridge added: “With the theme, People: purpose: passion, our aim was to encourage delegates to review every aspect of their businesses and especially the touch points of the patient journey.

“As we emerge from recession, it’s crucial that independents refresh their offering to ensure they are ready and able to welcome back existing patients and to attract new patients to the practice. It’s always a team effort and that’s why we encourage as many staff members to attend the conference as possible.”

He concluded: “Our final speaker of the day, author and marketing expert Geoff Ramm, talked about Celebrity Service, asking the question, ‘so what would you do differently if you knew a celebrity was your next patient?’ It’s that difference that has to be offered to every patient if independents are truly to differentiate from the competition.”