PART II PHARMACY MANAGEMENT DIVISION III THOROUGH KNOWLEDGE OF YOUR BUSINESS CHAPTER X. EFFICIENT MANAGEMENT. THREE things are requisite to the success of any pharmacy. 1. The establishment of the pharmacy itself must be a sound undertaking. That is, a good reason for its establishment must exist. The needs of the neighborhood demand it, perhaps. The location is excellent. 2. Sufficient capital. 3. Efficient management. It must have all these requisites, for if it has two of them and the third is entirely absent, the pharmacy won't live long. The chances for success are greatly hindered if the three requisites are not up to the standard required. The whole measure of success varies according to the degree of perfection existing in these three requisites. The third requisite-efficient management-is nowadays considered the most important. A first-class location may exist for the establishment of a pharmacy, the necessary capital forthcoming, but without efficient management, that pharmacy is doomed to failure. Efficient management can overcome a scanty capital or a location that is only fair. Efficient management determines the degree of success, and if the proprietor of a Pharmacy is an efficient manager he can rest assured that he is able to solve one of the biggest and most difficult problems of business success. But few pharmacists, however, are efficient managers, because their training for this important position has been lacking. Their experience has been confined to a few years' clerkship and a study of the professional side of pharmacy, rather than the commercial. They have hardly been introduced to business topics. They are not even on speaking terms with the ethics of business. If you were approached by a promoter to invest your money in a patent medicine factory or a druggist's syndicate, the first thing you would want to know would be: "How about the management? Who is the manager? Is he square and upright, and has he the ability to conduct this enterprise?" Big investors and capitalists will not invest their money in a new enterprise until they learn who has been secured as manager. A pharmacist who intends going in business for himself should study business methods systematically for two or three years previous to opening a store of his own. He ought to make some effort to prepare himself, for if he does not he will make a good many expensive mistakes the first five years he is in business. Good managers in any line are hard to find, for the fact that they are good assures them permanent positions. Any pharmacist who is an efficient manager need never worry about his future, for he can make good money in business for himself or be sure of a good salary and constant employment as manager for big pharmacies. No worse economy could be found than that of hiring a cheap manager. A good one is worth all he gets and if you are a good one yourself, see that you pay yourself a good salary. If you have to get a manager for your branch pharmacy, get a good one. A poor one will cost you at the end of a year a sum more than enough to pay a good one's salary. It is the writer's opinion that efficient management should be accorded the highest place from the view-point of actual value to a pharmacy. Many a pharmacy has been brought from the verge of bankruptcy to a plane of unqualified success because the new proprietor has proved himself an efficient manager. This suggests the natural question: "What are the requisites of a good manager?" "How can these requisites be acquired?" REQUISITES OF A MANAGER.-In the first place, to become an efficient manager, you must acquire a knowledge of values, which some one has termed the business man's sixth sense. You must inaugurate a system and adopt a definite policy for conducting your business. You must promote your business by the method known as the personal development plan-that is, go it easy, build up your business by the profits derived from the business itself, keep your expenses at low ebb, add new things gradually and always in a small way at first, in this step-by-step method you will avoid serious mistakes, risks, costly experiments, and the great danger ever present, of allowing your business to outgrow its capital. In this way you will learn as you go, abandoning your little inexpensive experiments that did not give quick results, and pushing those that did. Studying all the time the needs of your customers and the opportunities of your location and neighborhood. When branching out and adding new lines is made necessary, then you must do it cautiously, and with a small investment at first, watching closely for several weeks or a few months to see if it promises success; if it does, the investment in it can be increased, if it does not prove a success it can be discontinued. During this progressive period you are getting a thorough business training, practically acquired, which should give you a firm grasp of the reins of your business. This personal development plan is the natural method of business development. The slow, but sure method. You are bound to reach a high degree of success by this method, because you have practically applied business principles to your work actually in hand and every principle then should be so firmly impressed on your mind as to be of lasting benefit and a great base to start on during periods of hard times or industrial depressions. The personal element should be ever present in a good manager. It is the chief force for selling goods and pushing business. An efficient manager knows human nature, is aware that every one of his customers has fads or fancies which can be satisfied by having the right kind of goods and calling their attention to them in the right way. He must keep posted and abreast with the times by reading the drug trade papers as soon as they arrive, every month, and either have them bound or clip the most valuable articles and file them away alphabetically, by subjects, for future reference and guidance. Knowing the value of "pleased customers," he constantly safeguards their interests, waits on as many as he can personally, mingles with them, talks with them, gets a reputation among them of possessing a winning personality and a keen eye for business. He inaugurates a system so that all store duties are conducted like a perfect machine. He has control always over his working force, and while conducting his store on progressive lines, yet there is ever present the requisite amount of conservatism to assure permanency of growth, perfect stability, and proper balance at all times. He has the reins of his business always in hand, knows every day just how it stands, how to get the most out of it, prevents dead stock by knowing how to buy, gets quick turnovers of capital by knowing how to sell, takes cash discounts, watches book accounts, makes prompt collections, takes annual inventories, knows how to advertise, in fact he knows the laws of trade and how to practise business economics. To be an efficient manager requires that you run a business just as thoroughly as if you were acting as trustee for some estate. In that capacity you would have to account for everything. Mr. Frank A. Vanderlip, the well-known New York banker says: "If I were to name one thing pre-eminently to be desired as a result of higher commercial education, it would be the cultivation of a proper sense of trusteeship."1 1 Business and Education, by Frank A. Vanderlip. Duffield & Co., N. Y. CHAPTER XI. PROBLEMS OF MANAGEMENT. WE have just learned in the preceding chapter, the importance of efficient management and the requisites in general of an efficient manager. In the next few chapters we will learn how the efficient manager of a pharmacy applies his knowledge of business ethics and human nature to the varied and complicated problems of his chosen calling. In this chapter we will consider only a few problems in general. Assume, then, that you are either a proprietor of your own store or manager for some concern or syndicate. Think of the responsibility resting on your shoulders. You are a buyer, salesman, advertising man, business promoter, diplomat, bookkeeper, accountant, student, professional man, merchant, employer of men, and a servant of the public. To assume all the rôles with proper attention to each is no simple task. You will realize at the outset that you cannot look after all the little details yourself, it is too much for any one man, you would never get anywhere; you would make a mess of the whole affair. You would be like a person who never finishes anything because he is always beginning. You must get people to help you; to fill the positions demanded by such a large category of attainments. Your whole success as a pharmacist and a retail merchant, depends largely upon your ability to choose the right clerks for the right places. You may be possessed with great ability, but alone you can do but little; you cannot accomplish great things unless you can select the proper people to help you. You must have "the right men behind the guns.' Of course you must know how to do all the work yourself, but you should make others do it. All your time is needed in preserving the proper balance of the business, outlining its policy and building it up. You can train others to do a great deal of the work that you are doing at the present moment, and you should lose no time in bringing about such a con |