Make Your Summer Sales Sizzle!

Summer, Summer, Summer time!

A time for most to sit back and unwind as Will Smith sang a decade ago! For our industry it is time to heat things up!

This can be a down time of year for your sales or a great time of year for your sales! The choice is yours.

What is important to note is that now is the time to make plans so that your summer sales sizzle!

Here’s how:

Analyze: Look back on past sales trends for June – August. Go back at least the last 2-3 years depending upon the data you can collect. Review service sales trends, retail sales trends and client traffic trends. The numbers will give you a great place to plan from.

What’s Happening Now: What is happening in your business right now? What does your budget say that you need to work on during the summer? Consider whether you have new hires or people you are building as well as any new services or products you are offering?

Color It Up: Summer is always a great time to drive your color business and glossing business due to the lightening effects of the sun. Showcase this strategically in your marketing efforts.

It’s Time To Travel: Many people travel and vacation this time of year. You can and should be capitalizing on this! Offer gift certificate specials for pre and post maintenance and pampering to support their travels. You can also offer retail travel kits with travel size shampoo & conditioners include small hand sanitizers, handi-wipes, travel size aspirin and other accessories. Have fun with it!

Remember that this is a time of year when people think about taking time off. Don’t just okay vacation to everyone at the same time or you will be in for some lean months ahead. By taking the time now to get your team focused on the summer it can become a great sales period in your year and give you a great boost to build upon for the rest of the year!

Salon and Spa Marketing -TRY it and TRACK it before you TRASH it!

Recently, I met another salon owner who was struggling, like many of you, on how to get new clients and grow revenue. Although an optimist at heart she was beginning to become discouraged by her marketing efforts. Incremental growth was not enough; she needed hyper growth and she needed it fast.

We talked for quit awhile about what she had tried and where she may have gone wrong. Over the past year she had implemented dozens of marketing initiatives to gain new clients. Unfortunately she had little hard data to provide evidence as to whether or not her initiatives were working. I reminded her that numbers don’t lie and in the absence of numbers we rely on our feelings. Although valid, feelings unfortunately, do not provide the complete perspective needed for making sound decisions.

When you consider your marketing initiatives for your salon and spa remember the old saying, “different strokes for different folks”. In other words, what works for one salon or spa may not work for yours. You’ve got to be resourceful. If you’ve tried something and it didn’t work find out why, change it and re-launch it. If you attempted to get into a business through the owner, manager, front desk, etc. only to be met with a NO, then try another approach. Think about the clients you do have and find one that can open the door for you. What ever you do remember that you cannot TRASH an idea until you TRY it and TRACK it. Once you’ve assessed the success or failure of a marketing initiative then and only then can you determine its success or failure.

Most importantly, don’t make marketing difficult. Use your team to support you in developing and launching each marketing initiative. After all, they too will benefit from the efforts. Below you will find some additional suggestions for planning and implementing your next successful initiative.

• Schedule a meeting with your team and collectively come up with ways to gain new clients. Start by asking, who is our ideal client? Where do they work? Where do they play? Where do they eat, workout, go to church, etc.
• Then think of the ways to gain access to those clients. How can you get in front of them? What would interest them in you? Get into their minds and think about what they would want, expect and need in order to try your salon and spa over someone else’s. 
• Create a six month plan and select one initiative per month to focus on. 
• Track your success. Keep a binder at the front desk with a manual tracking form. Track things such as: clients name, service provider, promotion used, services received, products purchased, appointment rebooked, thank you sent, etc. The more information you collect the more you can determine if your marketing promotion was successful or not.

So remember; when determining if a marketing promotion will work for you take the time to TRY it and TRACK it before you TRASH it!

Know the SPAM Laws Before You Press SEND

Did you know there are rules govering your use of the internet for communicating with your current and potential clients? Before launching any internet marketing campaign for your salon or spa, it is very important to become aware of and adhere to the U.S. CAN-SPAM of 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act). Sounds pretty severe for governing an innocent email to your clients about a holiday special, but the guidelines are pretty simple:

• The To and From information must be accurate.
• You cannot mislead the recipient about what is in the content of the message.
• Recipients must be given the option of removing themselves from your mailing list.
• Your message must be identified as an advertisement and include the sender's physical postal address.

Several software options exist to manage your e-blasts, such as Constant Contact.

What is Poor Customer Service Costing Your Salon?

All salons and spas rely on customer retention to keep their businesses growing - after all, the backbone of your success isn't the one time customer but the repeat customer. Repeat customers keep coming back and become the foundation you can rely on. That's why customer retention is so important.

Even worse, if you begin losing customers because of poor customer service, your business might fail. That's why customer service training is so important - to be truly successful, you have to establish strong customer loyalty that can translate to repeat business and great referrals. Most salon and spa owners don't realize how much revenue they are losing every year because of poor customer service. Do you?

How Much Revenue are You Losing? You'll be Surprised! Take this Simple Reality Check:

The cost of poor customer retention is enormous. When customers leave your business they are taking their money to competitors. You've not only lost revenue for your business, you've increased the profitability of your competition! It's a "double whammy" that can permanently damage your business. Take a look at this eye-opening formula and see how much your salon is losing each year because of poor customer retention.

Customer Service Formula:

• Take your Average Annual Revenue Per Customer  X's  The Number of Customers Lost (Customers who leave annually)
  Example:$360 average annual revenue per customer  X's  100 lost customers = $36,000 in Lost Revenue pr year

The real profits that keep a salon and spa running and growing are in the second, third, and fourth sales to the same customer. Without this repeat business, most salons fail - and repeat business hinges more on Exceptional Customer Service than with anything else - including the products or services themselves.

Let's face it, if you are losing customers, you'll soon be losing employees. If you provide customer service training and other tools for all of your employees so that they can improve customer loyalty, they will feel more confident in their own success and the success of your business. You will have more loyal customers and more loyal employees!

Remember . . .

Some salons question whether or not they really have to make this effort. The reality is you really have no other reasonable choice. Customer service training will improve customer retention and ultimately determine whether you are in business next year.

Learn how to establish a consistent, branded customer experience ~ start by training all of your employees!

Ana Loiselle ~ Milady Business Coach and Trainer

Salon Training: Together Everyone Achieves More!

Do you remember the last time you were at a training and it rocked your world? Where were you? Who spoke? What did you learn? What was the benefit?

How often are you at something like that?

Imagine if your team felt that way on a consistent basis inside your salon or spa without having to leave the business.

Training and development that WOWS your staff can happen right inside your own four walls!

Here’s how:

1. Survey Your Team! Find out from them what type of training they are looking for to continue to grow as a salon and spa professional.
2. Connect The Dots! Once you know what they want, connect it to what you want. You have an idea of the areas you want to see the business and individuals work on to improve ~ marry both their needs and yours together.
3. Get Them Involved! If you and your distributor partners are the only people thinking of training topics for your team it is coming from you, not them. People get involved in what they help to create! Ask your team to join you in the effort of creating a training calendar. They will have the chance to step up to the plate and grow ~ AND it helps to save you time as well!
4. Block Out The Time! Schedule regular trainings on a monthly basis at the minimum. For example, the 2nd Tuesday of the month from 1pm – 4pm. Once it is scheduled, post it for everyone to see.
5. Set Clear Goals and Expectations! Once the training is created and people are involved, as the leader, you have to set clear goals and expectations and follow through to insure people are actually growing from what they are learning.

When you follow the above steps you will create a robust and healthy training arm of your business, where your team is constantly growing right along with your sales and profits too!

What Are People Saying About Your Salon??

Remember when you were a kid and other kids said you were slow, had “four eyes” or buck teeth? How did your mom tell you to handle that situation? “Just ignore them!” she’d say. Well mom is wrong, at least with respect to what others are saying about your salon or spa.

Did you know that over 90% of unhappy clients will not do business with your salon again and are likely to share their grievance with at least nine other people. Thirteen percent of unhappy clients will tell more than twenty people. In his book, Rule of 3-33, Author Jerry Wilson says for every three people willing to tell a positive story about an experience with your business, there are thirty-three others who will tell a horror story.

If someone was talking about your salon or spa (positively or negatively), you would want to know about it, right? If someone was speaking your praises, you would want to thank them. Conversely, if someone was speaking poorly about your business, you would want to set the record straight. But today, someone can just as easily talk about your business face-to-face as they can post to a blog, Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, City Search, etc.

Your business's reputation is just as important in brick-and-mortar as it is online. Customers are not just going to your website to get information about your business. You must also manage your web presence for postings from people outside your organization. The internet is a place where anyone (fan or critic) can express their opinions about anyone and anything. Don't be oblivious (or vulnerable) to rumors, complaints, review sites, blogs, etc.

Let me give you an example: True story from owner Amy Burness, of Victoria's 5th Ave. Salon, in Florida.  A new client came into the salon that works at the Hard Rock Casino. Her expense was great, but her haircut was not what she wanted. It was a little uneven and not short enough for her. The salon called her three days after her service (a follow up system they have in place) and asked her how her experience in the salon was. She said it was "okay." The salon  asked if there was anything they could do for her. The unahppy guest said that her haircut was just not layered enough for her - the salon owner offered for her to come in and have the problem corrected. When she came and got it corrected she loved it so much that over the next couple of months she sent in over 20 of her co-workers to the salon. She can’t stop talking about the salon following up with her to make sure her experience was great. When she came back in for her hair cut she tells the stylist how impressed she was that the salon cared enough to have called to make sure her experience was great. She was one of the 13% of unhappy clients that would have told more than 20 people how unhappy she was, but instead she is telling everyone how impressed she is with the salon.

As a salon or spa owner, are you managing your business's reputation? Do you have follow up systems in place like the above mentioned salon? What tools are you using to find online information? If you have found negative posts, what have you done to curtail the negativity?

Ana Loiselle ~ Milady Business Coach

Salon and Spa Performance Appraisals: Expect - Review - Reward

“People don’t get promoted on Potential”Harry Chambers – Performance Improvement Specialist

In today’s competitive salon and spa environment, your employees represent one of your organization’s most valuable assets. Which means your company’s PRODUCTIVITY—and ultimately, its PROFITABILITY! That’s why a solid performance review process is absolutely critical to the ongoing success of your company.

Managing and mastering successful performance appraisals require that you:
1. Develop clear job descriptions.
2. Communicate clear job performance expectations.
3. Consistently manage those expectations.
4. Clarifying real problems as they arise.
5. Create a path for performance (development plan) ensuring employees are working with their own unique intentions, toward the goals that contribute most to the long-term success of your business.

It’s easy to underestimate how much a well-designed performance review process contributes to overall employee satisfaction, and continued success of your salon and spa. Often owners and managers alike simply spend their time putting out ‘fires’! Unfortunately this ad hoc mentality can actually contribute to employee turnover. In fact, studies show that most workers value clear, consistent feedback and acknowledgement as much as (or more than) they do monetary compensation. When properly administered, performance reviews help your company to MOTIVATE employees from within, RECOGNIZE and COMPENSATE top performers for achieving their goals, REDUCE TURNOVER and ATTRITION, and PROTECT your business legally.

In time, with consistent tracking, reporting and communication, you will find that administering reviews is actually a great way of staying connected and motivating your team to achieve greater success.