Sharp-eyed Worldwide Salon Marketing member David Wood of Elan Men’s Hair in Brisbane is another who can thank his immersion in ‘our’ way of salon marketing for honing his B.S. Antenna to a state of high alert.
David sent me an article written by a purported ‘expert’ on customer retention that makes my eyes water.
Under the heading “Don’t ask customers why they left you!”, the article argues, correctly, that customers leave for three main reasons:
* Drawn: They are drawn away to a supplier that offers them substantially more of what they value (e.g. service, benefits, savings, etc.).
* Drift: They drift away to a similar supplier who offers them marginally more. Most often this occurs at points of change in their own life (e.g. moving job/house/site, having children, etc.).
* Driven: In the absence of a strong engagement, they become disenchanted over time and then a particular incident (trigger) pushes them to change suppliers.
But then the author falls in a hole, with the scholarly opinion that “…instead of asking them why they left you, try the following strategies to reduce customer defections:
1. Conduct value research
* Use analysis of relevant online discussion forums, traditional focus groups and other tools to identify what customers actually value from their relationship with you. Then use these insights to drive value into your customer relationships.
2. Leverage your customer data
* Use customer complaints data to prioritise and address those things that annoy customers (and start collecting it immediately if you don’t already!)
* Statistically analyse customer transactional behaviour to identify other change triggers (positive and negative).
Online discussion forums? Focus groups???
Oh, yawn. In other words, tip-toe around, do anything except send ‘em a letter, in an envelope, with a stamp on it, asking them to come back and giving them a bloody good reason (offer) to do so.
It’s classic avoidance strategy, padded with big words and fancy phrases, to give business owners comfort for not doing what it takes to get the damn customers back.
If you want to do ‘research’, here’s my contention: get the customers back first, then find out why they left in the first place. If they’re standing right in front of you, having eagerly responded to your ‘come back’ offer, that’s a pretty good place to start your ‘focus group’. Particularly after they’ve just been blown away by a ‘wow’ experience.
“C’mon Shirley, we haven’t seen you for three months. What happened?”
Sometimes, ‘experts’ just love to over-think things. Thankfully, our Members know the value of a well-crafted ‘Raise the Dead’ series of letters they can simply download from the Membership area. Many are getting a 30% response rate, or better, sending these letters to their ‘missing in action’ clients.
Like, for example, Hannah McEnteggart of Oasis Health & Beauty Spa in Great Missendon, UK:
At school, everyone gets a prize. In real life? Not so much…
At last, a glimmer of light in the dark and murky corners of political correctness. An up-market private girls school in my part of the world has admitted that the ‘everybody gets a prize’ mentality that’s infected our education system for decades might not be actually doing our young people any good after all.
St Hilda’s Anglican School for Girls (The West Australian, May 25) has written to parents explaining why it has decided to minimize praise (like “well done Angela, you failed, but you tried, that‘s the main thing!”), reduce reward stickers for participation (eg “here’s your certificate for actually coming to school, even though you tanked at everything.”) and setting deliberately difficult work so students could experience failure.
Eureka! Hurrah! Finally, an admission from green-tinged academics, the corduroy-jacket-and-leather-elbow-patches brigade, that constantly telling kids they’re wonderful, special, all-time winners just so their precious little self-esteem gets puffed up like a poisoned cat could just possibly be setting them up for a rude shock when they suddenly arrive in the real world.
A world that rewards people who actually get things done, not merely make a feeble attempt and give up. A world that punishes failure and praises success, not ATTEMPT. A world that has few leaders, and many followers. A world that is full of obstacles, pitfalls, challenges and tall buildings that can’t leaped in a single bound by a pimply teenager in a Superman suit, aided by a teacher whispering ‘wow, you’re really great. You failed, but you’re really great all the same.’
And out in the real world, nothing is less forgiving of failure than business. Particularly the world of small business, the one you and I inhabit. You may have noticed that customers who give you their money do not gently pat you on the head and whisper ‘good try!’ when you fail to deliver what they’ve paid for. To the ears of those molly-coddled through school any time in the last thirty years, it may sound harsh when suppliers you haven’t paid send the bailiff in to take your furniture.
And when you employ some youngster straight out of school (beauty school, particularly) is it any wonder they look like startled deer caught in the headlights when you (too gently) suggest to them they might like to actually work instead of Facebooking their friends till they’re blue in the face?
To quote the bleeding obvious from Primary Schools Association president Stephen Breen, who acknowledged that schools and parents had probably (the italics are mine) gone too far in puffing up children’s self-esteem by praising everything. “As a consequence, a lot of kids don’t accept criticism.”
Maybe, just maybe, kids might be better educated with some harsh reality right from the get go. Had the Allies lost the Second World War, it’s difficult to imagine Churchill gently admonishing Montgomery with “Well old chap, you gave it your best shot, that’s all that matters!”
I re-post from last year a short lesson in life for young people – and grown-ups who still think life should be just like it was in school.
Herb Kelleher, founder of Southwest Airlines. If the staff are happy, the customers are happy.
So you think you’ve got insurmountable problems with staff…staff who want everything for nothing, staff who don’t turn up, staff who ‘can’t sell’, staff who won’t work Wednesdays because their sister’s boyfriend’s band plays Tuesday nights?
And you have how many staff…two? Three? Maybe even a handful? Try keeping literally thousands of staff happy…so happy, in fact, they fall over themselves to get to work, refuse to leave, stay on for ten, twenty, thirty years!
Herb Kelleher had that ‘problem’. For those interested in how other business owners became – and remained – successful (and I can’t for the life of me imagine why anybody in business wouldn’t be interested in that) here’s a brief background, and some words of wisdom, from the man who founded Southwest Airlines more than 40 years ago, and turned it into one of the world’s most successful.
Southwest Airlines ad from 1981. No, you probably wouldn’t get away with it these days.
And that, in an industry that’s generated a litany of failures for decades.
Herb Kelleher founded Southwest Airlines in the late 1960s, concentrating on a few short-haul routes around Texas. For a few years it was a struggle. But Kelleher persisted, found ways to beat the established rivals on price, on service, on value-adds. And he’d pull almost any stunt to get the airline publicity. For several years the flight attendants’ uniform was hot pants – remember them? Try getting away with that in the oh-so-politically-correct 21st century.
But the thing that made Kelleher so successful wasn’t his eye for marketing, or his ‘business acumen’, or his ability with balance sheets.
It was his dedication to his staff – and by default, his customers.
Here are a few of the many pearls of business wisdom from one of the titans of the customer service industry:
“We will hire someone with less experience, less education, and less expertise, than someone who has more of those things and has a rotten attitude. Because we can train people. We can teach people how to lead. We can teach people how to provide customer service. But we can’t change their DNA.”
“The core of our success. That’s the most difficult thing for a competitor to imitate. They can buy all the physical things. The things you can’t buy are dedication, devotion, loyalty—the feeling that you are participating in a crusade.”
“You can’t really be disciplined in what you do unless you are humble and open-minded. Humility breeds open-mindedness—and really, what we try to do is establish a clear and simple set of values that we understand. That simplifies things; that expedites things. It enables the extreme discipline I mentioned in describing our strategy. When an issue comes up, we don’t say we’re going to study it for two and a half years. We just say, ‘Southwest Airlines doesn’t do that. Maybe somebody else does, but we don’t.’ It greatly facilitates the operation of the company.”
There’s an old saying: the teacher will appear when the student is ready.
Unfortunately for most business owners, they leave it till they’re on their last legs, the bailiff hammering at the door, the kids starving, the bills piling up like autumn leaves before they seek help, and join.
Long-term Members will be familiar with some of the names – Tegan Messineo, who was just 21 and pregnant with twins when she sought out WSM, and built her one-person business to a two-salon enterprise with ten staff, while she looked after her babies at home. Tracey Orr, who has been with us for more than 7 years, started her two-person salon in sleepy Tasmania, which is now a million dollar salon.
WSM member Nicole Lopez – enjoying the two-wheeled and four-wheeled fruits of both hard work and smart-thinking
Nicole Lopez is another one. When Nicole joined WSM in July 2011, her Perth salon was already growing rapidly (notably, not in a recognized affluent area, but one of the city’s poorest). But as Nicole reveals in this recent letter to me, success isn’t neat, clean and stress-free – something I’m sure she reflects on as she cruises the streets in the new Mercedes convertible or astride the shiny black motorcycle that a combination of hard work and smart thinking has brought her. This is a lesson in honesty, ambition and achievement.
I’ve bolded some of Nicole’s words for my own comments at the bottom of her story.
“When you said I was the WSM Salon of the Week I was not sure if I was worthy of such a privilege.
My life leading up to this moment has been full of challenges and thinking that I hadn’t yet reached my goal made me ponder my success up to this point, AND the fact I am almost always overwhelmed and stressed with anxiety surely couldn’t make me a success either?!
Owning a salon, much less all three types together, in my case Hair, Beauty & Day Spa, has proven to be the biggest challenge I have ever lived. I am passionate about business and succeeding, and doing all this without knowing there is something to fall back on! I believe that to succeed in life you need to take the plunge and do what you need to do to succeed, even if it means sacrificing everything to make that one thing work.
I believe that life hands you opportunities and it is up to you to grab them with both hands. That’s why, when I bought my salon and it was quiet and lonely, I took to the front door andwelcomed each person as they walked past to admire my A-Frames.
If there was ever a person who walked up to the front window to look at my signage I would take advantage and leaped to the challenge of making them my salon client. We are surrounded by salons, 5 in just our complex. And to any person looking from the outside in, everyone is quick to judge whether I made a good choice in buying the salon I did, in the area I did with so much competition around me. But in my eyes there is no competition because I have made people/clients aware (and advertised) why they should be coming to us and not to the salon next door.
Some of my secrets to fast tracking success has been to be the first point of contact to every client, phone, walk-ins and client bookings. I don’t work on the floor (and never have as I knew this would hold me back in the present and of course in the future when trying to pass the clients away) even though I am a qualified Hairstylist. As the business owner, no one ever sells the business as well as you do. I pushed through the financial strain this caused (by me not working on the floor) and made it my job (that if I wasn’t going to be doing clients) I would be trying anything and everything to get people to walk through our door. My weekends are non-existent – through my own choice – I spend every waking moment on the internet searching and Googling anything and everything that may involve free advertising, promotions or YouTube videos on ways to advertise for free. Or ways to bring in more money that wouldn’t involve me spending money.
Every day I am presented with new challenges that sometimes make me want to run and hide under a log or fly away to another country, I mean I am a normal person. I suffer from stress and anxiety and am naturally quite shy. BUT when I think about my business and how much I want to succeed it all disappears and I just do what I need to do to service our clients and become the most reputable salon in Perth – and become wealthy in the meantime.
To date, my motivation to dowhat it takes has benefited me in so many ways. I would never wish my anxiety away as this is what drives me to do what I need to do! It gives me my enthusiasm and it gives me my driving force for life! So unless I hadn’t pushed through all my life struggles and fought to take my business to new heights, today I wouldn’t be riding my very own 800cc shiny black motorcycle and driving a beautiful Mercedes SLK 350 silver Convertible!”
Key points that I’ve highlighted with bold text:
“without having something to fall back on”; during World War One, British officers would often stand behind the Tommies as they lined up to go ‘over the top’ into the teeth of the German machine guns. The officers carried pistols. The Tommies knew if they refused to attack, they’d be shot by their own officers.
I’m not suggesting instant death as alternative to commitment in business. But it’s all too easy to say “I’ll have a crack at it, and if it doesn’t work I can always go back to sweeping floors…”
“I took to the front door andwelcomed each person as they walked past…”
A few weeks ago I visited one of my favorite restaurants, for the first time in several months. Much had changed. Once thriving, the place was pretty much empty. The owner, whom I knew, was slumped at the bar, drinking a coffee and looking disconsolate. “It’s lousy,” he told me. “Business has just fallen through the floor. Nobody’s coming in any more. I don’t know what to do.”
Well just for starters, he could have gotten off his lazy backside and did what Nicole does – rush out and sell to people walking past the front door. Show some enthusiasm, passion, excitement. Money won’t get excited about you until you get excited about you. Instead of standing inside your empty salon, staring open-mouthed at prospective customers as they walked by, when was the last time you went outside your comfort zone, actually opened the door and attempted to talk to them?
“…why they should be coming to us and not to the salon next door…”
Most businesses don’t bother giving valid, well thought-out reasons why their prospects should buy from them rather than the competition. ‘Reason why’ marketing is so little used, yet so powerful. What written, verbal and visual reasons do you actively give your prospects? Anything? At all?
“…be the first point of contact to every client, phone, walk-ins and client bookings…”
The business owner’s job is not cutting hair. It’s doing what Nicole does – being the PPRO: the Prime Public Relations Officer. There’s nothing fluffy and wasteful about meeting and greeting. These customers are and will remain customers of the salon, not customers of an individual stylist or therapist.
Think about that the next time you worry about a staff member leaving and taking clients with them.
“I suffer from stress and anxiety…”
There isn’t a champion athlete who doesn’t suffer nerves as he steps up to the starting blocks. Sir Lawrence Olivier was always anxious on the first night of a new play.
It can’t be any other way. A certain amount of anxiety is necessary. Every day, you’re going into battle. Nerves are what give you an edge. I’ve never met a successful person who sails through life without a care in the world. And let’s face it, everybody has anxieties. I used to be a highly paid TV producer, often going to work – for somebody else – with a knot in my stomach. If I’m going have a knot in my stomach, I’d rather have it generating anxiety, and productivity for my own business than someone else’s.
WSM member Bec Woodage started with nothing two years ago – and built her business by over 1000% with the tools and education she obtained as a Member
Investing in your salon business isn’t just about buying equipment, stocking with products and paying staff. If that’s all it took, any fool could make serious money in a salon or spa, instead of only 5% that do.
One of those 5% is Rebecca Woodage, the young owner of Perfection in Beauty in Sydney. When Bec joined Worldwide Salon Marketing, she’d just returned from an overseas holiday and purchased the salon she’d worked in for several years as a beauty therapist. All went well – until the salon burned down 6 weeks later.
Bec attended one of our seminars, but as she describes in this video below, was too afraid to sign up for the company’s marketing & mentoring program (and the Simple Salon Marketing manual) because “I just couldn’t afford it.”
But she bit the bullet a month later…within two years, her business had grown a massive 1000%. Her story is a classic case of investing in her business education, combined with persistence and dedicated implementation of her new-found knowledge.
Kerri Ryan’s Water Lily Day Spa in Clonmel, Co Tipperary has TRIPLED sales – including 717 new clients in the past three months alone
If you’re all too ready to blame ‘the economy’ for your salon or spa’s miserable sales, empty chairs, unused treatment rooms, this report with either
1) make you want to punch someone, or
2) inspire you and light a beacon of hope.
Ireland was once the ‘Tiger of Europe”. But, like Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece, the Irish economy is now on the ropes, saddled with debt they can’t repay, on the edge of bankruptcy.
Naturally, the Irish aren’t spending any money, largely because they don’t have any. Really??
That’s a surprise to Kerri Ann Ryan, owner of Water Lily Day Spa in Clonmel, Co Tipperary. Kerri joined the Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program in October, 2010. As she reports in this long email received this week, her sales and new client figures have gone through the roof.
“January until now, turnover has tripled already compared to last year’s figures.
Water Lily Day Spa – thriving in the heart of economically-ravaged Ireland
717 new clients in the last 3 months due to the ‘Queen of Referrals program and loyalty card system. (Tried Queen of Referrals last year and it didn’t work. I offered vouchers worth 75 euro to my regulars and I couldn’t understand why clients weren’t interested. I was so frustrated as I believed this was such an amazing offer. Anyway, changed the idea around – now I offer 100 points on their Loyalty Cards and business is booming with referrals. I know you said if it doesn’t work one way try it from another angle.)
Super Summer Offer (Hollywood Woman) Package: took in over 3000 euro in 1 week. Offer is available Mon, Tue & Wed only so it has filled up slack times, clients have upgraded their packages so my early week takings are sometimes better than the weekend now.
Printed 5000 flyers with same offer last week. (Luckily I got your CD set in the post and on it you reminded a guy that if something works, do it again until it stops working. He seemed shocked at the idea and it made me realise what a bloody idiot I was for thinking the same way) Believe it or not, I wasn’t actually going to do this offer again for another while as I wanted to keep it “special” and “limited”. As soon as the huge tax bill came in the door I got the finger out fairly lively!! I intend to do a weekly drop to different housing estates in the area. (So far 10 new bookings and 4 bought the package also.)
Off the tools finally. Still in Salon a lot, but now I finally have a chance to look around me and see what steps I need to be making for the future of the business. Also it is great to be able to give my clients my full attention and sort out any issues quickly.
I am expanding the salon as I mentioned, to keep up with demand. I have hired a Manager now to deal with the staff and running of salon while I focus on Marketing. I am in the processes of implementing Julies Toolkit.
(Julie Piantadosi’s Total Salon Solutions polices, procedures and staff management system. Not yet available to non-Inner Circle member salons)
To be honest I have done very little with the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit® so far. I haven’t even scratched the surface and I am thrilled with the results. The potential is HUGE! Half the battle is changing my mindset. When we first spoke last year you said to me that I should be aiming for March this year to be off the tools. Honestly, I thought ” I wish” but had at least a 100 reasons why it wouldn’t be possible. Originally I didn’t imagine myself being off the tools for another few years. Of course business is very hard in Ireland right now but if the customer service is right and you are implementing different ideas and offers at the same time, there is no reason for it not to work.
My goal is to get over to Australia next year to one of your Bootcamps. The facebook forums have been a godsend as they keep you motivated and add new ideas to the mix. I am delighted I joined WSM. I have come across a lot of other members and yourself also, who I now aspire to be like. Can’t wait to get all the Toolkit into motion and start planning a prosperous future.
Kind Regards,
Kerri Ann
Congratulations Kerri Ann. You’re an inspiration to all salon owners, and particularly your fellow Irish business owners.
Sharp-eyed Worldwide Salon Marketing member David Wood of Elan Men’s Hair in Brisbane is another who can thank his immersion in ‘our’ way of salon marketing for honing his B.S. Antenna to a state of high alert.
