by Greg Milner | Apr 7, 2011 | Selling Salon Products, The Right Mindset
Inner Circle member Jane Mason of Pure Day Spa in Caloundra was facing a double challenge: not only was her primary market tourists – her spa is in a hotel, with little or no walk-by traffic – but she’s in the heart of the area devastated by the Queensland floods this past January.
As Jane writes below, she had to take MASSIVE ACTION – and used some classic “Sales Thinking” to come up with a clever twist on the famous Queen of Referrals system in the Toolkit.
It worked brilliantly – and Jane has generously shared the marketing pieces she uses in this campaign with other Members.
“It is quite basic and the letter could most probably do with tweaking. I rolled this out to 4 of my top hotels, as at a recent meeting they all said they were struggling and to be honest so was I (and looking at closing the door).
MASSIVE ACTION was needed. My salon has a 30/70 split in favour of the tourist due to us being inside a hotel and very little walk past. Although not directly flooded, a lot of my regular holiday clients are from Brisbane, Grantham, Toowoomba and the Lockyer valley.
The way it works is simple, I send the hotels 60 vouchers to the value of $25, which they can do with as they wish… Staff incentives, booking incentives, hotel Guests and residents.
When they run out they call and I take them some more. I keep track of the vouchers and at the end of the month the winning hotel gets a $100 voucher. Some of the hotels have gone to town with it, putting posters in lifts etc, others are a bit more discreet.
We gave out 240 vouchers in March and got back 67 (the girls also tried to upsell on the pedi’s so that in actual fact we didn’t give anything away).
The average spend per service $122.75. We have found that even if they don’t use the voucher the seed has been planted and they call us first without looking around town at what’s on offer.
We also had an offer that was value added that they couldn’t use the voucher on which the girls upsold (some were better than others at doing this). We have found that hotels that didn’t have them were phoning me to get in on the act so in April we have rolled this out to another 8.”
Now that’s what we call smart marketing. And obviously, getting results.
67 new clients at an average spend of $122 = YOU do the maths!
of the entire system.
by Greg Milner | Nov 9, 2010 | Marketing Superstars, The Right Mindset, The Smell of Success
IC member Clare Cockell of The Reef in Kent, UK. Excitement breeds excitement…
Yet more evidence – if any were needed – that losers whine about the economy, while winners create their own economy.
Almost every UK salon owner who applies for Membership of the Inner Circle Premium program complains bitterly about how they ‘can’t afford it because the UK economy is so bad…’
Well, don’t tell Inner Circle Premium member (4 years) Clare Cockell that. Clare, who owns The Reef in Maidstone, Kent, is living proof that there really is truth in the old saying about ‘shaking the tree and seeing what falls out…’
Read Clare’s email from last week, and watch the video below…
Hi Greg,
I hope you’re well?
Just thought I’d let you know about my recent marketing responses. We’ve just had the ‘Winter Warmer’ and a BOGOF (Buy One Get One Free) early bird Christmas gift voucher day…
The Winter Warmer was sent out in an email to our database of 2500 clients (approximately 500 people opened the email), sent by post to our top 200 clients and put on our website – so far we have had 56 bookings and I’m sure there will be more as it’s available until the end of November. So far that is £2,184 that we wouldn’t have taken!
Quite a few of the bookings were also from new people, or current clients bringing friends who hadn’t visited before, and a couple even rebooked to have it again a week later! All in all very good and we will definitely repeat it next year! the team is also buzzing as it’s keeping them busy and giving them something new to do and focus on.
We advertised our buy one get one free Xmas voucher day in the local paper, again sent it to out top 200 clients, put a poster and balloons in the window, gave out approx 500 leaflets in town and sent out 2 emails to our database of clients (with approximately 500 people opening the first email, 394 opening the second with 170 people clicking through to our website to see what vouchers would be available).
On the day there was a great atmosphere! We sold approximately £9,000 worth of BOGOF vouchers online and in salon (I don’t know exact numbers as it only ended 17 hours ago and I haven’t added it all up to the exact amount yet).
We had some new customers bought vouchers, lots bought for people who have never been to us, a couple of people popped in for treatments from us being out leafleting, the salon was busy so more people stopped to look while passing or came in, and word of mouth was great (one guy came in and said I hear you’ve got buy on get one free vouchers today, I want to get some for my mums birthday in December, when he found out they weren’t valid until after Christmas he paid for 2 at full price!). Again the team loved helping organize and it kept everyone motivated and excited!
We’ve also noticed because of these two promotions that our general normal priced bookings have increased, obviously because we got people talking and our name out there again. If you want to look at the emails sent, let me know.
Thank you for the regular emails, for keeping me motivated and my mind ticking!
Have a great weekend (I know I will!)
Clare
Clare Cockell
Spa Manager
The Reef
22 Gabriels Hill
Maidstone
Kent ME15 6JG
www.thereefsalonandspa.com
%CODE1%
by Greg Milner | Oct 28, 2010 | Australia, Canada, New Zealand, The Right Mindset, UK, US
If you’ve ever felt down about your salon business, if you’ve reached the end of your tether, on the brink of failure, the bailiff knocking at the door, the bills piling up so high you can’t see over them….
You need to read this.
If you’re in up to your ears, like this WSM member, you’ll probably find it uncomfortable. I make no apology for that. Sometimes, I’m regarded as a bit of an ogre. I make no apology for that either.
“Woe is me…”
Last week, the following pathetic email arrived in my in-box, from a long-term Inner Circle member. I won’t identify her (I’m not that cruel) but she’ll recognize this story. In fact, she gave me permission to publish it. I’ve edited the letter for clarity.
“Hi Greg,
I am in dire straits. I owe the taxman money, suppliers, super, rent and many more.
I have even picked up a 2nd job to start helping me pay back debt.
I now work all day in the salon, get home at around 6pm or later make dinner for my little girl and then leave the house to get to my second job at 8.30pm to start at 9pm and finish at 2am, then get home sleep for about 2hours and then up again to start all over again, just going through the motion as a zombie.
I no longer see my 4 year old, have no zest for life due to being so exhausted day in day out. So I guess this email is a cry for help.
I want to have a successful business. I want to be a successful woman so I can have my daughter look up to me and say, ‘wow my mummy is such a successful person.’ Not to say ‘my mother lives day by day or even worse, has become ill from exhaustion.
I am even considering selling the business to try and cut the debt, but I have two young girls who work for me and depend on me, and I love my salon (even though its in need of a face-lift). I love being a member of the community. I love my work; it’s the only thing I can do well.
I even bought tickets to come to the (Salon Profit Secrets) seminar in Sydney, but my mother got ill and I was then unable to attend.
So I guess I am asking, what steps I should take in my marketing to become the business/role model woman I want to be.
Please, I am so dedicated to change my life. I just need you to be my light.
I have been a member of your (Inner Circle) program for around 2 years. The tool kit has sat on the shelf collecting dust, and I have forgotten about it.
Kind regards, Mary…”
After I regained my breath, and retrieved my dropped jaw from the floor, I wrote back to her. I could have written some molly-coddling crap, soothed her troubled brow and told her everything would be okay. But frankly, I was too bloody annoyed.
“Good grief.
You admit ‘the tool kit has sat on the shelf collecting dust, and I have forgotten about it‘….
What??? If all you did was get off your backside, take the thing off the shelf and USE IT, you wouldn’t be in the situation you are now in.
If you won’t take action to help yourself, with the tools you ALREADY HAVE, then what on earth do you expect us to do? Drag you kicking and screaming to the success trough? Show me you are prepared to do something, then do it, and then I’ll help.
Take the Toolkit down, start using it. Get onto the members site, start using what’s in there. But don’t just expect somebody to wave a magic wand and ‘fix everything’ for you, without you lifting a finger!”
Now, I fully expected this member to immediately collapse in a flood of tears, instantly resign her membership of the Inner Circle program and flounce off into a self-righteous cloud of failure, forever more blaming everyone and everything but herself.
But no. She thought about it for a couple of days, and wrote back thus:
“Hi Greg,
I want to thank you for your quick response back to my email, I know you are a very busy man.
All I can say is that you hit the nail on the head with your comments about me.
I have spent the last couple of days reading the emails WSM has sent and using the members site and taking marketing ideas from the site and other salon owners.
Your email back has made me think of my past actions and also I took a step back and thought ‘what can I lose if I work the program, seeing you have made many people successful (they have also wanted it too).
So I have turned a new leaf so to speak. I have designed up a newsletter to send out to my guests with my ideas, and also ideas I got from the Members Only site.
Your response was truthful, which made the tears flow. I am now taking control of my life, business and family, and so want very hard to succeed to be a role model in the industry and for my daughter.
And I have not only taken the Toolkit off the shelf and dusted it down, I’ve opened it and used templates for future marketing.
Fingers crossed for me, and hopefully I will be one of your guest speakers one day, that came out of financial despair to running a chain of salons. I thank you again….”
It could have gone either way. Mary could have just as easily rolled over and curled up in a corner, hoping the world would go away. It took bravery to do what she did.
Too many business owners go under because they fail to take control, and therefore responsibility. The two are inextricably linked.
To quote Dan Kennedy, ‘being broke is just a temporary circumstance. Being poor is a state of mind’.
Are you a poor salon owner, or merely broke? If you’re poor, there’s not much I or anybody else can do for you. If you’re merely broke – like Mary – then you know what to do. Get off your butt, and take action.
And one day, soon, I expect we’ll hear more from Mary. She’ll be on this website, proudly telling the story of how she dragged herself from the depths of depression, resignation, despair….to success. I’ll be the first to applaud.
by Greg Milner | Sep 28, 2010 | Australia, The Right Mindset, The Smell of Success
Inner Circle member Amy Mitchell with baby Macy – a sudden rush of new clients thanks to ‘niche’ marketing
Old marketing saying: “There are riches in niches.”
Too many business owners try to be all things to all people, and end up in the to-be-avoided ‘middle ground’, effectively becoming nothing to nobody. What you really want to do is focus on a small target market that’s an inch wide and a mile deep, like Inner Circle member Amy Mitchell (1 year member).
Amy owns a business focusing on massage. Read on to see how business took off when she took my advice and focused on a small, well-defined niche market; mothers-to-be.
Inner Circle member Amy Mitchell ‘gets’ it – and is reaping the benefits.
“I’m just really excited and wanted to share some positive feedback with you in regards to the system. When I signed up I definitely was umming and ahhhhing about the system because I was only doing just straight massage. I have been a member for about 8 or 9 months now and have tried to do what I can to use the system to value add where I can and it has brought some success- nothing sensational- UNTIL NOW!
When I FIRST spoke to you, you suggested going hard in the pregnancy market. So I did.
I’ve opened my doors two weeks ago with Australia’s first pregnancy day spa. I’m nearly falling over because I popped a crappy A-Frame sign out the front with a cheap laminated sign I can use a white board marker on to change daily which cost me a total of $80- popped on a teaser variation of the Hollywood Woman Package and I have just sold $1000 of vouchers in last few hours alone. That’s 10 new clients within a matter of hours….. HOLY MOTHER OF GOD!!!
I also tried the Buy 1 Get 1 Free Gift Voucher Offer which produced a minimum of 55 new clients and just over $12,000 income that I otherwise would not have received upfront. Definitely helpful in beginning stages of business.
I am so happy now because I can fully utilise the system now and value add the hell out of everything.
I’ve got another coaching call with Annette which is great because honestly my marketing effort prior to open day was piss poor (due to seriously tight time restraints) but I’m hoping I can with Annette’s help create a huge buzz for an Open Day or something similar.
Anyway- thank you for what I’ve had in the last 9 months which has been good… but now THANK YOU for what I can use now which is nothing short of GREAT!!!!
Amy Mitchell, Panache Massage
PS: Just thought I’d let you know- another 24 hour period in which I spent two hours doing a couple of marketing activities and another $6500 to the bank account. I haven’t even scratched the surface yet, and it’s paying big time… so excited I can’t sleep.
Check out Amy’s website here: http://www.pregnancydayspa.com.au/
by Greg Milner | Jun 11, 2010 | Australia, The Right Mindset
When you’re standing around at a barbecue and somebody asks ‘what do you do?’, what do you instantly say?
Most salon owners will automatically reply
‘oh, I’m a hair stylist,’ or ‘I’m a beauty therapist/cosmetologist/nail technician’, blah blah blah.
And if that’s how you think, then that’s about the highest level you’ll ever reach. A mere technician.
Inner Circle member Sean Hayes (two years membership) is one who thinks the opposite. In a previous life, Sean was a carpenter – and no doubt that’s exactly how he responded when he got asked ‘the barbecue question’.
Not any more. Twelve months ago, Sean quit his carpentry job and threw himself into the real job of a business owner – as marketer of his wife Yvette’s Access to Beauty salon in Coogee, New South Wales.
Sean emailed me today, and you can tell from the words on the page he’s grinning from ear to ear:
Hi Greg,
Sean here from Access to Beauty, you may remember me writing to you a while ago after jacking in my job as a carpenter and becoming a full time marketer of Access to Beauty?
Well a full year has passed since that life changing event and I have just being looking over the numbers and they’re pretty fecking good!!
For the year May 2008 till April 2009 the salon did $ 301,951
Then for this last year (that Yvette went back into the salon and I concentrated on the marketing) May 2009 till Apr 2010 the salon did $425,560.
To say we were shocked is a understatement!
So you don’t have to work it out it’s $123,609 or about 41% improvement.
But the best gain has been the month of May 2010; May 2008 was $23,471, May 2009 was $34,177 and May 2010 was $46,037.
So it took us a little bit longer to double (nearly) our income for the month ( as you say you expect us to do) but for the fact it has rained almost all of May we would have got there.
So I just wanted to share with you guys our good news and again a big rap for you and all your team.
The saying “when the pupil is ready the teacher will appear “ sounds appropriate. Bring on the next 12 months! Keep up the good work.
Sean
PS Yvette and I have just come back from Beautyworld Expo in Dubai and they could do with some of your type of marketing over there!
by Greg Milner | May 26, 2010 | Selling Salon Products, The Right Mindset
How much money’s slipping through YOUR fingers?
The Sales Prevention Department’s alive and well in my part of the world, and I’ll bet my mother it is in yours, too. The world seems to be lurching from one financial crisis to another – first the GFC, now Europe on the brink thanks to massive debts – and yet so much of it could be solved if only sales people did nothing more than their job; to take the money people are begging you to stuff into your cash registers.
You don’t have to smart to be successful in sales. Just SHOWING UP is usually enough.
But most can’t even get out of their own way. I’ve been shopping for a new car, but if my experience is typical – and I fear it is – then it’s a mystery to me how car dealers, and the salesmen they employ, manage to feed their kids. And this is by no means restricted to the car industry.
Hint: how much money is slipping through your own Sales Prevention Department?
Example #1: Six months ago I decided on one of those up-market, outrageously-expensive European models. Phoned a nearby dealer, arranged to meet a salesman at the showroom, sat down with some kid in his twenties, ticked all the options I wanted, roughly added up the bill to somewhere on the nasty side of $120,000, suggested he might want to sharpen his pencil for a quick sale, and told him to send me a final figure. He had both my email address and my phone number.
I never heard from him again. Maybe he got snatched by aliens. Or his dog, fed up with not being fed, ate him. I have no earthly idea, but it’s the sort of nightmare that should be keeping his boss awake all night, staring at the ceiling.
Example #2: Bemused and somewhat perplexed by this, I simply refused to follow him up and try convincing him to take my money. I left it a few months – still nothing – so last week I started shopping again. This time a different dealer for a different make. Found one I liked, and with the young salesman in the passenger’s seat, took the thing for a test drive.
Back at the showroom, I told him I wasn’t going to commit to a new car for the next two or three years without spending at least a couple of days with the vehicle first, so he promised to get back to me about loaning me the car over the following weekend. That was last Saturday. Today is Wednesday. Still haven’t heard from him.
Example #3: Unwilling to waste any more time dealing direct with yet another Sales Prevention Department face to face, I instead went shopping online. On the most popular car website, I find two or three examples of the car I’m looking for, all at different dealerships across the country. (And by now I’d switched preferred models. I figured if the previous idiot’s sales skills were so lacking, his dealership’s service levels would be similarly inefficient)
I complete the online forms to make an inquiry, and hit the submit button. Four days later, not one of those dealers has bothered to respond.
Now, it’s not as if I’m buying a built-to-price, poverty-pack Korean tin can. I’m spending north of $100,000. And they don’t want my business???
Laughably, the website every dealer in the country uses to sell their cars clearly doesn’t trust the dealers either. It’s just sent me an automatic email, inquiring as to whether I’ve been contacted, and asking if I’d like them to give the dealers a gentle nudge. I presume something like “Gee, some jerk is trying to buy a car from you, wondering if you’d lower yourself to actually give him a call sometime.”
I don’t think so. Let them drown in their own sloth.
Here’s what’s instructive for all salon owners:
Think this kind of sabotage isn’t happening in your business? Do so at your peril, ‘cos it is. It happens in every business. Be paranoid. Paranoia is good. Every single time your phone rings, it’s ‘cos you’ve spent money making it ring. And every time that prospect falls through a canyon-size crack, it’s money wasted. Sales begging, not made. Profit left sitting on the table.
Be paranoid enough to mystery-shop your own business. The results can be terrifying. That’s why most business owners don’t. Just last week, one of our recently-joined Inner Circle member salons asked us to do it for them. Senior IC coach Annette Gomez booked herself in for a two-hour session. The salon owner thought his business was doing ‘okay’, but when he read Annette’s report, detailing at least twenty glaring, obvious-to-any-customer ‘service failures’, he just about had heart failure. But to his credit, he got stuck into fixing them.
But at least he had the courage to get it done in the first place. Most salon owners – in fact most owners of most businesses – have a head-in-the-sand attitude when it comes to this kind of detail. Folks, this stuff IS marketing.
I advocate ruthlessness. Many a time I’ve had a salon or spa owner on the phone, complaining to me that a staff member “….won’t do what I want her to do/say…” – and my instant and repeated advice is; fire them. Now.
The danger of effective marketing is success….getting more and more customers, who quickly find out you’re no good.
Inner Circle member Jane Mason of Pure Day Spa in Caloundra was facing a double challenge: not only was her primary market tourists – her spa is in a hotel, with little or no walk-by traffic – but she’s in the heart of the area devastated by the Queensland floods this past January.
