by Greg Milner | Sep 12, 2013 | The Right Mindset, The Smell of Success
A salon owner wrote to me a few weeks ago, bemoaning the fact that “I’ve run out of salon marketing ideas. Everybody’s doing package deals now, value-added offers and so on. It’s frustrating, if we all do it, there’s nothing to help the customers differentiate between us any more….”
That kind of thinking betrays a dangerously narrow view of what marketing is, and what makes a business successful.
Yep, everybody’s doing special deals. The daily deal sites, bless their black and bleeding hearts, have made an entire industry out of it. And it’s bitten a lot of businesses on the backside.
But to concentrate all your marketing focus on the next package deal, the next offer, and ignore everything else in your message is akin to expecting a perfectly baked cake when the only ingredient you’ve used is sugar.
Apple’s new iPhone – will it maintain the company’s cult status?
Let’s be clear; your offer is only the tip of your marketing iceberg. All the other ‘below the surface’ stuff is what holds it up in clear view, above the waterline. Imagine if all Apple did was build mobile phones and offered a ‘buy one, get one free’ deal. Sure, they’d sell a bunch of cheap mobile phones. Until somebody else came along with a better offer, a cheaper deal. It’s shallow, creating little more impact that a stone skipping across the surface of a lake. The ripples fan out, and just as quickly die off.
No, what Apple has done for decades is build a cult, it’s nurtured a culture, created a massive below-the-surface support structure that turns mere customers into raving, evangelical fans. The most fanatical, tub-thumping born-again Christian ought fear for his life if he gets between a gospel-preaching Apple fan and a new MacBook Air. It’s Apple’s culture, its below-the-surface iceberg, that’s allowed it to enjoy the fattest profit margins in the business. Apple charges more than any other company producing similar products. It never discounts.
(But even Apple isn’t infallible – the launch of the latest iPhone has hardly set the world on fire. Evidence that without the theatrical inspiration of it’s spiritual leader, any company can slide down to ordinary.)
So, let’s roll up our sleeves and examine for a moment what your iceberg might look like below the waterline. And there has to be a LOT of it, otherwise the tip of the ‘berg will sink.
First, what stories do you tell your clients, customers and prospects about you, about your salon, about your beliefs, successes, failures, achievements? People want to do business with real, flesh-and-blood people, not faceless entities. In your client newsletters, in your website and social media posts, do you tell stories about yourself, your family, your kids, your dog? Do you present a human face, or do you retreat self-consciously behind the front window of a pretty, stylish website and a salon facade that holds customers back behind a wall of ‘professionalism’?
Do you invite your customers into your life, or do you hold them at arm’s length?
Second, what is it about you and what you do/say/deliver that is unique, that cannot be found at a competing salon, that cannot be ignored, that is compelling, magnetic, attractive…or are you just another ‘me-too’ business, doing/saying/delivering pretty much the same as everybody else? What’s your Unique Selling Proposition (or propositions plural)?
Third, what kind of customers do you want, and what do you do to attract them? Are you trying to be all things to all people (and therefore nothing special to anybody in particular) or do you deliberately and carefully filter out the kind of people you don’t want, and only let in the kind of people you do want?
On my local TV news last night, a perfect example – a gym that deliberately makes it difficult to join. They have a long waiting list. If you don’t jump through all of their hoops, you don’t get in.
[cf]Gym[/cf]
Fourth, what interests do most of your customers have in common? Are they from a recognizable niche? Smart business owners will forensically examine their list of clients, collecting as much useful data about them as is possible to do. And then identify key factors which might give them a clue as to why certain types of people are attracted to the business – vital information that gives the business owner the ammunition to go after more of those types of people.
It’s niche marketing at its most basic.
Fifth, what intellectual capital do you have that you aren’t using? Qualifications, awards, photos of you with ‘celebrities’ (or, people who are well-known within perhaps a very narrow circle of people/professions/groups).
Trying to build a viable, profitable, in-demand business based only on the ‘tip of the iceberg’ special offers and package deals is going to give you a shallow result at best, a grass castle easily blown away by the lightest puff of breeze from a rival salon.
Spend time and energy on the basic foundations. When you do that, you won’t need special offers. People will queue up. And pay top dollar.
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[cf]cheatsheet[/cf]
by Greg Milner | Aug 27, 2013 | Blog, Motivating Salon Staff, The Right Mindset, The Smell of Success
There’s an old joke my brother tells quite often, because a) it’s at his wife’s expense, and b) it’s not completely untrue.
You see, his wife’s credit card was stolen a few years ago. He didn’t report it for a month because the thief’s rate of spending was less than hers. Ha ha, get it?
But the point of the story is we love buying things. We love to buy. And yet, for some strange reason, we hate to sell. To be seen as a ‘salesperson’. This has always bemused me, since without salespeople, copywriters, marketers, not a single transaction would ever occur. Nobody would buy anything. So, no income would be generated, no taxes paid, therefore no roads built, hospitals staffed, teachers hired. In effect, the world would stop turning.
We love to buy things. Love it. So why do we hate to sell?
This line of thought was prompted by a heartfelt post from a beauty therapist in an online forum. Obviously articulate, intelligent and passionate about her work, she was nonetheless feeling a bit down-in-the-mouth about the ‘pressure to sell’ from her employer. She was worried she would ‘freak her clients out’ if she tried to sell to them every time they came in.
She’s hardly alone. The common cry among so many in the hair & beauty industry is “I’m not a salesperson…I’m a stylist/therapist!”
Given that, it might be helpful to look at ‘selling’ in a different light. The business of a salon or spa IS selling. A salon is, before anything else, a marketing & sales business. And, in every small business (not just salons), the process of selling is inextricably linked to having a job.
But selling needn’t necessarily be seen as a distasteful chore. At many of our seminars over the years, veteran hair & beauty industry guru John Lees would teach that
“Our knowledge is ours to give, not ours to keep.”
John is right. Selling is the process of informing and educating clients so that you become the ‘trusted, knowledgeable expert’ they instinctively turn to for the solution to their fears, anxieties and insecurities. Once you get over your own anxiety about pitching to your clients, and start to see yourself as being the trusted expert, the selling becomes second nature, like unconsciously changing gears in a car. You don’t even notice you’re doing it.
There’s another common mistake made by those who look down on selling, and that’s pre-judging – by applying your own ‘cringe filter’, deciding on your client’s behalf whether she can afford to buy, or wants to buy what you’re selling. And in many cases, deciding in the negative.
A couple of years ago I conducted a little experiment. I dressed in dirty overalls, scuffed shoes and a battered hat pulled down over my eyes, and walked into a local prestige car dealership. For fully 15 minutes I wandered around looking at the shiny new cars, completely untroubled by even one of the half dozen sharply dressed salesmen standing around drinking coffee and looking down their noses at me.
I left, and returned half an hour later in pressed trousers, blue blazer, white shirt and polished brown shoes. I barely got in the door before two of these guys were fawning over me.
They couldn’t do enough for me, took me for a test drive, made me coffee, buried me in glossy brochures.
I thanked them, drove to a rival dealership, and bought exactly the same car that morning.
Unjustly, selling has a bad name, made worse by salespeople who either regard it as beneath them, or decide for themselves who can and cannot afford to buy. People love to buy. Let’s not make it hard for them, or play god and decide how people should spend their money. If you fail to educate, fail to inform, fail to offer, it’s a dereliction of duty to both the business, and the client.
“Never enough is sold because never enough is told. Selling is telling – the better you tell a story, the better you sell anything.”
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Buy it here for just $US97 with credit card or Paypal!
by Greg Milner | Jul 16, 2013 | Advertising Tips, Featured, The Smell of Success
A facial with snail slime? It’s generated a fortune in free publicity for one Tokyo salon
I’ve been nagging salons and spas for years; “Find a Niche – or die.” If you continue to try to be all things to all people, you’ll never be anything of much value to anybody. Two examples of exactly that kind of ‘niche thinking’ leaped out at me from my newspaper this morning.
The first, from Japan, where one salon in central Tokyo has generated itself literally millions of dollars worth of publicity worldwide after a UK TV reporter tried out a new facial treatment – snail slime!
[cf]Snails[/cf]
As part of the salon’s “Celebrity Escargot Course” customers will get five minutes of snail therapy, along with massage and other facial treatments. The snails alone cost $106 – no doubt because they’re ‘organic’, surely a word that’s been re-invented as synonym for ‘expensive’.
The second example of clever niche salon marketing is from my own home town. Barber shops have been struggling for years against the rising tide of ‘unisex’ salons, but they’re fighting back – with the old-fashioned cut-throat razor.
As you’ll see from the article below (click to enlarge), these barber shops are – perhaps unwittingly, but fortunately – cashing in on the nostalgia market; a growing hankering for old-fashioned values, old-fashioned smells, ‘old’ technology – almost a revolt against the overwhelming glitz and bling of technology, speed, celebrity obsession and shiny new things.
So why am I telling you this? Hopefully, to get you thinking, planning, scheming, conniving, working to develop, exploit and cash in on your own niche, your own specialist area, your own small but lucrative area of expertise that can’t be found anywhere else, that can’t be commoditized.
One that can’t be compared on price alone with the me-too services offered by a dozen other salons within walking distance of your own.
NOTE: Niche products and niche marketing is the subject of an entire seminar session we’ll be conducting for Worldwide Salon Marketing member salons in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane later this year.
Worldwide Salon Marketing is THE place salon owners come to for expert advice, tools, strategies and done-for-you systems online and offline that make marketing your salon easy.
When you join WSM, you’re becoming a Member of the world’s most exclusive group of entrepreneurial salon & spa owners.
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by Greg Milner | Jul 8, 2013 | Blog, Featured, Latest News, The Smell of Success
The Sales Prevention Department is one of my favourite departments in any business.
All businesses have one, some more finely tuned than others. A stand-out in my neck of the woods is a local premium car dealer. Not once, but twice has this dealer missed out on a lucrative sale because their SPD did such an extraordinary job.
Most recently, Michelle and I decided to trade her Audi TT two-seater roadster for something a little more practical, if not quite so much fun. Her elderly parents have been finding it increasingly difficult to lower themselves into the convertible (and she can only carry one of them at a time) and besides, there’s nowhere for her very hairy dog, except the passenger seat.
So we trundled down to the local Audi dealer the other day to see what was on offer. After the obligatory tour of the showroom’s bright-shiny new models, the sales manager instructed his rookie young salesman to call me during the week and arrange a trade-in valuation on the roadster. He duly wrote down my number and promised to call me on Wednesday.
With thanks to the Audi dealer’s Sales Prevention Department, Michelle ends up with a VW Polo isntead
And then…and then…nothing happened. This did not really surprise me. Three years ago I’d visited this same dealer, ticked a bunch of option boxes on a new Audi Q5 SUV, asked the salesman to add it all up and give me a call, and went home. I never heard from him again. Four days later, I bought a new Range Rover Sport instead.
This time, I waited more than a week. I refused to call him and do his job for him. I’m a stubborn guy, but eventually his disdain for my money wore me down. I gave up waiting, drove down to a neighbouring yard where they sell Audi’s sister cars, VW, and bought a new Polo GTI there and then.
Now, you don’t sell expensive cars. You sell hair & beauty services, of one kind or another. But I bet you have a well-tuned SPD too. Answer the following questions with a Yes or a No.
- When a first-time walk-in or phone caller inquires about an appointment, prices, services or anything else, do you
a) have a process in place to obtain her name and contact details on the spot, in exchange for a small gift voucher to use on her first booking? Or…
b) do you simply let them walk out of your shop with a wave and a smile, never to be seen again?
- Assuming you don’t have a full-time receptionist, and have to let some calls go through to your answering machine, do you
a) Check the answering machine at frequent intervals during the day, and return sales inquiries instantly, or
b) check the machine at the end of the day, and make a mental to note to get back to them tomorrow…or maybe the day after…or next week…?
- When you place an ad, distribute a mailbox flyer, email an offer or post a special promotion on your Facebook page/website, do you
a) divert your salon phone to a mobile to make sure that prospects reading your offer after business hours can actually call and buy your offer right away, or
b) not bother, assuming they’ll leave a message on the answering machine that you or your staff check sometimes…if you/they remember?
If you answered ‘b’ to any of these questions, congratulations – your Sales Prevention Department is in good shape. But it can always be fine-tuned further. For example,
- When a client is at reception paying their bill, do you
a) ask her an open question such as “Now Mary, just looking ahead four weeks, we have a spot available on Tuesday the 14th at 10am or Thursday the 16th at 3pm, which of those two would suit your best?” Or do you
b) Simply ask a lazy “Would you like to re-book?” – to which there is only a yes or no answer, and of course 90% of people will say ‘no, but thanks.’
- You’ve spent hours, days, weeks preparing your special offer, you’ve spent more time and money printing, buying newspaper space, do you
a) spend an equal amount of time training the staff on exactly how to respond to the phone calls generated from the marketing campaign, right down to the exact words to say to upsell to a higher-value package. Or do you
b) run the ad or distribute the flyer, having neglected to actually tell the staff you’re doing it.
Again, if you answered ‘b’ to those as well, your Sales Prevention Department is working a treat. After all, business is so much easier when you don’t have all those pesky customers, nagging you to take their money.
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by Greg Milner | May 30, 2013 | Featured, Latest News, The Right Mindset, The Smell of Success
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.
by Greg Milner | Apr 10, 2013 | Featured, Marketing Superstars, The Smell of Success
Marnie Kallmeyer – WSM member 5 years – owner of Evoque Salon in Perth. “I bought a Jeep!”
Five years ago, Marnie Kallmeyer was broke. Her Perth beauty salon was struggling week to week, she’d lost her house, she was on the verge of nervous breakdown.
So I couldn’t help but smile this week when Marnie turned up at my office in her brand new $60,000 Jeep SUV. She’d picked it up that morning from the dealer. “I wanted to show you that you were right,” she said. “I can’t thank you enough for everything Worldwide Salon Marketing has taught me about marketing & the salon business.”
(And for those salon owners who watch this and think ‘she must be working 80 hours a week’, take note: two months ago, Marnie broke her hand, putting her completely out of work. In the next two months, her salon’s turnover & profit hit new record highs!)
[cf]Marnie[/cf]
If you own a salon or spa and you’re struggling, fed up with not making enough money for yourself, then isn’t it time you took action?
Click here to find out how you can join Marnie and hundreds of other salon owners as Members of Worldwide Salon Marketing
