Info Salon Marketing Superstars – Inner Circle member of the week: Dr Usha Venkataraman
There are good reasons we created the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit™ and the Inner Circle marketing and mentoring program for beauty and hair salons, rather than for lawyers, or…doctors, for example.
Lawyers and doctors – as anybody who’s ever dealt with them will confirm – already know everything. Just ask them. So I was never going to beat my head against a brick wall trying to teach a doctor or a lawyer about marketing.
Dr Usha Venkataraman of Aesthetic Image & Laser Centre in Melbourne – sales more than doubled in two weeks after joining the Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program in June 2009.
But occasionally one of them slips under our guard and finds their way into the Inner Circle program, like Dr Usha Venkataraman and her colleague Soraya Pricop did at a Road to Riches seminar in Melbourne just over a month ago.
Luckily for these two, they weren’t like most doctors. For years their combined medical/cosmetic clinic had struggled, despite them ‘trying everything’.
So Dr Usha joined the Inner Circle group and took her Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit home that day. And unlike many, they took action right away.
Soraya takes up the story:
“In the two weeks leading up to the seminar, my side of the practice (cosmetic) took just $2,500. After the seminar, I read through everything in the kit, listened to the tutorial CDs, took notes during my first coaching call… basically just followed the system.
“In my next 6 days at work, spread over two weeks, my takings jumped to $7,500! Dr Usha had a similar dramatic increase in takings. In a typical 5 hour session (before joining the program) she would take $2,000, maybe $3,000 at the most. But we just did some figures…in a recent 5 hour session, her side of the practice took…$8,000…!”
“It is quite amazing that we had struggled along barely making money for years, and suddenly, just a little bit of education and the right tools, and it’s made a remarkable difference…”
Note to all Doctors: yes, your business is different, yes you’re all very clever and yes, obviously you already know everything. It’d be just too awful to spend all those years in expensive medical school and not know everything.
Hair Salon Marketing Tips: When your competition copies you…
Do you find it annoying when a competing salon sees how successful you are, and simply copies your advertising for themselves?
Yep, there it is, virtually a direct copy of the ad you ran only last week.
Well, get over it. Pay it no more attention. In fact, you should be celebrating it. Because what they’re seeing (and copying) is only the tip of the iceberg of your success.
What they cannot see, and therefore cannot copy, is all that bulk below the waterline – the systems that turn that great marketing into solid sales behind the counter.
I know this because it happens to us all the time.
Just this week, one of our operatives in England emailed me a link to the website of yet another salon marketing wannabe who’s seen how Worldwide Salon Marketing has grown from a spare-room start-up into a multi-million dollar business – and wants ‘in’ on the action.
Yet another one – if you search the web long enough you’ll find more and more of these sites popping up, purporting to offer salon owners ‘the’ answers to all things marketing.
Apart from a website, few have any more depth to them.
This new player – he’s by no means the first, and won’t be the last – has even gone so far as to blatantly copy our product names, e.g., he’s promoting his own ‘Inner Circle’ program, he’s offering his own ‘7-Step Mini Marketing Course’, and more carbon copies of the systems and marketing collateral we’ve developed over the last 5 years.
Our ‘spy’ was worried about our new ‘competition’. Frankly, I couldn’t care less. Because I know that 99% of all start-up business owners fail to do the things which create depth, structure and longevity for their business. In other words, they do no more than enough to skim the surface for short-term cash, and don’t invest in resources to create a long-term business.
The bigger we get (400 current member salons, growing by 30-40 per month) the more we invest in strengthening the foundations.
Here at head office, there are ten staff engaged in coaching members, providing member services, marketing, internet support, accounts and product development. In New Zealand and America, we have franchisees devoted to supporting our Members in those countries, and soon, similar operations in the UK.
Over the years we’ve invested millions on establishing systems for database management, offline and online marketing, seminar events, product packaging, product delivery, intellectual property development, member services, and office management.
Nail Salon Marketing Plan: when customers leave you, it isn’t ALWAYS bad news…
Last week we lost two of our long term Inner Circle members…and I couldn’t have been happier to hear from them.
No matter how good your business, no matter how much value you give, all businesses will lose customers from time to time, for all sorts of reasons. And the manner of that departure is a critical indicator of both the health of your business, and its future prospects.
Nothing gives us more delight here at Worldwide Salon Marketing as hearing that we have been instrumental in getting our Members into a position where they can sell their now-profitable businesses – instead of merely closing the doors and walking away, as so many are forced to do.
From Angeline and Andrew Griggs of Nails and Beauty with Attitude in Cairns, far north Queensland, a lovely letter to thank us for helping them realise their dream of business success:
“Andrew and I would just like to extend a warm North Queensland ‘Thank You’ for all your help and support over the last few years that we have been with you. It’s the end of an era for ‘Nails and Beauty with Attitude’, we have sold after 18 years and are looking forward to new adventures.
“We say goodbye for now and thank you for truly giving us the freedom to now do what we want to do. With many thoughts of gratefulness, from our family to yours, Andrew and Angeline Griggs.”
And from Maria Walsh, of Scentual Beauty Therapy in New South Wales, a beautifully-written letter describing her sorrow at having to leave the group for personal reasons, after taking her one-woman salon from a meagre $600 a week takings to more than $2,500 a week in less than a year…and still operating as a one-woman salon!
I have, with Maria’s permission, made her letter available here so you can read it in full (click on the pictures at left to enlarge them in a new window), but to paraphrase, “I learnt so much and you have given me a strength and boldness I never knew I had. In the beginning, I challenged the way some advertisements were worded (being a shy person!) but the response has been ‘That didn’t sound like you Maria but I would love to book this package because it sounds like just what I need!’ “
Of course, we also get a LOT of mail from Members thrilled to share their new-found success…and who wouldn’t leave the Inner Circle program for any reason.
“…We are doing fantastic. 18 months on we have approx 1800 clients – growing by 15-20% per month. I joined the inner circle program in Oct 08 knowing I needed more information and inspiration and since then I haven’t looked back. My hair and beauty salon has grown consistently thanks to the marketing, my clients nag me about what promos are coming up and they are starting to pre pay just to make sure they don’t miss out.
Gail Smith of Charmed Hair & Beauty – growing by 20% per month thanks to Inner Circle membership
“My salon target for the next financial year is over $500,000 and I am confident we will make it.
“When I first started using your type of marketing I had quite a few disappointments and failures and I will be the first to admit I fell on the old blame game – this just won’t work for my salon – its obviously just a bad idea, etc and one thing I learned is, that no matter what piece of marketing we’re given it can work, if you use it at the right time, to the right clients with value added offers that other salons would look at and say ‘no way am I giving that much away’.
“So I thank you, Greg and your wonderful team (had some great conversations with Jill and Jemma, too) you have helped me grow so much and I know I have still heaps more to learn – and share.”
IF YOU ARE NOT YET A MEMBER: If you do not yet have the done-for-you marketing tools, strategies, support, mentoring and continually-updated material that these and hundreds of other Members have used and are using to make their businesses successful, you are fighting your battle blindfolded with one arm tied behind your back.
Beauty Salon Marketing Strategy: We get (lots of) mail…
Does ‘our’ kind of marketing work?
Just a couple of the many emails we receive each week from IC members all over the world…these from New Zealand members to our NZ franchisee Chris and Rachael D’Aguiar-Sanders:
From Lorraine Burke, of Loaf in Christchurch:
Just listened to your recent CD no 28 which has fired me up ……..and also jogged my mind to write and tell you how wonderful your help and support has been for me over the last few weeks………It’s so nice to know you’re not on your own and support and encouragement at the end of a phone……….so thank you so much for that.Loaf has been up and running now for 5 weeks in which although I have been chasing my tail….. I have managed to start my marketing…I just want to say how thrilled I am at the response.
If one ad can do so much in 2 weeks what will all the other marketing systems bring? I placed the autumn makeover ad in one of the local newspapers, I have just done a tally and have reached 22 new clients………wow……. Out of them, 15 have rebooked….will get onto the ‘how to rebook’ section soon with my staff so we can make that at least 99%!!!!
So just doing the sums that’s
an extra $2178.00 that we wouldn’t have had ……(as well as the hidden advertising by people talking)… so over a year that’s worth $24,640.00 per year and that’s without retail recommendations to our clients. So thanks again Rachael, I’m looking forward to our next coaching call and all the support you will be giving me over the following months…I hope one day I can return the favour and do something for you.”
“We decided to take on someone to help us with the clinic as we have tried many things our way with very little success!
After looking around we decided to take on the Worldwide Salon Marketing team and thank god we did! It has been a great help to us to see where we were making the mistakes and to see immediate results!!!
Chris and Rachael have been there whenever we have needed help, which when you are trying to get things moving in the right direction GOOD help is what you need.
We totally recommend the system at Worldwide Salon Marketing and certainly have no regrets.”
Salon Marketing Tips: “I took an extra $9,500 in the next 72 hours!”
Yes, the tortoise WILL get there…eventually. But you don’t have to do it at a crawl.
Being part of the Inner Circle program and using the tools and strategies in the Toolkit is NOT a ‘get rich quick’ scheme. It does take work.
But there’s nothing inherently good about ‘getting rich slow’ either.
It’s always a mystery to me how it is that despite having exactly the same tools and support, the speed at which some Members implement those tools and strategies – and therefore the speed at which they reap the rewards – varies so greatly. Some leave the Toolkit sitting on their shelf, or tucked away under the reception desk, for months before actually bringing it out and using it. (One member recently told me that it was a full year before she actually got off her backside and put the ads, flyers and letters to work…lo and behond, in the next 12 months she increased her salon’s takings by a full $109,000 over the previous 12 months!)
But others do it at warp speed. Just last week, salon owner Lidija Siskopoulos of Enigma for Hair (right here in my home town) was so excited about getting into the Inner Circle program she refused to wait till the courier delivered her Toolkit, she jumped in her car and drove to our office to collect it herself.
This week she told me
“I took an extra $9,500 in the next 72 hours!”
Lidija is clearly one who understands that success is about Massive Action.
In other words, that massive action paid for Lidija’s entire first year Membership of the Inner Circle program in a single swoop.Now, to dismiss Lidija’s story as a flash-in-the-pan, as something out of the ordinary and quite unachievable for the average salon owner is akin to insisting that the earth is flat, and that she must somehow have gotten ‘lucky’. Success is all about taking action… not just in one area, doing ONE thing, sending out a single flyer or placing a single ad, but doing many things, all at once, rapidly. And luck has nothing to do with it. It’s simply planning meets opportunity.
As you’ll see and hear in this video, recorded at our recent Inner Circle Members Only Closed Door Mastermind session after our Road to Riches seminar in Sydney last week, those salon & spa owners who combine action with the right tools (eg the Toolkit) get a disproportionately-large result compared with merely putting the same amount of effort into just ‘doing the thing’ eg cutting more hair or applying more facials.
who’s seen how Worldwide Salon Marketing has grown from a spare-room start-up into a multi-million dollar business – and wants ‘in’ on the action. 
