by Greg Milner | Nov 16, 2010 | New Zealand
Fresh back from a week in the sunny Gold Coast in Australia, there was no better way to return than to find the email below from Inner Circle Member, Bedelia Shepherd of Nelson Beauty Therapy.
Bedelia joined the program and got her copy of the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit® in November 2009 and has seen her relatively small Nelson salon grow over 60% in turnover into a large purpose built Medispa.
And Bedelia’s email shows that even when you are getting fantastic results from the program, things still can and will go pear shaped from time to time. But armed with knowledge and support, it’s a heck of a lot easier to get through!
And Bedelia even offers some advice to fellow salon owners who look to blame others when things arn’t quite going right…
Here’s what Bedelia had to say….
Hi Chris
Its 6.30am and I’m up bright and early today as we are moving into our new salon!
I’m over the moon and can’t believe it, that in exactly 12 months of joining WSM we have gone from a small beauty therapy business that was doing just ok, upstairs above a bar to our new purpose built medispa !
When I received my little pink box last November I knew it was going to change my life and it truly has!!
We have grown our sales by over 60%, we have a good profit margin, we have an 83% client retention rate, and all our new salon has been funded out of turnover not the bank!
At 2.30 this morning when I climbed into bed after a full day on the floor and then packing up my salon, I read Greg’s email and saw some of the negative comments from people about how it doesn’t work for everyone bla bla… I really laughed out loud!!
This does work, but salon owners need to understand it’s not the system that doesn’t work it’s how they use the system!
Now to the salon owners who find blame in others or situations, I’ll share a little something.
……… Being the new careful planer I am, I had all my new staff arranged early for the new salon, as we have gone from 2 ½ to 5 ½. 10 days ago my new therapist started, within 2 days the poor lady had to fly to the UK as her husband had very suddenly passed away while on holiday, so of course she had to go, my other new therapist then decided that gosh, do we really work past 5pm!.. and she didn’t even start, but that was ok I thought I’ll manage this week with the 2 therapists I have and my new receptionist.
Ha … at 5.30 on Tuesday of this week one of my long term therapist said to me ” I’m quitting today”, I had about 10 mins of thinking Oh S..t what am I going to do now, but hey I’ve survived the week, looked after my own clients as well as the ones that she left high and dry, run 3 marketing campaigns, signed off 3 of our big Christmas adds, dealt with builders, painters, songwriters and website designers and I’m still in one piece, so you can see why at 2.00 a.m. this morning I was laughing my head off!
WSM gives you all the tools you need to run a successful salon, from the marketing to planning to how to overcome obstacles like I’ve had this week, it teaches you long term life skills to use within your business, I always feel like there is a gentle hand guiding me in the right direction.
Chris and Greg, I can’t thank you enough, if I’ve done this in a year imagine what the next 12 months will bring!
Kind wishes
Bedelia
by Greg Milner | Feb 18, 2009 | Hiring Salon Staff
Worldwide Salon Marketing: Hard to find Staff? Here’s how to get a flood of applications…
Peter Drucker is widely recognised as the world’s most famous business consultant, who declared that “Because its purpose is to create a customer, a business has two and only two functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results. All the rest are costs.”
Which is perfectly true, and in the beauty business, one of those costs is unavoidable; staff to deliver the innovation (or service) to the customers your marketing is bringing in.
Aside from marketing issues, finding the right staff is by far the biggest challenge facing 99% of salon owners. Which is why we developed a unique way to at least partly solve that challenge, and it’s brilliantly successful.
The Worldwide Salon Marketing Staff Finder Service
“We’ve used this method twice… both times, we had inquiries from prospective staff members within minutes of placing the ad. In fact the first time we used it, we had no fewer than 47 applications within two weeks, and hired two fantastic new team members right off the bat!” says Rachael D’Aguiar of D’Aguiar’s Hair.Skin.Nails in Auckland, NZ
And this works no matter where you are in the world. (And it’s FREE for Inner Circle members.) Here’s how it happens…
Step #1: you download a Free Report in Word format. The report is titled
“The Crucial Questions You MUST Ask – and the Answers You Need – Before You Sign Up for Any New Job.”
Step #2: You modify the report to suit your salon, and email it back to us.
Step #3: We upload the report to a special web page we create for you.
Step #4: You run a classified ad in the employment section of your local paper, and/or online. This ad (we give you the wording) directs prospective staff to the website where they can enter their name and contact number, and only then download your Free Report.
Step #5: You get an instant email with that person’s contact details.
Bingo! You’ve instantly captured the names and contact details of anybody who is obviously wanting a change of job!
We provide this service free for Inner Circle members. Non-members pay $329 and they can run the ad for as long as a month.
IF YOU WANT NEW STAFF NOW:
Inner Circle members: email Karan in our office karan @ worldwidesalonmarketing.com and he’ll organise it all for you, free.
Non-Members: call our office to inquire about pricing. Australia: 08 9381 6621, USA 602.490.0637.
by Greg Milner | Feb 3, 2009 | Ask the Experts, Hiring Salon Staff, Motivating Salon Staff
Salon Marketing Strategies: How to CUT Staff Absenteeism to ZERO!
Had an interesting conversation with one of our Inner Circle members this week.
Like most salon & spa owners, Michael Curtis’ Blush Day Spa has suffered for years from the whims of some staff members who would habitually, without notice, report in ‘sick’ – and leave the rest of the staff to carry the load, upsetting clients, costing revenue and profits, and causing Michael to lose hair he can’t afford to lose.
But four months ago, Michael ‘cracked the code’.
Michael Curtis eliminated staff sick days with some rigorous filtering
Traditionally, Blush would lose between ten and 21 staff days every single month. Add it up, and it amounts to an awful lot of distruption and lost business. But for the past four months, Blush has
not lost a SINGLE DAY!
How could this be? Well, Michael first purchased a simple, but powerful system of staff recruitment developed by our own recruitment specialist, David Osborne. (It’s called the Salon Owner’s Recruitment System and you can buy it here for $AUD597)
Using the system, Michael put every single job applicant through a rigorous ‘filtering’ – and then, once he’d got it down to a short-list, sent it to David who put each applicant through a special personality/suitability test that had nothing to do with technical skill and everything to do with a person’s psychological ability to contribute to a positive and enthusiastic team.
According to Michael, ‘aside from joining the Inner Circle program, getting David’s system and putting our staff through this testing process is the single most profitable and biggest business-building thing we have ever done in the ten years we’ve been in the spa industry’. If ONLY we had known about this a decade ago we’d be that much further in front, it’s not funny’.
Listen in as Michael talks about this ‘company-making’ advance.
As I’ve said many times, any fool can get customers in the door, given the right marketing tools and enough action. Shake enough trees, and you can’t help have money fall out of ’em. But many good marketing campaigns have been ruined by sloppy systems, lousy staff and an active Sales Prevention Department at the back end.
If there’s enough interest among Members, I may run a special Group Coaching call (IC members only) with both David and Michael as my guests, so more of our Members can get the obvious business-building benefits of zero staff absenteeism that Blush is enjoying.
