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 | Oct 5, 2010 | New Zealand, The Smell of Success
I’m a firm believer in attitude playing a big part in the success or downfall of your business, whatever industry you are in. Winston Churchill once said “Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference” and when it comes to Inner Circle member Heidi Morton of Bodyscape in Wellington, NZ, her positive, massive action taking attitude has made a world of difference to her business.
Heidi joined the Inner Circle program in the midst of a global recession (July 2009), but this didn’t stop her from growing her salon by over 40% and being so busy that she had to move to a new premises that was double the size of her previous spa!
Here’s an email I got from Heidi just yesterday….
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“After a full year of being involved in Worldwide Salon Marketing the results for our business speak for themselves. Whilst I had a good grasp of business and marketing options prior to becoming involved, Chris, Rachael and the team certainly made sure that I didn’t forget how important it is to ensure MASSIVE ACTION means MASSIVE RESULTS. I am now a firm believer in all wheels of the spoke.
Just over a year ago I had a profitable business that was making ends meet but certainly not a retirement plan. Being a busy Mum and a non beautician partner in the business I often neglected the marketing aspect of our business, focusing too much on the numbers at the other end. We had no trouble attracting and keeping clients but I knew we could do better, a lot better.
12 months later we have a brand new spa on Lambton Quay in Wellington, double the size of our previous spa, all paid for out of the increased turnover in our business. I would not have the courage to do this if I didn’t know of all the tools we could use that could generate us money.
We try everything and anything that WSM throws our way or we think can think of. Our Queen of Referrals competition run during 2010 (a version of the Queen of Referral program, but our Queens are competing for $1,000 of prizes by referring the most new clients and the most spend) has so far bought in over 200 new clients in 8 months whose first visits have spent over $10,000 let alone what they have spent after that. This doesn’t count referrals outside the Queens competition we run.
We have a monthly package deal that normally sells over 30 packages a month with add ons not discounts! We regularly do the Wellington Women’s package (our version of Hollywood women’s ? yes I like to put my own touch on everything!) and bring in 20 or so new clients when we do it. We sold over 100 of the packages on a voucher site when we ran it. 100 new clients in a day, $10,000 in a day – fantastic.
We put our karma cards on car window wipers outside the shop a free 30 minute service. The recipients of this love it and rave about how we have made their day. They refer their friends and we get more new clients. We use the yellow pages to advertise a package, not how pretty we look. Over the last 12 months we have had over 500 phone calls from our yellow pages ad (last year about 100). We display our packages everywhere , have a montly newsletter, weekly e-specials (always with add ons now not discounts). The only time I discount now is with our txt-a-deal days, whereby we may have a quiet day once in a while and then it is a discount to get them in the door today. Of course we don’t forget the basics, new client letters, raise the dead postcards, birthday vouchers, referral thank yous. These basics keep your current clients happy. Funny enough we recently moved from a $10 to a $20 birthday voucher and doubled the number we are getting back in the month, and a larger percentage of these back were clients we have not seen for a long time. At Christmas we wanted to up our retail sales so packaged together the retail products with free gift vouchers for treatments, this went down a treat. From December to February we always offer a deal for rebooking a free ad on service or product. We find if we can get the client 3 times monthly in a row then they won’t shop around elsewhere for a while.
Numbers wise, our turnover is up over 40% year on year, month on month. I have employed more staff and we are still growing. We have not gone backwards in over 15 months. I want to double over two years and we are on track for this to happen. Our staff love that they are more busy and have more $’s in their pay packets.
WSM is not an easy fix, it takes time and effort. I love the way it prompts me to think outside the square, I have some great ideas to implement in 2011 (2010’s move took up too much of my time!) and can’t wait to see what happens with my business.
By the way, this year I have had two overseas holidays, won another trip overseas (karma coming back to get me!), spent more quality time with my kids and have felt a lot happier about where I and the business is heading. However I never lose sight of the customer, our most important asset and whilst I know I can get new clients easily I still look after our current clients with quality, friendly service with value added services for them as well. They love it and complain to us if they are not getting enough deals or promotions like last month, which was our best ever and contained no promotions other than our monthly special as we were too busy all our rooms busy all the time. Now if only I could find some quality staff to expand!!”
Cheers, Heidi
by Greg Milner | Aug 18, 2010 | New Zealand
NZ Salon Business Plan Template Superstars Nikki Smith & Phil Newman of NV Hair in Wanaka PROVE how even in a small town, there is big money to be made!
If I ever needed to provide evidence that the Inner Circle system works, regardless of the size of your town or the area your salon is in then Nikki Smith and Phil Newman of NV Hair in Wanaka, New Zealand are living and breathing proof!
Nikki Smith and Phil Newman of NV Hair, Wanaka, NZ
Nikki and Phil joined the program in July this year and have seen their takings sky rocket since then. For those of you unfamiliar with Wanaka, it’s in a fairly remote location in the South Island and has a population of around 7,000 (which grows a bit depending on the season).
Nikki and Phil actually took over an existing premises in Wanaka and it’s fair to say that prior to them taking over, the business was on a downward slide, with few customers and the clients that did come in, simply paid whatever they wanted to pay. It’s VERY hard to run a business like that!
But Nikki and Phil are a ‘no-nonsense’ team and knew what they had to do to turn things around…FAST. As soon as they joined the Inner Circle program and got their very own copy of the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit® they took massive action.
“Hi Chris
We did the Hollywood promotion last month and here are our results…
We printed 2000 mailbox flyers at a cost of $110, and purchased 2000 envelopes at a cost of $230 (and we’ve now found them even cheaper).
We also ran 2 adverts in the local newspaper for $188 (we now do trade on service with advertiser so costs less, sometimes nothing depending on advert and time scale)
Our total number of bookings was 34 and out of the 34 only 3 paid the minimum $99. The average client spend was $130 (this was from up-grades and product sales).
The script for selling product and the method in the ‘Selling Like Crazy’ manual works a dream. I now have only 4 bottles of treatment on my shelf and my supplier loves me…..lol.
Thanks Chris this is definitely proof that the system works anywhere. The salon was on its knees when I took over and now, well I’m that busy I now need staff….lol.”
So let’s break these results down a bit more…
All up for the printing, envelopes and newspaper ads the cost was $528 (*You can get plain envelopes from the Warehouse Stationary for around $20 for 500…so this would have saved Nikki even more money).
3 packages were sold at $99 = $297
31 packages were sold with an average spend of $130 = $4030
So that’s a total income generated of $4327 for a cost of $528. A return of investment of $8 for every $1 spent…WOW!
If each of these clients were to spend on average $130 with Nikki and Phil every month for the next year, they would be worth over $1500 to the salon each. So potentially they have just increased the salons turnover over the next 12 months by $51,000….and that’s just from one promotion!
It’s pretty amazing considering that the salon was turning over a mere $2K a month before they took over.
Well done Nikki and Phil, keep up the good work!
Check out where Nikki and Phil’s salon is located…!
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by Greg Milner | Mar 25, 2010 | Marketing Superstars, New Zealand
Free Hair Salon Business Plan Template: NZ Salon Superstar, Terra Evans – The Membership Campaign that created a Storm!
If I said to you that every dollar you spent on marketing would give you $2 back, you would probably be very happy. Well Inner Circle member Terra Evans of Skin Deep Face and Body in the little seaside town of Browns Bay on Auckland’s North Shore recently launched her Mini Memberships program and made an astounding return for every $1 she spent on marketing these memberships….WOW!
But before I let Terra explain to you how she did it, I want to tell you some of the benefits of having memberships in your salon….
Memberships are a great way to get a huge chunk of cash up front from your clients or regular cash flow depending on the membership type. If cash flow is a bit tight and you have a GST bill coming up then memberships give you that much need boost. Or perhaps you want to go on a holiday or buy a new car then memberships give you more financial freedom so you don’t have to go grovelling to the bank for a loan!
Memberships are also a great way to guarantee your clients stay loyal to your salon for a long time and if a staff member leaves and starts working at a salon down the road it also stops clients going with that person.
You will often find that people on memberships will try out other services that they have never had before which opens up more opportunities to sell lots of product. Remember these people have paid their money upfront, so they are going to feel like they have got money to burn when they come in for their treatments….so SELL, SELL, SELL like crazy!
But enough from me, here is what Terra has to say about memberships and being a part of the Inner Circle Program…..
Terra Evans, Owner of Skin Deep Face & Body, Auckland
“I have been a member of the Inner Circle program for 2 months now. I decided to join because even though my salon is already doing well I knew it wasn’t working it to its full potential. So when I saw the ad for a free DVD on how to make more $ and do fab marketing it intrigued me and I phoned Chris to find out more. The first thing I felt when I spoke to Chris was that I wasn’t being sold to, I was just being told the facts and I could also see how genuine and enthusiastic Chris was about the whole thing. I asked Chris to give me some people to ring who are already members which he did and everyone gave rave reviews so I asked him if he could ring me in 2 months, when I felt I would be ready and I would give it a go, I really didn’t have anything to lose as there is the free trial period and I told Chris that if it didn’t work for me within that time I wouldn’t continue, but he was very confident that that would not be the case and that I would love it, and he was right!
I have implemented lots of new ideas but also things like new client letters which I knew I needed to do before I joined but didn’t know where to start. Well not anymore, with all the templates and ideas that are in the manuals I finally feel like I am taking control of my business! So far I have done New client letters 1,2 and 3, birthday letters, raise the dead letters, Queen of referrals, Valentines day specials, newsletters (mail and email), changed my messages, implemented the Happy form and testimonial form, cross over promotions, top client rewards, about to send out a school holiday special, ordered a new A frame for the sidewalk, increased my prices and am now using the Staff finder service to look for a new therapist so we have more spaces to fill so I can do some more marketing.
The Best success I have had so far is with the Mini Memberships. I did like the Manual said (why try and fight it) and offered $350 worth of treatments for $200 I had 20 up for grabs and they had a 6 month expiry. .I sent out 672 texts @ 22 cents each = $147.84 and 252 emails @ 5 cents = $12.60 total cost $160.44 all to my existing clients. The response from the texts was amazing within 24 hours of sending the message we had sold all 20 and had many more on a waiting list for next time. So all up it cost me $160.44 to market and I had a Membershiop campaign that created a STORM! Oh what a feeling!
What was interesting about the whole thing is that it actually has encouraged the mini members to try different treatments that they have been thinking about trying, already I have 2 clients starting a course of IPL (which of course will end up costing them more than $350) another client is going to use hers towards microdermabrasion course (again more than $350) and 3 of the members have only visited us a few times so after they have used up there credit I am sure they will be addicted! The rest of the members I am going to test and measure at the end of the 6 months and see how many different treatments they have tried and how much extra retail they have purchased.
So if you are nervous about trying mini memberships don’t be they work!! You can always try selling 10 and then when you see how well it works give it another go. Oh and by the way the clients love it and love you for it. It creates such a buzz and good energy which I feel is so important for true success.
Thanks so much Chris, I look forward to our next meeting and getting started on more great ideas!”
As you can see from what Terra has written she is a HUGELY motivated person that takes massive action. The memberships are just one of many strategies, systems and promotions that she has implemented since joining the Inner Circle program in January. Great results Terra, well done and I am so happy for you!
by Greg Milner | Feb 18, 2010 | Advertising Tips
A Salon Client Card Template For Advertising – is this the world’s WORST ad?
If you own a salon business or a day spa business, you’ve probably put at least some effort into crafting an ad that might pull some response. Unless you’re equipped with the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit® (or even equipped with the very basics contained in the new Lite program) you’re probably doing it blindfolded with one arm tied behind your back, but I give most salon owners credit for at least having a crack at it.
But this salon deserves to have the earth open up and swallow it whole, never to re-appear. This ad was sent in by long-term Inner Circle member Rebecca Skehan of Gaia Hair in Queensland. Like most Members who’ve been ‘converted’ and educated in the kind of Direct Response marketing we do (the kind that puts so many noses out of joint in the beauty industry), Rebecca has developed a keen eye for the wasteful, nonsensical, slap-dash crap that passes for ‘creativity’.
In fact it’s a burden that many of us carry. Many times, I’ve been taken aside by a member at one of our salon owner conferences, and told
“Greg, your system has ruined my life. Everywhere I go, I see small business advertising that’s so pathetic I’m constantly having to stop myself from going into that business and ‘saving’ them…”
Well folks, suck it up. Knowledge IS a burden. I can never go anywhere and simply switch off. I can’t stop myself looking at an ad, a billboard, a letter, without instantly and consciously analyzing it, wondering what’s it supposed be achieving, critiquing it, mentally re-writing it. But you can’t save people who won’t lift a finger to save themselves.
Whoever ‘wrote’ this ad is clearly desperate, like a cornered animal. But obviously not desperate enough to bother taking the time or putting in the little energy required to find out even a little information on what works in advertising.
And it’s not difficult. Fifteen years ago, you’d have had to get in your car, drive to the library, take out a couple of books, drive home again, and spend hours studying. Now, there’s Google. There’s NO excuse.
Try this yourself: Google ‘direct response advertising’. There’s page after page of people trying to sell you stuff, written by some of the best marketing copywriters on the planet. It’s a veritable university on your desk. If ALL you ever did was study what these guys have written, the structure of the piece, the way it leads the reader down a slippery slope to the Most Wanted Response… and applied even some of it to your own marketing, you’d be that far in front of most of your competition you’d be outta sight.
This particular ad is barely worth spending any time on. Certainly, I doubt any prospective customer did. But a couple of points worth mentioning.
One, it’s clear ‘distress selling’. May as well hire a megaphone, stand on your salon’s roof and shout “Hey, we’re starving, there’s really nothing going for us at all, but we’re really cheap!”
Second, the most important thing about any print ad is it’s headline. If the best you can come up with is the name of your salon, go flush your marketing money down the toilet.
Lastly, this ad begs for cheap clients, who’ll only ever want to spend five bucks. It has absolutely zero redeeming features. If I owned a salon nearby, I’d have a big sign out front that says
“We Fix $5 Haircuts”
Good grief. People like this don’t deserve the luxury of having customers.
FOOTNOTE: Even among our own Inner Circle members, there are always a few who are not long for this world. One, who joined the program recently, moaned and whined during a coaching call today that “no, I haven’t even opened the Toolkit, I haven’t been on the Members Only site, and anyway my business is different, this kind of stuff won’t work for me, and in any case I don’t want to do any of this marketing stuff, I want it all done for me…”
Sometimes, losers manage to weasel their way through a crack in our usually well-tuned Loser Filter.
