by Greg Milner | Mar 3, 2011 | The Smell of Success
New templates for Inner Circle Member salons – see below.
The New Zealand economy – never robust since the onset of the GFC – is bracing itself for another hit in the wake of Christchurch’s $12 billion earthquake.
But for salon business owners like Cathy Davys, of Cathy Davys Hair Design & Day Spa in Wellington, such awful disasters are all the more reason to do what true entrepreneurs do best – in times of trouble, market harder, sell with more enthusiasm;
In other words, she abides by the advice of veteran sales trainer Zig Ziglar:
“Go out and sell something. Your country needs the business.”
“We did a special Christmas offer – we took it from the Members Only website – and took $30,000 from that one promotion. Along with a couple of other promotions we ran after Christmas, it gave us our best January/February ever!”
writes Cathy.
“In January we ran a special Diamond membership promotion, with a ticket price of $1,800 for a $2,400 value. We limited numbers to just 12, and sold them all in a week! That alone brought in $21,000. Clients love renewing, as they all run out at different times now its great for cash flow. Just need not to spend it:-)
“Now we’re about to launch a Platinum membership offer, $6,999 worth of hair & beauty services for $4,999. I’ll let you know how that goes, but if all 7 of them sell as expected, that’s another $34,993 in cash up front.”
Christchurch earthquake fundraiser
But it’s not all about cash for the business. Like many entrepreneurs, Cathy is discovering the benefits of ‘community responsibility’ to drive sales for the salon, with a special promotion to raise funds for victims of last week’s fatal earthquake.
“We are doing a fund raiser for Christchurch through our email to non-returning guests for a $30 cut and blow wave with funds going to help Christchurch Hairdressers. This will also help to get 2 new stylists up and running.
“I love Worldwide Salon Marketing!”
by Greg Milner | Feb 23, 2011 | New Zealand
Monique Porter of Monique Beauty Therapy, North Shore, Auckland
Setting yourself goals and targets is so important in both your personal and business life. Without having an end result in mind, how will you be able to visualise and achieve your desired outcome?
Let’s take ‘losing weight’ as an example in your personal life. When you set yourself that goal did you have a specific number of kilo’s in mind that you wanted to lose? Did you write that number down somewhere or have a chart on the wall plotting your weight loss over a number of weeks? Was there a timeframe you wanted to achieve it by? Did you reward yourself for meeting certain weight loss targets and was there a consequence if you didn’t make your goal? Come to think of it, did you even weigh yourself to find out what your current weight is – or was the whole idea a wild stab in the dark?
It’s crucial to set goals and targets in your business life too.
In a coaching call just over a month ago with Inner Circle Member Monique Porter of Moniques Beauty Therapy on Auckland’s North Shore, she explained how she was having real problems selling retail to her customers. In fact, so much so that Monique, who is a sole operator, was selling no retail at all to her clients.
We talked through the retailing strategies in the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit® ‘Selling Like Crazy Manual’ and put in place some targets. The target set was to sell just 3 products per week over the 4 weeks (12 in total) by the time we spoke next. Baby steps to start with, but as you’ll hear Monique surpassed these targets with ease…
“I’ve gone from selling no product at all, to selling 18 products in just a month. I Sold 3 starter packages at $65.50 each, 9 bottles of product for in-grown hairs at $21 each, 4 flax seed oil products at $32 each and and 2 nail polishes for $10 each. That’s a total of 18 products for the month and $532 in extra revenue!”
Now that Moinque has achieved her first target, she can and has set new targets to keep this momentum going. If every month she got 18 different clients using her products, that’s 216 clients by the end of 12 months using her product ranges at a current average sale of $29.55 each. Of course, this doesn’t take into account that many of these client will also start purchasing more than just one product.
It’s also worth looking at what would have happened if Monique had NOT sold product to these clients, apart from missing out on the obvious extra income?
These clients would have left her salon and more than likely walked straight down the road to the supermarket or chemist (a salon’s biggest competitor) and bought their product from there. Now the products you get from a supermarket or chemist are generally not the best, so when the client found that their skin or hair wasn’t improving, the first thing they will do is blame the salon or therapist, not the products. So it’s unlikely that you’ll ever see them in the salon again.
So it’s extremely crucial that as experts in your industry, be it hair or beauty, you need to share your knowledge with your clients and give them the products to keep looking after themselves at home, in between their visits to your salon. That’s what your trained to do after all!
And don’t be afraid to sell people stuff! Let me ask you a question. You love to shop, right? So why are people so afraid to sell other people stuff, be it hair products or whatever. Whether you like it or not, you and your staff are sales people in your salon.
Well done Monique on your great product sales and looking forward to hearing more success stories from you!
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 | Nov 8, 2010 | Marketing Superstars
Lesley Morgan-Wesson’s salon has become an award-winning, substantial business in the 5 years she’s been a Member of the Inner Circle program
“Hi Greg,
I don’t think I have ever worked as hard in any business I have either owned or worked for, as I have done in this one… so I’m certainly pleased to share with you some of our recent successes, which are the result of tireless endeavour…
Having succeeded in being the salon that everyone in the area copies, over the last year-and-a-half I have been approached by 4 local spa and salon owners who wanted me to buy their businesses, which if they had been any good I would have… But I’m sure you’re over the stereotypical salon, so I won’t bore you with details.
At the beginning of the year, quite unexpectedly, I received notification that our Lady At Bay therapists had been judged Sydney’s best for 2010 and last week we won the Mosman Daily Small Business Awards again as North Shore’s BEST Anti-Ageing & Beauty Centre… I must say, it’s very gratifying, when you’ve worked hard to achieve excellence in everything you do, to get recognition from customers, shadow shoppers and independent business analysts from the NSW Department of Industry & Investment.
Lesley’s four-page monthly newsletter – Members can download a full copy in the Members Only ‘sealed section’
Attached you’ll find a copy of our November newsletter – one of these is mailed to every client each month at the beginning of the month and they are loved by staff and clients alike, one of whom told me she files them because of the interesting articles. These take hours of research and, because I’m pedantic, hours of proof-reading and jiggling with layout. This is in addition to the systemized direct and email marketing, SMS campaigns, new client letters, referral letters, newspaper advertising, window marketing, in-salon posters, leaflets… and on and on it goes.
It has taken 7 years of dogged determination and relentless focus to implement everything that you have preached and to systemize everything in the Toolkit and an infinite amount of patience to cut through the crap that I’ve had to deal with in terms of staff… same things you and all your members experience… no different.
BUT…. it’s the commitment to learn from mentors, to learn from experience and to learn from failure that determines success! One day you pull your head up, settle your bum down and realise… crikey… I’ve built a really substantial and successful business… one that’s absolutely bursting at the seams to multiply and grow.
So that’s the beginning…
I’m now looking forward to the next part of the journey… with you and the Team at Worldwide Salon Marketing there by my side.
Kindest regards and deepest respect,
Lesley Morgan-Wesson
LADY AT BAY
PS: In this industry, you’d be better off working hard to be the best employee you can be, rather than being a lousy worker who has subsequent problems with the boss and then with stars in your eyes you go and get into a business that you don’t have the ability, focus, endurance or cash for.
by Greg Milner | Oct 19, 2010 | New Zealand
Imagine being invited to someone’s house, having a really great time and then never being invited back again…you’d feel pretty hurt, right?
Well, two months ago I was asked to be a mystery shopper for one of Auckland’s top Day Spas and that’s exactly how I felt when I left the Spa….totally hurt that I hadn’t been invited back.
Now for obvious confidentially reasons, this Spa (who is not an Inner Circle member) shall remain nameless, but I wanted to share my experience with you and show how a failure to ask simple questions or do any follow up marketing could be costing YOUR salon a bucket load of money every year.
Before you read on, this story is not to bad mouth this Day Spa. In fact, I have to say that the service I received prior to and during the treatment was up there with some of the best I have ever experienced when visiting a Salon or Spa. But that’s what makes it so bad. They have spent so much time putting systems and procedures in place to ensure the customers have this amazing experience, but it’s then let down by complete neglect at the back end.
From the moment I made the booking on the phone the receptionist sounded delightful, asked all the right questions and took my credit card, explaining their 24 hour cancellation policy – a sure way to prevent those frustrating no shows!
When arriving at the Day Spa I was greeted and shown to a lounge where I was given a consultation and then shown the facilities available to me while I was at the Spa which included a sauna, steam room and gym. Everything was done down to the finest detail, even matching the tea I drank to the type of treatment I requested through my consultation.
Before being taken through to the treatment room I was taken to a relaxation room and introduced to my therapist, as well as another therapist. From the time I walked in the Spa I had met 4 different people, who all knew me by name and made me feel incredibly special. I felt like a valued client of the Spa, and not just one therapist!
The treatment itself was also excellent, with music and lighting tailored to my mood and post treatment I was taken to a separate room to relax even further, drink some more tea and fill out a satisfaction survey.
I think you get the picture, overall the WOW factor was huge!
So you can understand my disappointment that I was NOT ONCE asked if I wanted to rebook another appointment. It was pretty evident that I had really enjoyed my visit to the Spa, so as a guest to the Spa, why wasn’t I invited back?…HOW RUDE!!!
Please Let Me Come back To Your Spa…PLEASE!
Maybe I was missing something, was I meant to get down on my hands and knees and beg to come back?
One simple question would have turned a $140 sale, into at least a $1700 – $2000 client over 12 months, because you know what, if they’d asked me to come back, I would have said YES!
“Okay Chris, we would LOVE to see you back here at (salon name) again, so let’s make that next appointment for you now because we do get booked up very quickly and I don’t want you to miss out on the time that suits you best….how does 3pm on (date) or 10am on (date) suit?”
Now obviously I am just one client, so can you imagine how much money this Spa is losing if clients are not being re-booked…it’s scary! But that’s the difference between a great salon/spa and an average salon/spa. Members of our Inner Circle program understand the value of a customer, they don’t look at each client as a one-off sale, rather as a customer for life who will be worth thousands of $$$.
The next thing here was that I was not offered the professional products to go away with and use until my next appointment. It’s a fact that 70% of clients who are NOT sold retail will go down the road and buy it from a chemist or supermarket (a salons biggest rival) within 24 hours, the products will be crap and the client won’t be a happy camper! Who are they going to blame first…that’s right, the salon/therapist! So they will never return. How sad!
Maybe they didn’t ask me because I am a guy or some other lame excuse like that – whatever it was, it wasn’t good enough and will be costing the salon a fortune!
*If you have never heard about former Schwarzkopf CEO John Lee’s 1000 hour customer care policy, you should Google it, learn it and apply it to your salon!
Finally, the reason for me writing this story some 2 months after my visit to the Spa was to at least see if they did some follow up marketing. A welcome letter perhaps, with a voucher to use off my next booking or an email with their latest offers…did it ever happen?….Nope!
After my visit to the Spa, I filled out a lengthy mystery shopper questionnaire making specific reference to these issues and how all the positive aspects of my visit had gone to waste because of the failure to rebook or retail to me. I even made special mention that I would look forward to receiving follow up marketing from them as I REALLY wanted to come back.
I suppose I’ll NEVER know if they fixed any of these issues because I am still waiting to be invited back.
