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 | Jan 27, 2010 | Marketing Superstars, The Smell of Success
Free Salon Price List Template Marketing Superstar of the Week – a 312% increase in sales for Inner Circle members Peter & Amanda Rickman’s Hair Salon
“Hi Greg, what a year we’ve had at Making Waves Hair Design.
Thanks to you & your team’s ideas, the continued support and the information within the Inner Circle membership that we can access, we took massive action, coupled with staff teamwork and a whole new aspect on how we should run and work on building a profitable salon business.
Between Dec ’08 & Dec ’09 we have had a massive 312% increase in profit, all because we took action by joining WSM and getting our Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit® in Oct 08, listening & learning to what has been successful to others in the circle.
As for “what a month”, this past December has been extraordinary! Gone from $13,500 in ’08 to $21,799 in ’09. The voucher sales in 08 = $0, in ’09 = $2500 which was mainly due to our Dec newsletter and great work & salesmanship of our dedicated staff.
Not only that, the New Year has started off with a BANG, already we have a 21% increase in revenue from the same period last year, and this increase does not include the $3500 worth of vouchers & gift cards redeemed by our clients so far.
We are looking forward to a MAMMOTH year and especially the upcoming academy events.
Looking forward to more success…
Peter & Amanda
Making Waves Hair Design”
by Greg Milner | Jan 12, 2010 | Marketing Superstars, The Smell of Success
Inner Circle member and salon owner Anni Mavety of Wellness Treatment Centre in Banora, NSW – sales increased 150% since getting her Toolkit
Hair Salon Gift Certificate Template Superstar of the Week – how Inner Circle member Anni Mavety turned herself from struggling technician to proud salon business owner
“We have had an amazing 4 or 5 months since we joined. Haven’t finished off my figures yet, but my guess is that we have had an increase in business of at least 100% probably quite a bit higher.”
For every doubter, for every salon business owner who tells me ‘oh, your material didn’t work for me because “my business is different” ‘, there’s a dozen like Anni Mavety.
Anni only joined the Inner Circle program and got her marketing Toolkit in May 2009. As she admits in an email this week, ‘it took a while to get myself going’, but once she did, the results were almost instantaneous, and spectacular.
“I have used a lot of the info in the Toolkit, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t but it provided a mountain of resources which enabled me to change the way I think and the way I do business.
Considering we have a crappy location with no walk by and the state of the economy, I’m very happy with our results to date. I anticipate that this year we can double our figures again.
Anni’s story is a classic case of necessity being the mother of motivation. Supporting a husband suddenly disabled, she had to get the salon business profitable, and fast. She was desperate, and desperate times call for desperate measures. The ‘cost’ of Inner Circle membership initially frightened her, but as she explained when I interviewed her over the phone, that initial investment came back to her in spades.
by Greg Milner | Sep 10, 2009 | Marketing Superstars
Bev Bowman & Rosemaree Jones of Beautique in Cooranbong, NSW – a $160,000 increase in sales in one year thanks to the Toolkit
Beauty Salon Template Inner Circle Member of the Week: $160,000 increase in one year
Bev Bowman of Beautique Beauty Medispa in Cooranbong, NSW writes:
“I have wanted to write to you for a while now to let you know how happy we are with your salon marketing program and our increased sales. We attended the Sydney conference in August 2008 so I thought it may be a good time to share how we have been going since we have had the program for 12 months now.
Firstly, a little background on our business, Rosemaree Gough Jones and I have been in this business for almost 30 years and have made plenty of mistakes etc along the way but also learned as well.
So what have we achieved? An increase of just under $160,000 since joining the program taking our sales up from $1.565mil to $1.725mil, and to see those figures makes you feel that it isn’t going to be too hard to take it up to the $2mil mark, our goal for the next year.
We have been involved in everything that we thought would help us grow and develop, from reading everything we could get our hands on, to attending seminars and using the services of a business coach (that was an extremely expensive exercise without the results but that’s another story). Just to make sure we were doing it right I even went to University to get a Masters in Business Administration, majoring in Marketing and guess what they taught me (yes pretty pictures etc) but nothing has got us the results that your program has.
Our new client letters that we sent out for August has already returned $5000 of sales, can’t wait to see how much this will be in a year’s time. So for our original investment of $8029 for the membership we have a return of $160,000. I definitely don’t know of any better investment than that!
I know you expect to have your members double their turnover in the first year (and if we had I would be writing this email from the Bahamas) but we had been sending out a lot of the direct mail already, birthday letters, new client letters, Raise the Dead, newsletters etc. So maybe we haven’t doubled, but the result we have achieved by changing the way we do a few things as per your program have been outstanding for us.
Not only has it increased sales it has got us thinking on a whole new level and I can’t wait to implement other parts of the program. You know we haven’t done any letter box drops or advertising yet in newspapers etc, all this has been achieved with our existing client base and implementing a few changes.
Looking forward to the 14th September in Sydney* see you there. Thanks again, Beverley Bowman.”
* Bev will be among the Inner Circle members participating in our Closed Door Mastermind session following Monday’s Road to Riches salon marketing seminar at the Novotel Brighton Beach Hotel in Sydney. And for Inner Circle members only, she’ll be my Special Guest, along with fellow IC member Gail Smith, on our next CD of the Month, to be recorded next Wednesday. Look out for the CD in your next IC Member’s Only newsletter.
(If YOU want the kind of results Beverley has achieved, you need to be a Member of the Inner Circle program, complete with your own edition of the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit®. Go here to see if you qualify for a 30 Day Money Back Guaranteed Test Drive of the entire system – completey risk free.)
by Greg Milner | Aug 12, 2009 | Salon Advertising Tips
Salon owner Jemima Richards used a series of linked sales letters straight from the Toolkit to triple her marketing response
Salon Website Template: The ONE Marketing Strategy That Will Triple ANY Salon’s Direct Mail Response
Call me old-fashioned – somebody did once, and I said ‘fiddlesticks’ – but it’s a mystery to me why so many salon owners (even some Inner Circle members, who should know better) just do NOT get one of the simplest, easy-to-implement salon & spa marketing strategies I have ever taught.
Well, from Jemima Richards of Sync Detoxify Nourish Regenerate yet more proof – if any more were needed – that this strategy DOES work, works brilliantly, and all you have to do is implement it.
Says Jemima:
“Had to just let you know that we have been laughing a lot around here because I am an idiot! The reason for the laughter is the amount of return we are getting (using your strategy) and how many more bookings we are getting from the 2nd and 3rd letter.
“You always said it, and not that I didn’t believe you…if only I had been doing this all along…!”
What Jemima is talking about is the proven direct mail strategy of a linked series of letters to a list of customers or qualified prospects. Most businesses send one letter, and no matter what response they get, presume the rest are simply not interested, and give up.
It is a fatal marketing mistake. You leave untold amounts of money uncollected, sitting on the table.
Hear this: if you are tempted to do a one-shot mailing and stop there, save your money. They don’t even feel the breeze.
As Jemima says – and we have proven over and over and over again – you’ll often get a BIGGER response off letters #2 and #3 than you will off the first letter.
It is precisely why the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit™ is FULL of these linked, sequential letters, for a multitude of purposes and events, e.g.,
- The ‘Raise the Dead’ letters for getting ‘lost’ clients back. Written specifically for this purpose, with fun, from Rupert the Dog.
- The New Client re-booking letters, a series of three.
- The change of season letters to existing clients
..and a ton of other letters for every imaginable purpose.
“Oh, I couldn’t do that, my clients would think I’m pestering them.”
No, they won’t. Here’s the truth: clients leave you because of neglect, not because you’re sending them nice letters.
(And if ONE client complains, are you going to use that as a pathetic excuse to ignore the rest of your client base?)
