The Business of Beauty

Everyone is talking about the economic downturn, how could you avoid it? Pictures of doom and gloom for the retail sector fill our television screens. It has everyone worried. As small business owners many of us are concerned about the effects a recession would have on our income. That’s natural. But not many salon owners know exactly what they can do to “recession proof” their businesses.

Basically, the ideas I am going to provide here are the same tactics we should employing whether we are approaching a recession or not – It’s just more pertinent in difficult economic times. I teach that there are two major areas we need to concentrate on when times get a little tough. The first is to cut back on some of your costs. (I know what you are thinking – easier said than done!) But cutting back significantly on costs could simply mean doing things a bit smarter, not necessarily making wholesale changes to your business. It certainly means putting some time and effort into maintaining a healthy, loyal data base so that less money needs to be spent on attracting new clients through expensive advertising.

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I was recently running a marketing workshop for salon owners where I declared that two of my preferred forms of marketing were to write letters and get on the phone. I went on to do a cost analysis on each of these methods of contacting clients against radio, newspaper advertisements or letter box drops and it was clear that letters and phone calls are a great, cost effective form of keeping in touch with existing clients.

As my seminar progressed, we discussed the types of letters and phone calls I utilise. The area that most interested participants was the need to follow up clients.
It seems very few salons bother to follow up both new clients and customers that have purchased a product or tried a new service. And they should!
Yes it takes a bit of time, but the benefits vastly outweigh the costs or time considerations.

Here’s why:

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In my experience there are only five ways you can make more profit in your salon.

1. Attract more customers
2. Encourage clients to visit your salon more often
3. Convince them to spend more each time they visit
4. Reduce your overheads
5. Retain more of your existing clients

That sounds simplistic enough, but the reality is that most salons overlook the easiest and most effective method on this list - Retaining existing clients.

I am constantly amazed at just how many customers are on salon databases that haven’t been into the salon in months and months. After all, we spend hard earned money on advertising, brochures, business cards or expensive shop fit outs to attract them to us in the first place, so why would we let this money go to waste after just one visit?

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Not many of us plan for this almost inevitable circumstance and because we never plan for such a catastrophe, we panic when it happens. After all, our livelihood is at stake.

Let me tell you a true story…

Earlier this year a small but quite successful salon owner called me in an absolute panic. Between being upset, annoyed and totally flabbergasted that anyone would ever have the gall to enter her territory, I was told that she had no idea about how to fight this and protect her family’s primary income. The new establishment was to be a purpose built, eight room clinic with all the latest equipment plus everything that her salon offered. The fear was not only that her new client visitors would dry up, but that she could actually lose some of her long established data base to the bigger, newer and better equipped facility once it opened.

Her question was simply - What do I do?

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Many of the salons I have visited lately have asked the same question - How do we control no shows, late arrivals and constantly complaining customers? It seems every salon owner has the same issues when it comes to controlling the behaviour of our clients.

Many of us have been bought up with the adage “The customer is always right!” Well, for the purposes of this article I would like to give this old chestnut a bit of a twist. “The customer is not always right, but they are never wrong!” In other words we know the customer is wrong but we can’t actually say that to them in fear of losing their business.

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