The Business of Beauty

As a marketing consultant, I tend to study the business whose services I use as well as those I help. Obviously I am always looking for good advertising, the presentation of their premises and staff, how I am greeted and the degree of service that I experience. However, I am constantly amazed at how much time, money and effort is wasted on advertising that just doesn’t work. The really astonishing part of this statement is that many small business owners don’t actually know if any of their advertising endeavours are working for them, nor can they tell me the results of each of the various campaigns, that they undertake.

Let me give you an example. I recently went to a new local hairdresser to have a haircut. I had noticed her new shop signage as I drove down the main street of my suburb. Once, inside, we started chatting about how expensive it is to advertise. Like most salons, there was literally thousands of dollars worth of advertising including:

• Yellow Pages
• Shop Signage
• A-Frame chalk board for footpath
• Local paper ads
• Flyers for mail drops
• Brochures
• Price lists
• Business Cards
• Motor Vehicle Signage
• Chamber of Commerce / Networking Club members fees

I agree that these require thousands of dollars worth of advertising, which is very expensive but necessary in order to entice new clients to the salon. My next question was, “So what has been the most effective way to attract new clients?” Her answer wasn’t unusual. – “I don’t know.”

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How often have you walked away from a sales person shaking your head in disbelief because you barely understood a word they said? In our high tech world of computers, chemical compounds and acronyms for just about everything, it is all too easy to be lost in the jargon that surrounds purchasing even everyday items.

Those who know me, will know that I am an avid Apple Macintosh Computer user. I have owned Macs for years now and find them wonderfully easy to operate and incredibly reliable. Yet, I can’t give the same high praise to the sales representative that greeted me recently when I inquired about upgrading my current model.

Yes, I was greeted warmly.
Yes, the showroom was presented beautifully and;
Yes, the salesperson was enthusiastic to serve me.
But as soon as I muttered the word “upgrade”….I was whisked away into the far off world of computer speak.

Now, I don’t consider myself a fool, but I was lost after the very first sentence of gigabytes, RAM, DVD – ROM / CD Drive, and Fire wire. If this young man was trying to impress me with his knowledge, he was doing a great job. But if he was trying to sell me a computer system, he had no chance at all. You see, I had no idea what he was talking about, nor did I care. I felt a mixture of foolishness and anger. The salesperson wasn’t interested in my needs, my lifestyle, or my understanding. He was too busy impressing me!

Consequently, I chose not to purchase from that particular outlet.

Jargon in any field of business can kill sales. Doctors who presume we have a degree in anatomy or mechanics who think we can do more than put petrol in and change a tyre. Even cook book writers who believe we all grow exotic herbs and Asian vegetables. Or worst of all, beauty therapists who talk about active ingredients that other than industrial chemists no-one else has heard about and how they work on layers of the skin with really strange names. To make it worse, many of these products have French names that many of us cannot even pronounce correctly, let alone understand.

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Now anyone who has sat through one of my seminars or utilised my salon consultancy services will know how big I am on planning. Very few small businesses are just instantly successful. Success usually involves some carefully thought through planning.

We have all driven through a new area believing we know our way and wasted time taking wrong turns. The smart thing to do would be to stop the car, look in the street directory and arrive at your destination via the easiest route. The problem is that we all think we know where we are going, we are in too much of a rush to stop the car and using a directory is such a hassle. The same analogy can be used in business planning. We know pretty much what we want to achieve in our heads, we get so busy working in the business and producing a plan is too difficult. Well it doesn’t have to be. Here are a few pointers to get your planning started whether you are a new business or have been established for years.

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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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