HOW TO MAKE YOUR SALON BETTER?!
Written by Jaimee Trio, owner and founder of 5 Award-winning Beauty salons in Melbourne & Sydney Australia
No matter what time of year it is whether it is that magical time after the holidays where everyone is dieting and abstaining from alcohol or people are indoors a lot because it just miserable and rainy out or we all have peeling noses from being at the beach you can decide at any point in the year to set up your next 12 months up to your best ever.
As the owner and founder of 5 exclusive brow and lash salons in Melbourne & Sydney Australia I possibly know a thing or two about setting up for a year of growth. These are my top tips.
- SET YOUR INCOME GOALS FOR THE YEAR!
- REVIEW YOUR MARKETING & VISIBILITY OF YOUR SALON.
- REVIEW YOUR SUPPLIERS & COSTS.
- SURVEY YOUR STAFF & YOUR CLIENTS AS A CHECK IN TO SEE WHAT THEY ARE LOVING AND WHAT THEY WOULD LIKE TO SEE IMPROVE.
Let’s do a little bit of a deep dive on each point.
1) SET YOUR INCOME GOALS FOR THE YEAR.
What does setting your income goal do for you? Life can sort of drift unless you make some decisions on where it is going. You are the one that drives your life and the direction it is going. You create your future. So, unless you make a decision on what you want/need your income to be, chances are it may never eventuate.
How you make the decision is up you. You can do a full workout of expenses, things you want to do, holidays you want to go on, presents you would love to buy your family for their birthdays, how much you need to save to buy an investment property or what you would need to fund a social project of your choice. And from all of that you can work out what you need your income to be.
Or you could do a simple increase. Take what you made last year and say you want to make 20% more.
Or you could just pick a figure out of thin air and decide that is what you are going for.
The important thing to do is to decide.
2) REVIEW YOUR MARKETING & VISIBILITY OF YOUR SALON.
This is about not getting stuck in a rut in your marketing. To strengthen and increase your best ways of reaching people and to find how from your past marketing what has resonated with people the most. All marketing is, is communication to people, to make them aware of what you are offering and how what you are offering will solve a problem in their life or make their life better and then to get them to take up your offer. So, review how you reach people. What channels are you using to tell the world you exist? Ask new clients how they heard about you to discover what are you most successful channels. Are there other channels that exist that you could be using. Examples of channels would be emails (how do you get more email addresses), facebook forums, local library notice board, letterbox drops, google ads, posters on street lamps, business cards into local shops, word of mouth from clients, your shop signage, community fairs etc.
As part of the visibility/impression your salon gives, do a very through, deep spring clean, pulling out furniture, cleaning marks off the walls, maybe giving it a refresh paint job, cleaning ceiling fans, scrubbing the floor, doing any repairs, replacing old looking items etc.
3) REVIEW YOUR SUPPLIERS AND YOUR COSTS.
Review what you are purchasing, the pricing, the quality, the service. Can you provide better results to your clients by using higher quality products without increasing costs too much or at all.
Can you negotiate better prices if you bring all your purchasing to one supplier? Ask them!
How can you simplify your purchasing process by using only a few suppliers so you can spend more time on your business and less time ordering.
Review your utility bills, can you negotiate better rates?
This does not have to take long, maybe an afternoon, but it worth a check in to make sure you are getting good prices or to see if you can lower costs or increase quality or ideally both.
4) SURVEY YOUR STAFF & YOUR CLIENTS AS A CHECK IN TO SEE WHAT THEY ARE LOVING AND WHAT THEY WOULD LIKE TO SEE IMPROVE.
You can either guess what aspects of your service and salon the clients are loving, and you can make changes that YOU want to see or that YOU would like in your salon, but finding out from your clients what they need and want is a better approach. It is for them after all and it is upon them that you depend on for income.
I recommend doing a survey every so often as a check in. Ask them questions in regards to their likes or dislikes about your service, salon location, salon experience, range of services. You don’t have to use the word dislike, you could you what would you like to see improved or added.
You can ask about their favourite experience ever in their whole life in a service based business and what it that they loved about it. You can get creative with your questions to extract out of your clients in a nice way, what they really think. This data is invaluable if you can extract it. It will mean you don’t take away something they love and don’t go to a lot of effort to add something that they don’t really need.
And if you have staff, do the same thing. Find out what they are loving about working with you, what would they like to help improve, what help do they need from you. Work is such a large % of their time investment in life. It is your responsibility as an employer or manager to make it productive, fun and something they enjoy and can do well at. So ask them.
Hope this helps!
Any questions about how to improve your business reach out or read some of our other blogs
Recommended reading:
The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber
The Problems of Work by L. Ron Hubbard
How to Make a Million Before Lunch by Rachel Bridge
Screw it, Let’s Do it by Richard Branson
And as a good approach to how to be towards clients and staff to get the most out of your relationship with them I highly recommend:
Humankind – A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman
