While their competitors quaked in fear at the looming recession, these two ladies increased their salon's sales by more than $20,000 a month for the past three months. Read on to find out how they did it.

"When everyone else is greedy, it's time to be fearful. When everyone else is fearful, it's time to be greedy." Warren Buffet, world's greatest investor, as he spent billions buying General Electric shares at bargain-basement prices.

with Greg Milner, Co-founder Worldwide Salon Marketing

We live in fearful times. When General Motors admits it's a month away from running out of cash and going broke, you know times are tough. But it's also a time of great opportunity.

In the last few weeks we've inducted salon & spa owners into the Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program - and rushed their Toolkits to them by courier - from places as far afield as Goodyear, Arizona (Kelli Packwood, Eclipz the Salon), Marietta, Georgia (Robert Lilly, Sanda Gane Day Spa), Mooloolaba, Queensland (Michael Maidens, Mooloolaba Hair), Nelson, New Zealand (Tracey Power, Woman Beauty Day Spa), and Orange City, Florida (Bo Peary, Boco Salon Spa) - among nearly 40 new Members in the past month alone.

40 new Members in a month might seem like a heck of a lot of salons and spas scrambling, clawing, grasping at any straw they can find to help them survive - even prosper - in a time when the world is inexorably sinking into what appears to be the worst economic storm since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

And yet it's such a tiny number, specially when you consider that in the United States alone, there are more than 350,000 beauty businesses, with over 80 of them closing their doors every single day. Folding their tents, accepting without resistance the common belief that discretionary spending (i.e., personal grooming) goes to the bottom of the list when money gets short.

(Oh, really? How come then that in many houses where money is perpetually short, there's always a shiny new plasma TV?)

So I want to begin this week by giving you some hope, with just one of many, many examples I've recently seen of beauty businesses actually - and dramatically - increasing sales - despite and in defiance of a pervading sense of fear, of relentless downbeat news reports, of panicking governments, job layoffs, China imploding and Paris Hilton only going nightclubbing four nights a week instead of five.

Motion Beats Meditation

Jane Dowling and Niki Koutrakis of Talking Beauty in Hawthorn, Victoria have discovered that recession-proofing their business is about doing what's been proven to work - and lots of it.

In July this year - just over three months ago - Niki Koutrakis and Jane Dowling of Talking Beauty in Hawthorn, a suburb of Melbourne, joined the Inner Circle program and started absorbing and implementing the strategies in the Essential Salon Owner's Marketing Toolkit.

This at a time when the worst news of the global financial crisis was yet to come, when the stock market would fall another 20% over the following three months.

But Jane and Niki knew that there was only ONE strategy that would not only protect them from the worst of the recession, it might even cause them to actually prosper while others - their competitors - threw in the towell and gave in.

Confidence is taking action when you're only 80% sure. If you have to be 100% sure before you do anything, that's just procrastination.

The two ladies immediately began marketing like crazy. They relentlessly took the Toolkit apart, used the ad, flyer and sales letter templates and modified them to suit their own services and products….and sent them out.

A sales letter to 730 clients offering a special $127 'Hollywood Woman' package produced no fewer than 68 sales in three weeks. To save you doing the sums, that's $8,636 - not including add-ons like product sales and re-bookings.

A 'Ravish Me Darling' package produced 30 sales at $147. Another $4,410.

A cheap text message, straight out of the Toolkit, produced 14 sales.

They started enrolling their clients in the Queen of Referrals program - again, straight out of the Toolkit, with immediate results. One client brought in 5 of her friends.

All in all, Niki and Jane took MASSIVE ACTION, over a sustained period of time. Nothing got in their way. They kept their eyes firmly on the only thing that would make their ordinary business extraordinary. It did just that.

Total Sales	2007	2008
August	$32,000	$52,000
September	$33,000	$53,000
October	$38,000	$56,000

As Jane reveals in this brief out-take from a phone conversation I had with her this week, the results have been nothing short of astounding.

WSM General Manager Jemma Lole emailed our Advanced Marketing Trigger package of Christmas ads, flyers, vouchers and posters to Inner Circle members last week…and the response has been overwhelming.

Michael Curtis sells vast numbers of Gift Vouchers with a simple but well-craft phone script

Most businesses have a Sales Prevention Department - that's the department that has 'don't buy from me!' stamped on its forehead. No matter how good your marketing, it will always be sabotaged at the back end by disinterested staff, lousy systems, hopeless follow-up and a dozen other gremlins that conspire to stop customers from giving your their money.

But the better your systems, the less you have to rely on the 'let's-invent-it-as-we-go-along' brigade.

One of our more driven and accomplished Inner Circle members, Michael Curtis of Blush Day Spa, tells us his reception staff sell HUNDREDS of Gift Vouchers using a well-rehearsed, easily-learned phone script he insists his staff follow whenever anybody calls to ask about gift vouchers - and Christmas is of course the biggest Gift Voucher time of the year.

How to download this 'midas touch' phone script:

Inner Circle members can simply log into the Members Only 'sealed section' and navigate to 'Christmas Campaigns' - it's the most recent post there.

(And Inner Circle members get it for FREE.)

with Greg Milner, co-founder and CEO, Worldwide Salon Marketing

In the Depression of the 1930s, one of the few businesses that boomed was the movie business. People wanted to escape the gloom and doom, even if only for an hour or two. So the movie theatres were packed.

Same with the beauty business. In times of stress, people look for ways to pamper themselves, to ease the pain of deprivation. And there's no time of the year when that applies more than at Christmas.

Trouble is, most salon & spa owners are already too busy at Christmas time, just keeping up with clients, to actually focus on how to wring every last dollar from the biggest marketing event on the calendar. So they spend almost all their time on the floor, coping with the constant flow of customers, and never really working on getting the most out of the opportunity.

Always playing 'catch-up' before Christmas?

Always playing 'catch up'.

But how DO you maximize the opportunity? Well, with great marketing, of course. Advertising is Salesmanship in Print. And if you get it right, your marketing does for you what you can't find the time to do yourself.

Recently we asked Members of the Worldwide Salon Marketing Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program to tell us what they needed most - and huge numbers said

"We need Christmas and New Year promotions!"

The Inner Circle Christmas marketing package contains great direct response - and dare I say it - stylish postcards and ads like these…

…here's one for a range of special skin treatment, massage and waxing packages….

This is a Gift Voucher promotion specially tweaked for the festive season…

You ask, we give. For more than a week, our chief copywriter Jemma Lole and sales guru Jill Groves have been burning the midnight oil, developing, crafting and writing a comprehensive, done-for-you Christmas marketing campaign strategy.

It includes not only precise instructions on how to implement this campaign, but beautifully-produced templates for all manner of special offers. Here's a partial list of what's in the Christmas Marketing Package:

• Detailed campaign plans and instructions
• Scripts for phone and in-salon sales
• Mailbox flyers
• Newspaper ads
• Text message templates
• In-salon posters
• Letters to clients

…and more.

Note to Inner Circle members: you will be receiving this package BY EMAIL early next week. Subject line - 'marketing trigger - Christmas. If you do NOT receive this email by Wednesday and believe you should have, email us or call the office.

In fact, this 'marketing trigger' package is just part of an entirely new service we've implemented for Inner Circle members - regular, weeks-in-advance Advance Notice Marketing packages just like the Christmas one, for many of the major 'events' in the marketing calendar. In addition to the Toolkit, coaching, access to the Members Only 'sealed section', monthly international group coaching calls, and all the other benefits that come with IC membership, Inner Circle members will be getting these 'triggers' regularly, frequently, and well in advance.

So there'll never be the need to sit in front of a blank computer screen wondering what to write.

IF YOU ARE NOT yet an Inner Circle member: Now is the time to apply via our online form. You CANNOT simply join the Program online, you CANNOT simply buy the Toolkit online. We receive well over 100 applications each month for Inner Circle membership. We take on just 30. But if you're in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK or Ireland, you WILL receive a phone call from us to discuss your application. You might even get in.

But you'll never know if you don't go here and complete our online Pre-Application Survey and Questionnaire. 

The more things change, the more they stay the same. In spite of the ever increasing reliance on internet marketing, in spite of the plethora of so-called internet marketing 'experts', despite the growing 'noise' about online marketing - direct mail is NOT dead.

Far from it. Direct mail is still, in my humble opinion, THE most effective, 'cut-through' method of getting a well-crafted, tightly-written message to a highly-targetted market.

Specifically, your own customers.

Might be the most efficient, nor the cheapest. But it is by far the most effective, in terms of response rates.

Having said that, most salon & spa owners are too lazy to put effort into their direct mail. Effort, that when properly applied, almost always pays off in better response.

So, for the purposes of education, here are some 'rules', some guidelines to help you increase response to your direct mail. In this case, postcards.

1. ALWAYS use ALL the available space on the card. Not just one side. BOTH sides. Why waste all that real estate? FILL the damn thing. It might just be the ONLY chance you have of getting your message in front of a pair of eyeballs, if only fleetingly. Blank space doesn't sell ANYTHING.
2. Put the offer on BOTH sides of the card. As Bill Glazer of Glazer Kennedy says, 'when your customer or prospect looks at the postcard in the big pile of mail she retrieves from the mailbox, you never know which side she'll look at, and whether she'll be interested enough to turn it over'. Why take the chance she'll only look at the side without the offer?
3. Always put the deadline on both sides too. No matter how good the offer is, without a deadline, you have no offer.

Some other tips: Use brightly colored stock. Use cosmetic enhancements such as 'hand-written' doodles to increase response. Personalization will always increase readership. And never rely on a simple postcard to do all the work. Use it as PART of a comprehensive, sequential mailing campaign.

(Inner Circle members have all these tools, strategies and done-for-you templates in the Essential Salon Owner's Marketing Toolkit. If you are NOT yet a member, go here to see how you could qualify for a 30-day Test Drive of the entire system.)

with Greg Milner, CEO & Co-founder, Worldwide Salon Marketing

So America has a new president – a classic case of the right message, delivered to the right market, at the right time.

Clearly, something I failed to do at a seminar I gave for medspa doctors in San Diego last week.

Forbes Magazine - for America's richest, most 'sophisticated' readers. So you'd think they'd only respond to so-called 'sophisticated' advertising. Wrong.

So at Los Angeles airport on the way home last Friday, I picked up the latest copy of Forbes magazine, for some light reading on the 12 hour flight to Auckland. (Not to mention another 12 hours flying to get home from New Zealand!) 

This issue is devoted to the 400 richest people in America; minimum entry level, a net worth of $1.3 billion. The top 25, notes the magazine, could buy the remaining 375 put together. The 80/20 rule applies in all things.

Apart from the interesting reading the articles are in themselves, I mention this because I had just given my marketing seminar to that bunch of doctors, owners of medical spas.

Most are struggling (see below) but almost all of them gave me the ‘my business is different’ excuse for why they couldn’t possibly embrace ‘my’ kind of direct response marketing. One, I was told, ‘would retire if he had to run one of my ads…’

*Sigh* And yet these guys were actually at the seminar because their businesses were going backwards. It was like drowning men preferring to drown because they didn’t like the color of the lifeboat.

So it was amusing to browse through Forbes.

Who, might you imagine, would be Fortune’s target readership?

Yep, the kind of people who’ll buy a yacht for themselves and spend a ton of guilt money on their wives, mistresses, or both.

Pretty sophisticated readers, you would think. Far too up-market, too intelligent to respond to crass, ‘trashy’, in-your-face direct response.

Classic direct response advertising. It could be a lot better, but it demonstrates one thing clearly… so-called sophisticated consumers respond to exactly the same marketing stimuli as everybody else.

Strange then, that Forbes magazine was full of ‘my’ kind of direct response advertising….like the one you see here. (I also picked up a copy of Entrepreneur magazine. Same ad was in that too.) Sure, it ain’t a great direct response ad. There’s a whole bunch of improvements I could suggest that would increase the response to this ad 1000%. But the principle is there. Bold, outrageous headline.
Great ‘proof’ photo. Couple of ways of responding. And at the website, www.cenegenics-biz.com. a name-capture device, and presumably, an automatic responder of some kind.

Of course, no self-respecting doctor would lower themselves to run an ad with a headline like “Who do Plain Girls See When They Want to Look Like a Hollywood Star?” No sir, too ‘unprofessional’. And the fellows at the golf club would laugh at me.

All of which I find incredibly amusing, given that the medspa industry is tanking across the US.

Here’s an excerpt from the Orange Country Register:
“This year, as the economy slowed, so too did the medspa industry. A number of medspas and medspa chains have shut down.
Medspa chains that have closed in the past year or struggled through tough times include Solana MedSpas of Irvine.; Dermacare, based in Scottsdale, Ariz.; Sona MedSpas International, formerly of Franklin, Tenn.; and Medaesthetica of Woodland Hills.
‘Everyone is in a financial crunch,’ said John Buckingham of Mission Viejo, the former owner of Solana…..”
(You can find the full article at http://inyourface.freedomblogging.com/2008/07/30/slumping-economy-hits-medspas/487/#comments)
One of the doctors attending the San Diego seminar had spent three million dollars setting up and equipping his spa…he didn’t sign up for the new Medspa Platinum Success Program (which is full of ‘my’ kind of direct response advertising) so presumably he’s gone back to business, frantically spending yet more money on advertising that never worked well in the first place, and even less now as the souring economy bites.

But then, I guess that just proves my definition of insanity: continuing to do it the way you’ve always done it, while expecting different results.

If only these doctors could get their heads out of the place where the sun don’t shine, accept that they are not their customers, swallow their pride – and do the kind of marketing that actually gets customers in the door, they’d be able to go hit a golf ball with their scornful buddies and smile all the way to the bank.

Here's the lesson: assuming 'your' customers won't respond to well-crafted direct response (as against standard, ad-agency 'pretty' branding 'imagey' style advertising is a fatal mistake. You are not your customer. What YOU think about your marketing doesn't matter. The ONLY opinions you should take any notice of are those of your customers.

And they vote with their wallets. Amen.

with David Osborne, WSM's Recruitment Specialist. Go here to find tools you can use to create a profitable salon/spa team.

The First 3 Steps To Creating a Money Making Team.

Impossible I hear you cry, employees can be an absolute pain.

Trying to get the right people, keep them and then there’s the motivation stuff.  Such a drain on my energy.
Okay, let me ask you this, have you ever been in a team that won something important? And I am talking a State Title, a National Title.

If you don’t believe in teams, it’s because you have never been in a team where you really learnt the power of “Mateship”, “Camaraderie” and felt the power of a United Purpose. There is not one successful person that didn’t have a great team of people around them.

“I never got very far until I stopped imagining I had to do everything myself.”

Frank W Woolworth
The founder of the Wool worth’s retail chain.

Leading researchers suggest “Teams and good performance are inseparable and you cannot have one without the other”. So if you want to perform as a business owner you need a great team around you and one that performs. As Sam Walton, The founder of the giant Walmart retail chain in America said “The secret is we are working together”.

Step One: Understand you can’t create great wealth alone. 

Step Two: Understand you need a team that knows how to perform individually and as a team.
“How do I get that sort of team?”

By using a good selection processes. Great managers and business owners know how to select great staff, however here is a key point, you can’t obtain A Grade staff with a B Grade selection process, it just doesn’t work.
Those people who hire star performers are often well trained in selection. Poor people selectors will never hire A Grade staff, it’s just straight forward and down- right common sense. If the team around you are not building you wealth, then either your selection process is B Grade, or your selection knowledge is B Grade. Sorry, but you can see the connection, if the team isn’t right look in the mirror.

“Don't complain about the snow on your neighbour's roof when your own doorstep is unclean”.
                                                                                    Confucius

Step Three: Understand that if your team is not creating wealth, you need advice.

The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard, and just because the applicant has been to college, looks good and says the right words for one hour on one day, does not mean they are the right person for you.

"Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't."
Erica Jong

So here is some advice: You need to learn or adopt a selection process that works, and stop ignoring the facts. And this is where World Wide Salon Marketing can assist with the Salon Owner’s Recruitment System. This recruitment system has tried and tested advertising templates, for finding and selecting beauticians, hairdressers, salon managers, and salon receptionists.

The manual also has a letter of offer, a contract, position descriptions to generate high performance and much much more.
This what Jane Markac of Oxhey & Bushey Hair & Beauty said about the advertising templates in the manual:

“By changing the way I normally would write the ad to the way you set out I managed to attract at least 10 apprentice applicants and have hired one apprentice who I am very happy with”.

And Michelle Weston form Northmead Beauty Therapy says “Every salon owner should get this manual”.

So back to taking advice, have you ever heard Greg say “don’t reinvent the wheel?” There is great wisdom in those words. Business can be hard enough, why stumble along when you can have a winning team, and remember all the greats only really got ahead when they realised they did not have to do everything themselves.

WANT MORE? You'll find David's complete Salon & Spa Recruitment & Training System manual here…

Queenstown, New Zealand. Thursday.

Me with some of the 30 New Zealand salon & spa owners who joined the Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program at seminars in Auckland & Wellington this week.

My distaste for sitting in metal tubes high above the earth for hours on end is well known. But that's the penalty for having a global business with its head office in the most isolated capital city in the world. (Perth, Western Australia).

However, while I loathe flying, I love meeting our Inner Circle members in other countries. And they don't come much nicer than the Kiwis. There must be something in the water here. Or it might be simply that you can't live in a country as pretty as this one without it having a positive effect on your state of mind. New Zealand is one big picture postcard.

Sharing the stage with Australia's number #1 motivational speaker, Pat Mesiti, I presented direct response marketing classes for salon & spa owners in Auckland and Wellington this week, with more than 30 of them joining the Inner Circle program at those events.

Michelle and me overlooking the snow-fed lake at Queenstown from our apartment balcony

The view from up near Coronet Peak

Michelle and I took a shuttle flight down to Queenstown yesterday morning. As I write this, I'm looking out through the picture windows of our waterside apartment across Lake Wakatipu to a stunning vista of snow-capped mountains and rolling green pastures. Small sight-seeing boats steam by, as helicopters and light-aircraft take joy-riders over the mountain-tops towering above the little resort town nestled in the southern alps. If it was Switzerland, we'd all be yodelling.

It's all 'feel-good' stuff. But not nearly as good a feeling as I get when I hear Inner Circle members telling me how their lives and their businesses have changed since discovering the power of direct response marketing. 

Several of our IC members attended the Auckland and Wellington seminars - and spoke proudly of their achievements since joining the program. 

Hit the play button on these videos, and you'll see what I mean. In the first, Mellanie Smith tells of how she and husband Carl were just a week away from closing their salon's doors and declaring bankruptcy when they found Worldwide Salon Marketing, signed up, and immediately began putting the done-for-you marketing in the Essential Salon Owner's Marketing Toolkit into action. 

Just a few months later, they've quadrupled their sales, and they're now seeing themselves as business owners rather than slaves to the business. 

And from Auckland, Chris Sanders and wife Rachael D'Aguiar haven't looked back since joining the program 18 months ago. (Over dinner on Sunday evening, they told me they'd just moved into a new home in a gated community in one of Auckland's ritzier suburbs.) 

Their successes - at a time when the world's financial system is in shock, experts are talking of a long-lasting recession, and millions of business owners are hiding under the bed, turning out the lights and giving up - indicate to me that often, all it takes is a mere taste of success to trigger a domino effect that becomes self-perpetuating. 

But what is it that gets you started? I believe it's very simple. 

Make a decision. Then ACT on it, immediately. 

Success is really just about attitude. Mellanie and Carl, Chris and Rachael - and hundreds more IC members like them - have that attitude in spades. And as I've discovered, you can have the best knowledge, education, the best tools and strategies (such as those in the Toolkit) on the planet. But if your attitute is lousy, nothing will work. 

At one of the New Zealand seminars, one attendee approached me afterwards, and proceeded to tell me all the reasons why her salon was struggling, why the tools and strategies in the Inner Circle kit wouldn't work for her. I stopped her in the middle of this diatribe. 

"What you're telling me," I said, "is that you're looking for excuses for failure, instead of reasons for success."

Positive people find reasons for things to work, rather than reasons why they won't.  

 

 

 

San Diego seminar for Medspa Owners.
The next Success Strategies bulletin will come from California, where I'm speaking at the Medspa Marketing Institute seminar at the Westin Hotel in San Diego on Tuesday morning.

If you're a medspa owner and want to know how to opt-out of the recession, you have just days to secure your seat at this event. See the left hand column of this page to call the ticket hotline.

Last century, Napoleon Hill wrote the best-seller 'Think and Grow Rich'. It should have been called 'Think, ACT and Grow Rich'.

The world is full of educated derelicts. Motion beats meditation, every time. And success breeds ever-increasing confidence.

From Swan Hill, Victoria, Debra Page of Omoshun Hair & Beauty Concepts wrote to us last week to describe the steady increase in her business as she educated herself - and actually implemented that education - on what actually works to get business in the door.

"I just wanted to let you know how grateful I am to Worldwide Salon Marketing.

Three years ago I was working from a small room on my house with a small but loyal client base. I had found Worldwide Salon Marketing on the internet and read the online newsletters from time to time. Aug. 2005 I made the trip to a look & learn hairdressing seminar and met my future husband. All this time I still looked up the WSM newsletters. Dec 2005 I made the big decision to move into larger premises to separate home life from working life.

April 2006 my future husband whilst working for Haircare Australia came to my salon to do education both in business building and technical areas. We married in September 2006 and he encourages me continually in business and my own personal growth.

Success is Uphill

The lessons I learn are no longer mountains. As Pat Mesisti says, success is uphill.

March 2007 after reading yet another of the WSM newsletters I sent out the very first newsletter of my own on a bi-monthly basis. We sent out four in all for 2007. We now had a client base of 300.

Dec 2007 we started the new business, Imoshun Hair & Beauty Concepts in Swan Hill. Bigger town bigger premises! After reading a WSM newsletter I started to send them out monthly. We had gone from a 3 person salon to now employing 7 people. In March 2008 I discussed with my husband applying for Inner Circle membership. I was fortunate to be granted a 30 day trial and now love being signed up as an Inner Circle member.

More on A Salon Owner's Story…

ATTENTION All Medspa, Day Spa & Salon Owners: Sure, do dumb, wasteful 'branding' - at your peril.

I've lost count of the number of times I've been told by salon & spa owners "I want to get my brand out there…"

*Sigh*

Can't blame you all, I suppose. 'Getting your brand out there' is the sort of crap and nonsense peddled by so-called marketing 'experts' and the ignorant (often the same people), in lieu of any actual knowledge and experience - tested and measured - of accountable direct response marketing.

And it's not just small businesses who fall victim to this wrong-headed thinking.

Horror Story:

As reported on the business website bnet.com this week, 'branding' is mostly and excuse to waste marketing money.

In the late 90s, Ken Fitzpatrick, the CMO at Computer Associates, spent $100 Million on a massive branding exercise. Here's what Computer Associates got for their money:

• A new logo that was pretty much like the original one
• A useless, meaningless slogan: 'The software that manages e-business!'
• A directive that everybody in the firm answer the phone with that slogan
• Dopey TV ads featuring chickens.

Here's that TV ad:
 

 

As the commentator on bnet says, that's about a million bucks per chicken.

It's little wonder that small businesses see this sort of nonsense and think 'Gee, if these big companies are doing this kind of 'branding' I guess I've gotta do the same kind of thing. Those ad agency guys can't all be wrong."

Well, yes they can. And often are.

Here's what's instructive:

• If somebody who doesn't work in your business sees your logo, 'slogan' or ad and says "Huh??" then you've wasted a ton of money.
• Direct response ONLY. Don't do branding. Brand-building, if it occurs, is a fortunate by-product. Sacrifice image for impact. One of our Inner Circle members, Katarina Nikolovski of Afresh Hair in Newcastle, New South Wales, tells me this week she mailbox dropped 700 of our ugly, copy-intensive flyers each week for 6 weeks and picked up no fewer than 98 new clients. That's measurable direct response marketing. What do you want - sexy looking ads that stroke your ego, or money in the bank? 
• The 'experts' tell you to keep your marketing clean, plenty of open spaces, not too much copy. People won't read it. Drivel. DECADES of testing, measuring have proven BEYOND DOUBT that copy-intensive, tightly-packed ads, flyers and letters sell more. Less is NOT more. More is more. 
• This applies to ALL businesses. No business is different. Somehow, you think yours is, your customers are too dumb/too busy/too sophisticated to read lots of copy. Nonsense. Get over it. 
• This applies to ALL forms of media. 
• This applies to ALL people. Street sweepers to Fortune 500 CEOs ALL respond to and buy when exposed to well-crafted, long-copy emotional direct response. 
• What YOU think about your marketing - it's layout, 'tone', offers, the typeface used etc - matters not a damn. The only votes that matter are delivered with money. By your customers. 

IF YOU ARE STILL UNCONVINCED…

I'll take bets. Next Monday, October 20 in Auckland, Tuesday in Wellington, and Tuesday the 28th October in San Diego, I'll be teaching some of these principals, with actual examples of typical, loose 'branding' advertising compared with compelling Direct Response, at a series of seminars for salon, day spa and Medspa owners. 

Here's the bet: send me one of your 'normal', standard, garden variety ads. I'll write a Direct Response version of it. Test one against the other. Loser pays the $50K. 

New Zealand: we have about FIVE seats left for the Auckland and Wellington seminars. Call our office DIRECT by close of business FRIDAY to get your last-minute tickets.

Auckland: Monday, October 20

Wellington: Tuesday, October 21.

San Diego: ticket sales for this half-day event have just opened (late!) If you are a Medspa owner and want to know how to stop spending money on useless 'brand' advertising and instead use compelling direct response marketing to fill your spa with patients, go here to find out more, and phone Ryan Harris of the Medspa Marketing Institute on 858.736.9005  

During our international Inner Circle group coaching calls this week, the discussion was supposed to be about marketing - but both our Australian tele-seminar AND our US tele-seminar turned into in-depth discussions about staffing issues.

How to find them (staff), how to pay them, how to 'get their heads right'.

It's by far the biggest issue facing salon & spa owners all over the world, apart from actually getting customers.

Because even the best marketing on the planet will be sabotaged at the back end by lousy systems, and lousier staff. ALL businesses (including my own!) has what we call a

Sales Prevention Department

BUT… there is a solution!

Over the past several months, we've been working closely with Inner Circle coach David Osborne - a recruitment specialist in his own right - to develop a

World-Class Salon & Spa Recruitment System

Secretly, among a select group of Inner Circle members, we've been testing the Salon & Spa Recruitment system exhaustively. And the feedback is nothing short of amazing. 

Here's just a taste of what these 'guinea pig' salons & spas are saying:

 

"Every salon owner should get this manual…." "Having my salon for 10 years now I know a little about a lot of things in small business but this manual has given me a clear direction on how and what I should be doing - as I really have not had that much human resource experience - prior to having my salon despite having 10 staff!!" Michelle Weston, Northmead Beauty Therapy, Sydney   "Without doubt the best recruiting system the beauty industry has seen…" "The beauty industry being what it is, we're constantly having to recruit new staff - this system makes it so simple, and really nails it when it comes to choosing exactly the right kind of person to fit any particular role in the business…" Michael Curtis, Blush Day Spa, Perth

 The system has NOT yet been released onto the market. It will be soon. It's the complete deal - CD tutorials, tick sheets, assessment forms, interview guidelines, tests, the works. In my opinion, it is ridiculously cheap - and for a select few early buyers, a special bonus will be available - a one-on-one consulting session with David Osborne himself. 

Stay tuned. More information in the coming days.  

The beauty business is essentially about selling eternal youth, a kind of 'painted on' magic pill that somehow defies nature and holds back the tide of age. I, however, am enjoying growing older. I'm now 53, which I figure gives me some kind of licence to be grumpy.

So indulge me for a moment, while I indulge myself in a little 'I told you so…'

Just about every other day, I hear from people who tell me 'oh, I bought your system and it didn't work for me', or 'I joined the Inner Circle program, but my customers are different/more sophisticated/too poor/too affluent' etc etc.

Excuse me for a few seconds, while I gently tear my own fingernails out with a pair of rusty pliers.

Actually, the 'system' works fine. Gets more customers, gets your existing customers spending more. If it doesn't work for you, it's YOU, not the system. This week, two entirely unsolicited letters from Inner Circle members who 'get it'.

First, from Michael Curtis of Blush Day Spa here in my own home town. And for Inner Circle members, see below for details of how to get the exact promotion Michael used to achieve the spectacular results he describes here:

Michael Curtis of Blush Day Spa…record retail sales from a simple promotional flyer

"To keep the ball rolling on Retail sales, I thought I share again with the INNER CIRCLE member's another VERY successful  in-house promotion we're running with our NEW MAKE-UP RANGE.

We've been giving away a FREE MAKE-UP CONSULTATION - VALUED AT $97 and our retail sales have been nothing short of amazing, being at a new record for us at $38K for the month thus far…. Our top girl has topped $12k for the month ( and has earned herself almost $2500 in commission) and its all due to our in-hose flyer and team focus. One of our team sold $3,200 in ONE DAY of make up and accessories to clients and didn't have a single booking. The beauty of our new make-up is that it is mineral and you need a special set of BRUSHES to apply the product……WOW even more products to SELL to our clients. There is NO excuses for not selling to clients, it's just a matter of Focus, Product knowlege and exceptional service."

(NOTE TO INNER CIRCLE MEMBERS: to download the exact promotion that Michael used, log in to the Members Only 'sealed section' and navigate to Retail Product Promotions. You'll find it there as a pdf you can right click on and download to your own computer.)

NOTE OF CAUTION FOR EVERYBODY READING THIS: Do NOT call Michael to ask him about this promotion or waste his time trying to get him to solve your business problems for you. Just like every other Inner Circle member, he had to pay to get the tools and guidance that's helped him make more money. He, like many of our IC members, get a stream of calls from people wanting to pick their brains for free. Don't be cheapskates. Pay to join the program, and you'll get exactly the same tools and help as Michael and hundreds of other Members.)

Second case in point: Carl Smith from Saving Face Health & Beauty in Whakatane, New Zealand (it's pronounced FOK-A-TARNY). As Carl writes tellingly in this email,

"Why to we have to hurt before we act?"

Carl & Mellanie Smith of Saving Face Health & Beauty in New Zealand - raising prices by a whopping 30% resulted in (surprise, surprise!) an immediate increase in sales of…30%.

"Hi Greg,
 
Just wanting to let you know that sometimes it takes getting to the point of pain before we act. 
 
As a director of Saving Face Health & Beauty Ltd, I became an Inner Circle member in March of this year because, as you have heard so many times before, we were struggling as a business.
My Inner Circle coach told me on my very first call that we needed to increase our prices by at least 10% and strive to be charging the same as clinics in Auckland and even Australia - no excuses!!! However, while I have had great results in applying everything else he has recommended, I have been reluctant to up the prices by any significance. I did increase them but by only about 5%.
 
As a result of putting into action ideas from your marketing manual such as memberships, monthly newsletters, 'raise the dead' letters, 'Queen of referral' letters, 'new client' letters etc, we have been so busy that we had to employ another therapist. However we were still not making any money. We were still struggling to just pay for the overheads and bills, and as I said to David about six weeks ago, "this is so much hard work. I am so tired, I just want to sell the business".
 
Well at the end of August I finally said to my wife & business partner, "this is just not on. We either put up our prices to match city prices or we stop providing any services that we are not making any money on".
 
So as of the first of September we put all our prices up by 30%!!!  Well we have had our best month ever. We had a turnover of $63,310.32 for September compared to $44,801.65 for August. AND we only had about two or three clients make a bit of a complaint but as far as I am aware they still rebooked. All the rest didn't even blink an eyelid!
 
Now, when we still have the o