Worldwide Salon Marketing

Salon Success is about…getting out of your own way!

by Greg Milner on 06/10/08 at 1:54 am

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’.

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

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:

“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.)

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%.

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?”

“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 odd quieter day due to cancellations, we still make ‘target’ with relative ease, and when we have a good day, we have a REALLY good day.

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

Mellanie & I are looking forward to seeing you in Auckland on Monday 20th October*.

Kind regards
Carl Smith
Saving Face Health & Beauty Ltd
19a Bunyan Rd
Whakatane

(If you are in New Zealand and have NOT yet booked a ticket for either our Auckland seminar on October 20 or our Wellington seminar on October 21, do so NOW by calling Ticketek on 0800 842538 – FREE for Inner Circle members, call our office on +618-9381 6621 to register)

Does this stuff work in Australia” YES. Does this stuff work in the UK? YES. Does this stuff work in the USA? Well, of course it does, if you get out of your own way, put aside your ego, ignore your well-meaning friends, family, staff members and the advertising sales reps, none of whom know anything about how to use direct response marketing to drive salon & spa sales.

Listen to US Inner Circle members Tamara Schultz-Snyder of Tehachapi, CA and Susan Woodbury of Belmont, NH as they describe how their sales have (surprise, surprise!) skyrocketed by simply using the tools in the Inner Circle Toolkit…

A post by Greg Milner The odd idea, a bit of prodding, a nudge here and there, a little fun, and the occasional dose of brutal reality. Greg is co-founder and CEO of Worldwide Salon Marketing, a writer, direct response marketing consultant, specialist marketing systems adviser and coach. He (sometimes) accepts private consulting clients.

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