New Zealand Inner Circle Closed Door Session

by Chris Sanders on 20/08/09 at 1:31 pm

Getting off the tools, put your prices up and apply simple salon systems to double and even triple your annual sales. These were the hottest topics at this week’s very first New Zealand Inner Circle members only closed door session at Butterfly Creek in Auckland.

Top NZ Salon Owners at Butterfly Creek for the Closed-Door Inner Circle members Mastermind Session

Inner Circle members flew in from all over New Zealand including as far afield as Wellington, Tauranga and Whakatane. And what was meant to be a 2 hour brainstorming session turned into 3 hours of in-valuable knowledge and experience sharing….and I am sure we could have kept going!

For our newest members it was a great opportunity to tap into the knowledge of not only myself and Rachael, but some of our long term members such as Carl and Mellanie Smith from Saving Face Health & Beauty in Whakatane who increased their annual turnover by $166,977 in 12 months from April 2008 using the simple techniques in the Essential Salon Owners Marketing Toolkit™. Oh and by the way, congratulations to Carl and Mellanie who have won Nimue Salon of the year 2 years in a row and as a reward have won 2 weeks in Rarotonga from their supplier…we are all very jealous!!!

One of the main things to come from the session was the importance of having systems in place in your salon. Everyone that I coach knows that I always bleat on about the importance of simple systems such as new clients letters, raise the dead letters and the logic behind sending out the linked series of letters (that’s if clients don’t respond after letter 1 or 2).

A surprising amount of salons just send out one letter and give up if the client does not respond, leaving untold amounts of money untapped. Not sending these follow up letters is fatal for your business.

We were also lucky enough to have a special guest in Jeremy Wilson from the Success Group. With a diverse background in accounting spanning more than 20 years Jeremy showed the simple mathematics behind discounting vs value add. And it proved in black and white that any good accountant would agree that ‘DISCOUNTING IS EVIL!’

He explained that if your profit margin is 30%, that by raising your prices by just 10%, you could actually sustain a 25% reduction in sales and still be making the same profit…so in other words if you don’t lose 1 out of every 4 customers by raising your prices, you will be making more money…so here’s to raising our prices!!!

And in our question and answer session Maya Maora of Adam & Eve Beauty Therapy in Wellington asked ‘How do I get off the tools and start working on my business instead of in it?’ Director of Worldwide Salon Marketing New Zealand Rachael D’Aguiar-Sanders told the group exactly how she did it 18 months ago. “I just set a date and I let my customers know that from that day on I was no longer a Beauty Therapist and that I was focusing on running my business. We organised a big get together at our house because we wanted our clients to know that they are also our friends and I can honestly say we didn’t lose one customer.”

Inner Circle members Nirmata Kumar, Mellanie Smith & Lynda Moodley Share Ideas in the Butterfly House

You see there is only one thing that stops us from getting off the tools and working on our business and that is fear. Fear that you are going to lose all your loyal regular customers, fear of hiring staff – you catch my drift…you need to get over it!

If you are serious about turning your business into an asset that one day you can sell, then it has to be able to operate without you in it.

And as a special surprise for our members after the closed door session we took them through the attractions at Butterfly Creek including Australasia’s largest tropical Butterfly House, creepy crawly exhibit and the newest attraction…two giant 5m long Aussie Crocs….I could swear one of them looks like Greg Milner!

Rating 3.00 out of 5

A post by Chris Sanders

Chris and his wife Rachael D'Aguiar own a successful salon in Auckland - so successful, thanks to their involvement in the Worldwide Salon Marketing Inner Circle program and the tools and strategies in the Essential Salon Owner's Marketing Toolkit that they grabbed the opportunity to become the NZ franchise of WSM.