How to make sure you go off the rails, right from the start....

Ever seen a train wreck about to happen, and felt powerless to stop it?

Or imagined everything happening in slow-motion as a child reaches for the breakfast cereal and knocks the milk over?

It happened to me last week. Channel-hopping on a pay network, I stumbled on a documentary about a young couple in the UK, determined to open their dream salon business.

As the film detailed their ever-deepening financial commitment, I felt like I was a voyeur, watching through a peephole at impending disaster, holding my hand to my mouth and wanting to shout

‘NO….don’t do it!”

By the time they opened their doors, they had spent… wait for it…. FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND POUNDS. Much of that was provided by investors who clearly had more money than sense.

That’s close enough to a cool one MILLION dollars. The salon looked fabulous. They’d gutted the premises and started from scratch. They’d travelled to trade shows in Europe, spending fortunes on expensive Italian fixtures and fittings.  They’d even hired a ‘celebrity’ hair stylist.

Finally, the thrill of opening day. A brief rush of customers in the first two weeks – almost all of them family and friends. And then reality struck, hard.

I could see it happening right from the beginning. These people actually believed that old nonsense about “Build it and they will come.”

Er, no, they won’t. Like a deer in the headlights, they’d  had been blinded by the ‘bright shiny objects’ of starting and running a business, oblivious to the harsh reality; that without customers, you don’t have a business. All you have is an expensive liability.

In all that half million pound spend, not a penny had been set aside for marketing – the only thing that gets customers in ANY business.

Within two weeks, they were facing bankruptcy. The investors had finally woken up. You could have fired a cannon through the salon, without a chance of hitting anybody.

I almost felt sorry for them. Almost. In the end though, they deserved to fail. A few years ago, you’d have had to attend seminars, got in your car and driven to the library, hired appropriate consultants.

Now, all the knowledge you need to avoid making such dumb mistakes is staring right back at you from your computer screen.

'Raising the Dead' - or getting 'lost' clients back into your salon is a case of testing several offers and seeing which ones work best.

I’ve written about this several times before, but it’s worth re-tracing particularly because of the large number of salon marketing ‘newbies’ who’ve recently joined the Inner Circle Lite program.

For their minimal weekly subscription, Lite members are not entitled to individual coaching, even individual answers to questions, however when there are enough questions on a similar topic I’ll post a ‘group’ answer here. And it’s probably useful as a refresher for Premium members anyway.

Salon professionals who signed up for Lite when it launched last week are just now receiving the templates for what we call the ‘Raise the Dead’ series of direct mail pieces  used so successfully by hundreds of our Premium members to get ‘lost’ clients back into the salon. Every salon has ‘em, every salon wants ‘em back.

(Check out more about the Lite program here.)

But it’s brought a rash of questions along the lines of

“I don’t understand – are you really proposing that we offer lost clients a FREE service?”

Well, a couple of caveats.

First, the downloadable templates in the Lite program – in this case the Raise the Dead letters – are just that; templates. They are examples of how to do a direct mail campaign, but the sample offer contained in them is not set in stone.

However, a great deal of ‘sales thinking’ has gone into these pieces, and here’s how it goes:

• Your ‘lost’ clients are pretty much just that. If you haven’t seen somebody for three months or more, they’re not clients any more, they’re prospects. The only advantage you have is that you know their name and address. I.e., you can market to them in the most direct way possible – with a letter, an envelope and a stamp. (Well, you certainly should have their names and physical addresses, if you’re doing your job as the marketer of your business!)
• There’s a reason they haven’t been in for a long while. Either they’re pushing up daisies, or they’ve moved to another town – neither of which you can do much about – OR (worse) they found no compelling reason to come back to you, or (worse still) they found a compelling reason NOT to come back to you.
• To get them back, you have to make a compelling offer, one that must be responded to, that cannot be ignored. That’s not necessarily a free offer, but free is a much more compelling offer than asking them to come back and spend money, when they left you in the first place because they were dissatisfied – or at best, not delighted – with whatever they got last time they were there.

Now, here’s the clever thinking – and to do this properly, you need to know your own numbers for this:

1. First, do the sums: what is an average, regular client worth to you in say, a year? Let’s say for the sake of the argument, $1,000.
2. Second, if you got, say 10 ‘lost’ clients back into the salon, based on your average retention rate, how many of them do you think you’d keep re-booking for the long term? Let’s say five of them.
3. So, in the Raise the Dead letters, let’s say you make an offer of a free cut ‘n color – or a free facial, or body wrap, or whatever – valued at say, $139. (These are my numbers, don’t get bent out of shape because they’re not your numbers. Do some lateral thinking.) But it doesn’t actually COST you $139 to deliver the service… particularly if you make this offer for a Monday or Tuesday only and you’ve got staff sitting around picking their noses anyway.
   It might cost you say, $15 in product.
4. So for this example, it’s cost you $150 to deliver 10 of these freebies, to get ten former clients back in. But, based on your average retention rate, you’ve re-booked 5 of them, and those 5 are worth a total of $5,000 over the next year. For a ‘cost’ of $150.

You can do anything you like with the numbers. But the thinking is sound. And there is only ONE way you’re going to find out which numbers work best for you – testing.

If you find offering a freebie isn’t working, do something else – but whatever you do, don’t simply offer a discount. All that does is train your clients to expect discounts. And believe me, that is NOT the market you want to be in.

The now-famous series of Raise the Dead letters - Inner Circle Premium mebers report responses as high as 25%

FOOTNOTE: The ‘Raise the Dead’ series of direct mail pieces I talk about here is the now-famous one featuring Rupert the Dog. They are certainly NOT your standard, dreary ‘professional-looking’ letters that most business owners send out to their prospects and clients in the delusional belief that looking ‘professional’ will somehow be compelling enough to get them to pick up the phone.

Arguing that ‘I couldn’t possibly send something like that to my clients, they’re far too sophisticated for that’, as one salon owner did at our most recent Salon Profit Secrets seminar, is akin to insisting the world really is flat. As one of our Inner Circle Premium members wrote to me recently, “I sent out the first letter in the series and got one or two responses. Then I sent the second letter and got a massive 25% response – amazing!”

What YOU think about your marketing is irrelevant. The only opinions that matter are those of your customers, who vote with their credit cards.

Susan Anderson's gift voucher campaign paid off in a big way...

Susan Anderson of Lillian Mack Skin Clinic in Moranbah, Queensland has been pinching herself over how her salon business has been transformed.

Logging into the Members Only ‘sealed section’, Susan downloaded a special Gift Voucher offer many of our Inner Circle members had been running successfully in the lead-up to Christmas, and advertised it in the local newspaper last week.

She was almost knocked over in the rush…

“I had queues outside my door for the first two hours and then the rest of the day was solidly constant, I did not move from my front counter all day, even had one of the local coffee shop ladies bringing me coffee for free!! …and congratulating me on such a fantastic idea, we were the talk of the town!!

They have been on sale for 4 days and we’ve sold $24,980 worth of Gift Vouchers, and seen lots of new faces come into the salon so will have gained quite a few new clients…I am over the moon.”

Here’s how Susan describes the spectacular response:

Lisa Gray turned her entire business and life around with one decision...and lots of action.

Lisa Gray of Beauty Naturally in Sandgate, Qld, shares the strategies that saved her business from extinction – and put money in her purse for the first time in years.

(Play the interview recording below and listen in as Lisa describes how her business has taken off.)

“I get excited about actually having a business,” says Lisa. “I’m not so stressed, and when you’re not so stressed you’re more creative, you’re more at ease with yourself, you enjoy what you do. I actually look forward to staff trainings and staff meetings!”

“It’s exciting, it’s not a drain, and I don’t feel negative, I feel very very positive.”

From the Big End of town to the tiny end, there are plenty of reports indicating that the “recession” is patchy, uneven at best, certainly NOT a uniform slide into economic oblivion.

McDonald’s is reporting a massive 80% increase in net profit in 2008 over 2007. Spooked by the relentless reports of Armageddon on the TV news, it seems folks are hitting the fast food joints to save money on meals (and no doubt pile on some fat to carry them through the economic winter!)

Maccas made $4.3 billion in ’08, compared with $2.3 billion in ’07.

In our little world of entrepreneurial salon & spa owners, it’s a similar story, all over the world.

In Scottsdale, Arizona, Body Solutions Laser & Skin owners Dr Tim & Kanna Reilly report a staggering 500% increase in sales in 2008 over 2007, using a simple system of done-for-you direct response marketing tools and ‘sales thinking’ strategies they bought from Worldwide Salon Marketing in August 2007.

“It was a revelation,” says Dr Reilly, whose chiropractic clinic morphed into a skin care clinic over several years but had always bled them white. They were on the verge of giving up and closing their doors, until they ‘got it’ just in time and joined the WSM Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program.Â

IC member Rechelle Watt with her business award...a 40% increase in salon sales in 2008

Then there’s Inner Circle member Rechelle Watt, of Lamonde Hair Face & Body in New South Wales, Australia. While the majority of salon owners whine about how tough things are, Rechelle and hundreds of other Inner Circle members is going from strength to strength.

In ’08, a 40% increase in sales over ’07, according to an email from Rechelle this week.

“WOW!!!….. it’s AMAZING how my business has changed,” says Rechelle, echoing the sentiments of her fellow IC Members. Click here to read Rechelle’s full story.

(Members Only: want to copy what Rechelle’s done? Log into the Members Only section and navigate to ‘Getting New Clients – Hair’ and you’ll find the newspaper ads and the text messages Rechelle used to generate an extra $109,509 in sales in 2008)

And they do it using simple, hard-nosed, “ugly” copy-intensive emotional direct-response marketing, contained in the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit and the coaching they get as Inner Circle members – not the unaccountable, ‘imagey’ expensive branding-style-lets-hope-some-of-it-sticks marketing typically rolled out by big dumb companies using other people’s (eg shareholders’) money.

Big companies in the beauty business are as guilty of pouring useless advertising dollars down the ‘branding’ toilet as anybody else at the top end of town.

Take the giant Regis Corporation, owner of such brands as Cost Cutters, Super Cuts and Hair Club for Men and Women, Regis spend gazillions last year in an up-market makeover of its newly-purchased 635-store Trade Secret chain of salons, attempting to ‘European-ize’ them as a means of selling more bottles of beauty glop.

It was clearly money down the drain. This week Regis folded its Trade Secrets tent, announcing it was ‘selling’ the brand to Premier Salons Beauty Inc.

The word ‘selling’ is a euphemism for actually giving it away. Regis will get precisely zero, nada, zilch for the ‘sale’, instead picking up some tax credits on all the money it’s flushed down the drain on its worthless branding exercise.

All of which just goes to show, dear salon owner, that the ‘geniuses’ running these billion dollar product suppliers and salon chain owners are certainly no brighter, and in many cases a lot dumber, than you the small independent salon owner.

So take heart. If hundreds of our small-time independent salon Inner Circle members can actually increase sales in this deep recession, so can you.

If, of course, you’re equipped with the same marketing & sales tools and coaching.

Which is why you need to apply right now, before you suffer any more hardship, for Inner Circle membership and get that Toolkit in your hands.

Note to US and Canadian salon owners: successful IC members Dr Tim & Kanna Reilly of Body Solutions in Scottsdale, AZ are Worldwide Salon Marketing’s first USA franchise, and are handling all coaching for new North American members as of January 2009.

First, some interesting news that belies all the gloom and doom. International research and survey firm Synovate reports that a poll of 11,500 people in over a dozen countries found 41% of people plan to spend the same amount on beauty products and services as they did before the downturn, while only 27% said they would cut down. (source: www.synovate.com)

And there are other signs (hard to find in the mainstream press) that the outlook is not ALL thunder and lightning for 2009. China? The most recent figures I can find indicate China’s growth will ‘only’ be around 7% this year. ONLY 7%?? In any other country, 7% growth would produce dancing in the streets and joyful public fornication.

There are other indicators that the world hasn’t actually stopped turning. Principally from our own Inner Circle members. I love it when I hear from members who are truly kicking some serious butt… despite the ‘recession’, without regard to any and all obstacles put before them, regardless of nay-saying friends, family and/or staff, while ignoring the self-fulfilling talk of gloom and doom.

Like Chicken Little, for some people the sky is always falling in. For a few (certainly most of our Members) what falls out of the sky is money.

Nadia Valerio of Valerio Hair in Doncaster, Victoria. A real 'action woman'.

Among them, Nadia Valerio of Valerio Hair in Doncaster, Victoria.

Most salons struggle to fill chairs/treatment rooms at this time of the year. Nadia and her staff of 11 are struggling to keep up with the sheer volume of clients, all brought in using simple ads, flyers and sales strategies from the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit™

Get this: In November last year Nadia took an ad from the Toolkit and ran it in the local paper. The salon was run off its feet, in just five weeks they took in no fewer than

165 NEW clients.

(INNER CIRCLE MEMBERS: Log into the Members Only ‘Sealed Section’ and you’ll find the ad that Nadia used under “Getting New Clients – Hair”)

That result was achieved despite what many would see as a massive handicap – located in a huge shopping mall with no fewer than EIGHT directly competing salons.

“Every client that came in the week after then received a $10 welcome letter/gift voucher to come back to the store and so far in 8 weeks of the first ad going to print 45 of those clients have come back, it has been the most amazing response, I could not have asked for anything more and this is just a start. We have put together a plan for the next 6 months and can’t wait to put it all in to play. Once again thank you WORLDWIDE SALON MARKETING you have taken my buisness to the next level,” writes Nadia.

And that was just the beginning. As Nadia describes in this short interview extract, revenue, client numbers and profits have been nothing short of amazing since she a) began to educate herself about what works, and b) put the tools, strategies and advice as an Inner Circle member into action.

Special Group Coaching Call for Inner Circle Members – Monday, February 2

Nadia has agreed to be my special guest interview for our next Inner Circle Members Only Group Coaching Call. In this call she’ll detail exactly what she did to not only generate massive new business before Christmas, but avoid the post-Christmas lull that most salon owners suffer from.

Members will receive direct email notification of the dial-in number and PIN code for this call, but here are the date and times:

Date of Group Coaching Call: MONDAY, February 2.

(For North American Members, this will be SUNDAY afternoon/evening, February 1. If you miss the call, don’t say you got ‘confused’ by the time difference.)

Time of Group Coaching Call

In Australia:

Perth: 10am
Adelaide: 11.30am
Melbourne/Sydney: Noon
Brisbane: 11am

In New Zealand: 2pm

In NORTH AMERICA:

Sunday, February 1

Pacific: 5pm
Mountain: 6pm
Eastern: 8pm

From time to time I get an email complaining that “all you do is talk about the salon success stories, but there are far more failures out there than successes, how come you never talk about them?”

Well, call me old-fashioned, but I’ve never actually been able to figure out what constructive use could be gained from hearing endless complaints and excuses for failure. The 80/20 rules holds good in all things, and in the salon & spa industry, just like EVERY other industry, 20% of the people will make 80% of the money.That’s just the way it is. Those stats have been immovable for decades, ever since the first studies were done in the 1950s. The ONLY choice you have is which group you will belong to, which side of the line you stand. In my business life, I align myself with the 20%, I look to them for inspiration, help, advice, mentoring – and ignore the 80% who complain ‘its the economy’, or “my customers are too mean’, or “my business is in a poor area”, or “my business is different…”.

So I’m going to continue feeding you all success stories, because they’re more valuable than stories of “how I failed because my miserable customers kept complaing about my prices so I kept discounting them and then the competition undercut me and eventually I went out of business…” Anybody can copy. Copy what works, or copy what doesn’t work. I figure it’s better to copy what works. Which brings me to a great ‘what works’ story. It comes from long-time Inner Circle member Michelle Weston of Northmead Beauty Therapy in Sydney.

How My Salon Website Brings Me a Steady Stream of New Clients

Most salon websites are the usual ‘pretty’ brochure-style sites, with lots of nice graphics, moving pictures of gorgeous models, some text about how wonderful the salon is, and not much else. As an instrument of selling, they are virtually useless.

Michelle’s website, put together by Worldwide Salon Marketing, can hardly be called ‘attractive’ in the typical salon sense. But, combined with well-crafted pay-per-click advertising, copy designed to sell, and good search-engine-optimization, it is devastatingly effective in doing the ONLY thing that websites should do – generate leads and sales.

You can see for yourself how ‘ugly’ it is compared with most of the so-called competition. http://www.beauty-salon-parramatta.com/

Michelle Weston’s website is generating business worth over $250,000 a year

That’s okay with Michelle.

“My website is my pride and joy so I am happy for you to share “some” of those secrets with other members.

“We are getting around 240 hits a day on our website – that’s up by 47% on the same time last year – we are getting 2 or 3 free gift vouchers downloaded – but they will come in and use those vouchers, and then they’ll re-book because we market to them via their email address,” says Michelle.

According to Michelle, her re-booking rate is 74%, but even if she’s converting only one of those clients per day into a long term client, that’s adding say, $1,000 a day to her annual revenue. Do the sums, and that’s around $250,000 a year in new business just from the gift vouchers downloaded off the website.

“I love that website, it’s my baby! Online sales will increase by a massive amount (we have done $300 in Gift Voucher sales online just today!)

Overall, with her website, Toolkit, coaching, Michelle’s business is up 42% July to October this year over last, her gift voucher sales are up 300% this year on last, and she’s well and truly on track to increase sales 08-09 over 07-08 by her target 50%.

“With most of my work now done for December and January well prepared, I will be stepping away from the business for the next month or so.  (Can you believe a salon owner would be saying that 2 weeks before XMAS – never in my wildest dreams!!) The next couple of weeks will just see me watch how well my systems are working and hopefully counting the $$$ and just pick up any slack and loose ends!!! I will be away with my family on holidays until mid-January.”

Here’s the lesson: what YOU think about your website (indeed, about ANY of your marketing material) matters not a damn. It’s what your CUSTOMERS think, and how they act on what they see, that matters, not your opinion, or that of your friends, family or your pony-tailed website designer.

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.

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.

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.

Want to know exactly how they did it? (I figured you would!)

December 1 International Group Coaching call for IC Members: Niki and Jane are our special guests on this one-hour LIVE phone call, and Inner Circle members can eavesdrop, ask questions and find out exactly how these two marketing ‘hot shots’ rolled out their Recession-Busting, Profit-Boosting, Take-No-Prisoners campaigns – and how they’re going to tackle the BIG event of the year, Christmas. IC members will receive notification of call-in times by Members Only email in the next week.

 

This coaching call for IC members is just one of the HUGE benefits of the whole Inner Circle program. Another is the newly-introduced Members Only Advance Notice Marketing Triggers emails – complete with comprehensive done-for-you marketing templates, ideas, how-to strategies and advice in plenty of time to make the most of the big marketing ‘trigger’ events of the calendar.

 

FREE Done-For-You Christmas promotions, posters, ads, flyers for IC members

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.

For example, last Friday our General Manager Jemma Lole sent out to Members a multi-page, all-singing, all-dancing Christmas marketing campaign… and here’s just some of the feedback flooded our in-box over the weekend:

 

“Dear Jemma, oh my God…thanks so much for the wonderful Xmas Promotions, they are wonderfull!!!, I have downloaded everything.” Regards, Luba Voronov, 4U2C Body Utopia, Melbourne.

 

“Thanks Jemma, this worked – and it looks wonderful. Can’t wait to get it up on our window!” Regards, Lynette Farrelly, Secret Sanctum, Gold Coast

 

“I LOVE it. Thanks so much. I have written my December newsletter and I was thinking it looked dull. So this is perfect. Many thanks, Ruth Grant, Planet Beauty, Sydney

 

“Hi Jemma, thanks so much to you and your team for the great poster, ads etc for Christmas, they are absolutely wonderful. We will put them to use.” Regards, Wendy Marron, Queensland.

 

“Thank you, thank you. I have been waiting with anticipation for your info!!!” Michelle Weston, Northmean Beauty Therapy, Sydney. 

NOTE TO NON-MEMBERS: If you have NOT yet applied for membership of the Inner Circle marketing and mentoring program – and therefore do NOT have these crucial marketing tools, strategies and ‘sales thinking’ campaigns at your disposal… more and more of your competition does!

The longer you are without them, the more chance the recession will have to eat into your business, your client base, your profit (if in fact you have any profit) and your confidence. The longer you are without them, the longer your competition has to get the jump on you, to not only steal your existing clients but to vacuum up your prospective clients.

With the greatest marketing event of the calendar year just weeks away, you simply CANNOT afford to waste any more time….(and even if you’re traditionally packed to the rafters in the week or two before Christmas, what happens as soon as Santa disappears back up the chimney and you’re staring at a bleak and desolate January, where you can count the clients on one stumpy hand?)

Go HER NOW to apply for a Test Drive of the entire Inner Circle marketing & mentoring system….you never know, you could have your kit and be getting results like Niki and Jane within a few days.

Want LOST Clients Back in the Salon? Try THIS!

In the Toolkit, our Members will find a complete series of linked, sequential letters designed to entice ‘missing in action’ clients back into the salon. Our research indicates these bring a response rate of between 9% and 25%, which is pretty good in anybody’s language.

But extra kudos go to Inner Circle member Emily Maguire of Serene Hair & Beauty in Canberra. Emily took the so-called ‘Raise the Dead’ letters to a new level, using them to invite lost clients back – and set their own prices!

Yep, the offer was simple – come back, use any service in the salon, and “pay us what you think it’s worth!”

It’s a strategy that would terrify the timid. But for Emily, it worked brilliantly. In most cases, they paid MORE than the usual ticket price of the service. AND bought product.

RESOURCE:

For details on exactly how she did it, and an audio interview with Emily describing the results, IC members can log into the Members Only ‘sealed section’ and navigate to ‘Bet You Hadn’t Thought of THIS.’

The Phone Script That Sells Gift Vouchers – Like Crazy…

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.

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. 

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…