As Jane writes below, she had to take MASSIVE ACTION – and used some classic “Sales Thinking” to come up with a clever twist on the famous Queen of Referrals system in the Toolkit.

It worked brilliantly - and Jane has generously shared the marketing pieces she uses in this campaign with other Members.

“It is quite basic and the letter could most probably do with tweaking. I rolled this out to 4 of my top hotels, as at a recent meeting they all said they were struggling and to be honest so was I (and looking at closing the door).

MASSIVE ACTION was needed. My salon has a 30/70 split in favour of the tourist due to us being inside a hotel and very little walk past. Although not directly flooded, a lot of my regular holiday clients are from Brisbane, Grantham, Toowoomba and the Lockyer valley.

The way it works is simple, I send the hotels 60 vouchers to the value of $25, which they can do with as they wish… Staff incentives, booking incentives, hotel Guests and residents.

When they run out they call and I take them some more. I keep track of the vouchers and at the end of the month the winning hotel gets a $100 voucher. Some of the hotels have gone to town with it, putting posters in lifts etc, others are a bit more discreet.

We gave out 240 vouchers in March and got back 67 (the girls also tried to upsell on the pedi’s so that in actual fact we didn’t give anything away).

The average spend per service $122.75. We have found that even if they don’t use the voucher the seed has been planted and they call us first without looking around town at what’s on offer.

We also had an offer that was value added that they couldn’t use the voucher on which the girls upsold (some were better than others at doing this). We have found that hotels that didn’t have them were phoning me to get in on the act so in April we have rolled this out to another 8.”

WSM graphic artist Vanessa Goh and copywriter Chanelle Van Der Heijden with the all-new Essential Salon Owner's Marketing Toolkit - the first major update since the product was launched in 2004

Not yet a Member? Go here to find out more about the Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program and the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit - and how to apply for a 90 day Risk Free Test Drive of the entire system.

The Sales Prevention Department’s alive and well in my part of the world, and I’ll bet my mother it is in yours, too. The world seems to be lurching from one financial crisis to another – first the GFC, now Europe on the brink thanks to massive debts – and yet so much of it could be solved if only sales people did nothing more than their job; to take the money people are begging you to stuff into your cash registers.

You don't have to smart to be successful in sales. Just SHOWING UP is usually enough.

But most can’t even get out of their own way. I’ve been shopping for a new car, but if my experience is typical – and I fear it is – then it’s a mystery to me how car dealers, and the salesmen they employ, manage to feed their kids. And this is by no means restricted to the car industry.

Hint: how much money is slipping through your own Sales Prevention Department?

Example #1: Six months ago I decided on one of those up-market, outrageously-expensive European models. Phoned a nearby dealer, arranged to meet a salesman at the showroom, sat down with some kid in his twenties, ticked all the options I wanted, roughly added up the bill to somewhere on the nasty side of $120,000, suggested he might want to sharpen his pencil for a quick sale, and told him to send me a final figure. He had both my email address and my phone number.

I never heard from him again. Maybe he got snatched by aliens. Or his dog, fed up with not being fed, ate him. I have no earthly idea, but it’s the sort of nightmare that should be keeping his boss awake all night, staring at the ceiling.

Example #2: Bemused and somewhat perplexed by this, I simply refused to follow him up and try convincing him to take my money. I left it a few months – still nothing – so last week I started shopping again. This time a different dealer for a different make. Found one I liked, and with the young salesman in the passenger’s seat, took the thing for a test drive.
Back at the showroom, I told him I wasn’t going to commit to a new car for the next two or three years without spending at least a couple of days with the vehicle first, so he promised to get back to me about loaning me the car over the following weekend. That was last Saturday. Today is Wednesday. Still haven’t heard from him.

Example #3: Unwilling to waste any more time dealing direct with yet another Sales Prevention Department face to face, I instead went shopping online. On the most popular car website, I find two or three examples of the car I’m looking for, all at different dealerships across the country. (And by now I’d switched preferred models. I figured if the previous idiot’s sales skills were so lacking, his dealership’s service levels would be similarly inefficient)

I complete the online forms to make an inquiry, and hit the submit button. Four days later, not one of those dealers has bothered to respond.

Now, it’s not as if I’m buying a built-to-price, poverty-pack Korean tin can. I’m spending north of $100,000. And they don’t want my business???

Laughably, the website every dealer in the country uses to sell their cars clearly doesn’t trust the dealers either. It’s just sent me an automatic email, inquiring as to whether I’ve been contacted, and asking if I’d like them to give the dealers a gentle nudge. I presume something like “Gee, some jerk is trying to buy a car from you, wondering if you’d lower yourself to actually give him a call sometime.”

I don’t think so. Let them drown in their own sloth.

Here’s what’s instructive for all salon owners:

Think this kind of sabotage isn’t happening in your business? Do so at your peril, ‘cos it is. It happens in every business. Be paranoid. Paranoia is good. Every single time your phone rings, it’s ‘cos you’ve spent money making it ring. And every time that prospect falls through a canyon-size crack, it’s money wasted. Sales begging, not made. Profit left sitting on the table.

Be paranoid enough to mystery-shop your own business. The results can be terrifying. That’s why most business owners don’t.  Just last week, one of our recently-joined Inner Circle member salons asked us to do it for them. Senior IC coach Annette Gomez booked herself in for a two-hour session. The salon owner thought his business was doing ‘okay’, but when he read Annette’s report, detailing at least twenty glaring, obvious-to-any-customer ‘service failures’, he just about had heart failure. But to his credit, he got stuck into fixing them.

But at least he had the courage to get it done in the first place. Most salon owners – in fact most owners of most businesses – have a head-in-the-sand attitude when it comes to this kind of detail. Folks, this stuff IS marketing.

I advocate ruthlessness. Many a time I’ve had a salon or spa owner on the phone, complaining to me that a staff member “….won’t do what I want her to do/say…” – and my instant and repeated advice is; fire them. Now.

The danger of effective marketing is success….getting more and more customers, who quickly find out you’re no good.

The name of a product (or service, or company) should make it easy for prospective customers to instantly identify what it does, without having to think about it. The iPhone was a no-brainer. But Apple might have shot themselves in the foot with this one, like Kraft did with the idiotically named (and swiftly pulled) iSnack 2.0

Seems the women executives at Apple were all having a day off when the company signed off on the name for this new product. But women everywhere are having the last laugh now. I post this video for research purposes only. But it IS funny, at Apple’s expense.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsjU0K8QPhs

It failed my report card.

I won’t name the salon, but if its owner is reading this, she’ll recognize herself. This salon is one of three owned by a young entrepreneur who’s done a lot of things right, but still lets money fall through the cracks through lack of attention to detail. And there is magic in the detail.

I wandered in late yesterday afternoon, a Monday, to get a haircut. The layout is impressive – 20 chairs line the walls, with a massive raised catwalk down the middle for the fashion shows the salon has become known for.

That’s a tick for laterally thinking about how to create a ‘buzz’ that spills over into attracting new clients, an ‘involvement device’ to acknowledge that as the majority of customers are women, they’re interested in all things fashion and style, not just getting their hair done.

I was greeted at reception by a pleasant young lady (one of five staff on duty, only one of whom was actually cutting hair, being a Monday) who informed me that my haircut would cost an eye-watering $71. This for the privilege of having the services of the company’s ‘art director’, an innovative way of describing their most talented stylist.

When I visibly gulped at this – in a town where an average male haircut might stretch to $35 – she offered me instead, one of their ‘artists’ – another inventive term for what ordinary salons would call a ‘senior’ – for only $62. And if this was too much, I could have one of their ‘designers’ – their version of a mere apprentice, for a few dollars less.

Another massive tick from me for innovation. This salon owner is doing what I’m constantly nagging our Members to do – to re-think what it is they’re selling, to re-invent the business in such a way that it differentiates itself from the competition, simply by re-branding the common and thus making it un-common. Out of thin air, creating more perceived value. “Ordinary salons have seniors and apprentices. We have ‘artists’ and ‘designers’.”

Here’s what’s instructive: using differential pricing, you can elevate the perceived value of your own services. Example – clients insisting they only want the owner pay more for that privilege.

Next, I was asked to complete a client details form – name, all my phone numbers, email address – and crucially, tick-boxes for how I found out about the salon. A database-building system most salons are too lazy to implement, too ignorant to recognize its value.

I was introduced to my ‘artist’ who led me to her chair.

Unfortunately, that’s about when the shine started to come off an impressive start.

I was handed a selection of magazines. They were dog-eared, months old. As she washed my hair, my ‘artist’ cheerfully asked me the standard questions – ‘had a busy day so far?’ Yes, thanks. … ‘Got a big weekend planned?’ Mmmm…couple of social functions, that’s all. ‘What line of work are you in?’

I knew she was going to ask this, so I threw in a truthful answer, specifically to check her pulse.

‘Er, I show salons how to market themselves more effectively, more efficiently, how to increase the per-visit ticket price, and get customers coming back more often…’

“Really….and do you live locally?”

She might have been thinking, but it wasn’t about what I was saying. Nice enough girl, no pulse.

But the wheels really fell off back at the reception desk. Here I was, a brand new customer just walked in off the street, happily paying my $62 buzz-cut bill. I stood there idly chatting with the receptionist, my ‘artist’ attentively nearby.

Sigh. No attempt to sell me product, despite earlier telling my ‘artist’ I always use gel in my hair.

No request for feedback (i.e. testimonial) about my experience in their business.

Not even the slightest effort to re-book me next month.

I walked out the door, the sound of staff chattering to each other about their Christmas plans fading in my ears.

What a crying shame that it’s like this in almost ALL businesses. Attention to detail is its own economic stimulus package.

]]> http://www.worldwidesalonmarketing.com/does-this-happen-in-your-salon/feed 2 http://www.worldwidesalonmarketing.com/salon-spa-sales-lessons-from-a-tropical-paradise?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=salon-spa-sales-lessons-from-a-tropical-paradise http://www.worldwidesalonmarketing.com/salon-spa-sales-lessons-from-a-tropical-paradise#comments Wed, 15 Apr 2009 09:28:48 +0000 Greg Milner http://www.worldwidesalonmarketing.com/selling-salon-products/salon-spa-sales-lessons-from-a-tropical-paradise Michelle and I after our wedding ceremony on the beach at Rottnest Island. Doesn’t she look stunning? Reception committee at our Villa on the island of Bali. You can’t move without somebody smiling at you or polishing something. Surrounded by hawkers on the beach in front of the Ku De Ta restaurant. A buyer is a buyer is a buyer…. Staff at the many excellent restaurants actually know the menu…amazing. Obligatory ‘lying by the pool’ shot at our villa….

For the inquiring mind, there are lessons everywhere. Even when you’re on holidays in a tropical paradise, as Michelle and I are this week on the island of Bali, the equatorial tourist magnet at the fag end of the Indonesian archipelago.

As regular readers and our Members will know, we got married on Saturday April 4, surrounded by friends and family on the sunset-soaked beach in Thompson Bay, Rottnest Island, about 12 miles off the coast of Perth. But thanks to the Sales Prevention Department at the wedding venue, it could have gone off the rails badly. (The reception area under the marquee was still being set up while we were getting married on the beach 30 yards away. Despite a year’s warning, the hotel hadn’t bothered to arrange tablecloths from the mainland till that morning!)

Now we’re near the end of our honeymoon on Bali, and the contrast in service could not be more stark. I notice these things.

Immersed in Bali’s intoxicating combination of cheap food, opulent villas, umbrella drinks around private pools, heat, humidity and the fact you can barely move without the local people polishing something and smiling at you, most people would switch their brains into neutral…or reverse… but I find it difficult to simply close my eyes and ears and stop observing, noting, subconsciously absorbing and calculating how I might put this or that to use. It is the curse of the ‘always on’ entrepreneur, but the alternative is, to me, distasteful and wasteful.

Yesterday, a vivid illustration that a buyer is a buyer is a buyer, and that most salon owners and staff miss huge opportunities for business simply for lack of asking.

Michelle is doing her level best to spearhead the consumer-led economic recovery. Here in Bali, the beach hawkers can spot such a buyer from 50 yards. As soon as Michelle shows one of them the slightest interest in yet another cheaply-made sarong, trinket or pair of fake Gucci sunglasses, every other hawker’s sales radar twitches and fizzes, and soon my wife is surrounded by them, all pitching as hard as they can, knowing full-well that if she’s interested in one thing, it’s possible – even likely – she’ll be interested in something else. They KNOW she doesn’t NEED any of this stuff. That’s not the point. If they based their business decisions on what they thought their customers needed (instead of what they wanted) they’d starve. Poor sales people have skinny kids, as Zig Ziglar once said.

Eventually Michelle disentangles herself from these hyper-saleswomen, but not before she’s acquired enough sarongs to supply her family and friends for the next half a century.

Salon & spa owners more accustomed to hand-wringing guilt and fear of actually selling stuff to their customers should take a lesson from this. The beach hawkers of Bali know full-well that a few dollars not spent on their wares will most certainly NOT end up in the mortgage jar atop the fridge at home. It will, as sure as the incoming tide, be spent SOMEWHERE ELSE, so they feel no guilt whatsoever. May as well be in their pockets than the next guy’s.

Point #1: if you don’t make a point of telling your customers – verbally, visually, repetitively, loud and long – the WHOLE story about everything you sell, all the time, then you can be sure some of those customers will find what they want elsewhere.

If you’ve ever had a customer tell you “Gee, I didn’t know you did THAT here, I’ve been getting that done for years at another salon” then you’ll know what I mean.

Point #2: a buyer is a buyer is a buyer. Anybody who buys one product or service from you will more than likely buy another, and another, and another – if asked!

But while I give credit to the persistence of the typical Balinese street hawker, their marketing and sales skills are nothing more than that. They know little or nothing about adding value, instead competing head to head with each other armed with nothing more than discounting.

As I haggle and beat the offered price on a pair of sunglasses down by more than half, I wonder how much better off these people would be if only they knew how to add value, how to sell ‘packages’, how to build a compelling offer.

But no, haggling is the only way they’ve ever known how to do it, going back to when I was first here in 1976, when the now-famous, hotel-lined Kuta Beach was little more than a fishing village surrounded by rice paddies. Thirty three years later, much of Bali lives on the tourist dollar, attracted by the generous exchange rate (a good meal costs less than $10), and the fact that for $200 a night you can have your own luxurious private villa, serviced twice a day, complete with your own pool.

And nobody does service like the Balinese, even when you don’t ask for it. Today I parked our rented motorbike ($5 a day) outside an excellent restaurant, only to have a passerby offer to move it for me to a more secure spot across the street. He quickly brought the key to our table inside, smiled and was gone.

The scooter has been a godsend. There must be more than 5 million of them on the island. But while the narrow shop-lined streets are choked with cars and motorbikes, everyone is polite, drives slowly, gives way with a smile. Somehow, everything moves, and road rage is unheard of. And the bike has allowed us to easily slip down quiet tracks, get out into the villages, and be smiled at by yet more obliging locals. While their traditional fishing/farming culture has been irrevocably compromised, the rising tide of commercialism has thankfully left no detectable mark on the Balinese people’s naturally-welcoming nature.

By the time you read this, Michelle and I will be on the plane heading home, where no doubt we’ll be disappointed by Sales Prevention Departments everywhere.

Footnote: speaking of service, this week I had to attend a local clinic for a minor eye infection. The Balinese doctor was courteous, didn’t keep me waiting, supplied the required eye drops on the spot…and called our hotel the following day to inquire as to my health! Ever had that kind of treatment from your doctor???

But salesmanship is dead. Which is curious, because we love to buy things. My brother’s wife had her credit card stolen once. He didn’t report it for a month, because the thief was spending less than she was.

Yes, it’s a joke. But the lack of salesmanship is not. And the following appalling example should be enough to curdle the blood of any business owner who employs staff, e.g. presumably YOU if you’re the owner of a salon or spa.

On Saturday Michelle and I went to a nearby outdoor warehouse to buy one of those big market umbrellas for our rear deck. Chose the style and colour we wanted, handed over my credit card.

Did the ‘sales’ guy attempt to up-sell me to a nearby matching deckchair? Nope. Did he even so much as hint that I might like to take advantage of a special offer they had on barbecues that day? You’ve gotta be kidding. Nope, all the way out to my car, this poor dope blathered on about how hot it was, how bad sales had been because of the recession (!)

As he shoved the umbrella into my car, I gave him one last chance to do his job.

“Oh, does this thing come with a heavy base so it doesn’t take off in the wind?” I asked hopefully.

“Ah,” he said, “no it doesn’t, we do have them in stock though.” And then this idiot said the fatal words:

“But to be honest, you can get them cheaper at Bunnings”.

I nearly choked. Had I been his boss, he would have been fired on the spot. For criminal negligence, effectively stealing from his employer, for being an advocate for the competition.

There’s a Sales Prevention Department in every business. And the bigger the business, the more finely-tuned is their SPD.

Last month we tried to give an American magazine publisher nearly $10,000 for a full-page ad in a new beauty industry magazine. They declined to take our money because the ad we wanted to run wasn’t ‘the right type of ad to place in our new magazine given we are creating a highly aesthetic publication for our readers’. The italics are mine.

Never mind the fact that the ads we produce, both for ourselves and our Inner Circle salon members, actually work. Pardon the sarcasm, but it’s obviously of little consequence how effective an ad is, much more important how it looks.
So they miss out on our money. The Sales Prevention Department triumphs again.

The world doesn’t need government handouts, bailouts or rescue packages. The world just needs sales people to do their job, and sell stuff. The world economic crisis would self-correct, if the Sales Prevention Department would just get out of the way.

There is a lesson in this for all salon owners. Be paranoid. Be wary, suspicious, nervous about what your staff are telling your customers. Listen in. Make mystery calls. Take care that your employees are selling your stuff, not somebody else’s.

And if you were equipped with the Selling Like Crazy sales training module from the Inner Circle Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit you’d find that task a whole lot easier.

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…

Do you want the details of a real-life Mothers Day action plan that’s proven to work? I bet you do, having the exact steps laid out for you is incredibly valuable. Here’s Mothers Day action plan that one of our super star Inner Circle members Tracey Orr has successfully organized, and is generously sharing with us all:

“Hi guys, I just got the latest success strategy which I love getting. Really liked the tips on mothers day, thought I would share our mothers day promo with you. We always sell truck loads of mothers day vouchers to "walk-in" men in the 48 hours prior to mothers day but we decided to set ourselves a target this year as a group on top of our usual sales. Thought this info may help some of the other salons with their promo for Mothers Day.
 
This is exactly what we did:
 
Step 1. We used the format of the 4 visit voucher that was successful for us last time. (All Inner Circle members will find this exact certificate in their Marketing Made Easy manual, called ‘Door to Door Certificate’) For our mothers day one we did a new certificate (we slightly changed the blurb and treatments) and charged $99 instead of $69, with 4 upgrades available.
 
Step 2. We held a staff meeting where all staff were educated on the promotion, came up with ideas to sell it and they were advised that as an incentive they get 10% of the original certificate price – i.e. $9 cash for each one they sell.  If they sell a certificate with upgrades they do not get 10% of that, only the original amount. Staff were very happy with 10%.
 
Step 3. We had all this in place by the 1st April when we launched the certificates and set ourselves a group target of $5,000.00 a week.
 
Step 4. We launched the certificates and sent emails and sms messages to clients.  We created a web link to the vouchers as well for people to buy online. Staff asked EVERY client if they want a voucher. Limited numbers were available to help sell.  We have a big board in our staff room to track how many certificates each staff member has sold and how much they have earned.  (This is great when they start to see that their cash is adding up!)
 
Step 5. We are now two weeks into the promo (that leaves us almost 4 weeks more selling) and well on target. 
 
Figures to date:
Original Cert Sales at $99 each – $8623.00 (87 sold)
Visit A Upgrades    $555.00
Visit B Upgrades $345.00
Visit C Upgrades $485.00
Visit D upgrades   $275.00
Upgraded Original Certs $3690.00
 
Total to date (for 2.5 weeks) $13,973.00
Well above target of $5000 per week.
 
We also have the opportunity to upsell upgrades to the 87 standard certs sold at the time of booking.  We aim to sell $5000 a week in the 5 week period ($25,000.00) alone of these certs and then the normal bonus walk in man sales!
 
Not bad given that we have no advertising costs (other than printing the vouchers which we did ourselves!). I have started to see other salons with their ads on TV and in the newspaper now and we are almost $15k up on them already.
 
I think the 10% commission made a big staff incentive. For the next two weeks we will send a second sms and email and the staff have asked for letter drops for their home areas (amazing how they are happy to give up their time walking as there is something in it for them!) and we are also going to target random sales by getting our young Kierra out again to sell the vouchers door-to-door in the immediate week prior to mothers day.
 
P.S. I have been away (sick child) for all this time and so the team has pushed this along with the odd call from me about our target.
 
Tracey Orr
Absolute Beauty

Important Note: All Inner Circle members will find this 4 Visit Voucher in their Marketing Made Easy manual, called the ‘Door to Door Voucher’. It is also in Microsoft Word on the CD, ready to very easily modify with your salon details and print. Not yet an Inner Circle member? You can apply for a 30 Day Test Drive of the entire Inner Circle system, with literally hundreds of done-for-you ads, flyers, letters, and sales strategies by clicking on the ’30 Day Trial’ link in the column to the right.