Tearing your hair out over staff who won't let you relax about not being in the salon?

It’s a Catch-22 that almost all salon owners face: ‘how can I get off the tools so I can work “on” the business more, when I’m too afraid of losing money/worried about what the staff will do/can’t work out what to tell clients…’ blah blah blah.

There’s no easy answer, as one of our Inner Circle Premium members is discovering. In a post in the Members Only forums this week, Amanda writes:

Hi all.
I decided to go off the tools in April this year, only working on the floor 3 days a week. The remaining days I work at home on marketing, paperwork etc & have a manager in the salon. The thing is that I don’t feel things are being done fully in the salon & I don’t think it is just a case of getting the jitters about handing the reins over….

Amanda goes on to detail how clients aren’t getting what’s advertised, how staff are using her personal tools and not cleaning them or putting them back, and how frustrated she feels when the staff wonder why she gets angry at them.

Our members are encouraged to log into the Members Only ‘sealed section’ here and give Amanda whatever help they can. But my own take on this? The tail is wagging the dog, because of a lack of systems. And it comes down to the little-recognized difference between managing people (you can’t, really) and managing systems.

When you have properly thought-out and effectively-implemented systems in a business (and the staff have signed off on and agreed to those systems) you don’t have to manage the staff, you just have to manage the systems.

In my business we have simple ‘tick sheets’ for all the important processes. For example, when a new Member is enrolled in the Inner Circle Premium program, there’s a single-page tick-sheet detailing a dozen or more tasks that must be completed before the enrollment can be ‘signed off’ as having been completed. Credit card billed for shipping, form faxed or emailed for signing by the Member and returned, data entry, Toolkit packaged and shipped, coaching call booked, and many more.

The point is, the system makes people accountable and responsible; if even one of those tasks isn’t completed, or is done incorrectly, the system allows us to track the breakdown and easily pinpoint where a breakdown has occurred.

(And there’s a similar checklist for every major process in the business. Any decently-run salon or spa’s Operations Manual should have a checklist for everything, down to and including the process of opening and closing the salon, turning on the computer, arming/disarming alarms…the works.)

For those who care about systems, I’ve posted an example of this checklist below.

For members who want to add their two cents worth, please log into the Members Only ‘sealed section’ here to read Amanda’s full forum post and see what helpful advice you might be able to offer.

In business, reality IS harsh. If that offends you, stop reading now.

It obviously offended the managing editor of the country’s biggest beauty industry publication. I’ve written for this magazine many times, but when she read the following article, she emailed back

“…I think it might be a little too honest for us to run and get away with!”

Make up your own mind…

Salon Marketing Heresy: Turn Customers Away.

How often have you silently wished ‘Gee, if only I didn’t have to deal with customers like that miserable penny-pinching old cow…’?

Here’s a novel proposition for you: tell her, gently but firmly, ‘that’s the way we run our business, Mrs Splonge. But I’m sure if you try the salon down the road, they’ll more than likely do it your way.’

The more you decide exactly who you want to do business with, the more people want to do business with you.

I know, I know…it’s a very difficult concept for owners of most small businesses to get their heads around. But a lot of people have asked me about this, so stay with me, ‘cos Greg’s got answers.

When you’re new to business, or when your business is in early start-up phase and you’re desperate for customers – basically, anybody with a pulse – you’ll take whoever walks through the door, dance to their tune, and thank them for it.

Our business was no different. Back in the early days, we’d take on any salon owner who’d take our call. When the phone rang, we jumped. But we soon learned the hard lesson: the louder a customer plays that tune, the faster you dance.

Nowadays, we decline more applications for the Toolkit and Inner Circle membership than we accept. We never cold-call for business. Don’t even so much as talk to a salon owner unless they’ve jumped through a bunch of hoops to get to us.

Same applies to distributors. In the early days, when we were desperate for growth, we had lots of inquiries from all over the world from people who wanted to sell our stuff, or represent us in some way. We took on quite a few, with very little due diligence, and lived to regret it, as their failure to perform threatened to give us a bad name in the market.

We still get a ton of inquiries from would-be distributors. But we don’t take on anybody unless we’re absolutely convinced they’re the right kind of people to represent the Worldwide Salon Marketing brand.

It’s about positioning.

When wet-behind-the-ears college marketing graduates talk about ‘positioning’, they’re invariably talking about dinky, meaningless Mission Statements so many direction-less companies dream up in wasted hours of boardroom brainstorming sessions. Like

‘Leaders in Customer Service’ and other such claptrap.

But that’s not positioning, that’s just empty promises. Customers soon see through it, because the mission statement and actual experience is further apart than the brain cells in Britney Spears’ head.

Positioning is actually about two distinct, but linked things:

1)    Deciding exactly who you want to do business with – for example, prospects chosen by age, sex, socio-economic background, career demographic, geographical area, or a combination of all.

2)    Then deciding the Terms & Conditions under which you’ll do business with these chosen people.

Example: In the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit that all Inner Circle members get, there is a very carefully-crafted letter called

‘You and Us – a Beautiful Relationship’

which deliberately and clearly sets out how the new customer is expected to behave – essentially, turn up on time, and pay on time – and in return, the commitment the business makes to that customer.

And it’s important that the ground-rules are set right from the very beginning of the relationship. It’s hard to move the goal posts half way through the game.

For most salon owners, particularly those who’ve just opened the doors, the concept of limiting yourself to a particular type of preferred customer might seem like business suicide.

In fact, it’s exactly the opposite.

There are riches in niches. Try to be all things to all people, and you end up being nothing to nobody. The middle ground is death.

Example: the world is overflowing with marketing experts. Google ‘marketing consultant’ and the screen will almost melt down. They are almost all ‘generalists’, seeking business from anybody who needs help with anything to do with marketing.

Which is why, years ago, I decided I couldn’t and didn’t want to compete with that great unwashed slop. I decided to focus on a niche market that’s

an inch wide… but a mile deep.

How many salons are there that cater to everybody who wants to walk in the door? Virtually ALL of them.

But imagine if you positioned yourself as the inner-city salon that specializes in say…

Lawyers!

You cover the walls in lawyer-like posters, decorate the place like a library, put Judge Judy on endless loop on the flat screen TV…. I could go on, but you get the picture. Pretty soon, you’d become known as the place where lawyers (men and women), judges and clerks get their hair styled for that big court appearance.

There’s a million niche markets. Working mothers, DINKS (double-income-no-kids), debutants, secretaries, mining industry workers, yada yada yada…

(And there’s nothing to stop you creating a business within the business, i.e., creating marketing that only appeals to your chosen niche, as well as continuing to accept anybody and everybody.)

But the best advice is from Sam Walton, founder of Walmart, America’s biggest retailer, who decided he would

Go where others ain’t!

He was talking in the pure geographical sense, setting up in small towns the competitors had ignored.

But the principle holds. Go find markets your competitors are ignoring.

It’s there you’ll find riches.

The quote above from Abraham Lincoln came to me this week as I turned 54, an age by which – ten years ago – I would like to have been ‘retired’, whatever that means. Now, to my surprise, I’m finding it is the most productive and enjoyable time of my life.

I started this business when I was 49, an age at which most people are winding down, not gearing up. Ray Kroc would not have been surprised. He started McDonalds when he was 52, suffering diabetes, missing a gall bladder and most of his thyroid gland, but was “convinced the best was ahead of me”. Kroc spent the next 30 years building the company into a global phenomenon. Victor Kiam was in his late fifties when he famously ‘bought the company’ – Remington Products – in 1979. If you’re of a certain age (like me) you’ll remember his TV ads where he declared boldly ‘it shaves as close as a blade, or your money back!”

The point is this: energy and enthusiasm comes from actually doing things. Age has nothing to do with it.

Last week I reached a personal milestone. To you, fishing may well be nothing more than a jerk on one end, waiting for a jerk on the other.

But it has been my recreation for more than 30 years, though I had never reached the sportfisherman’s holy grail. Yet on a flat-calm sea aboard my friend John Davidson’s game fishing boat Incognito, nearly 40 nautical miles out to sea, I hooked my first marlin. Well may you yawn, but to me this was akin to a golfer achieving a hole-in-one after 30 years playing that infuriating game. It took 40 exhausting minutes to bring the great fish to the boat, at which point it shook its massive head, snapped the leader and swam away.

Which was fine by me, we were about to cut it loose anyway.

Two weeks from now I reach another milestone, when Michelle makes an honest man of me. It will be my third marraige. A couple of friends have asked why, at my age, I’m bothering to get married at all. I joke that it’s because I haven’t gotten married for more than 25 years, but that’s being deliberately glib.

As I see it, it’s simple. Age has nothing to do with anything. It has everything to do with commitment. When you commit to something – just about anything – you create for yourself a platform for success. Nothing worthwhile can be achieved without commitment. With it, you can achieve almost anything. Life itself becomes more fulfilling.

That’s why I continue to push the barriers, chase goals, seek adventure. Couple of weeks after we get married, I’m borrowing my brother’s 55ft boat and heading off to the Abrolhos Islands for a week of fishing with Michelle and three other couples. Not for me the sedentary cruise ship.

I would rather take risks, literally drive my own boat, than be a passenger…waiting for other people to make decisions and simply, passively reacting to them.

It is, I suppose, why I am at heart a marketer and entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship is a lonely place to be. Risky, sometimes dangerous, rarely secure. But to my mind it is better to take risks than to take the safe way, risk nothing.

Nobody who has never risked anything has ever achieved much either. And it’s a funny thing, the older I get, the more risks I like to take. What, after all, do I have to lose?

Let’s get on with this week’s offerings….

How to ‘eavesdrop’ on what’s working for other salon & spa owners…

One of the hardest things for any salon or spa owner is working in a vacuum. In America, there are more than 300,000 salons & spas, large and small. In Australia and New Zealand, more than 35,000, in the UK, at least 60,000.

And for almost every salon & spa, is an owner who goes to work every day and tries to re-invent the wheel. The beauty ‘industry’ is a multi-billion dollar beast, but its arms and legs are all moving in different directions. There might be 50 salons, clinics, spas within a few miles of each other, but the owners all turn up at work having no idea what’s working for the others.

Sad thing is, there’s no real need to re-invent the wheel, because somewhere in the world another salon or spa owner has already faced, challenged and found answers to exactly the questions you’re asking yourself right this second. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could ‘pick the brains’ of somebody who’s already been there, done that?

That’s exactly what’s happening every month among our Inner Circle members. Just this week we had dozens of Member salons join our monthly international Group Coaching Call to ask…and get answers…to questions like:

“What’s the quickest way to capture new clients?” from Judy Swain at Glam Spa in Connecticut.

“What’s the best way to retain new clients for re-bookings?” from Amanda Anderson of Contours Clinic in Melbourne, Victoria. And from Chantal Witkowski of E’clips Hair and Beauty in Woodend, Victoria, “”I have two of my full time stylists both leaving to have babies within 1 month of each other in July/August. What is the best way for me to do this without losing clients? All future female employees will be fitted with chastity belts to prevent this from happening again!!!”

If you’re not an Inner Circle member, here’s a small taste of how these Group Coaching Calls work:

Press play….

(NOTE TO INNER CIRCLE MEMBERS: The full one-hour Group Coaching call recording is available in the Member’s Only area under the top menu, ‘Group Coaching Calls’)

Of course, the Group Coaching calls are just a small part of the whole Inner Circle program….find out if you qualify by completing the no-obligation survey here.

The Price Cringe: How a single tiny change can instantly increase your sales in the salon…

I’ve often bemoaned the fact that most business owners – salon & spas particularly – would be more successful if only they’d get out of their own way, and let the customers buy from them.

The biggest mindset barrier here is around the issue of price. People in the beauty industry seem by nature to be ‘caring’ kinds of people. And that generates what I call the Price Cringe where the owner says unconsciously if not overtly

“I can’t raise my prices because my customers can’t afford it/won’t pay/I already raised prices once this decade…” or any combination of these.

It is death to play God and assume what your customers can and cannot afford, will and will not pay. I have banged on about this for years, and it seems to be one of the most diffucult concepts to get across.

So here is a proven strategy that will increase your gross sales instantly, without changing any prices at all, if that fear is too big for you to surmount.

Offer the Most Expensive Services First!

Most business owners start with the default position of assuming that customers always shop on price first. And so, bowing to the cringe factor, they offer the cheapest thing first, slowly working up to the most expensive on the list, all the while looking sideways to watch for the flinch.

Take a browse through the car ads in the newspaper and you’ll see exactly the same thinking, in print. Mistakenly in my view, the car dealers to a man put their cheapest cars at the top of the ad (the most important section of any ad) and all the expensive ones right down the bottom of the page… last to be read, if at all.

But study after investigation after focus group has shown that price is only the major issue when that is the only proposition put forward as the basis for the sale or offer.

However, even if price is the leading edge of your offer, you can instantly increase your sales by offering the most expensive items first, the cheapest last. And it costs you NOTHING to try this.

Years ago, when Jill and I began selling what was then just the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit, we sold two versions – a Bronze version (just the kit itself, no frills or add-ons) and a Silver version, which came with coaching and a few other bonuses. The Silver toolkit was twice the price of the Bronze version.

We would pitch the Bronze kit first, and typically the Bronze version outsold the Silver version by a factor of two to one. Then, at a marketing seminar in Dallas, I asked Bill Glazer about this.

“Pitch the deluxe version first, the basic version second,” he instantly told me. That single piece of advice was worth the long trip to Texas alone. In the next few months, we completely turned our sales around. Fully eighty percent of our sales were now the deluxe, upmarket version!

Here’s what to do: for the next week, whenever a new client comes into your salon or calls you to ask about services and prices, simply start at the expensive end of your price list first, instead of the cheap end. I’d be delighted to report your results.

Speaking of price…

Notice of Impending Inner Circle Membership Fee Rise.

As of Tuesday, May 19, Inner Circle fees for new members (excluding New Zealand at this stage) will rise substantially. (This will NOT affect existing Members or those salons joining prior to May 19.)

The Inner Circle first-year Membership fee of $7,932 (Australia and USA, over 12 months) has been held static for more than two years now. In the meantime, we’ve added a vast array of profit-generating products and services to the program. As of May 19, that full-year fee will rise to $9,948, an increase of just over $2,000.

What this means to you if you have not yet applied to join the program:

You have until May 19 to join the program at current price levels, and more importantly, join hundreds of entrepreneurial salon & spa owners around the world who can help you not only survive this recession, but actually prosper in it.

WARNING: we receive more than 100 applications every month, and take on only 30 new Members each month. Reason: we put enormous labor-intensive resources into each new Member. Sure, we could take on more, and I’d laugh all the way to the bank, but support would suffer, and I’d rather have 30 happy, well-looked-after new Members than a hundred justifiably-grumpy ones.

If you have not yet applied for Inner Circle membership, go and complete the no-obligation survey here.

This is my last post till the New Year. So I want to leave you, and 2008, with some gentle advice, a little encouragement, and a dose of economic reality.

With most salons and spas bursting at the seams, appointment books full in the week before Christmas, I expect that most of this will fall on deaf ears. But I’m going to go ahead and say it anyway.

The “S” Word

The S word is the most feared word in the beauty industry. In salons and spas across the country, stylists, estheticians, massage therapists and nail techs turn their noses up at it. Feel guilty about it. Won’t do it.

The S word is:

Selling

And among beauty industry technicians, it’s a horrible word. It makes them feel “pushy”. Makes ‘em feel guilty.”I’m not a salesperson, I’m a beauty therapist” is the universal cry. Well, I’m going to leave you for this year with some thoughts that should help you feel proud to sell, happy to upsell, delighted to be doing more of it, with the reward that you’re not only making more money for yourself, you’re doing your patriotic duty for your country.

I have always been bemused by this antipathy in the beauty industry towards selling. See, we LOVE to buy things. We just LOVE it. And yet, and yet, we hate selling. I don’t get it.

As much of the world sinks into recession, governments across the globe are handing out gazillions, and exhorting us to spend, spend, spend. So there is now absolutely no excuse for being timid about selling to your clients. You actually now have official sanction and encouragement to do everything in your power to get your clients to spend more money with you!

In this time of economic crisis, thinking small serves no-one. Cutting your prices not only damages your own economy, it is now officially dangerous for the nation.

Think BIG.

No woman will boast to her friends that she “only  paid $30 for a haircut”. But she WILL proudly show off her $200 Screen Star Makeover. Men are no different. I know, ‘cos I am one. It is a rare man indeed who would buy a $5,000 second-hand Korean buzz-box and rush around to show his friends. But a $100,000 red sports car with more bling than Paris Hilton? You bet, baby.

Here’s the thing: it’s not what you spend that matters, it’s how you feel about your purchase.

Selling is an exchange of value. You, the owner of the salon, are providing perceived value. For the customer, part of that perceived value is how they feel immediately after their purchase. And when people buy cheap, they feel cheap. It’s well known psychology. The MORE people pay for something, the better they feel, as long as they’re getting massive perceived value. (Inner Circle members: your Toolkit contains vast numbers of examples of how to add perceived value to your services.)

But there is now even greater encouragement for you to SELL, SELL, SELL.

Until something is sold, nothing happens. No income is generated. Therefore no taxes are paid. And if no taxes are paid, no schools are built, no roads constructed, no public services provided. Selling is the oil that keeps our entire society from creaking to a halt.

So my advice to you is:

• Raise your prices. Substantially. But do it with a pulse, by adding massive perceived value with extras that cost you little or nothing.

• Tell more, not less. The more you tell about your services, about yourself and your skills, about your products, about why your customer should buy you/them, the more you will sell. There’s a silly saying ‘less is more’. It is not. More is more.

• Ignore the little voice in your head that’s making you feel guilty about your customer handing over that extra $20. No, your customer will NOT go home and carefully put that 20 bucks in the mortgage jar on top of the fridge. She WILL gleefully go spend it somewhere else, next week. It’s human nature. And it’s your DUTY to take that $20 from her NOW. And spend it on yourself.

Money has zero value in and of itself. It ONLY has value when it changes hands.

In 2009, it’s your patriotic duty to make sure that as much of it as possible moves from your customers’ hands to yours. GUILT has no place in this changed economy.

This Salon Owner’s Appointment Book is FULL for January & February 2009 – So What’s SHE Doing That You’re NOT?

This is Catherine Powell, long-time Inner Circle member, owner of the million-dollar Beauty on Rose in Melbourne. In an interview with Selling Like Crazy author Jill Groves today, Catherine detailed, chapter and verse, exactly how she keeps her salon appointment book FULL during the deadliest time of the year for salons & spas…the weeks immediately after New Year.

This recording will be mailed to Inner Circle members early in January, but the information Catherine delivers in the interview is GOLD – too good to keep from our Members when they could be proifiting from it, so FOR INNER CIRCLE MEMBERS ONLY, we’ve uploaded the complete interview to the ‘sealed section’. Navigate to Member Interviews on the top menu, and you’ll find it in there. Listen, and be amazed.

You might be wondering ‘how can a little salon like mine ever be a successful business….when I know nothing about business!?’

Well, take heart. About the only thing you can hear on Wall Street this week is the sound of wrists being slashed and breasts being beaten, as yet more of America’s ‘institutions’ collapse in a very untidy heap, and the rest of the country shakes in fear of the economic ‘disaster’ ahead. Lehmann Brothers…dead and buried. Merrill Lynch sold for a pittance. Now the country’s biggest insurance company, AIG, bailed out by the taxpayer for $80-odd BILLION.

So you think YOU don’t know anything about business? The guys running these huge corporations are supposed to be Titans of Industry, the so-called Masters of the Universe. Yet it seems they’re not so smart after all.

How dumb was it to lend money to people who never had a hope of paying it back?

The emperors really don’t have any clothes.

If only these fools had half the smarts of some of our Inner Circle members, who clearly know more about how to make a profit than most of the Wall St wizards who’ve got America and much of the rest of the world into so much trouble.

Below are four reports just in this week, from salons and spas in America and Australia…from salon owners who ohave thumbed their noses at the ’recession’, are making more money than they’ve ever made in their lives, at a time when most salon & spa owners are shutting their eyes, slamming the door, hiding under the table and hoping that when they eventually do come out into the light again, things will have miraculously got better, all by themselves.

For here is the Great Recession Lesson: the more people do just that – bunker down, stop marketing…the greater is the opportunity for those few of us remaining to capture their market, make more money, not less, and come out the other side in better shape than we’ve ever been.

EXAMPLE #1: First to one of our more prominent Inner Circle members, Body Solutions Laser & Skin Care in Scottsdale, Arizona. From owners Dr Tim & Kanna Reilly, an email just in today, complete with the ad they used to achieve some spectacular results this past month:

Hi Greg,
I know you like to share some ideas with other Inner Circle Members so I thought I’d open up this one.  The attached ad (sse below) ran in our local paper (black and white, quarter page ad) from August 11to September 13.  The results:

87 New Clients @ $99 per facial = $8613
53 bought products totaling approx $4000
60 already rebooked for another next month.  Total from one monthly promotion was over $12,000,  money spent on ad was $1040 for the month ( the ad ran 3x per week for 4 weeks)

Thanks as always for all your help, ideas and encouragement!  If we keep this up well be looking for even more space.  Take care, Kanna Reilly, Body Solutions LASER & SKIN, Scottsdale, AZ, USA.

Inner Circle members: log into the Members only ‘sealed section’ www.worldwidesalonmarketing.com/members and navigate to the “Getting New Clients – Beauty” category to download the exact ad that Tim & Kanna used to get these results.

The In-Spa promotions that brought this Member retail sales of $25,000 a month.

EXAMPLE #2: From right here in my home town, Perth, Michael Curtis of Blush Day Spa has sent in a series of tiered-price in-salon retail promotions that have been going gangbusters.

Says Michael:

“Thort I’d share some great templates for inhouse product sales we use at Blush… We are consistently doing $25k a month in retail sales and these packages have really improved our performance… Enjoy!”

Inner Circle members: log into the Members only ‘sealed section’ www.worldwidesalonmarketing.com/members and navigate to the “Retail Product Promotions” category to download the exact ad that Tim & Kanna used to get these results.

EXAMPLE #3: Sydney salon owner Lesley Morgan-Wesson took two years to decide to join the Inner Circle program and get her marketing & sales Toolkit. By the sound of Lesley’s latest email to us, sounds like it’s been a worthwhile investment!

“We shall achieve our $1,000,000 goal by the end of this year…”

“Hi Greg, I read your newsletter – immediately I get it, no matter what else I’m doing – and it made me think you’d probably like to read some of my highlights…

I was working on reception in the salon yesterday… (because we’re 2 staff down at the moment: 1 on holiday and 1 I let go) and I was staggered at how busy we are!! I don’t work in the salon and rarely go in so I mean… it was really a surprise!

Let me explain…

Some of our staff are booked up til January of next year! We’re generally booked up until the end of September.

We’re doubling our turnover each month over the same period last year. We’re getting 15-20 enquiries from our website per day and most are converting… and they’re good quality clients as well.

Client feedback is very positive… one of our long term clients popped in yesterday because she saw me in the salon and we were generally updating each other. She praised the business, the staff, the marketing, the atmosphere, the decor, in fact the whole business… and me. This is a lady whose professional life revolves around the big end of town and has worked closely with all the big fashion houses in Paris. So you can imagine I was thrilled by her praise.

And perhaps the biggest coup for me was a few weeks ago I was approached by a local up-market shopping centre to open a spa there (on the basis of our website, our look and our reputation). I had a meeting last week with centre management and I’m working on a feasibility study and financial projection for them and for me… it’s looking very positive.

We shall achieve our $1,000,000 goal by the end of this year… no mean feat when you think a few months ago a Thai massage centre opened right next door to us and another massage centre opened across the road PLUS we already had 28 competitors in the area! Well, I’m happy to announce about 7 businesses have already closed and we rarely see anyone in the massage centre.

Why am I sharing this with you? Well, our salon has always done well… but this year it’s growing exponentially and really taking off!

I believe the reason is several-fold… I’m implementing all the Inner Circle theory (not just slavishly copying the templates) you speak and write about and yes, it requires tweaking at times… but when you get it right… BOOM!! I also have formulae, templates, notes, mentors and coaches to guide and support me and I feel so confident about the path I’m on… it’s great.

(Last year I was seriously considering giving up… too hard for the little return… I was so close to over it!)

So thank you very much… I enjoy being part of the Inner Circle because you and Jill have an impeccable work ethic and it is also evident in the staff you employ.

Kind regards (and raving fan),

Lesley Morgan-Wesson, Owner, LADY AT BAY, Sydney.

EXAMPLE #4: And here’s another one, this time from Lisa Conway of Marinelli’s Hair in Victoria:

Sales Increase by Over $2,000 a Week – in Just 9 weeks

“Well you won’t believe what happened this week. Before (we joined the Inner Circle program) at the July ‘Road to Riches Salon Marketing Super Conference’ (only 9 weeks ago) the salon took between $5,000 and $6,000 a week.

Things have been on the up each week and we were very close to $8,000 last week when the senior did a ‘no show’ on the Saturday. So we finished the week with $7,333. Then on the Monday I lost the other senior – she resigned over the phone, said she could not work with my manager. (She was below the line in so many ways).  So now I have 1 fantastic senior left and a very very competent  second year and a first year who had this week off on annual leave so now I have 2 staff instead of 5. So I jump back in and the 2 still standing rise to the challenge, the first-year offers to come in when she hears the news, we said ‘no we can do it, have your break’ - it was her 18th birthday this week.

We took no less than $8,123 for the week! WOO HOO!

Things happen for a reason and this is proof.

Lisa Conway, Marinelli’s Hair Studio, Gisborne, Victoria.

Recession? Nuts to that!

 ACTION

Thanks to her prominence in the Inner Circle program, Tracey Orr gets a constant stream of phone calls and emails from salon owners all over the world, begging for help. Tracey told me this week that most of them – struggling for the ‘magic bullet’ that will somehow miraculously save them from bankruptcy and failure – complain that it’s all just

‘too hard!!!’

As I said in my post last week, the statistics show that in 12 months from now, 80% of salon & spa owners will either be out of business, or no further advanced than they are today – and only 20% will be on the way to success.

And that goes back to ACTION: the difference between those who choose to be in the 80% ‘also-ran’ category, and those who choose to be in the top 20% (and don’t be under any illusion through my use of words here. I wrote ‘choose’ deliberately, as it is certainly a choice that anybody can make. Unfortunately, 80% choose to be in the bottom group.)

Case #1: The Hair Salon That Doubled Sales in Just Two Months:

A hair salon owner in Sydney got hold of the microphone at our recent Road to Riches Salon Marketing Super Conference and told how, after 5 years of plodding along doing it the way she’d always done it – and getting miserable results – her life had changed overnight… simply because she

1) made a decision, and

2) took ACTION

Coralie Allen takes up the story:

Coralie Allen, hair salon owner, of Sydney: "I have so much more energy for my business, I am currently aiming and on track to triple my sales by September…"

"Hi there, I had my business for 5 years and thought I was doing ok. But I knew it wasn’t good enough to be able to stay in business, I never could stay on top of it all, just making enough to barely stay open, all because of the way I was running my business.

"I realised I never really knew anything about business until I tried the salon marketing with Inner Circle. When I first saw the free intro DVD I was amazed…. it was like an awakening to me.

"I could not believe what I was watching, it was like ‘wow’, a saviour to my problems, something and someone that can hold my hand and help me make money in my business, all I had to do was follow what they told me to do, and no-one had ever offered to do that with me before.

"I could not believe it. I felt I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Instantly I enrolled in the program and as soon as I received it (the marketing Toolkit) I got started. I got results straight away, in the first two-and-a-half months my takings had jumped from $20,000 to $42,000… unbelievable, just simply following what I was told to do.
 
"This extra money made it possible for me to be able to

• renovate my old looking salon to a stylish new one.
• Hire my part time senior to full time,
• Get a $20,000 computer system,
• build a beauty room at the back and get a beautician in there, which she pays me rent, also getting her to work with the kit, so we do all the same marketing,
• hire a fantastic and more expensive bookeeper, who pays for herself because she helps me alot more than the other book keep ever did.

"Because once you start making money you need someone really good to be able to manage it, right? I have never ever had so many New Clients, using the marketing like the Queen of Referrals, in the first 2 months I got 62 new clients, now I get between 10-15 new clients every week.

"Got Hair Extensions in my salon, which I never could afford to get started up in previously. Got a part-time assistant, also now looking for a receptionist, and no more stress…YAY!

"I have so much more energy for my business, i am currently aiming and on track to triple my sales by september. Also have already planned 2 trips this year, one to NZ next month, also go to the Philippines in December for my brother’s wedding, which before i joined the Inner Circle program I had to tell him that I could not go, because I could not afford to go. So now I can.

"Also having money to purchase an Operations Manual through you guys, all these things I never would have been able to do before. Now I am also working on the membership for my clients to bring in even more cashflow. Thank you to Greg and your fantastic team. It feels like I have just started a whole new business. I really appreciate it. "

Case #2: The $500 ad That Brought In 26 New Clients

Now, Coralie’s story is hardly unique. All over the world, Inner Circle members are reporting similar breakthroughs. Like Lisa Conway of Marinelli’s Hair Design, down in Victoria. Recently I reported how Lisa had joined the program only in July, and had taken immediate ACTION, placing a direct response ad (my kind of ad, the kind the so-called ‘professionals’ hate) in her local newspaper.

Here’s how Lisa describes the results… (and Inner Circle members can log into the Members’ Only ‘sealed section’ to download the exact ad that Lisa used, under ‘Getting New Clients – Hair’):

Lisa Conway: $490 ad produced 26 new clients

"We have had 25 people come in and the last one is tomorrow. All were openly happy and 11 rebooked, 10 purchased a product on the day…We call them a week later to make sure they are still happy and 2 came in again for a slight adjustment.

"The ad cost $490.00 and I ran it twice, 2 weeks apart. The first ad made 15 bookings and the second 11 …26 x 99 = $2574 –  that’s the fact but for me it has created 26 new color clients and a new energy in our salon that is as they say, PRICELESS. "The rebooking and the products sold on the day was way down on the second group, maybe coincidence or maybe the energy slipped a little not sure. Lisa."

HOW TO JOIN THE INNER CIRCLE PROGRAM AND GET THE TOOLKIT ON 30-DAY TRIAL:

Each month we accept a handful of salons on a 30-day Test Drive of the whole system, including the full Toolkit, and one-on-one coaching in how to use it. To see if you qualify, you must first complete the survey and questionnaire.

Hazel McNamara Bodysense Solutions, NSW

Case 3: The Shop-A-Docket Campaign That Paid for Itself in Three Weeks. 

An email just in this week from long-time IC member Hazel McNamara of Bodysense Solutions in Gordon, NSW:

"Hi Greg, Just thought I would give you an update about a campaign I’m currently running in my local Woolworths supermarket.

I hadn’t done ‘Shop A Docket’ before but thought that I should give it a go. The campaign started at the end of July for 10 weeks at a total cost of $1,500.

I decided to run the attached campaign as I wanted to increase the number of new clients and give an option of a few treatments that we offer rather thanjust one type of treatment.

We’ve had one client who called asking if she could book herself and 4 family members in for a facial on the one docket.

As you can imagine, I had no problems with this at all. The more the merrier. And even better, this client came back the following week and booked a course of Microdermabrasion treatments for herself at $650 and a course of Infrared Wrap treatments at $1,000 for her daughter.

So from just one coupon we’ve had sales of just over $2,000. The campaign is paid for and all other sales are now profit.

We had another new client today who walked in with her coupon. She had our new Solitone treatment and spent a total of $260 and her daughter is coming in later in the week for the same treatment. She’s off to Paris for 3 weeks tomorrow but is booking a course of Solitone treatments together with a course of peels on her return at a cost of approx $1,700. Not bad!

This is the only marketing that I had booked for the month of August but because we are following other marketing ideas from our marketing kit, ie new client letters, birthdays, sms, emailing etc we are about to do one of
our biggest months ever!

The marketing kit has saved me thousands of dollars and although I’m spending less each month, our sales compared to last year have continued to increase each month.

Can’t wait till Summer comes to see how much we can increase sales duringour busiest time of the year.

Thanks,

Hazel
BodySense Solutions."

NOTE TO Inner Circle Members: log into the Members’ Only ‘sealed section’ and you can download the exact Shop-A-Docket voucher that worked so well for Hazel. You’ll find it under ‘Getting New Clients – Beauty.’

HOW TO JOIN THE INNER CIRCLE PROGRAM AND GET THE TOOLKIT ON 30-DAY TRIAL:

Each month we accept a handful of salons on a 30-day Test Drive of the whole system, including the full Toolkit, and one-on-one coaching in how to use it. To see if you qualify, you must first complete the survey and questionnaire.

"Under no circumstances are you to allow more than 30 of them to join the Inner Circle program – we just cannot handle any more than that!"

Well, maybe I shouldn’t have said anything at all. Because within 30 seconds of finishing my 90 minute session on stage, Jill and the team at the back of the room were beseiged .

More than 45 salon owners were jostling at the tables, thrusting their enrolment forms forward and begging to be allowed into the ‘chosen 30′.

I called the office.

"Peter," I said to senior coach Peter Butler, "go find some more coaching resources!"

It was a cracker of an event. Here are just a few of the comments emailed to us within hours of the event:

"Hi Greg, I went to your seminar in Sydney on Monday, I have to say for the first 15mins I could not imagine ever doing the marketing you were suggesting me to do, My business runs really well with the marketing I do at present. The more I listened to what you were saying the more I couldnt wait to get back to my salons and put your marketing into practice. 
"It will be interesting to watch my business grow. I opened my salon in Woy Woy in 2006. The first year we turned over just under $500,000.00 and in 2007-08 we turned over $560,000.00,  my other salon was opened in December 2007 and turnover to date has been $225,000.00.

Click here to view more pictures.

One was a very sincere salon owner who had applied for a 30-day Test Drive of the Worldwide Salon Marketing Inner Circle marketing and mentoring program. Turns out she is the family’s major breadwinner, with her ‘house-husband’ staying at home to look after the family. At age 37, she was working her fingers to the bone, helped only by a part-timer. It had been this way for the past SEVEN YEARS!

I asked her the hard question: “If you keep doing it the way you’ve always done it, can you see yourself still doing the same thing ten years from now?”

As I suspected, it was her husband who was holding her back, too fearful to allow her to invest in anything that would help leverage her off the tools and turn her ‘job’ into a real business. By the end of the conversation she was reduced to tears of frustration. She would have to go home and ask (beg!) the husband for his blessing to join the program.

Not surprisingly, I haven’t heard from her since.

The second conversation was with another lady; different circumstances, same frustrations. She’s a sales rep for a skin care product company, whose owners are blinkered by the ‘old school’ of sales – knocking on doors, cold calling. That’s all they know, that’s the way everybody else does it. Too ignorant/narrow-minded/pig-headed to even investigate the possiblity that there might actually be more effective ways of getting customers (eg, carefully-drafted direct response marketing that gets customers calling you instead of you chasing them.)

If the dilemma faced by these two ladies resonates with you, listen up:

If you keep asking permission, sooner rather than later you’ll find somebody who’ll say NO. It’s easier to seek forgiveness that it is to get permission in the first place.

Find yourself in the position where your ambitions, desires, hopes and dreams are blocked by the ignorant, the timid, the fearful, those stubbornly resistant to change?

If you can’t easily remove yourself from them (husband, wife etc) then suck it in, grit your teeth and commit to change without enrolling them in the process. Bite off more than you can chew, and chew like hell. And when you succeed (not if…when) then you can justifiably go back and say ‘I told you so’.

And if, as I told the sales rep, you’re hamstrung by a boss who will obstinately refuse to get out of the way of his own failure - to educate himself on better ways to do business, to bring in customers, to market his company using brains instead of brawn and hard labour – then for the sake of your own sanity, you have a duty to yourself to remove yourself from that toxic influence.

It’s about two very simple, but BIG things. Making the decision… and then acting on it.

Yes, being a member of the Inner Circle program gives you the tools, the guidance, the inspiration and the encouragement to make your salon or spa successful. But only YOU can make the decision and take the action to join in the first place.

Rebecca Skehan of Gaia Hair – from $8,000 a month to $22,000 a month…

Speaking of success - a topic that’s far more palatable, easier to digest and produces less stomach acid than failure – I’m always delighted to hear of the great successes of our Inner Circle members, many of whom have made the tough decisions above and are very shortly thereafter reaping the benefits of those decisions.

Like IC member Rebecca Skehan, of Gaia Hair in an outer southern suburb of Brisbane, Queensland.

Rebecca was savvy enough to join the Inner Circle program and get her marketing kit before she even opened the doors of her salon last year. Her sales figures after one year in the program speak for themselves:

Sales in July 2007: $8,119 – with two full time staff

Sales in July 2008: $22,669 - with 1 full time staff member, one part-timer, and 1 apprentice.

That’s a shade under 300% growth in 12 months. If you play the video in the right column of this page, you can see and hear Rebecca talking about this experience.

SYDNEY Road to Riches Conference Bursting at the Seams

As of today – Thursday, August 14 – we have 278 salon & spa owners registered for Monday’s day-long marketing conference at the Novotel Brighton Beach hotel in Sydney. That’s a big day, and if past conferences are anything to go by, every one of them will leave dazed, thrilled, a little bewildered by the information they’ve absorbed – and fired with new determination to make serious changes in their business and personal lives.

Late breaking news: Australia’s most inspiring motivational speaker, Pat Mesiti, will be there to give us his own (fire)brand of get-up-and-go business-boosting training. Pat is one speaker I never get tired of listening to.

And at the end of the day, somebody’s going to ride out of the hotel on our door prize, a brand-new, fully registered $4,000 Vespa scooter. Can’t wait to see that.

NOTE TO MEMBERS:

Inside the ‘sealed section’ Members area, look in the Newsletters category for new templates for you, in Microsoft Publisher format, in both US Letter and A4 sizes. These are templates of the very successful monthly newsletters created and used profitably by IC members Angeline and Andrew Griggs of Nails & Beauty with Attitude in Cairns, Queensland.

Simply download them and use them as your own.