A pair of classic Jaguars I lust after. They’re 3.8 litre Mark Two saloons from the early to mid sixties. In The Sweeney and a dozen other British crime shows of that era, no self-respecting bad guy would rob a bank without one.

Both have been restored to within an inch of their lives. Vast amounts of money lavished on every nut, bolt and wing mirror. The paint’s so shiny you need Polaroids to look at them. Rich leather upholstery, acres of polished wood, and those glorious-looking XK engines you could not only eat your breakfast off, but cook it on them too.

They’re sexy as hell.

One’s in South Africa, the other in England. Price is within a heartbeat of each other, any difference no doubt eliminated by the varying costs of shipping and insurance to my home port, Fremantle. They’re achingly gorgeous. I want one of them.

Should I choose this one...or...

Only trouble is, I just can’t make up my mind which one. This week I favour the silver one in Durban, South Africa. Then I flip-flop because Michelle prefers the blue one in England. Next week I’ll find something compelling about the silver one again.

I can’t make a decision. So I sit on my hands. The guy with the blue Jag knows that I and an unknown number of other potential buyers are also looking at the silver car. Is he worried he’s asking too much compared with the rival car? Possibly. Is Silver Jag looking at Blue Jag and thinking his photos are better? Quite likely.

...this one? Too hard. I won't make a choice. Just like many of your prospects.

And they’re both making the same mistake – obsessing about their competition; when their real competition is…the customer!

Every day, I field questions from salon & spa owners like “I wonder if I should put my prices up…but the salon across the road would be cheaper than I am…”

Or “My competition is discounting like mad, what should I do?”

There’s no right answer to these questions, because they’re the wrong questions. Because the real competition simply isn’t the salon across the mall, it’s the status quo. As the business owner, you’re worried that customers – particularly potential first-time customers – are tossing up between you and the other salons. But the truth is far more complex. It’s actually a three-way contest; choose you, choose one of your competition or – a far more likely option – choose to do nothing.

Just as I can’t make up my mind about two very similar classic Jaguars – and therefore choose not to choose – your prospective customers are more than likely sitting on their hands too. Because it’s far easier to do nothing than it is to make a decision. It’s ‘paralysis by analysis’.

If they can’t figure whether to choose you or the opposition, and they can put off making a decision without going through any inconvenience or pain, they will.

So, rather than spend every waking hour agonizing, plotting and scheming to out-manoeuvre the opposition, adding this little extra there or that special tweak here in an escalating arms race against the salon down the street, your battle to differentiate – to develop your own Unique Selling Proposition – should be more about moving your prospects off the couch than stuff that shouts “Come to us ‘cos we’re better than the other guys.”

What do you think is more efficient and productive: sweating over the 20% or 30% of business your competitors are getting, or the 40% of prospects who haven’t made up their mind yet?

And for those who haven’t made up their mind, bombarding them with a snowstorm of ‘me-too’ products or services, or endless drivel about how wonderful you are will just leave them comatose with confusion.

Change the conversation. In the world of vanity – after all, that’s the real business you’re in, aren’t you? – the conversation needs to be about them, not you and your precious little salon and its wonderful but inexplicable treatments, and its breath-takingly incomprehensible products.

You can’t get people off the couch by talking about you. You can only get them heaving that backside towards the phone by talking to them about them. Telling me, your prospect that you’ve won such-and-such an award, your senior stylist once cut George Clooney’s hair and your water supply is bottled by glove-wearing Japanese artisans on Tuesdays after being specially piped in from a snow-fed stream in the Italian Alps just gives me a severe case of MEGO – My Eyes Glaze Over. What’s in it for me?

But if you told me I can park my shiny Jaguar right outside your front door, you guarantee if I’m on time and you keep me waiting more than two minutes and 14 seconds my appointment is free, and I can doodle around on my iPad on your free Wi-Fi while you make me look like Brad Pitt, you got my attention baby. Enough about you, it’s all about me. And I’m in.

But back to my car porn. Neither of these Jaguars is leaping out at me. I might just go buy another boat instead.

Need help getting more clients? Check out Greg Milner’s FREE ‘how-to’ videos here!

Click here to download the latest issue!

Well, Worldwide Salon Marketing NZ is proudly supporting Salon Finder iPhone App in announcing the inaugural ‘New Zealand’s Favourite Salon’ competition giving one salon the opportunity to be crowned as ‘New Zealand’s Favourite Salon’ by their customers and have bragging rights over ALL their competitors!

Plus, as well as the kudos that comes with being voted New Zealand’s Favourite Salon the ‘favourite’ salon will win:

1 x nights accommodation for 2 people in a Lakeview Room including breakfast at the Novotel Rotorua

2 x spa therapies valued at $85 each at the Polynesian Day Spa in Rotorua. This will allow the winner to soak in the hot mineral pools in the Deluxe Lake Spa (usually for one hour prior to the spa therapy) and a 30 minute treatment of their choice in the Lake Spa retreat. Additional treatments if required will incur a charge.

2 x PICK 1 vouchers for 1 person for Agroventures. Winner can choose between Swoop, Schweeb, Agrojet or Freefall

12 months coaching and mentoring courtesy of Worldwide Salon Marketing & The Salon Staff Coach.  This consists of 6 x 30 min marketing coaching calls and 6 x 30 min Staff Coaching calls.

A feature story in Images Magazine

The coveted title and trophy as New Zealand’s Favourite Salon 2012

A total package worth almost $15,000!

There are also heaps of amazing prizes for your customers to win including a luxury weekend get-away and weekly prizes on our Facebook page – so get them favouriting your salon!

Here’s how you enter and it’s FREE!

First CLICK HERE to register & claim your salon.

Once you have registered you will see the promotional material we have designed and written for you to download and use.

There are in-salon posters, table talkers and email templates for you to use.  Simply print the posters to put up around the salon and copy and paste the email template to send to your customers.  The more you do, the more chance you have of winning!!!

Your clients can ‘Favourite’ your salon by tapping the heart on your salons app page – each favourite = 1 VOTE.  The salon with the most favourites will WIN – too easy!

New Zealand’s Favourite Salon is open to ALL salons, clinics and spa’s, no matter where you are in New Zealand or how big or small your salon is!  Everyone has the same chance to WIN!!!

Competition Starts on May 14th 2012 and finishes on July 2nd when the winner will be announced – terms and conditions are on the website.  So you have got all this week to get all your marketing ready and your customers excited!

CLICK HERE now to get started and good luck!

Chris Sanders, Director Worldwide Salon Marketing NZ

New Zealand’s Favourite Salon is proudly supported by:

Your business is your chosen highway to freedom and the lifestyle that you want to lead. The only thing that stops you is the same person who looks back at you in the mirror every morning.

Is your thinking broken?

YOU!

I have just finished reading about how business owners strangle themselves by letting their own BS stops them from achieving their own goals.

One of the big BS blocks is successful marketing, and how much time and effort to invest in it?

The answer to “how much time and effort” is devastatingly simple – WHATEVER  IT  TAKES !

I have noticed locally that there is a severe shortage of ads going into papers for salons and spas. This has been confirmed by Inner Circle Premium and Salon Accelerator member salons.  I have even been chased down by a promoter to fill a stand at an up coming major marketing event in our main convention center. An event aimed at women, and heavily promoted on radio to attract women. Where women will come and see what they can INVEST their money in for themselves. They are having a mountain of trouble trying to fill the spaces.

Why?

Because businesses are wimping out on one of the greatest times to be promoting their business that we have seen in the last 20 years. Consumers want to spend their money, and they want to spend it with the leaders of that industry.

Salons and spas are strangling themselves to a slow, painful death by NOT investing time and effort to market their business. Which is why what I am saying is counter intuitive to most of those that will read this.

Now is the best time to be marketing your backside off. It is an uncluttered market place that is looking FOR LEADERS in every field. What you do NOW is going to have a massive effect on your business in 18 months time.

Here is the key though: YOU HAVE TO BE THE LEADERS IN THE FIELD!

No good being second best in the field. No one remembers who finished second. Who was the second richest woman last year?

For those who want to know, the richest  is Christy Walton ( valued at 25.3 billion as of March 2012) , and second was Liliane Bettencourt – whose father founded L’oreal  (worth 24 billion as of March 2012).

My point is this – you have to be seen as the leaders in the field.  Consumers want to associate with those that are the leaders. It provides an intrinsic emotion that makes them feel great as they know that they are dealing with the best in the business. The leader of the industry. But you have to get your message out to the market place that you are the leader in your field.

Now I can her you saying to yourself  “but I am the leader in the field of customer service, great products and tidy shelves.”

Great. Nice. Couldn’t be happier for you.

But what does the consumer know?

They don’t know that you are great at customer service because you don’t invest in marketing to let everyone know.

They don’t know that you have the greatest goop (which cost you an arm and a leg to get into the salon as the opening order was a huge cost ) on the face of the earth in a bottle because you have not invested in the marketing to let everyone know that you have the greatest goop that has every been collected from the undersea depths of a cavern which is only known to a few select humans. Not to mention that goop can only be collected from this cavern at a certain time of the year due to glacial flows and treacherous freezing seas.

This idea of “what is the cheapest (or free)  thing that i can do to get customers” is wrong. Can’t tell you enough times – WRONG WRONG WRONG!

If something is cheap, or worse FREE on the internet, or even worse is unqualified FREE advice from Facebook users who have no idea how to market a salon business, then there is a VERY GOOD REASON for this.

The reason why the information is free is because it is WORTHLESS.

FREE does indeed have a price, it is just when you have to pay the price that is undetermined.

Investing in marketing and client acquisition , and ultimately understanding how it is that you can market your business successfully in any media, is the one secret that successful business owners happily continue to use day after day, while you struggle to find the one big thing that will change your business.

NOT yet a Member of the Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program? Don’t yet have the power of the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit? Click here to find out more and apply for a 90-day Money Back Guaranteed Test Drive of the entire system, including the Toolkit, one-on-one coaching (with our experienced coaches who are all salon & spa owners themselves) and access to the Members Only resources website.

Chloe Wilson of Unique Beauty, Timaru NZ

Well for Chloe Wilson of Unique Beauty in Timaru, New Zealand the days of trusting ad reps are long gone! She now trusts in one thing…her own opinion of how an effective advert should be constructed.

Since then she has been going guns blazing and has in fact tripled her salons turnover since joining Worldwide Salon Marketing around 8 months ago.

Here is what Chloe had to say….

“When I opened up my beauty salon in April 2011, it was very slow at the start, I spent over 6,000 on advertising that wasn’t working, in August I found WSM on the internet and started up with a 1500 leaflet drop to the surrounding area to the salon. I had 15 people book in from it and more from there just it just flowed.

After having a few phone calls with Toni, I let her know how scared I was about putting this advert in the yellow pages – she reassured me it would work, so I stuck with it. The advert cost me $2000 and doesn’t just look like an expensive business card anymore.

When the YP came out in October I had 3 phone calls on the day of it coming out and about 20 the next week following. I still get phone calls every week for the deal in advert and just people getting other treatments.

Since November I’ve only had 3 quiet weeks and I’ve had fully booked weeks, working 3 late nights a week and I’ve tripled my income a week from $500 a week to 2,000-3,000 weekly. I have also 10 weddings this year as well which has brought me more people to the salon and 3 booked in for the end of the year (friends from brides has make-up done with me).”

For Inner Circle Members I have made the actual Yellow Pages ad used by Chloe available on the members website for you to see.

You can click here to view the Yellow pages ad in the members only website

Thanks for sharing your success with us Chloe.  I’m sure you’ll have inspired many salon owners to give their ad rep a good old kick in the backside the next time they try and tell them they know best!

Keep up the great work!

Chris Sanders, Director Worldwide Salon Marketing NZ

Isn’t it time you started making some real money in your salon and doing marketing that actually gets results just like Chloe got? If you are ready to take the next step in your business then click here NOW to find out more!

Getting your customers to favourite your salon in the app is the key to making the app work effectively for you.

You must also ensure that your customers register themselves in the app so that they can favourite you and receive all your latest promotions and special offers through push notifications.

These posters will help you to increase your favourites, so put them around the salon, in the shop window, behind the reception counter, in the bathroom, the treatments rooms or between the hair cutting mirrors!

The posters are available to download below as high res PDF’s.  So you can either download and print or send to your printer to do this for you.

The article, from Marketwatch talks about how the “alpha women” have had enough of the “tightening purse strings” lifestyle and want to spend. These are the women that set the trends for others to follow.

The article states “The survey findings signal that relief might be in sight for retailers and marketers since women, the world’s great mega niche, influence more than 85 percent of all products and services sold in the U.S — including 60 percent of automobile and 40 percent of stock purchases.”

These women are LOOKING for somewhere to spend their money. Not next week. Not tomorrow. They are looking  NOW! And if you want to be one of the places where they can be seen to go, then you had better act soon.

It is your duty as a salon marketer to make they spend their money with you! YOU just have to give them the reason.

This figure could most certainly be reproduced time and again for each country, not just the US.

53% of these alpha women say they are planning holidays in the next 12 months, and the same group has stated that their financial status has steadied in the last 12 months. Their spending patterns are starting to change and as salon marketers, we need to be aware of this and take full advantage of it. Where the “alpha women” go, the others will follow.

Given that this trend information is usually 6 months to 2 years ahead of its time ( think back to when the housing prices went through the roof in the US, and then 6 months to 2 years later it followed through to the rest of the world, ) then you will see that there is an opportunity for you to take advantage of the future changes and make sure that your salon is ahead of the rest of the industry. Your salon marketing is how you will stay ahead of your competition, and prosper when the others are trying to get new clients in.

You should be marketing your salon more heavily now than ever before, as the competition has thinned out and all the deadwood salons and spas have been shut down. You have the rare opportunity to be the only one in the local paper as everyone is cutting back on costs. It is a clear landscape now that you should be setting your salon up as the only one to go to, no matter what your services are. This current time demands that you set your salon up for success in the future. If you market your salon THE RIGHT WAY, and set yourself up as the “go to” salon in the quiet times, it means that you will reap the rewards for the salon marketing in the future. From what the previously mentioned article states, around 6 months to 2 years is the expected wait time.

Your competitors are cutting back on salon marketing as they see it as an expense that has to be cut to keep the doors open. The savvy salon marketer will see it for what it really is – A ONCE in every 15 to 20 year golden opportunity to set your business  as the place to go. You can market the salon or spa so that when ( and it will happen ) another salon or spa opens around the corner, you already have the marketing systems and strategies behind you to fend off their attack.

This ties in the fact that mothers day is just around the corner, and the “Alpha’s” know what they want.

“Alphas have a clear preference for gifting on Mother’s Day, and all special occasions, “They want family and friends to plan a special way to celebrate the day (41 percent),” added Perro-Jarvis. “She would ideally include a significant gift that she wouldn’t get for herself — like a technology splurge or something sparkly.”

As I said before, THEY ARE LOOKING FOR SOMEWHERE TO SPEND THEIR MONEY!!!

Get your salon marketing into shape now and give them the reasons they need to spend their money WITH YOU!

NOT yet a Member of the Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program? Don’t yet have the power of the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit? Click here to find out more and apply for a 90-day Money Back Guaranteed Test Drive of the entire system, including the Toolkit, one-on-one coaching (with our experienced coaches who are all salon & spa owners themselves) and access to the Members Only resources website.

Ellen Norton of Jada Hairstylists in Cobble Hill, British Columbia tells a similar story. As she reveals in this short video, her retail sales have doubled – a brilliant achievement considering more and more consumers are buying online and department store products.

If YOU want the same kind of business success as Harry and Ellen and hundreds of other WSM member salons around the world, find out here how you can Test Drive the entire Inner Circle mentoring program, including the famous Toolkit, for 90-Days Money Back Guaranteed – CLICK HERE.

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I have hidden the video in a SECRET LOCATION on our Worldwide Salon Marketing website and you can access it by scanning the WSM QR code included with this post.

To access the video you need to have the FREE QR code reader downloaded on your smart phone (you can do this on most phone platforms e.g. iPhone, Android etc..) When you get to the secret page, click on the video and it will enlarge so you can view it!

Plus I am going to tell you in this video how you can get your own QR code personalised with your salons logo, valued at $109 – absolutely free! Hope you enjoy watching and learn something new!!!