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.

Master presenter David Price reveals the little known secrets of effective direct response marketing for salons & spas to an audience of 180 salon professionals at the Brisbane ‘Road to Riches’ event on Monday, July 6. Below, WSM director Jill Groves teaches simple sales skills to boost takings without spending a cent on marketing.

Success coach Perry Mardon works with a salon owner on stage. Perry specializes in coaching salon owners in the psychology of managing staff.

Ellysia & Michael Maidens of Mooloolaba Hair in Queensland. “Amazing success using the Inner Circle advertising examples and strategies”.

Tessia Little of Rainbow Hair & Beauty Studio in Rainbow Beach, Queensland – one of 20 salons to join the Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program at the Brisbane seminar.

New IC members Katherine McCosker of Headstart Salon in Rockhampton, QLD, and Robyn Robertson of Studio Hair in Palmwoods, QLD

New IC member Susan Anderson of Lillian Mac Skin Clinic in Moranbah, QLD

No fewer than 20 beauty and hair salons committed nearly $200,000 between them in a single morning this week to join the Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program – despite the absence of our poor General Manager, Jemma Lole, who was stricken with acute apendicitis an hour before the start of the Brisbane Road to Riches seminar!

While Jemma was being ambulanced to Royal Brisbane Hospital for an emergency apendectomy, about 180 beauty industry professionals crowded into the conference room at the 5-star Sofitel Hotel.

For them, it was a ground-breaking event. Apart from the 30 or so current Inner Circle members, it was the first time they’d discovered what actually makes good small-business marketing.

For me, it was a little strange. For the first time in five years of presenting at these events, I had fired myself in favour of professional presenter and speaking coach David Price. So I watched from the sidelines, and I’m pleased to say, David showed me up.

But I was only doing what we’ve been preaching to our Members for years: that the number ’1′ is the most dangerous in business. For too long, our business had been reliant on me getting up and speaking in front of people. In the interests of practising what I preach, I took another step towards making myself redundant, at the same time ensuring that the business would run without me.

One thing that was not a surprise to me was the relatively small number of attendees that ‘see the light’ and invest in their own future by joining the Inner Circle program at these Road to Riches events.

In all things, the 80/20 rule holds true. No matter how many salons are represented at these events (in Brisbane, 78 of them, not counting existing members) it is always only about 20% – 25% tops who actually make a decision to join. They do so because they are committed to their own success, where the remainder are frozen to inaction by fear, lack of confidence, or downright refusal to accept overwhelming proof that systems (like the Inner Circle program) do work.

But as some sage once said, confidence is being able to make a decision when you’re only 80% sure. If you have to be 100% sure, that’s just procrastination.

And by overwhelming proof, I’m talking about testimony after testimony from our Inner Circle members that ‘it’ does work. Despite their misgivings, fears about not being able to afford it, worry about ‘will I be able to do this’…. despite any and all obstacles put in front of them, hundreds and hundreds of our Member salons the world over are

leaping with joy

that their lives, their businesses and their entire attitude to success have been changed because of what they discovered in the program, and the tools that come with it.

Take Gail Smith for example. Gail joined the Inner Circle program only in October last year. In less than 12 months, her sales and profits have been literally transformed.

Gail’s story is hardly an isolated one. People all over the world respond to emotional direct response marketing in much the same way. So it’s hardly a surprise that, for example, Inner Circle salons in New Zealand are seeing similar successes…salon owners like Carl & Melanie Smith of Saving Face Health & Beauty:

If YOU want results like that, all you have to do is apply for membership of the Inner Circle program.

One of the big benefits of Membership is being involved in our post-seminar, Members-only ‘closed door’ mastermind brainstorming sessions. Even more than the seminars themselves, it’s in these sessions that members share their most successful money-making ideas and systems. Here’s how it looked at the Brisbane event…

FOOTNOTE: as for Jemma (left), 24 hours after her operation I found the last two Business Class seats on a Qantas jet out of Brisbane on Tuesday afternoon, and got her home five hours later, somewhat sore, and annoyed she’d missed out on a great seminar!

We all knew this because Erpy would open his weekly lesson by declaring

“99% of all the world’s knowledge is contained in books. Therefore, read.”

And for the remainder of the lesson, he wouldn’t say another word as he wandered around the classroom ready to pounce on any teenage boy who dared look up from his book. I’ve always loved reading, so this was no chore for me. But it was for many in my class, and judging by what I hear from salon owners to this day, an aversion to reading is distressingly common.

Last week I was interviewing an applicant for Inner Circle membership when she spoke the words that strike fear into my heart every time I hear them.

They came in response to a question I always ask in these interviews: “What have you ever done to educate yourself about business, and how it works?”

The answer was pretty typical among therapists and stylists in the beauty industry.

“Well, I don’t actually read much.”

Despite having heard this lament hundreds of times, I’m still shocked by it.

Most (no, not all) owners of salons & spas have come ‘up through the ranks’, by being a technician first, then deciding it’s time they became a business owner. They’ve accepted that being a technician requires months and sometimes years of training.

Yet somehow this need for training and education doesn’t apply to the discipline of owning and running a business. Beats me. So most stylists and beauty therapists aren’t great readers. But with modern technology, there is absolutely zero excuse these days for not educating yourself.

Okay, so you don’t read. But you can sit in your car and listen, can’t you?

It’ll come as a surprise to many that iTunes is not simply an online store delivering head-banging music to pimply teenagers. You can now buy (cheaply) any number of audio books by some of the most famous names in business and marketing today.

I only live a short distance from the office, so I get about 5 minutes of listening time on the way to and from work each day. But I spend a lot of time on planes.

So instead of lugging a collection of bulky books on this week’s 10-hour ride to Brisbane and back, I loaded up my iPhone with audio books downloaded straight from iTunes.

Here’s a partial list of the audio books on my iPhone:

‘Made to Stick’ by brothers Dan and Chip Heath, a wonderful story about some of the world’s greatest marketing exercises. It’s a fascinating examination of what makes some ideas memorable and ‘sticky’, while others fade into oblivion.

‘Mastering the Art of Selling’ by Tom Hopkins, one of the world’s top sales authors. So you hate the idea of ‘selling’. Listen to this and you’ll realise how dumb the fear of selling is. After all, we LOVE to buy stuff. Somebody has to sell it first.

‘Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires’ by Brian Tracy

‘Selling the Invisible – a Field Guide to Modern Marketing’ by Harry Beckwith.

‘Why We Want You to be Rich’ by Donald Trump and Robert Kyosaki.

And that’s just to name a few. No, it’s not as good as reading it in a book. You can’t scribble notes and use a highlighter pen on an audio book. But it’s better than wasting your driving or flying time listening to airheads like Britney Spears.

There, I’ve written enough. And for those who don’t like to read, far too much.

FOOTNOTE: before you flood my in-box with accusations I’m slinging off at the average beauty professional, this article does not apply to you. Well, you read this far, didn’t you?

She features on the cover of this week’s issue of Business Review Weekly in a story about her $120million empire. But the really interesting thing is the idiotic spin the magazine used in its press release, describing breathlessly how ‘un-supermodel’ like was her behaviour during their interview and photo shoot.

The magazine said Macpherson could be beautifully charming but also “controlling and prickly”, yelling at her staff and only approving certain photos for use.

“During her sit down with BRW, Macpherson insisted on scrolling through the images captured by BRW’s photographer saying `yes, no, no, yes’ as she checked the screen on the camera,” BRW said in a media release.

“When a question made her uncomfortable, she had no qualms about shouting at her minders to keep quiet so she could concentrate.”

Macpherson refused to disclose how much she was worth, and told the magazine she credits her “vision and balls” for her success.

Controlling and prickly? Bravo! Vision and balls? Excellent. Why, I wonder, would she want to portray anything else? Business is ABOUT being controlling, being demanding, having vision, and being possessed of Big Kahunas. The mystery here is how a business magazine could be surprised, even offended by this. Er, do they somehow believe that just because Elle MacPherson happens to be six foot two, 45 years old and still looks stunning, she should fit a soft, gooey sterotype?

Good grief. That fact that the softest part of Elle is her teeth should be a matter for applause, not surprise.

After this week’s Road to Riches seminar for salon owners in Sydney, Jill and I hosted a special two-hour, closed-door ‘Masterminds’ networking and brainstorming session for Inner Circle members only.

It’s at these sessions that some of the biggest breakthroughs often happen, simply by listening in and swapping ideas with some of the most successful and driven salon owners in the business. And it’s proof that nobody has a mortgage on all the good ideas.

Many times, I’ve watched jaws drop and eyes widen as an Inner Circle member salon owner almost casually drops a ‘gold nugget’ into the middle of the table.

That’s the thing about entrepreneurs – always with eyes and ears open, always seeking, refining, tweaking, hunting down even the smallest of pieces of information which could make a disproportionately-large difference to their business, their sales, their profits.

In this particular closed-door session, one of our long-time members offered just a single jewel of information about how to collect credit card details, avoid no-shows and still be protected from charge-backs that had the rest of the room scrambling for pen and paper. For those members in attendance, this small but glittering gem could make a difference of many thousands of dollars worth of sales.

And just minutes later, a rush for copies as another Member showed the printed cards she uses to generate dozens of referrals every month….

Here at the headquarters of Worldwide Salon Marketing, we had a similar experience only a week or two back.

Every month, scores of salon owners around the world complete our online Pre-Application Survey. We take only a limited number of new Members each month, so part of the process is actually phoning each applicant to interview them and judge their suitability for the program. (And, not to be taken too lightly, thier demonstrated eagerness, enthusiam and willingness to do what it takes to be successful.)

But it’s astounding the number of people who complete a form and instantly forget they’ve even done it…or, despite being informed they’re going to get a phone call, are never available or simply don’t return messages.

So we made a tiny, simple change to the online form, inserting a field requiring the applicant to nominate a day and time they’re available to take a call.

Instantly, the difficulty of contacting applicants has almost evaporated, overnight. And as a result, our enrolment rate has shot up, and so has the quality of Members coming to us via our online lead generation processes.

Look at your own business. What tiny, zero-cost changes could you make, test, measure, implement? Do you make mystery calls to your own salon to find out how staff are handling calls? Do you mystery shop other salons to see if you can steal what’s working for them?

Have you read a book or looked at a rival’s website to see if you can pick anything up there? Is there a small reward you can give clients referring their friends… a small potplant, a cheerfully-wrapped box of chocolates?

Look for the tiny things. They are all around you. Little hinges really do swing big doors.

(NOTE TO INNER CIRCLE MEMBERS: These ‘closed-door’ mastermind workshops are available for all Members, directly after each Road to Riches seminar, but you MUST book with our office first.)

But for the first time, Michelle and I got to sit in the back seat for a change, while a friend took the wheel for the last couple of hours of a long drive home from Port Denison, where I’d parked my brother’s big charter boat Nordon after our fishing trip to the Abrolhos Islands last week. (Photos and story below, for those not bored witless by other people’s adventures.)

Jim Carrey's 'Yes Man' - silly, but inspiration anyway for saying 'yes' and allowing some change into your life...

So I put a movie on to pass the time. It was a Jim Carrey film, Yes Man. Nothing much to the movie (Jim Carrey plays Jim Carrey) but its premise was powerful.

Keep saying ‘no’ and you achieve nothing. Say ‘yes’ and opportunities abound.

Now, clearly you can’t say ‘yes’ to everything, otherwise you end up in the (contrived) kind of trouble Carrey’s character finds himself mired in. But I’ve found that a trait of success among our most successful Inner Circle member salons around the world is their willingness to entertain a ‘yes’ answer to almost any question, and see what happens from there. Once you say ‘yes’, something will happen.

When you say ‘no’, nothing happens, nothing changes. Which is exactly the situation for thousands of salon & spa owners across New South Wales, who said ‘no’ to attending next Monday’s Road to Riches salon & spa marketing seminar at the Novotel Brighton Beach hotel.

On a brighter note, more than 200 people said ‘yes’, and for these salon owners, things will begin to change because of that ‘yes’ answer. The entire Worldwide Salon Marketing team is trooping across the country for this event, and we’re looking forward to meeting newcomers as well as dozens of Inner Circle members who are booked in for our post-seminar Closed Door Members Only Workshop on Monday afternoon.

For those salon & spa owners who have NOT booked into Sydney, you have ONE DAY to do so. Phone the office on 08 9381 6621 or book online at www.salonroadtoriches.com

The next seminars in Melbourne, Brisbane and the Gold Coast are already filling fast. Details and online booking forms at www.salonroadtoriches.com

Last week a technical fault in our database system (run from Arizona by a prominent US company) resulted in thousands of salon owners getting multiple copies of our weekly email, and prompted a sarcastic rant from me the following day, and an apology for the foul-up.

Salon entrepreneurs & Inner Circle members Jane Dowling and Niki Koutrakis: "Xmas was a huge success! Our best ever! Gift voucher sales were up 50% on last year, and overall we were up 30% for December. That's with the same amount of staff as well! Jane and I are so pleased as January has been off to a busy start also! And the (Advance Notice Marketing Triggers) you send out by email to Members are great...so easy to follow."

Even those salon and spa owners whose business is recording bigger and bigger sales in spite of the recession (and there are plenty of our Inner Circle members reporting extraordinary results, see the photo and caption at left, and elsewhere on this site) it would be foolish to point at such results and say the recession does not exist per se.

While there may be green shoots of optimism, by and large the picture is a grim one across thousands of industries.

At home, my 28-year-old second son is glum. Just over a month ago he was riding high on the back of the China-driven resources boom, making over $100,000 a year as a fly-in, fly-out driller, about to buy his first property. Then the crash hit, Chinese orders for iron ore started drying up, his employer’s share price tanked 95%.

Within weeks his world has crashed, about to lose his job, no chance of buying that house. He’s no orphan.

But funny things happen when things get tough.

To me, it’s a time of terrific opportunity for (some of) those in the beauty business.

Lean close, dear reader: for here is a dose of reality that 95% of your competition doesn’t get, won’t understand, will to their detriment ignore.

The typical reaction – certainly among small businesses – to a downturn is to close the shutters, to actually stop doing the only thing that brings money in the door – marketing. For you, the savvy salon or spa owner, this is simply a brilliant opportunity.

Because most of your competition actually remove themselves from the market place, decrease rather than increase their visibility. They stop spending money on advertising. And that creates a sudden vacuum.

Less noise in the market place means your message can be heard easier. Fewer salons & spas spending on advertising means your ads, flyers, direct mail can cut through the clutter.

But it takes a certain entrepreneurial mindset to actually get this, a certain determination to not simply understand it, but put it into action. I wonder how many salon & spa owners reading this really regard themselves as entrepreneurial. Not many, I hazard to guess.

The relative few who do are those who tend to be attracted to the Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program. They understand that being in the salon or spa business is not about cutting hair, or applying glop to a client’s face.

They tend to be risk-takers, because if you’re totally averse to risk, you shouldn’t be in business anyhow.

Stubborn, delusionally optimistic, creative, fearless, flexible and focussed are some of the ways psychologists and business people describe the personality of the entrepreneur.

According to former Apple executive Guy Kawasaki, “you need to be in denial or in ignorance about the huge challenges you face.”

And Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway scooter, says he often suffers sleepless nights wrestling over whether to quit a project that’s not panning out. “You end up lying there saying, I’m not stopping. It would be an act of shallow cowardice. Or you decide to quit and you say – This is one of those ideas that just isn’t going to work.”

Of the entrepreneur mindset, Kamen says “It’s not that they’re brilliant or well-educated. They work all the time. They don’t let failure demoralize or destroy them. They pick themselves up and keep going and eventually, every once in a while, one of your ideas actually breaks through and works, and it makes all that stuff seem worthwhile.”

(source: http://us.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/worklife/01/12/entrepreneur.psychology/index.html)

Here’s an example of Entrepreneurship at Work in the Salon Business (AND a special bonus for Inner Circle members)

IC member Tegan Messineo and partner Ben – spectacular results from some entrepreneurial ‘sales thinking’ and marketing ACTION up for her country town salon.

Tegan Messineo of Body Firming and Beauty in Bunbury, Western Australia, only joined the Inner Circle program and received her Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit in October 2008. Tegan obviously believes in ACTION. She writes this week how she used the Toolkit principles, resources in the Members Only ‘Sealed Section’ website and some ‘sales thinking’ strategies to craft a radio ad.

It ran on the local radio station only THREE TIMES before she had to take it off air because it was too successful.

Inner Circle Members: Get Tegan’s radio ad and salon flyer NOW by logging into the Member’s Only ‘Sealed Section’ and navigating to ‘Getting New Clients – Beauty’

On its first outing, the ad ran twice on Day One and generated TEN bookings. On Day Two the ad ran ONCE and generated another 9 bookings, at which point Tegan pulled the ad because they were already up to the self-imposed limit of 19 prospects for the free trial treatment.

At the time of this posting, the salon had had 5 of those 19 in for their free treatment, and signed up FOUR of them for a full course of anti-cellulite treatment at $1500 a time, paid up front. I’ll do the sums for you:

That’s $6,000 in up-front sales, in TWO DAYS, with another 14 prospects yet to see. But at that 80% conversion rate, Tegan can expect total sales of around $22,000 – all from a radio ad that cost a measly $170 to produce and schedule for a full week.

But there was a lot of more detailed ‘sales thinking’ that went into this, I’ll let Tegan explain:

“Now even though we need to give a client 1 hour of our time and we don’t know if they are really here to buy or if they are just tyre kickers, we decided that when they call up and book in we will up sell them an extra $20 and they can include Virtual Mesotherapy and Ultrasound to their appointment. Now if this client dosent end up purchasing anything she still has to pay her $20 so that then covers our time and product.
“Also because its a free appointment people sometimes think that they don’t need to show up. That then make sit worse for us as we have set aside this 1 hour time slot. So if they don’t want to upgrade to the Meso and ultrasound we then still get them to pay a $20 deposit which they will get back when they show up for their appointment. If they fail  to show up they forfeit their deposit.

“In the appointment we have a structure that we use.

• We do the consultation
• Analyse their body shape
• Grade their cellulite
• Measure them
• Do the treatment
• Re measure them
• Discuss treatment packages
• Close the sale
• Get the Happy Form filled out

Â

“We have included a lot into the packages that we are selling but..in reality it doesn’t cost us much at all. Absolutely everything is factored into the price and then our mark-up is added on. With the toning tables we are using it as something to basically bulk up the package. And we have already had ladies say that they don’t want this or that in their package but because its a package they still have to pay for it.

Â

The cost to run the radio add for this week has been $170.

Thanks for the great Ideas!!! Its sooo nice to see when all your hard work pays off!

Â

Tegan Messineo

Body Firming and Beauty”

“The way you talk,” she said, “you’d think almost every salon owner is making money, when in fact the reverse is true. Most are scraping by week to week, or going broke…and I’m one of them!” she huffed.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

“So,” I told her as gently as my white knuckles and clenched teeth would allow, “you’d prefer to get this newsletter every week and waste your time reading sob stories and failure reports – of which there is ample supply - rather than actually finding out what works, from successful people who are actually doing it?”

She looked at me blankly, shocked and speechless. So I filled the gap. “And then, poisoned by tales of woe, you go to work and pour this toxic gloom and doom all over your staff like a sticky dark syrup… is there any wonder you’re having a miserable time?”

She shook her head and stormed off in a huff, a little dark cloud over her bowed head. Needless to say, this lady was not one of the dozen or more salon owners who joined our Inner Circle marketing and mentoring program that day.

So, in the interests of both rubbing the poor woman’s nose in it, and bringing some more light and inspiration in your life, here’s yet more compelling evidence that with the right tools (eg, the Toolkit that all Inner Circle members get) AND the right attitude about success, you too can mix with it with the Inner Circle members whose videos appear below.

And remember, it really is true that your income is an average of the income levels of your ten best friends and closest associates. What does that tell you? Hang out with successful people, not self-declared and self-perpetuating failures.

Drum roll please, for the Recession Busters!!!

Oh, woe is me. I’ve heard this so many times, I’ve actually given up gouging my own eyes out with a sharp spoon. But I was reminded of this common excuse for failure by a number of reports this week from Inner Circle members equipped with the Toolkit, in widely-differing – but similarly ‘disadvantaged’ – geographical areas.

While the rest of the population moans about soaring fuel prices, rising – or falling – interest rates (there’ll always be somebody complaining, either way), un-responsive clients, Paris Hilton (there’ll always be somebody complaining about her) and anything else they can use as an excuse for their own lack of action, these salon & spa owners have done what more should do: ignore all outside influences, focus on what’s been proven to WORK, and just do it.

Susan Woodbury of Village Image, New Hampshire. “Recession? Phooey!”

From Belmont, New Hampshire, recent Inner Circle member Susan Woodbury of Village Image reports “My numbers are unbelievable!…in June were up $4100. These numbers are from doing my thank you letters to new customers and sending them vouchers for their next visit, as well as sending out thank you cards with vouchers to my clients who refer others. I would love to do a quarter million this year but I think it’ll be next year. But I’m going to try like hell. So from this year vs. last year… my numbers are up by $26,316.13. Recession? Phooey!”

Then there’s IC member Karelle Johnson, for example. Karelle’s Face & Body Therapies is in a little town on the far south coast of New South Wales. In a so-called ‘depressed’ area of mainly elderly residents, Karelle sent a Toolkit-based offer with a $95 ticket price to 500 clients on her database.

“Within TWO DAYS,” says Karelle, “we’d sold 28 packages, that’s nearly $2,700 in sales, plus product they bought, and follow-up bookings, and it cost me $300 to print and post the letters.”

(For INNER CIRCLE members, login to the Members Only ‘Sealed Section’ and you’ll find the letter Karelle used, in the ‘marketing to existing clients’ category.)

Then there was Inner Circle member Irene Wardrop, whose salon is in a suburban area of Hobart, Tasmania – hardly a city recognised for being an economic powerhouse. During a Call-In Day for members this week, Irene let it slip that she’d paid $600 run a simple ad straight out of the Toolkit in her local newspaper (page 13, for those interested) and ‘within 4 days had THIRTY ONE brand new clients, who will each be worth on average $1,500 to me over the next year’. (Let’s say Irene only keeps 20 of those new clients – so that’s a mere $30,000 in extra annual revenue, from one ad, run on one Saturday. So what would I do now? Yup…run the same damn ad, EVERY week…. until it stops working!)

Chris Burkinshaw of Turning Heads hairdressing – cheap ad brought in 15 new clients in 24 hours

And from Wagga, a regional city of just 60,000 people in the middle of drought-affected New South Wales, and surrounded by dozens of competitors, IC member Chris Burkinshaw of Turning Heads hairdressing, is creating his own economy, instead of complaining about the one the media tries to impose on him.

A Page 3 ad in the local paper, costing $265 and run yesterday morning (July 2, 2008) produced ELEVEN new clients by 11am that morning, at an up-front sale of $99 each, plus another 4 by the next morning – that’s 15 new clients, average annual value $1,000 each, in 24 hours. You can’t do it any better than that.

(BONUS for Inner Circle members: you’ll find the exact ad that Chris used, under ‘Getting new clients – hair’ in the Members-only ‘sealed section’, www.worldwidesalonmarketing.com/members )

And that’s in a so-called ‘depressed’ area of the country. Two days ago, I interviewed two prospective Inner Circle members, in two different countries. Both claimed their salons had suffered because of geography, of location in a low socio-economic area, of penny-pinching customers who constantly demanded discounts. Initially, both salon owners explained that they feared raising their prices because ‘my customers couldn’t afford to pay more…’

Then I said something that shocked both of these salon owners:

“Ask your customers if they own a big, shiny plasma TV…!”

And I’ll bet 90% of them would say ‘yes‘. And if retail studies are correct, most of them would have purchased their new plasma TV in the past 12 months. So, still think your customers are broke and can’t afford your services?

Tellingly, ONE of these salon owners immediately began to see that it was her thinking that was holding her back….and exclaimed ‘why didn’t I think of that!’ when I talked her through just ONE no-brainer strategy that would add over $360,000 to her annual revenue in the next 12 months. She was admitted into the program.

The other salon owner continued to argue with me that ‘this wouldn’t work in my area, my customers wouldn’t respond to that kind of stuff.” I politely declined her application.

Interesting observation: According to US marketing guru Dan Kennedy, ‘under normal conditions, only 10% of customers always buy by price, their decisions governed by price, because they have no choice. This group is largely made up of “working poor”, low-wage working people with more mouths to feed than they can afford food for. Nothing wrong with them as people. A lot to admire – except the choice they make that keep them poor.

‘But no good reason to have them – or worse, seek them out as customers. Yet, strangely, most business owners focus 90% of their energy on price even while only 10% of customers decide based on price. However, there are 20% who make most buying decisions with little weight given to price or cheapest price, and 5% who never consider price….’

So, which customers do you want? It is my contention that you get the customers you deserve.

HOW TO BITE BACK AT THE ‘RECESSION’

The above quote was taken from an extensive interview I recently conducted with Dan, the most astute, highly-paid direct response marketing consultant in America today.

For Inner Circle members only, you can get the entire interview with Dan, downloadable in .pdf form, in the members only ‘sealed section’ under ‘Free Resources’ – go here: www.worldwidesalonmarketing.com/members