How To Push Your Salon Into The Next Level .. Read if You’re Stuck
Seriously – If results in your salon are the same week in, week out, year after year. No change in profits, clients, staff or anything … You’re heading for trouble.
One of my favourite clients to work with are salons that are stuck and I get it because I had salons that were also stuck and that can take time – a lot of time – to work out sometimes.
This year a brilliant salon came to me that was stuck. These guys are amazing hairdressers, doing good money but not enough, had clients but not enough and from the outside looking in they seemed to be doing everything right.
But the problem was … they were just doing alright, not incredibly well, not the best, not number one status.
For me personally why be OK when you can easily be number one. These guys realised that and came to me for change. But you can do this also so listen up and I will cover a few things we did.
Early in their process, they made it clear they had issues with staffing. People coming and going despite having other staff that had been there a long time. How do you recruit and keep these guys?
It’s easier than most salon owners think.
So, we put into place a few things the first being to make sure their salon was leveraged to give them their investment back quickly.
One was a system to bring in new team members and another was a system for interviewing and managing their staff. Within a week they had new people coming into the salon for jobs. In fact, they had too many at first.
The problem here is they needed just one but I advised to take more than that one. Why? Because when you know how you can get them busy instantly.
I have a set goal for new starters and it is this – they must cover their own wages and costs instantly. So we set that into play and instantly they took the money we needed them to take.
Once we had staff in place we had to play around with other things. Pricing was an issue so we increased some of the prices by quite an amount. They felt it would be a disaster but thankfully not one single client was lost because of the way we did the increases. We did other cool stuff, got marketing systems into place that they hadn’t really done before.
They were marketing and doing certain things but like most salons, they weren’t getting a good return from the time and investment being put into the marketing efforts.
So we increased new clients quickly, installed specialist services, put new people into the shop, created new management rituals, installed a receptionist and much more.
Here’s the thing.
They felt this would be that good for them and had resistance. But you know what if you want to level up or take your salon to the next level you have to do things that have risk to them. It felt like a risk to the guys, It felt like perfect to me and as always – I was right (as my wife will say to me) and the business is levelled up very quickly and is well on its way to being a number one salon with a team too match it.
The only way to get your salon out of the place it is in is to take risks, push yourself, challenge yourself and have a belief that if you have the right advice this will be fine.
Last year I decided to up my level at training in the gym. Not as easy when you are 55 but I wanted to do it. I took on a new trainer and he pushed me so hard I thought I was going to die. I didn’t die of course but the results were amazing. The funny thing was I had tons of men’s health magazines, loads of books a home gym and just about everything else you can think about. The problem was on my own it just wasn’t working. The trainer that knew the faster route helped me and my results have been really great.
Your salon is like that.
You can read everything, try everything and do everything but your reality is there are always times when you need an experienced guide to give you confidence, a person that has tested what is working and someone that has been down that same path before you.
But the other reality is to take your salon into another level – you must take a different direction.
You know I went down to one of the biggest salons in London. They were celebrating 20-years being open but he realised that despite his fame, glory and recognition in the business he wanted to go to another level.
This guy can be found on every chemist shelf in the UK that’s for sure yet he understood he needed to get into the higher league even after 20-years.
So …
Let me ask you this before I show you what one salon said.
Will next year be any different to the one before and before or will you make the changes you know you need to make.
When I had my salons I loved being No.1 For me – there was no other way. How about you?
Alan
