Month: April 2015

Does it matter how great you say your salon is? Or does it matter more how great your clients say it is? It’s a little nauseating to others when we tend to blow our own horns.

CS Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia and many other well know books gives writing advice to a young American fan named Joan Lancaster in June of 1956.

“In writing. Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, “Please will you do my job for me.””

The point is that you should not have to tell people how great you are, they should be telling you how great you are because of the great things that you do. The question therefore is how do you get your clients to say great things about your business?

Exceed customer expectations

In my opinion this is not very hard in the hair industry (with exceptions of course). Again, maybe its because I’m a man and men generally are quite easy to please and therefore salon staff don’t feel the need to work very hard to please male clients, who knows?

As a result my expectation is that if I enquire about a booking and there are none available on the day I desire I will not get offered alternatives. If I do get a booking the staff will generally not know much about me even though I may have visited the salon on more than one previous occasion. While I’m at the salon I may or may not get offered some coffee or other type of refreshment, which seems quite standard. I may or not get my head massaged at the basin and if I do it may or may not be a great experience. I will most likely not get much of a consultation apart from the usual “What are we doing today?” Once my cut is finished and the stylist has flashed the mirror behind my head while I nod or grunt approval its then time to pay. The discussion of products for my hair will most likely not come up and if it does it will be something to the effect of would like to try this product or not? Once I’ve paid that will be the end of it and the sense I will leave with is that they couldn’t really be bothered if I return.

So the question is, if that has been my experience of so many salons over the years what will it take to exceed my expectations? I don’t think it will take very much indeed.

Little things on the side

One way to start is to do something small on the side. For example, what do you get when you buy a coffee at Vida? That’s right, a dark chocolate. Now, any coffee shop I visit after having experienced Vida that does not provide me with either a chocolate or a something similar will be less of an experience than Vida (Note that Im not commenting on the quality of the coffee itself – this is a matter of its own).

Another example is Pearl Valley golf course near Franschoek in the Western Cape, which is a wonderful experience. However, one of the best parts of the experience is something that is quite achievable by other golf courses who don’t enjoy such high pedigree. They have cool wet towels at the half way house. On a hot day there is hardly any better experience than walking into the clubhouse and wiping your face with a cooled towel. Also, on the first tee box I was given a chilled apple before starting the round. These are things that other courses could also offer that if they did people would talk about them.

The idea would be then for your clients to say something along the lines of “My salon is so amazing, whenever I go there they give me _____________ “(fill in the blank). Or, “…whenever I go there, they do ____________________ for me” (again fill in the blank).

Be careful though, once you start adding something to the mix (like you do above) then if you ever stop doing it in future your clients will not feel that you are simply offering the same as everyone else again, but rather they will feel like you have taken something away from them that they have grown to expect.

Validating parking

Our offices in Cape Town are near the Cape Quarter and inside there is a car wash. One of the things that the car wash does, apart from wash my car, is validate my parking for three hours. They most likely build it into the price of the car wash, however, it still comes to mind whenever I need to get my car washed. If you are able to build it into your costs, or able to work something out with centre management then covering some or all of a client’s parking would go a long way to building wow factor.

SMS Appointment Reminders

Sending your clients an sms appointment reminder goes a long way to improving their perception of your salon. On one hand it is practical and on the other hand it lets them know that you actually care for them to return, so much so that you are willing to send them a reminder.

Discount less preferred booking dates

This may be a bold one, but if a client wants an appointment today and you cant fit them in why not offer them a discount for a slot that you do have free. This may be the difference between them returning to your salon or not. I would be blown away if a receptionist said to me “we are fully booked today, but we have a slot tomorrow and we will give you a 10% discount if you take it”. It would be worth talking about.

10% off for a repeat booking

What about saying to a client as they finish paying “if you book your next appointment now you will be entitled to a 10% discount”? If that were me I would be much more inclined to make the booking and it would be something worth talking about to others.

Surprise them with your knowledge of them

If I sat down at the chair and the stylist recalled details of my previous visits it would surprise me. These details could be of a personal nature or related to products and services. If this was the standard I could expect from a salon it would definitely be worth talking about. But, Im talking about doing this for everyone, even the person who was last there more than 6 months ago and not just doing it for the clients you see week in and week out.

Conclusion

Its hard to give someone credit when they are giving themselves credit all the time. Rather, do things for others that result in them responding positively to you. Doing things like in the examples above gives the client an overall feeling that you want them to come back again. We want you to come back so we will pay for your parking, we want you to come back so we will send you a thank you SMS. We want you to come back so we will give you 10% off if you book your next appointment now.

When people sense that you value their business then they will talk about whatever factors contributed to that.

Have you ever had to do anything over again because you didn’t do it properly in the first place? Have you ever had to spend a lot of time cleaning up a mess that could have been avoided if you had just planned better?

Would you consider yourself a good manager? They say that the first function in management is planning. Planning is something I actually find very difficult – I don’t know what this says for my management skills …

Part of the reason I find it difficult is I always feel so busy with all the pressures of work that seem to almost be working against me to prevent me from planning (notice how I’m trying to make excuses). But I think there is some truth in this, life continually throws enough things our way to keep us busy for a number of lifetimes, we therefore have to be very deliberate about planning else it will never happen.

The flip side of why I find planning difficult is because if I do actually make any plans then I have to stick to them, which leads into the second, third and fourth functions of management namely activating your plan, coordinating your plan and finally maintaining your plan. If I don’t plan then I don’t have to do any of these other things and its more difficult to hold me accountable.

Im starting to wonder if this article is for your benefit or mine ..?

Types of planning

As I consider the different types of planning that you can do I realize I may be off the hook in some ways because I realize that for some types of things I do plan and for other types I don’t.

For example, I don’t plan my social life very well (probably why I don’t have much of a social life to speak of). I don’t plan holidays well either. However, when it comes to other things like certain projects at work where I have experienced what can go wrong when there isn’t a good plan in place I have been much better at planning.

How is it with you? Are you a planner by nature or do you only plan well for certain things or do you just live by the seat of your pants and rely on good instincts in the moment?

That little piece of paper

Believe it or not, this article is not an article on planning. Well, not in the general sense as I’ve alluded to above. Rather, as the title suggests, its more about being deliberate about certain small things that if done will save you time and hassle in the future. I guess this is a form of planning but its almost situational planning, ie to save you time and avoid mishaps in very specific areas.

My suggestions are not going to be anything mind-blowing but rather just some practical wisdom based on what I’ve observed over the years and how to avoid a lot of pain in certain of your business processes.

For this article I want to focus on just one thing, printing client receipts.

Print your receipts

Whenever you go to a reputable retail outlet you will notice that you always get issued a receipt once you have paid. This does not happen only when you request it, it happens automatically every time you make a purchase. When last did you have to request a receipt from the cashier at Woolworths or Pick n Pay? You’re more likely to try and refuse the receipt because its probably going to find its way into the nearest dustbin but you’ll never have to ask for one.

So, how does printing a receipt save you time and avoid pain? Well the first assumption is that you have some sort of computerized invoicing system and if you do then it means that you have a powerful tool at your disposal that should be enhancing your business processing capabilities in more ways than one. So, in order to print a receipt you need a computerized system (and by implication will get all the benefits that come with it).

However, just because you have a computerized system does not mean that you will print a receipt so go back to rule number one and ensure that you print a receipt. Lets look at the other benefits of doing this.

For owners

By printing a receipt it means that your reception staff have actually entered the sale onto the system. If they didn’t enter the sale onto the system then a number of things may go wrong, ie they may pocket the cash. If there is no record of a sales transaction then there may not be any record of cash being received. This will lead to pain in your cash flow!

For clients

Another outcome will be that the client themselves have proof that the transaction took place. The benefits to the client would be that they will be able to produce proof of purchase if they have to return a product at a later stage. This also keeps you in line with the Consumer Protection Act. Another benefit for clients will be if you have a client loyalty scheme, then the client will know that their purchase will contribute towards their loyalty balance.

For staff members

Because the sales have been entered onto the system and entered correctly then there is a higher chance that staff members will get their correct commission when salaries are paid.

Also, printing a receipt (AND GIVING IT TO THE CLIENT) means that the sale was entered into the system at the time it actually took place rather than at the end of the day after you have closed. It is disturbingly common for salons to not enter sales into their computerized systems as they happen but rather enter them all together at the end of the day. Doing it this way leaves much room for errors and manipulation. At the end of the day staff are eager to get finished and get home and having to work through cash up errors and deal with transactions that happened up to 8 hours prior can cause a lot of frustration and errors.

For accountants

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this yet but accountants are quite particular. They get their knickers in a knot if things don’t all balance or money cannot be accounted for. There’s quite a good reason for this, and this is because they know what kinds of questions will have to be answered if the “Eye of Sauron” (SARS) turns its focus onto your business. Believe it or not SARS does not like it when money can’t be accounted for and so if printing receipts for every client is a way that guarantees that every sales transaction is entered into your system and matches the money that you have in your safe or your bank then your accountant tends to be a little less condescending about how you run your business and the general state of your affairs.

Conclusion

There are many more benefits not mentioned above that are the result of simply printing a receipt like accurate reporting and analytics, targeted marketing campaigns and stock control to mention a few. Who would have thought that the little piece of paper that so often goes straight into the bin could have such a profound influence over the successful management of your salon?

If you are not currently doing this start today, ensure that every client who visits your salon walks out with a printed receipt for their purchase. Ensure all your correct details are on the receipt. Ensure that your software autoprints a receipt and also a second copy that you can keep in the salon for your own records.

It may seem like more work to have to enter the sale into your system as it happens but as the saying goes a stitch in time … well you know the rest.