A message from Salon Owner, Coach and Author, Steve Hilliard:
I know as an industry and as a country, we’re in uncharted water now, but I believe there are positive opportunities waiting to be seized by salon owners to come out stronger and poised for success, if only we’ll look for them.
While your business is quiet or even closed, you can take maximum advantage of the opportunities created by the Governments ‘COVID-19 Business Support Package’. This packagae is designed to help us stay solvent and retain our staff and premises until the all clear has been given which offers business grants, interest free loans, VAT deferment and help paying staff wages.
Now, with the worry of being financially broken taken care of, you can focus your attention on planning and preparing your training and marketing to hit the ground running when the market booms.
How often has the day to day pressure of running your business made it impossible to plan and prepare … well now you can!
You can find more details of the government’s support plans here.
Steve’s top tips:
When it comes to making the most of any trading opportunities you’ve got at the moment or planning and preparing for potential closures, your Shortcuts Software can really help!
Here are some top tips you can use to help you make the most of the system:
While you can still trade …
- Look at the predicted total at the beginning of every week using a ‘Value Of Future Appointments Report’. Then you can monitor the rise of fall of the predicted total by creating new Value Of Future Appointments Reports for the same period at least twice a day as the week progresses. This will tell you whether the marketing support and motivational coaching you should be giving your staff is working, or whether you need to do more.
- Also make sure you also track cancelled appointments every day by going to ‘menu’ at the bottom of your appointment book and clicking on ‘conformation status’. There you’ll see all the deleted clients for the day. Double click on each one to see if they’ve rebooked. If they haven’t, then write them down in a separate ‘Hit List’ notebook so you know who you need to be persuading to return!
- Finally, don’t be afraid to have a quick meeting with each of your staff at the beginning of every day. Give each one their ‘Value Of Future Appointments’ predicted total for the day. Give them an incentive to beat that prediction by 20%. If they haven’t got many clients help them to focus on upselling treatments and other additional services. If they do have clients help them to focus on the retail opportunities.
If you have to stop trading …
- Soften the blow and guarantee future business after you reopen by preselling ‘extra value vouchers’ that are valid for 6 months after you reopen. The extra value could be selling £75 vouchers for just £50 as an example. Record the sales in your clients notes so you can maximise the opportunity with each individual.
- You can also market ‘extra value vouchers’ online while you’re closed to generate additional revenue.
- Use the time while you’re closed to analyse and plan for a more successful future by drilling down through the data on your Shortcuts system to do a S.W.O.T Analysis (This means looking for the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) in four different areas of your business.a) Your team members.
b) Your clients.
c) Your salon services.
d) Your retail products.
I don’t have the space on this article to delve much further, but if you’d like some more information and some help getting and using the data in your system to prepare for the resumption of trading, I’d be happy to give you a FREE 1 hour coaching session to get you started.
You can contact me to arrange this by emailing info@stevehilliardcoaching.com today!
In the meantime I wish you all good luck and a soft landing!
