Posted on 3rd May 2016 by Steve Hilliard
It’s a fair question if you think about it.
As a salon owner you hopefully love your work, love your staff, love your brand and you love your clients! With so much love flying around, why would you be afraid of putting your prices up?
The most common answer I’m given when I ask salon owners this question is … “because I’m afraid of upsetting or even losing my clients.”
With the provision that you’re good enough at what you do, you might well lose a few customers if you put your prices up, but trust me when I say … these are ones you needed to lose anyway and the additional profit you make from your higher prices will make up for the few clients you lose, many times over. Plus if you train your team to introduce a level down so the price stays around the same.
Your most common service is probably a cut & finish with your most common colour service probably partial and tinting roots. These would be the services you should increase and see how much revenue you can gain.
Last December, I increased one of my manager’s prices because she was running at 93%productivity, which meant she was far too busy looking after clients to do her managers job effectively and more importantly she could not fit her clients in!
After her price increase, her productivity dropped to 80{b55adc3a662bd6c2e6709665258abfc1f6e7a7940e6d74c1b6e379c733dca360}, however, those ‘lost’ clients actually stayed with the salon. This is where it is vital to train your team if they feel the price is too high, they simply just move to other stylists who charged what these price sensitive customers were used to paying.
The net effect was, the business lost virtually no clients, the management of the salon improved and profits went up because 80%of my manager’s customers happily paid more. And most importantly my manager was able to take on new clients at her new price and grow her column again!
Also because the other stylists got busier and the salon was doing better, my manager and staff all earned more as well… so everybody wins just because I wasn’t afraid to put up my manager’s prices.
It’s powerful because it gives your staff control of how much they earn and if you use it properly you’ll never be asked for a pay rise again! I know it sounds unlikely but trust must me it works!
If you’re still not sure about raising your prices and you’ve taken the time to read this article, I’D BE HAPPY TO GIVE YOU FOR FREE one of my valuable “How to put your prices up without losing customers” planning sessions and you’ll be amazed at the difference it makes to your confidence and salon profits.
This is a genuine offer and you can book your free session by sending an email to stevehilliardhair3@dsl.pipex.com with a brief note explaining why you’re not sure it’s safe to put your prices up.
So that’s it for now. I’ll leave you with my motto … “Do Something Different In Your Salon Today”
…and you can do something different by booking your session with me and remember to come back next time to get hold of my powerful commission system.
Here’s to your future!
Steve Hilliard
