How to Make More Retail Sales in Your Salon or Spa

by Greg Milner   

“I’m a beauty therapist, not a salesperson!”

How many times have salon owners heard that lament, accompanied by a melodramatic rolling of the eyes, as they struggle to lift retail sales?

The inability, unwillingness, or worse, obstinate refusal among salon staff – hair and beauty – to ‘lower’ themselves to the role of sales person in order to sell more product bedevils business owners all over the world.

But it’s a problem salon owners must overcome, and quickly. Everywhere, suppliers and manufacturers of skin and hair care products are less and less inclined to rely solely on exclusive salon outlets, and more and more turning to alternative distribution channels, like departments stores and supermarkets.

As they do, the opportunity for salon owners to ‘leverage’ their revenue by upselling products on the back of treatments erodes away, little by little but surely and steadily.

So, let’s have a little reality check about what selling is all about.

As CEO of Worldwide Salon Marketing (www.worldwidesalonmarketing.com) I get to talk with hundreds of salon owners and staff around the world. Many of them are now owners of the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit, the world’s only complete marketing system of pre-written ads, sales letters and flyers designed to alleviate one of the most difficult tasks any salon owner faces – having to write all their own marketing material.

But what’s the point of creating the world’s best ad, the best mailbox flyer or sales letter, when all that marketing effort gets sabotaged at the back end?

At salon marketing seminars I run all over Australia and New Zealand, salon and day spa owners regularly tell me that even they sometimes have trouble selling, because of the common but misguided belief that clients might find them ‘pushy’ if they actively recommended product.

“Retail sales have always been a worry,” says Linda Rothenburg of Linda’s Beauty Therapy in Myrtle Bank, South Australia. “Our ratio of product sales would be 30% of overall sales. I would like it to be more. We have the fear of being pushy ‘like the department store girls’.”

It’s a fear that’s widely-held.
“I sometimes feel guilty about taking a client’s money, knowing that she could be putting that extra money on her mortgage, or education for the kids,” a salon owner once told me.

Folks, in the real world, here’s what does not happen… the next time you or your staff fail to show Mrs Average Client to the door with those jars of product you know she needs, Mrs Average Client will not take that $100 she’s just saved and place it gratefully in the ‘Mortgage Payments’ envelope on top of the fridge.

Nor will Mrs Average Client immediately rugby-tackle the nearest little-old-lady-in-a-Salvation-Army-uniform to the ground, forcing that ‘saved’ $100 into the collection tin. Or take that crisp $100 bill, held carefully between thumb and forefinger, and have those squeeky, questionable brakes fixed on her car.

Nope. Not at all. What she will do is take her hundred bucks, drive to the department store, and buy the stuff you should have sold her in the first place.

By you not selling the product, you’re simply giving the money to a rival retailer.

Still feeling guilty about taking somebody’s hard-earned cash? Okay, I’ll be brutal.

If nobody sold anything, the world would stop turning. Until something’s sold, nothing happens. No income is earned. Therefore no taxes are paid. If no taxes are paid, no schools can be built, hospitals staffed, roads constructed, pensions paid.

The entire economy of the world ceases to exist if everybody decides at once that selling is beneath them. So let’s get that nonsense out of the system, and get onto the real work, which is

How to Make More Retail Sales.
In a perfect world of perfect marketing, there wouldn’t be any need for selling as such. Marketing by definition is ‘any activity which brings customers to you with a pre-disposition to buy from you and you alone, at the price you wish to charge.’

True, good marketing will bring customers to you, in droves. Any number of Toolkit-equipped salon owners will attest to that. But more often than not, you still need to sell to them once you get them in door.

In her in-salon sales manual ‘Selling with Energy’ (part of the Toolkit) author and sales guru Jill Groves sets out dozens of easy-to-do strategies that make the selling a process rather than an event. But behind them all is the simple philosophy
“Our knowledge is ours to give, not ours to keep”

“I heard (former Schwartzkopf national marketing manager) John Lees say that at a seminar, and it struck me like a thunderbolt,” says Jill.

The ‘gold’ in that little sentence is here: even a junior therapist, straight out of beauty college, knows more about skin care than her client.

“In the treatment room or at the stylist’s chair, you will see an immediate and dramatic improvement in sales simply by educating the client about the products being applied,” says Groves.
“Trouble is, many therapists waste that hugely valuable time – they’re preaching to a captive audience, after all – by babbling on about her boyfriend, or the movie she saw last week, or the holiday she’s saving up for.”

That sentiment is backed up by many a salon owner. Says Toolkit owner Lorraine Thompson of The Key to Natural Health in Christchurch, New Zealand, education (of staff) is vital.

“Include staff in training with suppliers and reps,” says Lorraine. “Encourage therapists to educate the clients. If Clients understand the value of the products which are used on them, they will be more inclined to want them. Even if clients don't buy today, they will value the therapist more. They are not going to go to another therapist who doesn't know as much..... And who are they going to recommend to their friends??.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by many owners.
“Knowledge is power,” says Michelle Weston of Northmead Beauty Therapy in Sydney. “The more the Therapist knows about the product the easier they find it to sell.”

Every salon owner cries tears of frustration when they do the numbers on sales they’re missing out on. Lorraine Thompson’s no exception. She says her product sales are only 20% of total turnover. They should be much higher.

“Ideally product sales should equal or be higher than treatments. There are only so many hours in which to give facials and waxing, but if even every 4th client was sold product, this would be closer to reality. Do the math. Four facial clients, 4 leg waxes, 4 manicures = say $650, or $54 per client average (and that would be a full day with a good therapist.)
“Then add in $120 product to two of the Facial clients (at least), some after waxing gel & body cream to two of the waxing clients - say $100, then a nail polish & cuticle oil to each manicure - $130. This could then be an extra $470 = $93 average!!! Even an extra nail polish and hand cream to every client will add a big diffence to your bottom line.”

Figuring out how much money you’re leaving uncollected every week can be a sobering – sometimes depressing – experience.

“There is a steady decrease in retail spending,” says Michelle Weston. “Clients are opting for ‘cheaper supermarket so-called comparables’.”

So how can you motivate staff to sell more? Unfortunately, offering staff the chance to earn more money just doesn’t cut it, if that’s the only carrot you can wave.

In a phone seminar with our Toolkit owners, Andrew Finkelstein, president of The Beauty Resource consulting group in New York explained that money was actually number three or four on the list of most therapist’s wish list.

“We’ve found that people are more often motivated by what money gets rather than the money itself,” says Finkelstein.

Jill Groves agrees. “Ask your staff this: ‘What would you rather have, an extra $400 or a weekend away for two at a hotel of your choice?’ My research shows that 7 out of 10 would choose the weekend away.

“So it still comes down to money in the end, but it’s how you help them visualize what that looks like that matters,” she says.

Northmead Beauty Therapy’s Michelle Weston agrees.

“I do not employ an apprentice staff. I am always seeking mature, "old fashioned Therapists". I have had more success with women with families and Therapists that trained 15-20 years ago either through Ella Bache or as Apprentices themselves.

“The late teens/early twenties employees - the ME generation as I call them - expect to earn top dollars immediately and not work hard for them. Dollars tend to work for them.

“However, my Mums appreciate a night out much more. Most do not "go out" except for our annual awards night out! We have been on a harbour cruise and also out for dinners!

What other ways do you reward staff?

“At our award evening we celebrate Top Retailer of the Year (whoever sells the most products). Surprisingly it seems always to be Part-timers not Full-timers who win this! This year we gave away a weekend for 2 all expenses paid to the Hunter Valley. We also have an Incentive award, which is given to the most consistent and reliable person throughout the year. This year they were awarded 2 tickets on the Sydney Harbour Jetboats.
”We also have a 5 year continued service award, which is $200 wholesale value in products.

I’ve even been trying to encourage the girls that next time we go Pole Dancing!!”

But it takes more than incentives, monetary or in kind, to motivate staff. “In many ways, people are child-like when it comes to motivation,” says Jill Groves.

“If a child doesn’t like her teacher, she won’t work, and ultimately fail. Which is exactly what your staff will do. If your staff don’t like you, don’t like the way you speak to them, think you make ‘too much money’ without working for it, they won’t sell jack for you.”

That’s not a problem for one of Australia’s most successful salon proprietors, Toolkit owner Tracey Orr, a former lawyer who now owns Absolute Beauty in Launceston, Tasmania. Using strategies from the Toolkit, Tracey devised a multi-step promotion that brought in an extra $16,200 in sales in a single month (treatments and products).

One of the keys to getting those sales over the line was staff involvement.

“All we did was print these (flyers) up and place them under our nail tables etc and we blew up large ones and hung them everywhere. Of course all my staff have had all the treatments and raved about them,” Tracey told me.
“We also made a fuss of clients that bought the packages and staff were instructed that there were only 20 of each. In other words they (the staff) believed this and so they closed the sale with clients as there genuinely were only a limited number of each.”

But Tracey Orr’s business acumen is relatively rare in a largely mum-and-dad industry that lurches unsteadily from week to week.

Michelle Weston sums up best the need for salon owners to be rigorously choosy when it comes to recruitment.

“First, I insist that anybody applying for a job have personality plus. Then it’s down to training, training and more training!” she says.

“Jill Groves Manual ‘Selling with Energy embraces the idea the client’s treatment commences the moment they walk in the door until the time that door closes behind them when they leave. It is not just about doing a good leg wax.

“But if the Therapist does not have the PERSONALITY to gain the trust of the client there will be no sale.

“As owners, we need to be very selective as to whom we chose to employ and ensure that the well-educated therapists are looked after and don’t leave the industry. By ‘looked after’ I mean money as well as understanding the simple fact that the employees come to work to provide for their families and that in their eyes their families come first.

“Being flexible and understanding provides the mutual respect you need for your staff to WANT to improve themselves in the workplace.”