9 Big Reasons Why You Should Avoid Staff Training in Your Salon

Training your staff could have a serious impact on your bank balance

When I speak to my clients about the need for ongoing staff training, I often hear "I hate spending the money to hold staff training, because eventually they will leave and I have wasted my money"

While this may sound like valid reasoning to some, I wonder if much thought has been given to the repercussions of continuing to think along these lines.


So, here are my (tongue in cheek) 9 TOP reasons why you should never train your staff:

9. Well trained staff generate substantially more income through effective, relationship building retail sales.  I can certainly understand why you wouldn't want that! All those extra retail sales mean you will never be off the phone, ordering more stock...now that's a pain!

8. Well trained staff generate substantially more income through up-selling of services and elimination of gaps in the appointment book.  That's a real problem.  When will there be time for coffee and chatting in the lunch room?       

7. Well trained staff deliver substantially better customer service.  That's just scary.  Now all those customers you have spent so much money on attracting will actually want to come back and spend more money!

6. Well trained staff stay longer in their jobs. This is a real problem for those of you who love spending time and money on recruitment and new employee training and indoctrination.  Not to mention having to keep all those customers who leave when their personal technician leaves your salon.

5. Well trained staff are happier and more motivated in their jobs.  This can be downright depressing if you enjoy working in a tense and moody environment every day! Happy people can be so depressing to be around.

4. Well trained staff retain more clients.  So what are you supposed to do with all those cash generating, extra clients coming in? Sounds like a problem to me.

3. Well trained staff get more personal referrals.  That's a problem too - even more clients wanting to spend their money in your business.  Where will it all end?

2. Well trained staff get better rebooking percentages.  If those clients keep coming back regularly, you are going to be forced to hire more staff and you know what that means!

And last but not least

1. Well trained staff work more efficiently.  You know what this means.  More work, more money and then. in the blink of an eye, you have a tax problem to deal with!

I hope you enjoyed my tongue in cheek list of why you should never train your staff and would like to finish this post by sharing one of my favourite quotes with you.

"There is only one thing worse than training staff and having them leave and this is it..... NOT TRAINING THEM AND HAVING THEM STAY!"

Wishing you prosperity and success
Pam
Photo by Idea Go

Shotgun Marketing - Blasting Holes in Your Bank Balance

What I am about to say will upset some salon owners....get ready for it......contrary to common belief, not all advertising is good advertising! 

When times are tough, and let's face it, they are pretty tough right now,
it is vital to make your advertising dollars work harder for you than ever before.

Gimme all your money!

Shotgun marketing, as the name implies, relies on shooting out many many pellets of advertising material as you can afford to to try and reach as many people as possible.  This approach might be useful for a start-up business that needs to make its local market aware of its existence but after that, it is just too scattered to make the kind of impact that is needed to build an existing business.

Here's somthing you really need to know and embrace....not everyone wants to be your client.  Savvy salon owners appreciate this and spend their precious advertising dollars only in ways that will reach the kind of people who are likely to come in and spend.  In most cases, that is to their own database or to people who are very much like the ones who are already purchasing from you.
 

Do you know who these people are and more importantly, are you making them the target of your marketing efforts?

Next time you are approached by people asking you to advertise in their magazine, newsletter, internet listing etc and so on, ask yourself some important questions first before you sign on the dotted line.

• Am I getting this message to my target market (my clients or those people just like them) or am I spending a lot of money advertising to people who just aren't interested in what I am selling?
• Is the money I am about to spend going to be a good investment and achieve the desired outcome?  Am I going to see a substantial return on my investment and how can I measure the results?
• How could I refine my marketing, spend less money and reach the people who are most likely to buy my product?

Perhaps it's time to re-focus your approach to marketing in 2011 to ensure that every dollar you spend from this point forward creates maximum impact with your target market.

Wishing you prosperity and success
Pam

Photo by Boaz Yiftach

Plan for Success in 2011

 You will have definitely heard the saying "Failure to plan is planning to fail" and it's too true.  Salon owners, from my experience, are generally wonderful and caring people with loads of talent and optimism but generally they are pretty reluctant to sit down and PLAN for their future business success.

image by jscreations

 
Before you can start out on your journey to business prosperity, you need to know what route to take to get you there as quickly and efficiently as possible.  This means creating a plan for success.

Let me ask you a few questions to help you get your plan started for 2011.

1. How much profit (after your wages) do you want your salon to make in 2011? Be precise here, is it $25K, $50K or more?
2. After adding your projected expenses back on to this figure, what turnover does your salon need to achieve.....exact amounts here please?
3. Ok, now that you know how much your salon needs to take, what does that break down into as a weekly figure. 
4. Great, now you have some idea of what your salon needs to be taking every week to meet your financial goals.  The next question is, how are you going to achieve this?
5. Here are some things that you can ask yourself to get started:
1. Is it time to have a price increase on services and if so how much should it be considering the cost of providing each service?
2. Am I ready to retail a more profitable line of product where I can earn more dollars per sale?
3. Is my roster aligned properly to the amount of work coming into my salon or do I need to measure this more closely to find out?
4. Are there better, more profitable services I could be offering to my clients?
5. Is it time to train my staff in better retail and service upselling techniques?
6. Can I possibly reduce my overheads and do a better deal on most of my expenses?
7. How can I retain my clients more effectively and therefore save tons of money on expensive and mostly unnecessary marketing campaigns?
8. Are all of my staff rebooking each and every client before they leave the salon?

Now this list is not comprehensive by a long shot, but it will give you a starting point for your 2011 business plan.

If you would like help to plan your year, please give me a call or send me an email to discuss how you can become more profitable this year.


Wishing you prosperity and success for 2011
Pam