6 New Year Resolutions for Salon Suite Owners
THOUGHT PROCESS
Studies show that people who put their goals into writing outperform those who don’t write them down.
ACTION STEPS
Take advantage of the excitement of moving into a new year to put your professional and business-related goals into writing in the form of New Year Resolutions, including the specific steps you’ll take to reach each one.
Goals are the stuff dreams are made of; rather, without goals, dreams are likely to remain out of reach. You can spend all the hours you want wishing for a higher income, a bigger book of business, client loyalty, referrals, or retail sales; however, without a plan, those dreams aren’t likely to come to fruition.
The beginning of a New Year offers a golden opportunity for you to take your dreams out of the conceptual phase and put them into actionable, measurable goals. Even taking this first step makes it more likely to occur!
A Dominican University study by Gail Matthews featured on Forbes.com found that people who put their goals into writing “accomplished significantly more” than people who didn’t write down their goals. According to the article, there are four key factors at play:
- A clear vision – know what you want or where you want to be
- Measurable – an achievable timeframe and when and what you’ll measure to determine progress or success
- Benchmarks – the more ambitious your goal, the more you will need to set incremental milestones, giving yourself a chance to celebrate progress and helping you keep on track
- Celebrations – hard work might be its own reward, but you’re going to want to keep on keeping on if you stop to celebrate when you hit key benchmarks and reward yourself for persistence
That doesn’t sound too hard, does it? Breaking your goal down into incremental steps set apart by specific milestones is like the old joke:
Q: How do you eat an elephant?
A: One bite at a time.
Now that you know how, let’s talk about what. When it comes to setting New Year Resolutions, here are six ideas to consider:
1. Increase Your Book of Business
If you’ve got holes in your schedule, you’re leaving money on the table. Not only will you earn less because you have hours when you could be earning going unclaimed, it also (usually) precludes your ability to raise prices. On the other hand, if your book of business is full and you have a waiting list, you have the type of demand that justifies increasing prices and earning a premium for your time.
2. Decrease Client Churn Rate
Client churn (or client turnover) is important to understand, especially if you’re building a book of business. This rate refers to the number of clients who don’t return. If you have a high client churn rate, then you have to continually try to bring new clients in the door at a faster rate in order to fill up your books. Conversely, if you have a low client turnover rate (and high client loyalty), then every new client earned is a step toward your goal.
3. Increase Average Ticket
Maybe you don’t have a lot of holes in your schedule to fill; however, you aren’t yet earning as much as you would like or need to have. If demand for your services warrant, it might be time for a price increase, but that’s just one way to increase the average amount of money you earn per hour of service sold. You can also focus on upselling existing clients to a higher level of service or selling more retail. You won’t be spending more time working, but your revenue per hour will be higher.
MY SALON Suite provides its Members with a specific plan they can work to grow their business to the earning level they want to achieve, step by step. If this sounds appealing to you, reach out to your nearest MY SALON Suite franchise owner for more details or contact us for more information.
4. Attract More ‘Ideal Client’ Types
This New Year Resolution isn’t just about attracting new clients, nor is necessarily going to be about attracting clients who spend more; rather, it’s about focusing your efforts on attracting new clients that represent your ideal client. Ideally, the stars will align and this will mean you get to spend the most time working toward your strengths, with clients you enjoy working with, and which help you become more profitable. You might not even end up working more hours, but you will change the make-up of your client base over time.
In order to do this, you must actually define the client personas that represent your “best” clients – those who are likely to be loyal, follow your recommendations, enjoy being in your Salon Suite because of its atmosphere, let you do the type of services you most enjoy or are most profitable (and do less of those you don’t enjoy or which aren’t profitable), and so on. Your client personas might be described by any number of factors from age, gender, fashion-forward-ness, income, employment, lifestyle, zip code, neighborhood, and more.
5. Increase Referrals
When clients refer friends, family, or colleagues to your Salon Suite for service it’s the ultimate compliment. Not only does it help you build your book of business more quickly, it can also help you attract more of your “ideal client” types, if your ideal clients are referring more people like themselves to you for salon services.
But it’s not always easy to get those referrals, although it’s not entirely out of your hands. You can motivate clients to tell their co-workers, friends, and loved ones about your Salon Suite by:
- Providing an extra-ordinary client experience
- Ensuring client perceive they are receiving high value
- Rewarding or incentivizing client referrals
- Asking your ideal client types for referrals (people “just like them”)
- Delivering amazing results on a consistent basis
- Demonstrating that you have the client’s best interest at heart
- Personalizing communications and recommendations
6. Add Services
Nothing helps spur business growth like expanding in some way; such as education that enables you to add new services to your Salon Suite’s menu, enlarging retail inventory, purchasing equipment to add new services, and so on. Expanding your Salon Suite can also be very personally rewarding (as well as financially rewarding) especially if you add services that you truly enjoy providing or acquire skills you always wanted to master.
The New Year is full of opportunity. Let your dreams always be bigger than your fears and put New Year Resolutions into writing for your Salon Suite.
