Retail Therapy
You know, don’t you, that it makes sense to retail, but do you do it well, in fact do you do it at all?
Do you know how much your profits would increase if you sold every client (or even every 3 clients) 2 products? Well, you should! Because retailing can make a huge difference. Most salons use top quality professional products at the backwash, as well as prepping and styling the clients’ hair. In fact, a lot of you will have several haircare brands. Do you talk about this?
Do you tell your clients why you are using a particular product on their hair or how they should use the products when styling their hair at home? (We suspect some of you are nodding “of course”, others are thinking “when I think about it”, but a lot of you (or if not you, then your staff,) will get carried away with the usual salon chit chat, around holidays, clothes, going out and boyfriends and suddenly your client’s hair is finished, she pays her bill and goes off to a chain like Boots or Superdrug or to the supermarket, or indeed, online, to stock up in hair products. She might even be Googling the brand you use! A lost opportunity.
So how do you improve your retailing?
First of all, you need staff training. That means product knowledge, playing with the products, experimenting with the products and learning what you can achieve with them.
Secondly you need a good product display, that’s visible (ideally from outside the shop and at reception.) Make your backwash area attractive too and get your staff talking about what they’re using and why.
This leads on to a good consultation. Don’t just talk about style and colour, talk about their hair type, how they style their hair, what difficulties they encounter when doing their hair at home. Then, through each part of the salon journey, you can talk through the perfect product choice for them.
Talk the talk! Your salon retail isn’t for window shopping it’s for selling.
Don’t hike the price! These days everyone compares prices online. If you hike up your prices too much, you’ll fail. We can all think of brands that have ‘sold their soul to the devil’ by allowing cut price outlets to sell their brands. It can only damage your retail, so, be aware of the price trap.
And encourage your staff to sell. Secretly a lot of hairdressers are frightened to sell (and yes, it is recommending, but at the end of the day it’s about a sale.) They need confidence building and that takes time.
We think some of you are thinking you do all this…..OK, check your figures! What is your retail percentage? 5% 10% 15%…..That higher figure is possible you know, but it requires constant work and monitoring.
This all brings us to: today….
We are in difficult times. Hopefully most of your clients won’t be suffering too much and will still treat themselves and welcome your great service, but everyone is aware of the burdens of higher enegy bills, food and petrol, (and we know all this is true of you too.)
We should be entering the busiest few weeks of the year and that means maximising your services, giving great consultations to upsell services, (don’t forget treatments here,) and retailing not only for your clients, but also for gifting.
Can you give your team enticements to retail well? Gifts for achieved targets, team competitions, bonuses??? Not only can this be effective in improving profits, it can also be great for team building.
We’re sure a lot of you are nodding and thinking to yourselves, “I know all this!” That’s great then….but are you and all your team doing it? That’s the question. We can only remind you of the value. And if you have any tips you can add to the above, we’d love to hear them and will happily share.
Here’s hoping the weeks up to Christmas are super busy and bring you lots of success!
For questions and to join the conversation, email: creative@hairuncut.com.
