Introduction
This book is targeted at business owners and staff in the hair and beauty industry. This includes hair and beauty salons, spas, barbershops, clinics, stylists, therapists, cosmetologist, aestheticians, beauticians, barbers, technicians and anyone else in our industry. For the sake of ease, I will refer to the business as a ‘salon’, the business as a ‘salon business’ and the people that work within the industry as ‘stylists. I appreciate the vast spectrum in skills and application. This book applies to you all, indeed it can largely be used by anyone in any industry that sells goods or services.
The fact that you now have this book in your hand tells me you are finally ready to start selling products in your salon. If I am wrong and you are not ready to start selling, then put the book down, give it to a friend or use it as a doorstop, because if you are not ready to learn how to change your business by selling products then it won’t work.
This is not a motivational, let’s feel good book. If you think by reading this book it will endorse all the reasons why you have so far failed, or that this book will make you feel much better by telling you that you were right all along to treat selling like it is an option, it won’t. This is meant to be a hard-hitting look at selling products or otherwise known as product retailing. We will be calling it selling because I do not want you to hide away from the essential task which is selling a product. I do not want you to hide behind the words, education, recommendation and suggestion because if you failed to exchange money for a product and sell it, you are a little nearer to see your business failing.
It’s not that every book, video or course on the subject is wrong, they are not, to the contrary, there is a lot of good material widely available for you to use. However, the attitude and approach that most salon owners, stylists, barbers and therapists take is definitely wrong. It must be wrong otherwise you would be selling lots of products, a lot fewer salons would be closing, and I wouldn’t be able to write this book.
In this book, I will talk to you about selling. You can be confident about saying it, say it aloud and get used to the word, SELLING. We don’t need to call it a secret name, we don’t need to disguise it like its word you must not use in front of the children, it’s not taboo and you won’t get arrested for saying it. SELLING, SELLING, SELLING, it’s your responsibility to the client, the salon and your family.
When you take this one business action you can increase your sales, your profits, your CUSTOMER SERVICE, your client retention, improve marketing and even tackle the dreaded V.A.T threshold (in the UK). Read that again, all these problems solved or improved by doing just one thing. What other single step can you take that will deliver all these benefits and almost for free.
Selling is not a novelty promotion, it’s not an exciting new app or another social media tool, this is about understanding how selling is essential to both you and the client. Grasp this concept and I assure you, your business will change for life.
Having had a number of my own salons, worked with many, many salons as a business coach and perhaps just as importantly had a career in the retail sector, I am always amazed and disappointed, that our industry, worldwide, deliberately turns away vast income from products. Even more so, we reject all the benefits that come with selling products. No other industry in the world would turn away so much of their potential sales and profits, it really does not make any sense at all. Salon owners would rather close their salon, underpay staff, struggle with taxes, not pay themselves and even deliver poor customer service rather than address selling.
An obsession with product selling is essential because it increases your customer service levels beyond the levels of almost every one of your competitors. In general terms, you cannot beat your all your competition on the skills service, a haircut in one salon is largely the same in another salon, and whilst technically they can be worlds apart, what the client usually sees isn’t that different, and this is true with most services throughout the industry. You can’t beat your competition on price, certainly not for long. If you lower your price to beat your competition, your competition will do the same. A lower price just gives you less, it gives the client less, it gives the stylist less. It gives everyone less. When a salon is selling a £/$300 haircut, or a £/$400 facial, they are not selling that process, they are not selling a product, they are selling the bit that you can’t always see, they are selling customer service.
This book will reset your business thinking.
