Two Key Learnings for Beauty Therapists

During September, we ran a day for our beauty therapists, with Pete Scott coming in to share some ideas. Pete delivers training across a range of sectors and has great knowledge of the beauty/spa industry. He has also set up spabeautysuccess.com – a great resource for salon professionals.

As a salon owner, it was money well spent. Here we had an external person talking to the girls – sometimes quite bluntly – about what it takes to be a successful beauty therapist. Along with all his ideas, here were the two I picked out as simple, but incredibly powerful if you take them and implement them.

Think about that for a minute. Have you got into a routine where a client comes into the salon, you do your job, then say goodbye? What if you:

It sounds simple, and it is. But, could you do it? The example that Pete compounded related to skincare regimes. What if you really listened to the clients problem, asking questions about their lifestyle, how easy /hard it would be for them to keep it up, get them to buy-in to getting the result they desire and then – and only then – sell them the solutions, which may involved more treatments and/or products?

Or, perhaps a client has an issue that you could answer? I remember a few years ago, Claire (my wife, business partner and a trained therapist) was doing a treatment on a woman who mentioned she had issues with eyeliners. Claire wrote down the name of a product she knew was good and told the woman if she wanted a potential solution to go to Boots, buy the product, come right back and she would show her how to use it. You don’t make a sale, but you are encouraging trust and loyalty.

Own Your Column

Pete has the latitude to say things I can’t as a boss. One of the key things were about earnings and changing the way you (as a beauty therapist) should adapt your attitude towards working to the clock.

He suggested that as a beauty therapist, who has targets, you are effectively your own boss inside the business. So, although the salon you work for should be getting you clients and running offers and campaigns, etc., you are your own boss in terms of keeping clients and building up your client base.

What are you doing about it?

Some therapists sit in the kitchen when they are quiet, or busy themselves doing chores around the salon. What if they worked on their clients to look for opportunities and reached out to people.

Examples

I have two examples to share that have happened in the past month since this training.

Firstly, one of our therapists emailed me one morning to say that she had been checking her column and one of her regulars hadn’t been in for two months. So, we created a personalised email (from her) and emailed him, hoping he was well, that we hadn’t seen him for a while and hopefully we would see him soon. It was personal (from the therapist) and was more about caring than selling.

Within half an hour he’d phoned up and booked a treatment.

Secondly, not relating to beauty. As well as running beauty salons, I do marketing consultancy – especially digital (websites, etc.). So, I took one of my clients that I had been trying to make a sale to and did some caring with their website. I emailed them to say that some of their technology was out of date and I wanted to update it for free so that their website was still secure.

Within two days I got an order from them for a quote that had been hanging around for three months.

If I am honest, I do like caring for clients (and you probably do too), it’s just a nice reminder to get told that there is always more you can do.

But, don’t take my word for it, try it.