3 Salon Strategies for Hard Times



Posted: Sunday, April 05, 2009

by Bill Slater
Stylin 2 Succeed

With all the bad economic news that we want to hear, we need to focus our thoughts and not let it exhaust us of our aspiration not only to preserve our business but to make it even stronger.

Here's a basic salon strategy for building up your brand which is something that we always want to work on but certainly in tough economic times.

There'll be a lot of hair stylists that can't complete in times like these because their positioning wasn't that sharp. There'll be businesses that struggle now because all they've ever been is order takers; they really never worked at building a business. And by order taker I mean a customer walks in and you give them a cut or color and you never see them again. Ever even think about why they never came back? It'll be because of one or possibly all these 3 reasons.

Take care of your most vital assets: We all must realize that our current customers are our biggest assets. They pay our bills, they make our business feasible and we should not and can not take them for granted. We have to make sure we meet and exceed their expectations. We need to dazzle them, providing them with such outstanding services that they wouldn't even dream of changing to someone else. We need to pamper and coddle them as well, and there are more than one way to put all this together for them. If you want an inexpensive way to stand out in the crowd and do what others won't then send each and every one of them a thank you card.

Take care of your marketing: Too many self-employed stylists don't get it when it comes to marketing their businesses. One of the best ways to dramatically increase the amount of clients is with referrals. And I don't mean trying to occasionally mention that you take referrals with your customers. You will have to be engaged in your approach to marketing ... always knowing that your success as a hair stylist rests completely on your capability to market yourself - not just by how well you service your customers. Are you really good at what you do? You better be, and if you are one of the many that aren't trying your absolute best right now then you certainly need to start.

Take care of your list: (that's your contact information) I'm sure that you have a definitive list of your customers, don't you? I mean you have their names and phone numbers, addresses and possibly even their email addresses, right? If you don't, how do you keep in touch with them? You must begin to build your own list of your customers and if you need a pattern for one then I have one for you.

Oh ... are you waiting for your customers to call you for an appointment? And how's that going for you? Is there any void spots or vacant periods on your calendar? Don't you want it to be filled in every day? This is of course just a little commentary of some of the things that you can carry out right now to bring about a salon strategy for hard times. But you have to apply what you learn and get started to work on your business and not just in your business.

If you'd like more information about this then click here and sign up for a free report entitled, "How Most Stylists Under-serve Their Customers"

This Article has been viewed 40 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
No comments yet.
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.