Ask me Anything - October 2024

Hello, my salon friends. How are you? How's business? Let's find out in my monthly Q&A. Hello, hello, hello, my salon friends. Phil Jackson here, your queen of salons, coming in your eyes and ears again with another dose of Wise Owl Wisdom. How is business? Hope October's been good for you. Heard some good, strong, positive results from some of my coaching clients, and I hope it's been the same in your business, too. Reach out and let me know. Phil at buildyoursalon.com. You know I love hearing from you anyway. And hear from you, I did. I did have to do a bit of hustling, bit of hassling, nagging people into sending me their questions. But we've got a good set of questions for my Ask Me Anything episode. And we're going to start, we're going to jump straight in with a question from Cora. And apologies for looking down, but I've got my notes. Cora says, how do I get my girls to sell retail? I'm the only one selling and we hardly sell anything. They get 10% commission on sales. Oh, my goodness. If I had a pound for every time a salon owner has reached out to me with frustrations around salon retail, I'd have, oh, gosh, over £10, I expect. This is a very common question. I think it is getting tougher to sell retail as we get more professional products being sold on places like Amazon and eBay. It is getting harder. And even in my own salon, I have seen people checking the prices online before they decide whether to make a purchase or not. That said, there's some stuff that I think we can be doing. I think the first thing I would look at is the brands that you're stocking. And I'm looking for two things here. One is that the brand you're stocking is aligned with your own salon brand. So there's a tension in my own business, for example. So I keep calling it my business. It's not my business anymore, but I interfere in it enough that I feel like it's still my salon. But we are a hair salon and we stock KMS products and KMS branding does not fit our clientele. Our clientele is more mature. They're certainly wealthy. And the branding that goes with KMS, all of the point of sale material is very young, very hip, very trendy. And there's a tension in the business there which needs to be addressed. So we bring in different brands to supplement.

And eventually I expect KMS will be discontinued in the salon. So make sure that what you're retailing fits with everything else. If, for example, you have, I don't know, a salon that's built around your green credentials and you're very environmentally aware, environmentally conscious and your products aren't, then there's a tension in the business and it's going to make it tougher to sell. So make sure you're looking at the brands that you've got. Also, why not look for stuff that you can't buy online? And I'm a big fan of smaller brands, brands that will offer you exclusivity, at least in the local area, brands that don't sell online. Or if they do, they've got some sort of portal where you can still get a commission or even better, look at white labelling. And the quality of white labelling products now is much higher than it used to be. Used to be very, very poor. Now, I think you'd be hard pushed to find better. And then, of course, you're reinforcing your branding in the customer's bathroom, but also they can't buy those products unless they're buying them from you. So I would look at the branding, first of all. Secondly, I think we've got a performance management question here. I think we need to make it really clear what our expectations are of our team members. And ultimately, those targets should be built into, I don't know whether you're hair or beauty, but they should be built into your stylist or esthetician or beauty therapist job description. So it should be really clear, even at the recruitment stage, that they are expected to retail. And ultimately, it's their job. If it's in the job description, we have an expectation and we start coaching them towards that. But ultimately, we need to be prepared if we're going to set retail targets, we need to be prepared to shift that conversation. So if they've had all the product knowledge training, they've had all the sales technique training, we've run promotions to make the products more attractive, we've made sure the branding is aligned and they're still not retailing. Well, that's no longer a knowledge problem. It's no longer a coaching problem. What we've got there is a disciplinary problem or a capability problem. So we need to be prepared to shift that conversation. Three tiny little extra points, though, for you, Cora. You said we hardly sell anything. Does that mean you're not retailing very much either? Because I'll tell you now, you need to get your own house in order. It's very hard to sit down with a straight face and coach somebody on retail products if you're not retailing really hard. So you need to be the best retailer they've ever seen and lead by example in that instance.

Second point is 10% commission on sales doesn't do it for me. I have to say, at most price points, that's not really going to make a big difference. Even if they're retailing reasonably well, it's not going to make a huge difference pay packet wise. I would have a look at stripping that out and finding a different way to motivate and incentivize. We changed and moved our retail commission over to our training budget. So the more they sell, the more goes into the training budget. My guys are much more motivated by training than they ever were by an extra few quid in their pay packet at the end of the month. But do what works for your team. And finally, don't make the assumption that you have to retail at all. I think these days it's a perfectly valid business model to say, do you know what? We're not going to stop retail products. I will talk to you about the kinds of ingredients you should be using. I'll talk to you about what I'm using on your hair or your skin. But we don't do that because we're going to be selling you a product at the end of it. We do it because it's the right thing to do. I think there's an argument for that these days where there probably wasn't maybe 10 years ago. So have a bit of a head scratch and figure out if it's part of your strategy going forward. If it is, I hope those tips have helped you. Next question comes from Terry and Terry's putting a membership together. Oh, we do love a membership. And Terry says, how much discount do I need to give for my salon membership? And the short answer is you don't if you don't want to. You can make it a discount membership. I don't teach discount memberships. I say during my memberships training, this is not a discount club that we are building. Sometimes it's worth offering a small discount. It depends basically how valuable it is for you to have a member. If you've got a big problem with the first of the month anxiety and lots of anxiety around money coming in and breaking even too late in the month, maybe it's worth something to you to put a discount out there. But I think we can find lots of other reasons for people to join a salon membership. For example, as much as we're smoothing your income with a membership, we're smoothing their outgoing. So perhaps that predictability can take the place of a discount. Perhaps that's enough for someone to sign up. Or maybe we need to create something that's more of an exclusive membership, perhaps building some VIP benefits. Or perhaps offer people access to certain team members or certain time slots or certain services even that they can't get unless they are a member.

So there's lots of reasons we can give people to join a membership beyond just discounting. So don't assume that you need to give a discount at all. If you need more help on memberships, Terry, I don't know if you've got my cheat sheet, buildyoursalonpodcast.com forward slash memberships. There's a free cheat sheet there for you to download. And it gives you 10 mistakes that I see people making when they're putting memberships together. Next cab off the rank is Val. And Val's growing her team. Hurrah! We're recruiting and I'm struggling to see how I can afford to take anyone new on. They all want £15 plus per hour. And there's no way I can make a profit on that if they're not busy straight away. OK, Val. Now, basically, your wages and your targets and your prices are all intrinsically linked. And if you can't afford to pay £15 an hour, you need to figure out whether there's something that needs looking at in your pricing. Because £15 an hour used to be what I would call management rate. That used to be if somebody was coming into the salon and we were expecting them to supervise other team members or run the salon in our absence, that would be a good hourly rate. Nowadays, particularly in beauty, £15 an hour is not a huge ask. It's on the spicy side. But I've heard people asking for a lot more than £15 an hour. Also, bear in mind, a lot of the supermarkets are paying, you know, £11, £11.50, £12 an hour now. And we've certainly got a lot more going for us than stacking shelves, one would hope. That said, I do think we can come back to your job description because the hourly rate should be really clear in the job description. And the job description should be available for people in the application process. So I don't really understand how they're turning up and then asking for £15 an hour. If you've done the maths and you can't afford that and you've got an hourly rate in mind, that should be in the job description. They shouldn't really even be applying if they're not happy with the wage that you've put in the job description. A few things you can do to, or a couple of things you can do to reduce your risk financially when you're recruiting. First is what we call a tapered start. And we used to do this a lot. Now, it works if you're recruiting younger people who are maybe still living at home.

It doesn't work so well when people have got mortgages or rent to pay. But what you could say is, yes, we want somebody full time. But to start with, we're going to bring them in, say, three and a half days a week until they hit certain targets, usually utilisation targets, until they get to a certain level of busyness. Then we'll increase their hours by another half day or another full day. So we can do a tapered start. Not everyone will agree to it. It's up to you to decide whether that's going to be a hard line or whether you're willing to compromise on that a little bit. But it reduces your outgoings in the short term while they're building a clientele. Other thing we can do is build in a probation period. So a nice 90-day probation period. Nice, tight targets. Achievable, but challenging targets. We want to see that people are getting busier. By 90 days, we should be seeing their rebookings coming in. Their utilisation should be high. Bearing in mind, it also relies on your ability to market properly. But within 90 days, you should know whether someone's going to be a goer or not. So sometimes people will say, you know, I'm going to have to bring in a beauty therapist and it's going to cost me £22,000 a year. Well, it doesn't cost you £22,000. Basically, it costs you 90 days worth of those wages. That's the risk. That's the gamble. And if the gamble doesn't pay off, then we cut our losses. But the one thing I would say, if you're worried about getting them busy straight away, have a look at the utilisation that you have across the rest of the team. Because unless your utilisations, I would suggest, up in the 80s, you probably don't need to recruit right now anyway. So have a look at utilisation with everybody else. Make sure there's actually a role. And three months should be enough time for them to get busy, particularly if they're replacing somebody in the team. If it's a brand new column, sometimes it can take a bit longer. But usually three months with some good marketing should be fine. But well done for recruiting, Val. You know that recruiters are some of my favourite people in our industry. And finally, a question from Harry. Harry says, Harry's running a hair salon. We have an older client base and I think it's holding my business back. I know at least one of my stylists says she's bored cutting old people's hair and they won't pay more so I can't put my prices up. OK, Harry, basically what you've got then is a marketing and positioning question. If you don't want to cut older people's hair anymore, then we need to emphasise that in your marketing and positioning. So it's a bit like I'll sometimes go into a salon, let's say a beauty salon, where they're offering multiple different beauty services.

And some of those services are more profitable than others. So usually, for example, skin services are more profitable than nail services. So we don't necessarily discontinue those nail services, though you might. What we do is just angle the marketing towards the more profitable stuff. So if you've got an older client base and you want to reposition, then all we do is make sure that the stuff that you're sharing on socials supports that repositioning. So younger, fresher styles and clients being shown. That said, I think there's a couple of assumptions that I don't really like that I'm going to challenge you on, Harry. Firstly, older does not mean boring. I know plenty of people who are older but don't necessarily want old people's hair. They would want something a bit younger and a bit fresher. And I've had some of the most exciting colour work I've ever done was actually on one of my favourite clients. And she was in her 60s and she was at the stage where she did not care anymore. And she was going to have the hair that she wanted. And we did everything apart from pink. She wouldn't have pink. But every colour you can imagine went onto that lady's hair. In fact, she was the one, if we got new colours in, she was the one that I would try them out on first. So older does not mean boring. If you've got somebody who's bored, it's because they're doing boring work. And you get boring clients by doing boring work. If all you're doing is very traditional, very safe work, then guess what sort of clients you're going to be attracting. It's not going to be people that are edgy and trying to do new stuff. But don't assume that people necessarily want older styles because they've passed a certain age. You know, I am of an age now myself, but I don't necessarily want to look younger. I just want to look like a fabulous 50, darling. And I bet there's lots of your clients that feel the same in their 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. You do get the clients you deserve, though. If you're doing boring work, you do get boring clients. The other thing I'm going to challenge you on is making assumptions that people won't pay more. There is a trend across, actually not just a UK trend. It's kind of a worldwide trend in lots of places where some of the wealthiest people in our economy are people that are retired. They've got their own properties. They haven't got mortgages anymore.

They've got disposable income. It's actually the younger people that are struggling to make ends meet, can't get a mortgage because they're not earning enough, because wages have not kept pace with house prices. So don't assume just because people are older they won't pay more. I think there might be some nice surprises in there if you did look at revising your prices. So I hope that's helped. Harry, Val, Terry and Cora, thank you so much for your questions this month. And if you've got a question for next month's Q&A, please reach out phil at buildyoursalon.com. The email address is scrolling at the bottom of the screen if you're watching us on Spotify or YouTube. Just seven short days until I'm coming in your eyes and ears again with another dose of Wise Our Wisdom. But also please reach out if you would like to be a featured guest on a future episode of the podcast. I would love to be chatting to you about your journey through our salon industry. And until the next episode, please take care.