Do you do a great job? Do you promise? Guarantees and your salon business

Do you do a good job in your salon? Do you promise? A Salon Guarantee can be an amazing way to stand out in a crowded marketplace. Here's how to put one together. Hello, hello, hello, my salon friends. Phil Jackson here, your queen of salons. Coming in your eyes and ears again with a dose of wise old owl wisdom. How on earth are you? Achingly well, I hope, looking good and feeling gorgeous as we march through March. So here we are, me, desperate for summer to get on with it. I've enjoyed the slightly lighter mornings, but my goodness, I'm ready for some decent, reliable, warmer weather because, yes, of course, we get that in the summer here in the UK. Today's topic is Salon Guarantees and it's a really important tool that not only, I think, helps you stand out in your marketing as something slightly different, certainly makes a new client decision a little bit easier and takes a bit of the risk away. Or the perceived risk as far as a new customer is concerned. But actually, a guarantee can inform your entire strategy. Heck, it can make differences in so many different ways in your salon business. Now, I'm going to use my own salon as an example. And we put together a five point guarantee. Now, bear in mind, mine was a hair salon. So you clever, clever beauty people, you're going to have to do just a bit of translating in order to get something out of today's episode. Some of the stuff will apply to you straight away. I do think a guarantee should be in place in every single salon business, whether you're hair, beauty, aesthetics, whether you're a solopreneur, right up to a chain of salons. So let's get stuck into my five point promise, shall we? And let me say, first of all, that we did not start with a five point promise. That's because version one beats version none every single time. And you need to bear that in mind when you're running your business. So we actually started with a three point salon promise because some of the points that I'm going to go through today are easier for you to implement, easier for you to guarantee than others. Some of them you're going to have to do some team training. You're going to have to look at your policies, your procedures, your systems, your protocols in order to deliver that consistent result. The other thing I'm going to say is that there's no point in having a guarantee or a promise or whatever you decide to call it if nobody knows it's there. So we made a really big deal out of this. And each of these points was made really clear to our customers during their salon journey.

And I will go through each point and tell you how we communicated that with our customers, too. So first up, our first promise was that you would be 100 percent happy with your hair. It's a big statement when you think about it. And in fact, it did change a little and I'll explain why as well. But I think the least we can do is guarantee that people will be happy with what they've had done, that they will be happy with the results that we've given them today. Now, we tweaked it a little bit to say that they will be 100 percent happy with our work. And that's because and I'm sure particularly in beauty, you're going to appreciate this. Sometimes we're on a journey with our customers. So let's say somebody came in for a skin transformation. You can't say they're going to be 100 percent happy with their skin straight away. It's going to take some time. And particularly when we start looking at aesthetics and injectables, they're not going to be 100 percent happy straight away. But I think that we can be happy with the work that we've put in. It's the same in hair. Sometimes we have, let's say, a color correction journey where we can't get to the result that we want in one go. Otherwise, the hair would be disintegrating in front of our very eyes. But what we can do is guarantee that they'll be happy with the work that we've done that day. And we had to look at how we make sure that people are happy. And first of all, that's managing client expectations. It's making sure they understand what the result that day is going to be. And secondly, we had to figure out how do we know when someone's 100 percent happy with our work? Well, guess what, my dears? We ask them. And we made it part of our procedure when people were paying and leaving to ask the question, are you 100 percent happy with our work today? And if the answer is no, what a golden opportunity to turn that around before the customer has left. So point number one, you'll be 100 percent happy with our work. Point number two is a retail one. And we made the promise to our customers that we would tell them about every single product being used on them today. And I think that's the least we can do, particularly as our customers are getting more sophisticated, particularly as they're more concerned with the ingredients in certain products. They want to know what you're doing and why you're doing it. So I think the least we can do is make sure we're telling them. Now, it made a really big difference to our retail because, of course, the biggest reason people don't buy retail products is not because they can get products cheaper online. It's because no one's having the bloody conversation with them in the first place. So it guaranteed that that conversation was going to happen. Now, in my hair salon, this was turned into a little mirror cling, a little sticker that ran along the bottom of the mirrors.

So everybody saw that all the time. And what it meant was there was an expectation that that conversation was going to happen. There was no embarrassment from my team members talking about retail products anymore because they knew they had to do it. Now, I will tell you, we did have to polish and refine the way that that was delivered a little bit over time. And that's because we got into a situation where some stylists were just rattling off a list of products instead of actually taking the time to explain. So we had to kind of say, yes, it's not really enough to mention the products. You actually have to explain why you're doing what you're doing as well every single time. Now, occasionally a client would turn around and say, actually, I don't want to hear about the products. And that's fine, too. You know, as long as we're delivering on our side of the promise, if they opt out of it, well, that's that's entirely up to them as well. So point number two was we would tell you about every product being used on you today. Point number three was that we would give a full consultation every single time. Now, why is that important? Well, firstly, it goes back to point number one. If we're not doing a full consultation, then maybe we're also not explaining what the transformation is going to be today. We're not managing the expectations and outcomes as part of that consultation process. But secondly, it comes from our new client package. I don't know if I've done an episode on the new client package. If it's interesting to you, reach out. Let me know. Phil at buildyoursalon.com. But we have an extended appointment as part of that new client package, which means we've got time for a full consultation. The problem is after two or three visits, there is a temptation to kind of whiz through the consultation. And, you know, same again, is it or just the ends off or just a trim and tidy? And that isn't enough if we're going to manage the long term loyalty of our customers, because most people leave us not because we've done a shitty job, my dears. It's because they've got bored with what we're doing. There's no thrill. There's no excitement there anymore. But the problem is you have to define what a full consultation looks like. So essentially what we did was created a checklist. And if we ticked every box on that checklist, there had been a full consultation. So, for example, there had to be a conversation about aftercare and home advice.

There had to be an idea for next time. Now, in a new client, those points in conversation might take a couple of minutes each. With an existing client who's coming in very, very regularly, we're going to get through those points much, much quicker. But we have to hit those points because then if someone says, actually, I'm not sure I had a full consultation, we can say, did they give you an idea for next time? Did they talk about home care and aftercare? Did they talk about lifestyle? So, if we ticked all those boxes, then yes, you did have a full consultation, even though it may have just taken a couple of minutes. Point number four on my promise is around upsell. And particularly in the hair salon, it was around conditioning treatments. Now, we're very lucky in hair because we have this little device called a conditioning treatment, which can revolutionize your salon finances. And I'm not even exaggerating. So, a conditioning treatment is basically instead of a conditioner put on at the base and we do a treatment, you get a longer massage sometimes and we can target a particular hair need. And it's an upsold service. Normally, it's something that people don't always book ahead, but it's something very easy that any member of the team can upsell on the day. Now, traditionally, in my salon, we did maybe two conditioning treatments a week. Normally, when we were running late, so we would say, I'll just explain to my lady that I'm running a little bit behind and give her a conditioning treatment to keep her happy. So, we weren't even charging for those conditioning treatments anyway. We put this promise in where you would be offered a conditioning treatment every single time or you don't pay. Oh, my goodness. Literally, day one, we started making more money because the reason people weren't having conditioning treatments again is not because they didn't want them. It's because nobody was asking. So, by consistently asking every single customer, straight away, we started selling treatments. And a conditioning treatment, even a cheap conditioning treatment, is adding £10 to your average bill. Some of the more sophisticated treatments could be adding £35, £40, £45 to your average bill each time. Incredible impact. And we literally added thousands to our salon turnover just by asking that simple question without finding a single extra customer. The other thing it makes really clear for your team is that they have to have that conversation, but also they get used to hearing the word no. Suddenly, they start disconnecting from whether someone's taken them up on an offer or not. So, they're not so emotionally invested in the outcome, which makes selling light and easy and fun, which increases your results again. Now, some salons obviously can't make that promise that they're going to offer a conditioning treatment every time.

Perhaps you've got a beauty salon, so that doesn't work. There isn't really one add-on service in beauty or most beauty salons that you can consistently offer. So, sometimes people will swap that out for a rebooking promise that will make a recommendation on when we want to see you next and offer you an appointment on the way out to make that promise instead. Now, in my salon, I knew that we had hit gold with this because I had posters made and put it next to the basin area. So, each of these promises was advertised to our customers at the point of delivery of that part of the service. So, the retail promise was in the chair. The conditioning treatment promise was next to the basins. And then one Christmas, we had a batch of GHD hair straighteners in their Christmas packs, and I was struggling to sell them. So, we swapped out the poster for a GHD poster instead, and we carried on selling consistently those conditioning treatments. It was so much part of the way that we just do business that we didn't take a hit on those results at all. So, we didn't even need the poster in the end, though I did put it back up as well. So, point number four is to consistently offer an upsell that makes sense, or if not, to offer the next appointment. And then finally, and this was the one that took us a really long time to get in place, and this relies very much on understanding what's important to your customer avatar, because point number five was that we would finish your appointment on time, every time, guaranteed, or you don't pay. Whoa, big statement, particularly in hair. And that's because I understood my customer avatar was pushed for time. I also understood that there was free parking the other side of the road from us for one hour. If we ran behind on an appointment, she was panicking about whether we would need to rush out and put another ticket on her car for her. So, that promise was really important to my customer. Now, it might be that's not very important to your customer. The time thing may not be what switches them on, but in my salon, it was vitally important. And this is my example of how it has an impact on the way you do business, because we had to first look at the reasons why we weren't running on time. Why were we consistently running late with some columns and some services? Was it a training issue? Was it a product knowledge issue? Was it that we just needed to kick some ass a little bit and give people a reason to run on time?

Did we need to look at the timings of certain services so that we could make sure we could deliver on that promise? What we also realized was that because there were no clocks in the salon, part of the reason we weren't running on time is nobody knew what the time was. So, we had to make it part of the uniform policy for our stylists that they start to wear a watch and for our apprentices that we'd start to give them little fob watches that they could pin to their clothes because we don't want them having water trapped underneath their watch strap. So, it changed our uniform policy as well. Then we had to look at how we can consistently deliver. So, for example, if you have one client who's running late, how does we make sure that we're not giving away service for the rest of today? So, we built in little buffers into people's columns so we had some catch-up time. Also, we said that if we were running more than 10 minutes late, we would call the next appointment and let them know so that they would come in 10 minutes later. So, we started their appointment later, but we would still be finishing on time, albeit 10 minutes later than we had planned that morning. So, there was an awful lot that we had to build in before we could consistently offer to finish every appointment on time. And there were repercussions. So, most of these, if we didn't tell you about your retail products, you would take them all home for nothing. So, you potentially could have had people taking quite a lot of retail stock home with them. I think I've only ever had to give away a couple of services, and that was around the conditioning treatments not being offered. And that was a communication thing. The stylist thought that it was the apprentice's job to offer. The apprentice thought it was the stylist's job to offer. A quick bit of team training, and we've mopped up that little hiccup in our protocols too. So, what do you think the impact is on your business? Well, all things being equal, if you're a brand new customer, looking at two salons that charge the same for what looks like the same service, would you not go with the one that guaranteed all of these things as part of your visits? Would it not be the final decider, all other things being equal? Well, I think it really would. And it meant that we had a continual program of training and development for our teams because we had a goal in mind. This informed our entire organizational values in the end. So, what do you think?

What have I missed? What have you got in place? Is it something that you would implement yourself? Have I gone way off track and missed something vitally important? Reach out. Let me know. Phil at buildyoursalon.com. I would love to hear from you anyway. You know that I would. I would also love it if you would take two minutes just to leave me a five-star review on this episode. You know, it absolutely makes my day when I count up the stars that we've got. Just seven short days until I'm coming in your eyes and ears again. And until then, take care. Sit down and see what's going on with the queen of salons. Hair, beauty and more successful tips for business owners. All on build your salon.