How to Set Salon Team Targets That Actually Motivate (Not Just Another Spreadsheet They Ignore)

Most salon team targets don't work. It's that time of year again. They either don't exist, or they're too complicated, or here's the killer, everyone hits their targets and the salon still misses its numbers because the targets just don't add up. Let me share with you the four measure system where individual targets actually add up to your salon target and how to motivate your team. Hello, hello, hello, my salon friends. Phil Jackson here, your queen of salons. Coming all over the internet with a big dose of my wise owl wisdom. How on earth are you? Achingly well, I hope. We've nearly made it through January. Goodness me, does that not feel like a very, very long month? It does to me. I have noticed the days are getting a bit longer, which means that spring's on the way, my favourite time of year, and we can finally start shaking off our winter blues. But it's that time of year when lots of people are looking at one-to-ones with their teams and starting to set some proper targets. And I've been coaching salons for nearly a decade, and here's what goes wrong with team targets. The biggest problem is there aren't any targets at all in most of the salons that I go into. Terrifying, I know. These are salons that are willing to pay me thousands to see better results, and yet they're not willing to carve out a little bit of time each week or each month with a team member to make sure everyone is performing. We just keep our fingers crossed and hope that everyone's doing their best. Problem is, if you're not tracking people's targets, you don't realise that their best isn't good enough until December and you're 20k down on your year's targets. Problem number two is we end up with these random targets. You pick numbers that just sound good, or you're coaching people towards their commission target. Now, big difference in what we're talking about here. We don't coach people on commission targets. Now, why would that be, Uncle Phil? That doesn't make any sense. Well, it's because the commission is there to motivate your team member. If you've then got to coach the team member to hit that target, guess what? The fucking commission's not working, darlings, and that means we need to look at your commission structure. What we should be coaching people towards is our salon targets, what you need each team member to achieve in order for you to hit your salon goals.

And that takes me on to mistake number three, problem number three, which is when the individual targets don't add up to the salon target. And I see this a lot with those people that are setting targets. I'll go in, I'll say, OK, what's your salon target? And they might say, I don't know, 50k. And then I'll look at the individual targets. When I add them all up, there's a shortfall. They don't add up to 50,000. And then you wonder why it's getting expensive because you're paying commissions. It's getting expensive because you're using your time to coach people and not making any money. It's because those individual targets have to be worked backwards from what the salon actually needs. So your job as the salon owner is to sit down and say, OK, we want to hit 50k. Betty's going to put 8k in the till. Doris is going to put 12k in the till. And make sure that adds up to your salon target. God alive, I'm ranting already in this episode. Targets, honestly, I promise you, this is the one thing that could change your fortune in no time at all. Literally, I'm asking you to spend 10 minutes a week with each team member. Problem number four is targets are there, but there's no coaching. You're setting the targets. You're tracking the targets. People miss it. Then what? You haven't got a toolkit in place to help them improve. You've got no strategies to coach your team members. Yes, you're going to be the coach. So what's the solution? Well, the solution is that we need a really simple set of measures that matter. And our salon software systems, God bless them, aren't helping because they've got so many bloody reports that it gets confusing. Stop tracking 17 things. I just want you to track four things. Now, you can add additional measures to each team member. So, for example, let's say you've got someone who's quite early on in their training with you. You might put some training targets in your measures as well. But for all of our team, we're just going to have these four measures. Now, like I said, you can add to them if you want to. But these four are for everybody. So what are they, Phil? Stop fudging around. Stop foreplaying. Let's get on with the main event, shall we? Measure number one is your service revenue. How much in pounds, dollars, euros are a team member rather going to put in the till from service? This is what pays the bills. Everything else is gravy. And don't forget, we're going to be working backwards from your salon target.

So we figure out how much each stylist or each therapist is going to put in the till. This is the target that we're going to be communicating with our team member. Measure number two is retail. Now, why do I separate the two out? It's because the profit margin on retail is normally much, much lower than the profit margin on service, or it bloody well should be. Otherwise, you've got your service prices wrong. So what I don't want is a team member who hits a combined target and then I realise I'm not making enough profit. So by separating the two out, I keep some control over that. Now, there are a number of ways that you can set a retail target. None of them is perfect. You could give people a pound, dollar or euro amount on the amount that they're going to be retailing. So you could say, Doris, I want you to do 300 quids worth of retail this week. Problem is, you could have a situation where you've got two, let's use a hair example. You could have an example where you've got two hairdressers, two stylists sat down in front of you. They've both done 300 pounds in retail. One of them sold a set of very expensive hair straighteners. One of them sold 15 shampoo and conditioner kits. Which one do you think has done the better job of retailing? Because on paper, they've done the same job. So you've got a judgment call to make there. I would say that the person who sold 15 different customers has been retailing a lot harder and done a much better job. So we could say, well, we're not going to measure the amount of money that you put in the tool with retail. Instead, we're going to measure the number of units. So we could say that your target is to retail 20 items. That's not perfect either because the person who sat in front of us, let's say we've got two beauty therapists this time sat in front of us. They've both sold 20 units this week. One of them sold 20 travel size cleansers for a tenner each. The other one sold 20 serum kits at £150 each. So on paper, they've both sold 20 units. But actually, who's been doing the better job of retail? So neither of them is perfect. Choose one. Stick with it. Myself, I like units. I don't want you to have to say, OK, my target is 300 quid. How many units is that? Who do I need to sell to? Whereas if I say I want you to sell 20 items, it's much, much simpler for you to translate into actually what you need to do.

Measure number three is utilisation. How much of the column is full with paying customers? And it's measured as a percentage. So the percentage of available hours that are actually booked up. Why is this important? Well, you're not going to make money from an empty column, but let's take an extreme example. You could say, I only want to measure the amount of money that's put through the till on service. OK, it will be a fair assumption. Lots of coaches will teach you that way. Problem is, I could run a motivation. I could run an incentive, rather. I could run a promotion where I stand outside your salon and I give away free massage, OK, or massage for a pound. And I could hand out vouchers to everyone who walks past. It might look on paper like that beauty therapist has done no work or she's only taken 40 quid. But actually, she's done 40 massages this week. So by combining utilisation and takings, I get a much more rounded picture of what's going on in your column. And utilisation is the one that people get wrong. So what they tend to do, what salon owners tend to do is they say, well, I want 100% utilisation. I want the columns full all the time. Problem is, you're not building in any elasticity into the model. It's a very stressed model. So what you find then is, let's say you've got a stylist who starts to run late. She never has an opportunity to pick up the time. She's going to run late all day. It's a very stressful way of running a business. So in my salon, we want somewhere around 80 to 90% utilisation. 85% is a very sweet spot. A few little bits of white space are a good thing. Also, it means they've got the opportunity to upsell. If you're on 100% utilisation, there's no room to upsell in the column. Measure number four, you get a choice. You can either choose rebooking or retention. Now, why am I giving you the choice? Mainly because salon software systems don't tend to offer both. If they do, they'll do one of them really well and one of them really badly. If you've got the choice, choose rebooking. So how many customers are actually rebooking as they leave the salon? In the end, they tell the same story. If you've got high rebooking, chances are your retention is going to be really high as well. If you've got very low rebooking, your retention is probably low as well.

Why do I prefer rebooking? It's because I can see a difference much more quickly. If I say to you, I want to improve your retention, it can take us weeks or months to figure out if my coaching is working to make a difference. With rebooking, I can see tomorrow whether you're making more of an effort. So I can see whether we're moving in the right direction much more quickly. Also, as a caveat, I'm a nerd. I'm a geek. I love technology. I love software. Salon software companies prick up your ears. Your uncle Phil's telling you your retention reports are a fucking car crash. I can't read most retention reports and I'm a nerd. So the average salon owner who doesn't like figures has no chance at all. Rebooking ones tend to be much more obvious. So if you've got the choice, I would go for rebooking. Target wise, it depends. If you've got lots and lots of online bookings going on, then it's going to be slightly lower. But a sweet spot for me will be somewhere around the 60% plus mark. Retention, do bear in mind when someone's in the early stages of their career, the retention rate is going to be slightly lower because the retention rate on new clients is never as high as your regular clients. We tend to lose a few new clients along the way. So do bear that in mind if you've got younger team members. For all four of these, we want challenging but achievable. So it sounds like you only need four numbers, doesn't it? Thank you, Uncle Phil. This is going to be really, really easy. It's a little bit more difficult than that because for each of those measures, we actually have three numbers. We have the target and the target needs to be challenging but achievable. This is what we're striving for. This is what we're getting people to be coached for. At the second level, higher than that, we have the celebration goal. We have the awesome goal. So if I say to you, your target this week is 15 products. But if you hit 20, that would be spectacular. It's your stretch goal. Then we would recognise that if somebody actually achieves that. So whether it's a pat on the back or a call out in a team meeting or something put into your WhatsApp group, but we give people that tap on the back because it means that they've gone over and above. It gives high performers some recognition. Below that target, below our target, is the minimum acceptable. Now, we're not going to be talking about this in our one-to-one meetings, but basically it's the number which shows that you're really not trying. So if your retail target is 15, your celebration target is 20, but your minimum acceptable might

say below 10. If they fall consistently below 10, it's not really a coaching conversation anymore. This is going to shift onto either a capability conversation. Are you able to do the job? Or basically a disciplinary conversation. Do you not want to do the job? We need to be prepared. But if we've got that number in place, it's not an emotional decision anymore. It's actually just down to black and white. One-to-ones, we're going to book out no more than 15 minutes. All of my one-to-ones are done in 10. They're very factual. We're only based on four numbers, but the frequency will change. So if you've got someone who's ticking all the boxes, monthly is fine. And do it somewhere around payday when they're thinking about performance and pay. If you've got someone who's failing in multiple areas, then we increase the frequency to fortnightly or maybe even weekly. Make sure for each of these measures, and if you want another episode about this, for each of these measures, we need a toolkit that we can actually put into place. There's no point in giving someone a utilisation target if you haven't got the tools to help them improve their utilisation. So have three to five tactics for each number so that you can actually coach these people on doing better. OK, so make sure you've got those tactics in place. What do you think? Are you putting measures in place? What have I missed out? Reach out and let me know. I don't have all the answers. I know it sounds like I do, but only because I talk very quickly when I'm on these episodes. If you'd like to reach out, my email address is scrolling at the bottom of the screen. Phil at buildyoursalon.com. I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to be interviewing you and sharing your story of success with my amazing Build Your Salon audience. Also reach out if you would like some one-to-one help. I've put the link to get some one-to-one help in my show notes. Also in the show notes is a link to my Salon Spark programme, my weekly accountability programme. There's no training in there. It just helps keep you on the right track. What an amazing way to start your 2026. Just a few short days until I'm coming all over the airwaves again with another dose of my Wise Owl wisdom. And until then, take care.