Ready to sleigh? Essential ways to boost your salon profits this Christmas

It's nearly the most wonderful time of the year, and it's easy to make Christmas go with a bang. We just drink lots of gin and eat lots of Ferrero Rocher, but how do we make sure Christmas goes with a bang in your salon business? Hello, hello, hello my salon friends. Phil Jackson here from Build Your Salon, your queen of salons, here coming in your eyes and ears with a bit of wise old owl wisdom about Christmas this year. And I know it's November, but if I leave it any longer, it's going to be too late. And I've asked you to keep pushing your horizons a little bit further, get a bit more organized week after week after week. So it's really a time that we talked about Christmas. So the whole of November on the Build Your Salon podcast is going to be given over to Christmas. So we've got our Q&A next week. Last call for questions, by the way, phil at buildyoursalon.com. Head them over to me. I'll do my best to get around to them next week. But the episodes, the other episodes, either side of the Q&A are all going to be focused on making sure that December is a hugely profitable month for you. And I've got three strategies, three little ways that you can make Christmas go with a bang this year and every year, in fact, all proven methods to putting more money in the till. In the meantime, how's October? Good for you, I hope. How's November looking? November was always a bit of a tricky one for us. We always had people trying to push things that little bit further so they could take their appointments a bit closer to the festive season. Hopefully, you're staying afloat in November, though. Still got all to play for. And don't worry, we've got some brilliant marketing opportunities in November as well. Don't forget, we've got Black Friday, too. Wow, what a money spinner that is these days. Thank you, America, for exporting Black Friday to us. But we're here to talk about December. And the first thing I want to talk about is your Christmas events. Now, Christmas events, we always used to run really successfully in the salon, and I always really enjoyed them. We always did two. So we had one, which was our kind of bog standard event for all of our customers. And then we had a second, which was for our VIPs. It was our membership customers. So then we used to get the good canapes out, and we'd throw away the bottles of Prosecco and buy champagne instead. So we had a kind of VIP evening. But you may only want to do one in your salon. And the biggest problem that I see with people is they put lots and lots of effort into organizing and marketing an event. Lots of people say they're going to come, and then it gets to the night, and they're disappointed.

And the number of people that turn up is either small, or sometimes I've heard of some awful occasions where there's been kind of one or two people turning up when they were expecting 30 to 50. So how do we make sure that we maximize people's attendance? Well, once people have actually bought into the idea and they've said they're coming, got to keep the reminders coming, because it's a busy time of year for lots and lots of people. My idea would be to do your Christmas event actually quite far from Christmas. If you can do it at the very beginning of December, or even at the end of this month, the end of November, it's less likely to clash with other events that people have going on. Of course, there's nothing we can do about the weather, and sometimes that's against us too. So bear in mind that you might have to reschedule last minute. But keep the reminders coming. Keep the reasons for people to turn up at the front of their minds. What is the point of the event? The other thing I would do is sell tickets. Now, it's very difficult to sell tickets to a shopping event. You're going to have to work a bit harder than that. So that means that we're either educating, or we're doing some giveaways, or we're making it more of a party, more of a social occasion. And when people don't get invited to the number of Christmas parties that they used to, they might actually be really glad to have something to put on their Christmas calendar. So you're going to have to put more effort in if it's a ticketed event. Also, what I would do is choose a local charity, and the ticket money goes to them. Because we don't need to make money on the tickets. We're going to make money on the retail, or the services, or the packages that we're selling on the night. So we don't need to make money off the tickets per se. But if we sell the tickets for a charity, firstly, it's a nice thing to do, particularly this time of year. But we also get an extra bite of the marketing cherry. Because if you choose a local charity in particular, they're likely to be promoting your event for you as well. Much more likely to get yourself some column space in your local newspaper. We've even managed to get events onto our local radio station because they've been charity events. So they're not promoting something that's just purely for my financial gain and greed and my Scrooge-like tendencies through December. So sell tickets to your event, but benefit the charity. That way you've got a better idea on who's coming and who isn't. It's still not 100% reliable. Of course, there might be people that buy a ticket just to support the charity with no intention of turning up. The other thing you could do, of course, because we're living in the 21st century. And my goodness, aren't we embracing technology since COVID? You could make it an online event.

That's going to be more of a pure shopping event. And you certainly wouldn't sell tickets for it. But if you've got the right clientele, you could do something on Zoom. Or you could do something in a WhatsApp group. If it were me, and this is how I would run it. And I haven't seen anyone brave enough to do it yet. But please, somebody take this idea and run with it. Because I don't have my salon anymore. But I would do it like a little QVC thing. Where I'd camp it up a little bit. And then have limited numbers of deals that you offer at your Christmas shopping event. But have some fun with it. Crack open a little bottle of bubbly. And perhaps have a co-presenter as well. And have some really good fun with it. And I would do it as a streaming event. A Zoom event that you could also put onto your socials as well. You can need an assistant to make sure you're taking orders. But I would really ham it up. That would be how I run an online event. But it means then that you're less likely to have to reschedule because of the weather. The cost of putting the event on is going to be much lower. Because you're not worrying about staffing and refreshments and canapes. And also, because we've got a lower cost. Actually, we can probably set slightly lower targets for the event too. But also, it's going to increase its reach. There's no reason why someone couldn't attend your online shopping event. Even if they're not in your town, your county, even your country. So that's Christmas events. The second thing I want to talk about is Christmas retail. And how we make Christmas retail work. And don't end up with tons and tons of stock next year. So I'm going to use an example from GHD. So if you know anything about hair, you will know something about hair straighteners. And I know lots of you are beauty therapists. In fact, nearly all of you run beauty businesses, not hair businesses. And that's fine. You can translate. I know you're clever. But GHD, each year, I don't know if they still do, but they used to bring out a Christmas edition. And essentially, it's the same straightener in a different colorway. Okay? It's a limited edition, different colors. Sometimes packaged with something else. Sometimes just presented differently. Or it comes with a carrying case or whatever. And sometimes, they used to go with a bang. And we would sell dozens and dozens and dozens. It was a very highly profitable item for us to stock during Christmas. Other years, either the set wasn't quite as good or the marketing wasn't quite as good. Or sometimes, people just didn't have the money to spend. And also, of course, GHDs, they last quite a long time. So people don't need a new set every single year. So some years was a bit not quite so impressive as far as takings was concerned.

So here's the way to run it. What we do is, firstly, you train your sales rep because you want to know what those sets look like as soon as your rep leaves the sales meeting. Now, I appreciate that you've probably already seen the Christmas stock for this year. But certainly, bear it in mind for next year. And it's not exclusive to Christmas stuff, too. This works for any special editions of anything that's coming up. So you want your rep to be on the phone to you as soon as they leave the sales meeting telling you about it. And then you want them to send you over some images that you can use. And what we used to do was start taking pre-orders. So you could get that GHD set at a discount from the day that I heard about it right up to when we took delivery of the stock. And I could afford to discount because I wasn't rewarding my team because I was doing the selling. So there was no retail commission. And also, it was my indicator of how those sets were going to go. So if they went like hotcakes, I knew it was worth us placing a big order. The chances were good we'd be able to sell those straightness through. If we struggled on the pre-order, it was going to be a much, much smaller order. And it might mean that we sold out very quickly and I'd actually turned away some potential profit. But I would much rather that than lots of stock sitting around until next year. We had one hair salon in our town. And if they had one special Christmas set, they must have had five in their window year after year from previous years. It was just ridiculous. Because those things are starting to get dusty and faded and it just devalues over time. And we don't want that. So pre-orders are the way to go. Pre-orders at a discount. That will tell you whether it's a popular offering or not. Then the sets came in and we would sell at full price. And that's when I'm making the most profits. You might put together a little team incentive where whoever sells the most gets a voucher for X or if we sell a certain amount as a team, I buy everyone pizza on Christmas Eve or whatever you want to do. But this is when you're going to make the bulk of your profit on those orders. Then what I want you to do is see the whole order that you placed with your manufacturer as an entire project. So with the pre-orders going at a discount and the sets that you're selling at full price on the run up to Christmas, you should have made a good profit. That means that you can afford to sell off any remaining stock at a discount too. And we used to do a Boxing Day sale and it was a ridiculous price. As long as the order overall was profitable, I was okay with selling that stuff at a discount. I wanted it gone. I certainly did not want to be unpacking Christmas items when we came back into the salon on January

the 4th. So I want you to see the entire thing, the entire order as a project. As long as that project remains profitable, you can afford to play with the pricing as you go. So pre-orders, then sell at full price, then sell off whatever's left at a discount. And the last thing, and this is a strategy that I want you to use for all of your campaigns, and in fact, I don't see any salons doing it nearly enough, but you need to debrief. So our first team meeting of the new year would be sitting down and talking about Christmas. What went well as far as promotions were concerned? What went well as far as stock levels were concerned? Were there things that we were running out of? What do we need to look at for opening hours next time? Was there enough staff available at certain times of the day, certain times of the week, certain times of the month? What are you going to change for next year? And write it up just on one side of A4, because in 12 months' time, you'll have forgotten. It's going to be much, much easier putting together Christmas 2024 if you've done a really good debrief on 2023. So I hope that's been useful to you. My three strategies for a storming, profitable Christmas, and I hope they serve you well. Any questions, ping them over. You've just got time to submit your questions for the November Q&A, which is next week's podcast. Then we're talking about Christmas some more after that. Phil at buildyoursalon.com with your questions. 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.