Hate selling retail? Let AI do this instead

Every appointment you carried out this week had more potential. You left money on the table; it was worth more than you charged. Let me show you where the money went and how to capture it next time. All on Build Your Salon. There is an uncomfortable truth about our industry that nobody wants to say out loud. There are too many salons. There are too many salon professionals, not everywhere, not in every market, but across the industry, across hair and beauty and aesthetics. There are more businesses chasing the same number of clients than the market can keep fully booked. That is reality, which means if you are waiting for a full column to save you, you might be waiting for a long time. You see, the lever is not how many clients you see. It is how much you can make from each client that you do see. And I want to tell you something about how I use AI because it is probably not what you expect. It is not about doing things for me. I have tried that, and you get lots of generic output that sounds like it was written by a committee. Where AI is fantastic is it gets you to think differently, to challenge your assumptions, to say, what am I missing here? And get a useful answer. And once you start applying that to revenue, specifically to the question of where money is being left on the table, the answers start to get really useful. I am Phil Jackson, your queen of Salons, coming all over the internet with another dose of my Wise Hour wisdom. And I am here today to stop you leaving money on the table, my darling, because you are doing it on every single booking, and it is not because you are doing anything wrong, it is because nobody has shown you where to look. So today I want to show you four places that AI can help you find the extra money hidden in every single one of your appointments. First up, this feeling: it is a Tuesday afternoon, your column is busy, and then a text arrives. It is a last minute cancellation, and suddenly there is a two hour hole in your day and a hundred quid missing from your week. And the instinct, and what most salon business owners do, is put something on Instagram saying 'Last minute availability. DM me to book.' Sometimes it works. But a huge discount sometimes makes your premium salon feel like you are in a clearance sale, and it pulls focus away from the client who is in front of you. So what can we do instead? A smarter version of this would be an AI powered wait list so that when a cancellation lands, the system can send a message to the first few people on your list, not a desperate broadcast to the whole internet. A personal note saying, 'I have just had an opening for Tuesday at 2:00 PM. Would you like to take it?' It feels like a VIP heads up, not a fire sale. And then the AI can work through that list until the slot fills without you making a single phone call. That gap gets filled. You stay present with your existing clients, and we are not discounting to the wide world. A simple low tech version of this would be a WhatsApp group. But then you have to be careful about how many people you are messaging at once. Maybe we could make the most of WhatsApp's labeling feature. If you have WhatsApp Business, you can label people on your WhatsApp contacts so that you are only messaging people who are under a certain label. So you are only messaging a certain number of people at a time. But if you can set up a little AI system to do this well, so much the better. I do not think, or I have not heard of a salon software system that does this. It is something that you can ask AI for help with, though it might involve you putting your client details into a little spreadsheet so people sign up to hear about these last minute opportunities. You give AI the spreadsheet and the contact details, and it works its way through until it gets a yes. Most salon owners have a retail shelf, and that barely earns its space. And it is not because you have chosen bad products; you did not, but it is because recommending those products in the moment feels awkward. You have just spent a couple of hours on someone's hair or a couple of hours getting someone's skin feeling fantastic. The last thing you want to do is round it off with something that feels like a huge sales pitch. So what do you do? Nothing. And the client walks out without any products, which would maintain what you have just done. And then when their skin is not so great in a few days' time, or their colour fades faster than it should, they do not think, 'I should have bought that conditioner.' What they are thinking is maybe they did not do quite as good a job as I thought. The fix is: we could be using AI to take you out of the selling entirely. An AI follow-up sent straight after the appointment or the day after the appointment, not from a generic marketing system, but a personalised note based on what the customer had done, can do the recommending for you. Something like, 'I loved having you in yesterday to keep that colour looking sharp. Here is what we used, and here is the link where you can get it.' It lands when they are thinking about their hair, it lands when they are thinking with that first wash, and it feels like proper aftercare rather than a sales pitch. And I bet that it converts at a rate that would surprise you too. What about using AI to get people to add on services? This happens either in the consultation or even before it. When a client books in for a particular service that an extra treatment would genuinely transform, instead of suggesting it in the moment when the client is in the chair or in the room, we could be doing that ahead of time. AI powered booking systems can present these upsell options before the client arrives, either during the online booking process based on their service history. So it is not a generic pop-up, it is tailored to that particular client. Or perhaps it could be going out with their appointment reminder. The reason I want this done ahead of time, and if your salon software does not do this, nag them and ask AI how you can do this yourself, is because people lead busy lives. And I have seen so many opportunities wasted in salons when a client would have been perfectly willing to take an upsell to take that add-on treatment that would genuinely enhance their experience. But they say something like, 'I wish I had known. I have to pick the kids up,' or 'I wish I had known. I have only put an hour on the car.' So it is either, they are not saying no because they did not want it. They are saying no because they cannot make it work in their day with a day or two's notice or at the point of booking. Then it is a relevant suggestion that I can take action on, and I can make it work with my schedule as well. Last up, what about using AI to start stepping in when we notice clients are drifting away? Those regulars who used to come in every six weeks, and then they have pushed it to seven, and then eight, and then ten, you notice it, but you are busy. You keep meaning to follow up. Six months have gone by, and the client has drifted away every week. Someone is delaying their appointment every week. That is income that you will never recover. And trust me, if you want to get busier, if you want more money going through your business, you do not need any extra clients at all. We need to make sure that frequency of visit does not start to drift. So what about asking ChatGPT or Claude to help you build an AI retention system that tracks those booking patterns? And when someone goes past their usual window, it gives them a nudge, not a bulk email that is going out to everybody. Not some generic piece of content that your salon software system has put together. Something that sounds personal: 'We are thinking of you. It has been a while. I have a couple of slots next week, and I know you are ready for a visit.' It keeps it quiet and warm without feeling pushy. And a lot of clients will come back simply because you have noticed that they have started to drift away. AI does the noticing; you do the stepping in and the personal touch. So, four ways you can be using AI with every single appointment. That wait list is particularly powerful, those retail recommendations and great add-ons. But make sure we are stepping in before a client has pulled up and parked their car or that system that stops people drifting away so we never have to worry about lost client marketing. I want you to learn how to use AI practically in your business, and I would love to be helping you on that journey. Head over to Philjackson.coach for details of my AI Buy Your Side program. Every month I release a couple of walkthroughs that help you with money or marketing or getting more done in your day without overwhelm, using AI as an amazing tool. I am going to put that link in the description as well. Are you using AI in your business? Why not reach out and let me know? My email address scrolling at the bottom of the screen: phil@buildyoursalon.com. I would love to be sharing your story with my Build Your Salon podcast listeners. So why not reach out, and we could schedule an interview where I can share your story with my tribe, a few short days until I am coming all over the airwaves with our last episode of May. And until then, take care.