Want to BOOST your team's performance? The simple shortcut to better numbers in your salon

Getting to grips with performance management in your salon doesn't need to be time-consuming, doesn't need to be confusing, but it's the quickest way to better business results. 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. Hello, hello, hello, my salon friend. How on earth are you? Phil Jackson here, your queen of salons. I hope you are achingly well and raring to go for another episode of the Build Your Salon podcast here on your favourite podcast platform, but also coming in your eyes over on YouTube. We've managed to keep this habit up for a little while, haven't I? I didn't think I was going to be able to commit to a weekly video, but so far, so good. I'm finding ways of repurposing content, which is, of course, quite the thing these days, isn't it? Quite a trend in our industry. Using a little bit of software, by the way, and I don't get anything, there's no affiliate link or anything, so I'm not even going to link to it in the show notes. But using a piece of software called repurpose.io, should you feel the need to repurpose your own content, basically what it does is helps me chop up my YouTube video into little snippets that I can pop over on Instagram. Check it out. I think it's money well spent, myself. Anyway, I have an apology for you, first of all, darlings. I did a podcast about three weeks ago where I alluded to the fact that I had put together a podcast previously about performance management and one-to-ones, and I said this was something we need to take seriously, but I wasn't going to go into lots of detail because there was an episode already. Well, I lied. Somebody sent me an email and said that they couldn't find the podcast episode, and I went through the archive, and it's getting to be quite a big archive now. It's got to be said, a fair few episodes out there, and we're attracting over seven listeners a week now, Poppets. But, yeah, there wasn't an episode at all. I must have been tripping. So here it is today, one-to-ones, performance management and your team, and this is something that most salon owners don't do enough of. If they do do it, they kind of dread it, and certainly they make a dog's dinner of it. My God, you're spending bloody hours on these one-to-one meetings. So I'm going to show you today how we can carry out a one-to-one meeting with our team members in under 10 minutes. So in my own salon business, I couldn't take hours and hours because we had a team at one stage of 21 people.

I'd have been spending 21 hours a week just doing one-to-ones, which is insane. So I managed to get my one-to-ones down to about 10 minutes. I'd book out 15 minutes in their column. It would always be done in 10 or less. So how did I manage that? Well, essentially, there is a simple three-part structure on how we carry out a one-to-one or performance management meeting. And this is the same format, though the timescales might be a bit different. This is the same format, whether it's an annual appraisal or a mid-year review or a weekly performance management meeting. And the format is this. First, this is what you achieved over the last period. So in a weekly one-to-one, we're looking at last week's performance. In a monthly, we're looking at last month. In an annual appraisal, this is what you achieved last year. So obviously, depending on the timescale, that's going to take a certain amount of time. But in a weekly one-to-one performance management meeting, that should be less than a minute, reflecting on what they did last time. Then secondly, we set out their target for this time. So we're reporting back on the performance measures, then we're going to set out what we want them to achieve this week. And that shouldn't take you more than about a minute as well. Now, obviously, in an annual appraisal, what we want you to achieve this year, that's going to take a bit more explanation. Do you see how these timescales start to shift things a little bit? But the format stays the same. So firstly, this is what you achieved. Secondly, this is what I need you to achieve. And then the final part is a question. What help do you need from me to make sure that performance management happens? So that's it. Three parts. Here's what you did. Here's what I need you to do. What help do you need from me? Now, specifically, what is it that we're going to be coaching our team members on? Well, there's just four measures. And obviously, you might want to add extra measures. But for a qualified team member, these are the four that are always going to be there. OK, so we might add in extra measures for someone who's doing some training. We might have training performance measures. We might have different measures for somebody who's front of house. But essentially, for a qualified beauty therapist or esthetician or stylist in your business, these are the four measures that we're going to report back on every week or every month. Now, why do I say every week or every month? Let's get some clarity on that, first of all. If somebody is hitting all of their performance measures and you drag them into a room once a week and manage their performance, micromanage their performance, you will have a negative impact.

You're actually going to do more harm than good. If they're performing, get out of the bloody way and let them get on with it. But if they're failing to hit measures, then the frequency increases. So for someone who's not hitting performance measures, it will be a weekly meeting. If they're hitting them, I'll probably go down to fortnightly or probably monthly. OK, so it depends on the level of performance as to how many times we're meeting with a team member. But the structure stays the same and the measures stay the same. So what are the four measures that I'm going to take you through today? Firstly, they're takings on service. Sweet and simple. How much money have you put in the till? And there should be a measure which we can report back on and a target that we set them week after week, month after month. Now, here's where people go wrong when they're measuring performance as far as takings is concerned. If I go into a salon, the first thing I will do is say, what do you want your business to achieve? Because if you remember, one of my big tenets, one of the things that I'm best known for is building a business that serves you, not you serving the business. So I want to know what you want to take out of the business. What does that mean as far as your salon's performance is concerned? What do you need to be taking? What does the turnover need to be for your business? OK, and I'll ask for that number. And sometimes they've got the number to hand. Sometimes we have to do a bit of work on it. Then I'll ask them what the targets are for each individual team member. And guess what? If I add up the targets for each individual team member, they don't add up to the target that the salon manager has set for the salon as a whole. So the target doesn't come from their commission target. It doesn't come from last week's performance. It comes from what you need them to achieve in order for you to hit your salon goals. So get that clarity on what you want. First of all, then we break it down into each team member. And that's the target that they get. My God, I'm on a roll with this one, aren't I, Puppets? Sorry if I'm ranting again. Gosh, that's a few episodes in a row. I seem to be turning to a stroppy old cow. I think it's the heat. I haven't slept terribly well. Second measure is retail. Now, you've got a choice here. You can either measure retail in terms of the number of dollars or pounds or euros that are going into your till. Or you can measure it in the number of retail products sold. I prefer the number of retail products sold. I think it's easier for a beauty therapist or a stylist to visualize what you're asking them to do. If I bring you into a room and say, I want you to sell 25 products, you know what that looks like.

If I bring you into a room and ask you to sell £500 worth of retail, you've got to do some head scratching and figure out how that's going to work. So let's reduce the barriers, measure it in units. There is an exception, though. And this is particularly true if you're a beauty therapist, because sometimes there is a huge difference, a huge variance in the prices of the different products that you're selling. So if you've got very cheap products and very expensive products, sometimes measuring things in the number of units sold isn't the most appropriate. Because you could have two beauty therapists sat next to you. They've both sold 50 units this month, but one of them has turned over $5,000 and the other one's only turned over $500. Do you see what I mean? So sometimes it's not fair to measure in units. Sometimes it's better if we measure it in the number of dollars that went in the till. Third is either your rebooking rate or your retention rate. And I give you a choice on this for two reasons, actually three. The first is that I think rebooking and retention actually tell the same story. If your rebooking rate is high, your retention is probably going to be high as well. Secondly, most salon software does one of these reports really well. And the other one is an absolute car crash. OK, so I find I'm a nerd. I'm a geek. I'm somebody who loves a bit of technology. But I am also very aware that sometimes salon software doesn't make things terribly easy. And I know that retention reports are notoriously difficult almost across the board. I'm starting to see some improvements. Well done, Forrest, by the way. I've looked at your new retention report and I have to say I'm terribly impressed. It's about time we got to grips with this. But usually retention reports are hugely confusing. So if you've got the choice, normally I go for rebooking. But the third reason that I give you the choice and actually prefer rebooking is it depends how quickly you want to see the impact. And I prefer rebooking because if I ask you to improve your retention, it can take weeks or even months before we start to see an improvement. If I ask you to improve your rebooking rate, I can see tomorrow whether you've made more of an effort than you did today. So we can have an impact on rebooking much more quickly. But ultimately, go for the one that you can get the report most easily. Go for the one that you think fits in with what you want the bigger picture of your salon

to look like. And the final measure is one that lots of people neglect actually is a performance measure. But the final one is utilisation. So how much of that therapist or stylist column was actually booked up with paying customers? And the reason we have that alongside our takings is it gives a more rounded picture of what's going on. Let me give you a very extreme example. We could have somebody who we decide they're not very busy. They're not making very much money. We're going to stand outside our salons and we're going to hand out a voucher for a facial for one pound. OK, normal price, a hundred pounds. Today only facials are a pound. Now, on paper, at the end of the day, it might be if we only looked at their takings, it looks like they've done nothing. It looks like they've done no money at all. They might have ten pounds set in the till. But when we look at the utilisation, they might have been 100% utilised. So by looking at their takings and also their utilisation, we get a more rounded picture, which also takes into account any promotional activity that you might be doing. The other reason, and in fact, the reason I started looking at utilisation is because sometimes the way that your salon software takes care of courses means that all of the money is accounted for up front. So it might be that there's no money coming in the till, but they're taking, you know, number three, number four, number five, number six on a course of six treatments. So they're not actually taking any money into the till, but the stylist or beauty therapist is actually quite heavily utilised. So that gives us quite a rounded picture. So those are the four measures. Now, the key to keeping this a 10-minute meeting, you might say, well, four measures, that's going to take me a couple of minutes each, plus the bit that we've got to do at the beginning, plus the help they need from us. We can't get that done in 10 minutes. Here's the secret sauce, my darlings. Here's the little bit that Uncle Phil came up with all by himself, I'm telling you. We only coach on one measure at a time. So we report back on all four measures. But we, well, ideally, we will be asking the beauty therapist or the stylist, which one do you want to work on first? So let's say they're struggling to perform properly in terms of retail and rebooking and utilisation. If there's one that's going to save their job, of course, we work on that one first. But all of the things being equal, I would say these are the four results that we had over the last week. These are the three that need work. Which one do you want to focus on this week? And then when we start to see some improvement in that measure, then we can move on to another

one. So that's how we get it done in only 10 minutes, because we're only actually coaching on one measure per week. I hope that's been useful to you. If it has, please reach out and let me know. Also, if you've got two minutes to leave me a little review, that will be awesome. Don't forget to subscribe or follow or whatever it's called on the platform you're listening. If there's a subject you would like me to cover in a future episode, Phil at Build Your Salon.com. I would love to hear from you. I love hearing from salon owners and managers around the world. So you've got listeners in all sorts of strange places. Also, don't forget, one of these episodes per month is going to turn into a Q&A. So if there's something going on in your business that you would like your Uncle Phil's help with, of course, I'd love to sprinkle a little bit of camp nonsense, but hopefully some business knowledge across what's going on in your business. Just seven short days until I'm coming in your eyes and ears again. 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.