Your Revenue Target Isn't Enough | Here's Why

Here's a question for you. When did you last sit down and actually plan your quarter? Not just set a revenue number and hope, but properly map out what you're going to do and when. If the answer is never or not recently, you're in the right place. Hello, hello, hello my salon friends. Phil Jackson here, your queen of salons, coming all over the internet with another dose of Wise Owl Wisdom. How on earth are you achingly well, I hope, as we march towards the end of our Q1? How has it been for you? How's business? How has March been? Are we going to wave Q1 off with fond farewells or are we pleased to see the back of it, my darlings? I'll be pleased to see the back of this spot. I put off recording this episode for a couple of days because I didn't want you to have to tolerate my pus-filled face, but frankly we are running out of time and my public needs me. Anyway, what are we talking about today? We're talking about Q2. Q2, of course, running through April, May and June and it's a good one. It's a fun one and actually it can be a very good money one as well because we've got Easter, we've got the spring colours coming, we've got the pre-holiday treatments, a bit of a skin boom and the first wave of summer prep bookings and for a lot of salons it's actually a very strong quarter financially. In fact, for some salons, aside from Christmas, it's the busiest period of the year. For some salons, including Christmas, is the busiest period of the year. It's not a quiet time just to survive and scrape by. There's big revenue opportunities out there, but the problem is lots of salon owners arrive in April in reactive mode. They had the January new salon, new ambitions vibe. They had all those resolutions put in place. Then February happened and it bit them on the arse. Then March happened and we're kind of scraping our way through. Suddenly it's Q2 and you're just responding to whatever the hell happened after Christmas. And what we want is the opposite of that. We want a planned quarter. It doesn't just mean that we can make more money. It actually makes the work feel a lot less chaotic, a lot less frantic. When you know what you're doing and you make the decisions about what you're doing in that quieter space, then suddenly the same number of clients feels entirely different. So what are we going to do? How do we go about planning our Q2?

Well, there are three things that we need to pin down before we get into April. And the reason I'm doing this now is sometimes people criticize me, my darlings. I know it's hard to imagine they'd have ammunition at all, isn't it? But sometimes I'm accused in my podcasting of being a little bit late to the table, sometimes talking about stuff after there's any opportunity. And we're not doing that this time. We've got a few weeks left of Q1. So it's the ideal time to knuckle down. And before we get into April, I want you to look at some stuff and get some things down on paper. And the first place we always start is our Q2 revenue target. So how much do we want to make across April, May and June? An actual number. And I want you to think about the logic that goes behind it as well. So I want you to look at Q1. How was it? How did we actually do? What did January and February and March really deliver for you? I want you to look at Q2 of last year. I want you to look at what's going on in your area, what's going on in your gut around how you feel Q2 might be. And we need to aim to build on that. We want a growth target on last year. In a mature business, anything around 10% to 15% up is pretty good. But also do bear in mind you probably had a price increase somewhere along the way. So take that into account as well. Take into account the seasonal uplift that we're going to get from spring. And then what I want you to do is break it down month by month. And normally, when you look at a quarter, and you will know what this pattern looks like in your own business. When you look at a quarter, which is made up of three months, one of those months will be a big pile of shit. Maybe it's April, maybe it's May, maybe it's June. For us, it would have been April because that's when Easter lands this year. Any time the kids are off school, our takings take a bit of a dive. Whereas May and June would not have those problems. Or perhaps it's when the kids are at school that there's a bigger problem for you. But one of those months will be kind of meh and quite hard work for you. And then on the opposite side, one of those months will be the strongest. For us, that was usually around May. I don't know why, but that was the kind of pattern that my customers used to spend with. And then somewhere in the middle, there will be a month that's kind of okay. So in most salon businesses, if we take any three months, one will be weak, one will be strong, and one will be kind of average somewhere in there.

And what I want you to do is map that out. So take that Q2 target and break it down month by month. So if your Q2 target is 30k, instead of just saying, well, I'm going to do 10k in April, 10k in May, 10k in June. I want you to take into account the fact that one of those months will be stronger, one will be weaker, and one will be kind of average. So the strong month, let it do a bit more heavy lifting. All businesses have seasons, have a rhythm to them. And if you try and fight against that, it's actually kind of exhausting. You end up spending a lot of energy, a lot of marketing energy. It's much better to make money when there's money to be made, my darlings. But bear in mind that we've got Easter disrupting the diary. We've got school holidays in there as well. Maybe your clients are a bit cash conscious in April, something to do with the new tax year. But bear those things in mind, have a look at previous years, see what the pattern is for you. Generally, it's getting pretty predictable these days. Now, the actual numbers matter a lot less than having a target. We need something that we can track your progress against, rather than just coming up with a vague idea about how much money we want left in the bank. If you've done the pricing bit, factor your prices in when we're looking at our targets. Because, I mean, why wouldn't you this time of year anyway? Then I want you to take a look at what you would expect to happen if you put no extra effort in. So have a look at April, have a look at May, have a look at June. What do you think is probably going to happen if nothing spectacular comes along? If you don't put any extra effort in, if your marketing calendar doesn't really deliver anything, what do you think you might achieve? And between the two numbers, there will be a gap. So you might have your Q2 target means that in April, you want to turn over 15K. If you do nothing special, then you're probably going to get to 12K, because that will be an average kind of month for you. That gives you a gap of 3K. Suddenly, we have a target that can only be filled by marketing. And this is when we can start to look at our marketing calendar. So map out what those gaps are going to be across the three months. That will tell you where to spend your marketing effort. You only have so much bandwidth for your marketing. There's only so many promotions you can do. There are only so many times you can email your customers. A lot more than you think, by the way. There's only so much capacity you've got for doing marketing. Now we've identified where those gaps are.

You know where to spend the marketing energy. Have a think about those key moments in Q2 that should have a bit of a plan behind them. The most obvious one is Easter. It can be disruptive, but it can be full of opportunity as well. Lots of clients have got time off. They want to look good. They don't necessarily want to be booking last minute. So we could do a bit of a pre-Easter push. Also a good moment for gift vouchers as well. Mother's Day is already gone, but we've got Father's Day in June, June 21st. I don't know how many gents are part of your salon business, but do bear in mind that could give you that little June uplift around gift vouchers or some kind of men's promo. Then we've got the pre-summer window. And I always think it's to do with the longer days. It's to do with the warmer weather. Clients start thinking about holidays and also people are a bit more social. If we get the chance to scrape the rust off the barbecue and start inviting people around, suddenly we care a bit more about how we're looking. So maybe it's time to start looking at things like spray tans, waxing, skin preps, color refreshes. Time to introduce those packages or bundles. If you haven't already, that pre-summer moment might be exactly what you're looking for. And for each of those, I want you to set a target. Know what you're promoting, when you're promoting it and how. Look at how far ahead we're getting on your marketing plan. And then the final thing is a little bit of a reality check around your team capacity. Now, if you haven't got a team, you haven't got to worry about this, but you do need to plot in the time that you're taking off across the three months. Does that mean that the weeks that you are around need to be super productive? Those revenue targets are actually only achievable if you have the capacity, if you have the team numbers, if you have the column space that can actually deliver them. So it might mean that we need to shuffle a little bit of that turnover target around. It might be that, yes, ideally we'd want to do 13K in April, but actually team capacity means a thousand of that's going to have to get bumped over into May. So look at your team structure across Q2. Have you got adequate cover? Are there any holiday gaps? Also, bear in mind, we have got the end of the tax year coming up as well. Are you prepared for that minimum wage increase? Factor the cost into your Q2 numbers now. We don't want any nasty surprises in May. This is probably the last chance that you get to look at raising your prices. If you haven't done it already this quarter, get it done right now. Go back a few episodes. I'm sure we did one. I think it was two, three weeks ago about increasing your prices.

I don't know. I'm doing two episodes a week at the moment. I'm not quite sure where it is, but head over to queenofsalons.com. Anyway, you can see our entire back catalogue of previous episodes. Make sure the team is okay with your price increases as well. Make sure they feel confident about talking about pricing when customers ask. And there's also an opportunity there, I think, to look at your team and figure out who's got the most capacity to take on more. It might be, instead of doing general promotions, we might need something a little bit more targeted to get particular team members up to scratch and get them earning. Map it out now. Get it in place. Get it onto your Q2 plan. Now, it sounds like this Q2 plan is going to be a huge, monstrous piece of writing. It really isn't. One piece of A4, those four things down. So your Q2 revenue target, break it down month by month, figure out what you might achieve anyway, measure the gap, and then get your marketing plan in place. It doesn't need to be a 40-page document. It's just one side of A4 that you've got something to track. If you want to go further, if you want some help building a proper 12-month marketing plan with a full pricing strategy and a five-year business plan that actually connects your daily decisions to where you want to end up, that is what One-to-One Ultimate Clarity is for. We work together, you and I, over 90 days, one-to-one. We get those three things in place, that five-year business plan, your 12-month marketing plan, and your full pricing strategy for the next year all done. There's a link to book a free 30-minute call in the show notes. If you want more details, head over to buildyoursalon.com. So what do you think? What's coming up for you in Q2? Are you excited for it? Are you looking forward to it? What have I missed? Why not reach out and let me know? My email address, scrolling at the bottom of the screen, phil at buildyoursalon.com. You know I love hearing from my salon owner friends. Anyway, just a few short days until I'm coming all over the internet with another dose of my Wise Owl wisdom. And until then, take care.