You don’t need to be a fortune teller to accurately project achievable monthly salon/spa goals.

You don’t need to be a Tony Robbins to lead and inspire your team to hit goal.

What you do need is clarity on your leadership role, responsibilities and level of engagement that makes “hitting goal” your team’s priority.

Red flags start flying when I hear owners and managers make any of the following five statements:

1. “We haven’t hit goal in a long time.”


2. “I have no idea if the goals we set are doable.”


3. “My team gives up when they see we’re going to miss goal.”


4. “I keep lowering the goal so the team can hit it.”


5. “I have some employees that could care less about the company’s monthly goal.”

• 85% effort will never achieve 100% of goal: If you missed goal by 15%, chances are, your team only gave 85% of the 100% effort required to hit goal. I’m telling you what you already know. If you and your team analyze its performance, you will find many missed opportunities that could have pushed the team over goal and scored a win. How much more could have been done if clients were recommended services and products that they would benefit from? What would your productivity rate have looked like if the team was focused on pre-books six to ten weeks ago? Hindsight may be 20/20, but turning the lessons of past missed opportunities into the effort required to hit goal is what separates the consistent winners from the consistent excuse makers.


• Goals = math x applied team effort: I don’t understand why some owners set goals but don’t believe those goals are achievable. Goals are based on service hours for sale x expected productivity rate x revenue per hour. Example: If a salon/spa has 900 hours service providers are schedule to work in a given month, that’s your inventory of “Hours Available for Sale.” If 80% of those hours can be sold, that’s your projected productivity rate. If the average service revenue for one hour is $92, the math looks like this: 900 hours x 80% x $92 = $66,240. That gives you a service revenue goal of $66,240. If you expect retail to be 18% of Total Revenue, divide $66,240 by 82%. Your total Service and Retail Revenue goal would be $80,780.49. Retail goal would be $16,540.49. If 80% productivity rate and 18% retail is achievable, all that’s needed is the team effort. That’s where leadership comes in.

• Winning teams play to the end: What does it say about your team’s character if it gives up in the final days of the month because the goal will be missed? It says, “When the going gets tough, it’s okay to back off and quit.” When a team dials back its effort in the closing days of the month, it is intentionally making a bad month worse. It’s surrendering the revenue it could have generated had it stayed in the game. Payroll, products, rent and other expenses still need to be paid — but there is now less cash than projected. If you watch your team throw in the towel in the final days, as their leader, you are enabling that behavior to happen again and again.


• Raise the effort — never lower the goal: Once a goal month begins and the team falls behind, the last thing you want to do is lower the goal. Doing so sets the expectation that any time the team falls behind, the goal will be lowered to make it easier to hit. It’s no different than paying out a bonus because the team came close to hitting goal. Bonus is triggered when the goal is achieved, not when the goal is just missed. Tampering with a goal after the month begins is the opposite of what needs to be done. Leaders need to rally the team to overcome the odds. The leader helps the team find missed opportunities. The leader engages, encourages, inspires and supports. The leader never lowers the goal.


• If they don’t care — they’re not on your team: I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time handing paychecks to employees that don’t care about the company goal. The question that needs to be answered is, how long ago did that employee stop caring and you failed to engage and coach that employee back into your team-based culture? The other issue is that all team members are watching you, their leader, tolerate the non-team player while they carry the load. The longer this situation continues, the more team members stop caring too. Yes, salon/spa cultures are that susceptible to contamination. Protecting the culture is a leader’s most important responsibility.