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Leading Overall Salon & Spa Growth

Leading Overall Salon Spa Growth

The “fill columns on the appointment book” approach to growing a salon/spa has been around forever.

It’s a pretty straight forward process of feeding a service provider(s) new clients and building individual request rates until the column(s) is full. Then, start filling another column. It’s the business equivalent of spinning plates.

Obviously, it’s really nice when a service provider comes with a “following” to instantly fill his or her column.

But that column of business that now lives on your appointment book, left a hole on the previous employer’s appointment book.

Such is life in the salon/spa business.

FACT: Employee turnover has long been an industry challenge, but it’s the devastation of staff walkouts that owners fear most.

If employee turnover and walkouts are known problems, why do salons and spas cling to the “fill columns on the appointment book” approach that propagates client loyalty to individuals rather than the salon/spa?

This is where leading OVERALL salon/spa growth comes into play. It’s a dramatically different process from growing individuals and columns on the appointment book.

Here are my eight No-Compromise Leadership reasons leading OVERALL salon/spa growth can outperform “growing columns on the appointment book”:

  1. It’s about getting off the hamster wheel: Why even bother building another column on your appointment book if it’s going to leave with the service provider? More and more owners of employee-based salons/spas are getting beat up and fed up with the “train them, build them, watch them leave with a chunk of business” scenario. Getting off the hamster wheel means shifting focus away from building columns to engaging the “team” in driving overall salon/spa performance.

  2. It’s about having a Big Hairy Audacious Goal: The only way to capture the hearts and minds of employees is to have one hell of an awesome Big Hairy Audacious Goal. “Let’s get better” quests are quick to launch and quick to fizzle. Doubling the size of your company, jumping to premium price point, creating a new and innovative workspace design and client experience are worthy quests. But going after a Big Hairy Audacious Goal demands that owners lead at a higher level and execute the plan.

  3. It’s about delivering incredible service — not “who owns the client”: The fighting over “who owns the client” has got to stop. It undermines and wrecks salon/spa cultures. Heck, it blows up companies. Salon/spa is a high touch SERVICE business. A team focused on delivering incredible hair and skin services to drive overall company performance breaks down the barriers that “columns on the appointment book” create. Everyone wins with team service. People lose when columns are competing against each other.

  4. It’s about achieving truly authentic teamwork: When the barriers created by “columns on the appointment book” are removed, a new and cohesive level of team service emerges. Columns are “I/me/mine.” When a team puts the client’s needs and satisfaction first, the appointment book transforms into a “skill offering” that can be designed for each client. Teamwork can reach levels seldom seen in the salon/spa industry when “the team” is focused on client satisfaction and driving overall performance.

  5. It’s about company goals and wins: Strategies has been teaching and coaching daily huddles and scoreboards for years. The intent is to rally all employees around achieving the company’s goals. It’s unleashing the energy of team. That’s how everyone wins. Individual goals and “columns on the appointment book” is about winners and losers, and it still amazes me that there are owners that don’t want employees to know their company’s revenue numbers. You can’t build a team when trust is compromised.

  6. It’s about driving overall productivity: This one is easy. If your salon/spa has service providers with waiting lists, and competent service providers with time available, opportunities are being missed. In coaching, we see too many salons and spas with productivity rates well below 70%. That’s a lot of unused time. When a team is focused on driving overall productivity across all columns on the appointment book, efficiency and revenue increase. If you have busy service providers who couldn't care less about the empty time slots on other columns, you don’t have a team-based culture.

  7. It’s about creating employee growth opportunities: Driving overall salon/spa performance doesn’t mean paying your people less. It means paying them better. A busy, productive, financially secure company takes care of its people by providing income and career growth opportunities.

  8. It’s about creating a unique brand identity: When a team is focused on driving overall salon/spa performance, it’s brand identity becomes more unique. Team service occurs naturally because competition between columns on the appointment is eliminated. The extraordinary service experiences that others talk about comes to life on a consistent daily basis, so much so that the team protects the integrity of the high level of service it has achieved and earned. This doesn’t happen when the focus is on building columns on the appointment book.


Here’s my challenge to you: Take an unfiltered look at your appointment book and ask yourself this most basic question; Are all of the clients on your appointment book clients of your company and its brand, or are they the clients of the names at the top of each column? The next step is to reread the eight strategies presented here and begin exploring a very different and effective way to do business.

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