CHUK October 20

#BusinessEdit
KEN’S CLINIC
GOT A BUSINESS HEADACHE? LET KEN WEST, DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS
EXPERTS 3•6•5, OFFER A PERSONAL PRESCRIPTION
Do you have any advice
on how to prepare for the
Christmas rush assuming
the restrictions of PPE,
longer appointment
times and so on,
are still in place?
BRIAN MACMILLAN,
F&M HAIRDRESSING
KEN’S DIAGNOSIS
We find ourselves facing a Christmas like no other.
At the time of writing, salons are still obliged to follow
tough PPE guidelines. I feel that come Christmas our salon
lives will still be far from normal.
So how can you go about making Christmas special for
your clients and profitable for your business? Well hopefully
you have already made changes to your current pricing and
working structure to ensure that the work you are doing and
the services that you are delivering are profitable.
Unfortunately many salons may have focused on merely
being busy while not doing the maths
to ensure that they are still profitable.
The possibility of having to serve fewer
clients in a Covid 19-safe manner, often
with reduced team sizes, may have a
massive effect on profit margins.
Assuming that you have all of that
covered, Brian, then I think that now
is the time to really do things
differently and also take clues
from the major retailers
that are still achieving
good results. Normally I
would be suggesting that
you should be planning
VIP guest festive gift
and styling events and I
would still suggest that
you do these. However,
you are unlikely to be able
to actually physically host
them, so if you can’t, what can you do? Online of course.
I have always been frustrated by the lack of online product
and styling advice that salons make available to their guests,
so now is the time to put this right.
There are many tools available now to host online
presentations. We are currently delivering all of our coaching
online whereas six months ago we had never done so. There
is so much you can do if you plan it. Testers and samples can
be sent in advance to clients that sign up to an event, ready for
you to explain why and how to use them during your online
event. Clients can still get engaged via live chat or by using
breakout rooms.
I see many manufacturers of hairdressing products creating
and sharing online tutorials on how to use their products and
their styling tools, yet salons spend more time trying to show
their clients how clever they are, instead of showing the clients
how clever they could be with the help, advice and products
available from the salon.
If clients can’t be in your salon then make sure that your
salon is in their home. Never before have your website and all
of your social media incarnations been more important to the
success of your business. Learn how to maximise social media
and make your website a real showroom for your business and
why people should come to you.
Finally, fully booked means fully booked; ‘squeezing in’ is
no longer acceptable. Now is the time to understand which
services make you money… which means now could also be
the perfect time to decide which services you need to stop
doing. No change = no change.
Some people make it happen, some watch it happen and
some say what happened.
DO YOU HAVE A BUSINESS HEADACHE YOU’D LIKE KEN TO HELP WITH?
Email him directly on KenW@365Hair.com or tweet us at @creativeheadmag
20
CREATIVE HEAD