10 Tips for Improving Your Tips (and Building Business) in the Salon or Spa

Last week I came across a link to the “60 Best Restaurant Industry Blog Sites” and on the site www.tipssquared.com I found an article by blogger David Hayden posted in April 2010 titled “Tips for Improving Your Tips” that featured 10 rules geared toward restaurant wait staff.

1. If you worry about the client, the tip will take care of itself
Notice I did not use the plural form of client(s) or tip(s); this is because it’s important that you view each and every individual customer experience as singly and uniquely important. You may be providing services and selling products to 10, 20 or even hundreds of people in any given day; however, for your client, there is only one experience that matters:  Theirs.

Set some time aside at the beginning of the day, before you ever begin facing clients, working behind the chair or selling retail products to review your schedule. Think about the specific clients that you will be seeing that day. Review their client file or card. Think about what you know about their personality and interests. Being mentally prepared to interact and engage with your clients personally, and showing them that you do care about them individually by remembering who they are and what is important to them in their lives makes them feel that they are important to you, and this is one of the most powerful ways that you can make yourself important to them as a professional and as a person.  This is a priceless aspect of their experience in your salon or spa!

Of course it is possible to create a truly exceptional experience for your client and still fail to receive monetary acknowledgement from any given client – for many reasons. They may not be able to afford it, they may not have planned for it, their child might have taken the last of their cash for a last-minute school project, they may not be aware that tips are appropriate or may not be aware of what constitutes a fair gratuity; however, as the author of the original article says, ” The only thing you can do to control how much you make, is to make every client as happy as you can. Client counts per service hour, per ticket spending, and client gratuities are beyond your control. Instead focus on the clients and trust that this is the best way to make the money work out in your favor.”

Taking the time to review your schedule for each work day before it begins gives you the opportunity to see where you may have breaks in your schedule that would give you the additional time needed to enhance a customer’s experience by sampling products, providing free consultations or makeup touchups, writing out a ‘prescribed’ home care plan to address a client condition that you noticed, writing out a thank you note to give to the client as they leave (or mail out to them), providing a free mini add-on service or even suggesting (paid) add-on services that could enhance a client’s overall results or introduce them to a service they have not previously tried.

And beyond thinking about just one or two clients, what can you do within your business to create true points of difference? What is it about how your client feels while at your salon or spa or after their appointment that is different (and better) than how they would feel if they received services elsewhere? There are many touch points where you could add something special or improve the environment in order to create a unique and engaging client experience:

• Client arrival and greeting
• Client waiting area environment and experience
• Client consultation
• At the back bar and/or client hair or skin preparation experience
• During the service, during a basic service, during a more time-intensive service, as a reward for an add-on service
• In your retail merchandising presentation
• In your retail home care sales efforts
• At the point of check out
• As the client leaves
• After the appointment (follow up, thank yous, rewards, rebooking, additional offers, etc.)

3. Generic stylists produce generic tips
I know it sounds the same, but it isn’t. You may or may not have the ability to alter the client experience in your salon and spa overall, but you do have the ability to make sure that the experience that you, personally, provide to your clients is not generic. If you view your job as “just a job,” roll out of bed, put on a baseball cap or just pull your hair back into a ‘do’ more suitable for working out in the gym than the workplace your clients will notice. In fact, you probably wonder why some of your co-workers are booked 2 months out while you struggle to fill your books each day.  Renew your investment in yourself and let your inner sense of style and personality show up on the outside at work.

Not convinced that it matters? Let’s say that you are the new prospective client and you’ve just walked in the door of a salon or spa. Two stylists are waiting and both are beckoning you over, one with that ‘just out of bed’ no makeup and no style look sporting stretchy pants and flip flops while the second got up in time to wash, blow dry, and style their own precision cut, custom-colored and highlighted hair, has flawless makeup (or, if male, flawless grooming) appropriate to their own personal style and in accord with the overall “style” of the salon or spa, and chose to wear clothes appropriate to their workplace that still reflect their personal sense of style and a distinct dash of current fashion. Which way do you go? Who do you most trust to provide you with renewed style and beauty?  What other means do you have to make a decision?  What is more powerful than this first impression?

4. Clients don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care
No doubt you have tried suggestive selling and scripted promotions to help support retail sales in the past to mixed results. Or maybe you tried once or twice, failed, and let the initiative die a quick but painful death – painful because you really do want and need the additional revenue represented by acquiring new clients, selling add-on services and moving through more retail. You probably have a strong consultative side and over time you have become skilled at identifying hair or skin conditions as well as the reparative products or services that can best address them. But you have to remember that your clients receive scores of marketing and selling messages every day; not hundreds – but thousands – every day. If your client consultation, service and product recommendations come across like just another sales pitch in a sea of sameness, you will be fostering the attitude of skepticism that we – as consumers – have come to have based on the overwhelming number of people out there just to make a buck, who will say anything in order to get us to buy something.  The next tip tells you how to build trust so that your clients will listen:

5. Always recommend what is in the client’s best interest, not yours
What is the quickest way to lose client trust (and clients)? Lie to them. Push them to embrace unneeded products or services. Why? While they may ‘bite’ for a while, eventually they will receive information from another salon or spa professional, a friend, or some other source that reveals how you misled them. They’ll be resentful of the money they spent needlessly and they will be mistrustful of future recommendations. They’ll be unlikely to refer any of their friends or family to you, and may not be willing to return to you or even to your salon or spa again.

And you can dial this down to each client experience as well. Let’s say you are running behind or you want to leave early, so instead of doing what a client asks, you take shortcuts in the process that produces lackluster results or you even talk clients out of receiving the extended services they want.  You are cheating your business and yourself out of revenues and out of the long-term benefits that client satisfaction produces.

6. Never spend money you haven’t made
You work in an industry where your salary is not guaranteed. It is dependent upon many factors, some of which are under your control, but many of which are not (such as the economy, layoffs at local businesses, taxes, holidays, weather, competitors, etc.)  If you spend money that you have not yet made, or spend money on what you anticipate that you can make in the next month based on the last month, you may find that you have overspent. This may drive you into a bit of a panic, where you then become tempted to push clients to do what is best for you (not them) or where your panic spills over into the customer experience in some other way (overbooking, being over-eager, hard selling of add-on services or products, etc.) Your life has enough pressure; proper financial planning and saving can help ensure that hiccups or slower-than-expected times in your business don’t throw you into a tailspin.

7. Be the co-worker you want to have
Ah…. the golden rule for the workplace! You may have slipped into a rut when it comes to being a co-worker; you might work with a real jerk (or two, or three) who cause you to lose your religion in the workplace. You may have taken so many hits from others or been on the receiving end of gossip, slander, and deceitful actions of others. You may have had clients stolen away, walk-in customers diverted, client tips or commissions from retail products swiped, products or tools “borrowed” without return, your workstation left dirty or damaged by others; in other words, you may have good reason for the state of permanent paranoia, defensiveness or stinginess from which you operate in the workplace, and you may have even decided to return evil-for-evil yourself.   But I’ll bet you’re not happy!

And to the point, are you crazy enough to believe that all of this is not having an incredibly negative impact when it comes to the experience you provide to your clients? Even if they don’t see you misbehaving, chances are a majority of your clients are aware of the tension and negativity that pervades your salon or spa. They might not be able to put their finger on why, but they feel it!

The negativity you mistakenly believe is confined to out-of-client areas is fully impacting the environment in your business. It is diminishing the sense of luxury, escape and pleasure that you want to provide for your clients. It is dampening the spirit of excitement and joy that you want to characterize your initiatives, promotions, and events.  Businesses with low employee morale lack the employee enthusiasm needed to support the pursuit of goals; they don’t grow, they have high employee turnover and lack consistency in the customer experience.

When your co-workers check the schedule and know that they’ll be working alongside you, do they look forward to it? Can they count on you to have their back, to help support the recommendations they make to clients, to be honest when it comes to commissions, add-on services, walk in clients and referrals? Can they trust you to provide their clients with a great experience on their behalf if for some reason they need you to cover for them? Do they worry about what you say behind their back to other co-workers or the boss?

You can’t control the actions of others, but you and you alone control your own actions and decide who it is that you want to be; the person that you want to see when you look in the mirror every day, the person you want to be in reputation with co-workers and clients, and the person that you want to be in your personal and family life. Be the co-worker that you want to have. Do favors. De-escalate tense conversations. Save discussion of problems for private times. Be honestly complimentary of co-workers relative to their strengths in front of both clients and other employees. Look for the good in others!

8. Exceed expectations
For years, businesses have claimed that they provide “exceptional customer service.”  This claim has been done to death; if everyone makes the claim, can it be true? If everyone is “exceptional,” isn’t it true that no one is?   Most of these companies don’t understand what exceptional means. It is not exceptional to meet customer expectations, it is not exceptional to produce the results that clients expect and request. This is not only not exceptional, it is the definition of ordinary. As customers, it’s reasonable to expect that a salon or spa will deliver on its promise of service, experience and results. To be truly exceptional, you have to go over and above. You have to exceed – not just meet – client expectations. Something about the experience provided in your business has to be so uniquely different that it cannot be found anywhere else. Is there anything about your client experience that fits in that category?

9. “Count things up” at the end of each day
Just as you began by thinking your day and each client experience through with intention, set aside time at the end of the day to take account of each experience. Think about what went right, what went wrong, what needs to change tomorrow and what needs to be addressed in the long term, or with co-workers. Write thank you notes or emails to express your appreciation to the most important or most loyal customers that you saw that day. Post a note on Facebook about something that rocked your day, about one of your employees who went over and above the call of duty or exceeded client expectations, about something a client did that made your day, etc. Ending each day in a spirit of gratitude and taking the time to tell people about it is extra-ordinary; so few people do it!

10. Pessimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy
Several years ago the book and video called “The Secret“ generated a great deal of buzz; I watched the video and really appreciated a couple major concepts. One was the advice given to live in a spirit of gratitude. When you are thankful for what you have, and thankful for the people in your life (co-workers, clients, friends, family, etc.) and appreciative toward others, God and the universe, you will find that you are happier. The second concept I really appreciated was the idea that you get more of what you focus on the most. If you spend your time worrying about problems, you’ll probably get more problems. If you spend your time worrying about the negative actions of others, you’ll continue to experience and attract them. If you spend your time thinking about how bad the economy is, how bad business is, and how hopeless the future is, it will be. However, if you spend your time focused on thinking about following your dreams, building business, developing your career, and being and becoming the best “you” you can be, then your actions will follow.  In other words, by focusing on the positive things that are already in, and those that you want to come into your life, you will then pursue actions that lead to positive results. When you pour out thanks to others, your own soul is nourished. You are happier because you better appreciate what you have, and you are happier because you are pursuing what you most want. You appreciate other people more, and as a result, other people enjoy being with you more. Your ‘attitude of gratitude’ results in a better sense of personal peace and well-being within yourself, and as a result, you are better-able to be a good life partner, companion, parent, child, sibling, friend and co-worker.

It’s not really existential, or maybe it’s all really existential? It’s going to be a great year!