All great coaches say that’s the formula for success, right? Yet, that is what many tanning salon owners do. They hire a new team member, put them through the on-boarding process, educate them on skincare lotions, teach them the salon’s tour, instruct them how to interact with guests and send them off to sell. Then, those owners complain when their sales statistics fall off and don’t meet expectations.
If you want continual sales growth, you need to continually educate and motivate.
There is a martial art saying, “Do not fear the opponent who knows 1,000 strikes; fear the opponent who has practiced the strike 1,000 times.” You should be practicing, training and providing your team members with continual education on almost a daily basis.
At our salons, we focus on three things:
1. Weekly Team Update. This is a one-or-two-page memo that:
- Spotlights a Team Member who is having a great week in sales or who did something that was above and beyond the call of duty.
- Provides a benchmark of where we currently stand with our monthly goals.
- Explains what skincare product promotion we are offering, as well as how to present it.
2. Pop Quizzes. Put your team members on the spot every time you see them. A pop quiz could be:
- “I’m a new guest – give me the salon tour.”
- “I’m an EFT customer who wants to cancel their membership. What do you tell me?”
- “Explain to me why I need eye protection.”
The number of pop quiz questions is infinite. They can be anything that pertains to the salon, its operations or its environment.
If you want continual sales growth, you need to continually educate and motivate.
3. Monthly Meetings. I’m a big fan of jiu jitsu – I practice the sport five-to-six days a week and received my purple belt about nine months ago. The purple designation means I’m allowed to teach jiu jitsu if I so desire. I was talking to one of my instructors after class about the way he runs his classes. He told me he follows the Rule of Thirds.
One-third Warm-Up: However, we don’t warm up with pushups and jumping jacks. We warm up with a “Flo Series” – a choreographed “sparring session” done at half speed. Simply put, my partner attacks me in a certain way, I counter, then they counter, I counter their counter and then, they re-counter mine. We do this with different attacks in techniques for the first 20 minutes of class. It helps to fine tune our offensive and defensive techniques and strategies. Having a team member role play and perform a salon tour, sell a membership and a lotion bundle at every meeting would be an example of a warm-up for a tanning salon staff.
One-Third Review: We then spend the next 20 minutes of class practicing the techniques we were working on in the previous session. “Repetition is the key to success.” If you covered how to sell tan extenders at your last meeting, then take the most important aspects of what you covered and review that content.
One-Third New: We spend the final 20 minutes practicing new or different techniques we haven’t touched upon recently. This could be how to sell a membership, a new lotion, how to properly answer phone questions, there are endless areas of improvement that you can cover each month.
Following the Rule of Thirds for team meetings, as well as consistently practicing and educating your team is the fastest way to take your salon to the NEXT LEVEL.
