Kissing slimy, dead fish on the lips on a daily basis, the fishmongers at Seattle’s world famous Pike Place Fish Market put on a show day and night on their “fish market business stage.” When you visit this truly unique tourist attraction, you can’t help but be engaged – the show consistently inspires people to immerse themselves in the stinky fish-buying experience, including the signature moment when a big slimy fish gets hurled right in front of you from one monger to another. You never know … you might even be the one catching or kissing the scaly sea creature!
So, go ahead! Run on down to your local seafood market and stock up on big, smelly, dead fish to sling around your beautiful tanning salon to stimulate lotion sales! Okay, maybe not a good idea – probably not the kind of show that would motivate your fragrance-conscience, bronzed diva salon guests.
Tanning Salon/Fish Market: A strange comparison for sure, but the two have more in common than meets the nose. Both businesses offer products for purchase. They both either offer a service to enhance the delivery of the product (Pike Place fish show) or a product that enhances a service (your tanning beds), and both seek to engage with their guests on a personal level to keep them coming back again and again.
Your salon transforms guests and makes them look and feel more attractive. PPFM sells dead fish! Why are they world famous and your tanning salon is not? Because they designate their workplace as a special place, a performance stage where the cast of workers deliberately ACT and submerge themselves in the art of staging an engaging fish-buying experience!
Here is part of “fishmongers” blueprint for success: When they are working they are ACTING! Each cast member plays a part that has been practiced and perfected.
The mongers use these three easy acting techniques every day on their stinky business stage – use them to help set the stage and engage your salon guests in new and exciting ways.
Play
Yes, making a living in salon operation is serious business, but it’s also about having fun with staff as well as guests. Tanners love to have fun and are inspired by watching others enjoy their experience, too. Plus, cast members who have a blast and love their jobs project an infectious energy to everyone.
Be There
Be present! Forget about everything else going on outside the salon and be in the moment with each guest.
Choose Your Attitude
As the great Aristotle pointed out, acting is about making choices. We all act differently in front of co-workers, customers, family and friends – not fake, but simply choosing that part of ourselves we want to reveal to whoever we’re in front of at that moment.
Be more than just the average boring salon. Start staging a tanning experience for your guests to immerse themselves in every time they visit and you’ll see a brand new form of economic activity begin to develop.
Next month: I learned the most valuable sales lesson of my career from my daughter’s lemonade stand!
