Trying to get beauty therapists to focus on their targets, make more sales and improve their figures is an up hill battle for business owners. So why don’t your staff like to sell? It’s simple really.
Imagine this, you book a cleaner to come and clean your house, only when they arrive, you ask them to cook your weekly meals instead. The cleaner becomes confused because they are there to clean, not cook. You can’t understand why they are reluctant to cook as the company who recommended them mentioned that they had been trained in ‘household duties, including cooking”.
This is what has happened to the beauty industry. Therapists spend two years at beauty school learning how to treat (clean) and spend one day on how to sell (cook). You hire based on the fact that they have learnt how to sell in beauty school, which should mean they be able to sell when they work for you, right!? Wrong.
When asked why therapists join the beauty industry the top three answer are:
1. To make people feel good
2. To educate people about their skin
3. To follow in a relative or friends footsteps
Notice none of those answers included anything about selling products. Heck if they wanted to sell something they would have entered into the Real Estate, Transport or Retail industry. However we understand that our biggest profit comes from product, so selling needs to be apart of our business model.
Firstly, change your language from sales to prescription.
Nobody, not even you, want’s to be sold to after having a relaxing massage, therefore it’s disconnected for a massage therapist to want to sell a product after giving someone that relaxing treatment.
Talking prescription connects with therapists as they understand a prescription is professional advice from an educated source, given to the client in the upmost respected way.
Secondly change how you talk about figures.
Stop drawing dollar signs along the side of their treatment columns, take down the spreadsheets in the kitchen and for goodness sake don’t ask them how much their sitting on for the day.
Instead, focus on upgrades, add ons, prescriptions and cross promotions in a day and have targets around that.
This language is easy for therapists to track, it speaks their language, w while still putting profit on your spreadsheet. Win, win.
For example,
a) Ruby our Injector is working today, whoever can get Ruby the most consultations today from their treatment column will go home with $50 at the end of the day.
b) Everyone has facials in their column today, whoever can upgrade the most clients to add on LED with their facial today will go home with $50 to spend on treatments for themselves.
Small changes can start with you, today. Ask your team the reason why they entered the beauty industry and what they don’t like about selling.
Overcome these objections and help them work through their fears.