I had a call the other day from one of the Salon Marketing Toolkit owners. She was very distressed. Two of their main therapists/stylists had left and set up their own salon. Worse still, they had taken the complete client listing with them and were actively mailing to it!
Your salon’s most precious asset
As I say in the free videos, just about everything can be replaced in your business. Staff. Fixtures and fittings. Stock. But the one single asset that is almost impossible (or extremely expensive) to replace is your client listing. Why? Because it is this list that brings in your money. Without it you have no business.
So, what to do?
There is nothing you can do to stop your staff leaving your salon. Whether they set up their own place or move to another salon. There are steps you can take, however, to minimise the damage to your business. Many times I have heard similar stories “Oh she left and took all her clients with her.” No. The real story here is “She left and I did nothing to stop her clients going with her.”
So what can you do? Take action is what! Firstly, my salon owner went legal on the two offending people. That’s fine but it doesn’t stop the damage. Secondly, they had the technology to print out the complete client listing for each of the therapists/stylists. This listed each client, by turnover, for the last 12 months. The highest spending client at the top, down to the lowest spending. Armed with this information, the salon owner called the first 20 clients for each therapist. The call was to inform them about the staff changes AND to ask them to come in for a FREE treatment with their newly assigned therapist/stylist.
Why give away treatments?
Now, you might be thinking that this was commercial madness. Why give away what you normally charge for? But let’s do the numbers first. If you looked at the revenue these 40 people generated for the salon each year I’d say it will be a fair amount of cash (we cover how to calculate the “lifetime value” of a client on the free videos). You need these clients to stay ‘sticky’ to your salon and not move with the therapist/stylist. You also know that they probably won’t turn down a free treatment! So you’ve got a fair chance of keeping all that revenue if you’re clever. Worthwhile? You bet!
Next, you need to try and keep the rest of the clients. What can you do here? I wrote a mailing piece for the salon owner. It went something along the lines of “We’d like to say farewell to Jo and we wish her well. But we’d like you to come and see Mel. She ….” The point of this letter was to entice those people back in. It was sent to the rest of the people on each therapist’s list.
(If you’re a Toolkit Owner facing the same predicament then give me a call and I’ll send you the letters.)
Be prepared. Often you don’t know when one of your key staff is planning to leave. If you are not already doing it, start keeping track of each therapist/stylist’s client list, and especially those who are regular high-spending clients. And if it’s practical, make sure those people know you, the salon owner. Make a point to stop and chat with them when they come in, or phone them occasionally to check that they’re happy with your salon’s service. So there will be no more “She took her clients with her” syndrome.
What do you think? Do you have suggestions or questions? Have you experienced a similar situation, and what did you do? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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