Jenni Gilbert - A recent survey by Australian beauty giant Priceline Pharmacy discovered that women consider themselves to be in a rut, with 97 percent confirming they follow the same beauty routine every day.
Additionally, 96 percent said there was at least one beauty product they could not live without: 46 percent said this was moisturiser.
In response, Priceline has launched the Find Your Beautiful campaign, encouraging women to update their beauty and health routines.
It goes without saying that this will in turn ensure Priceline’s profits won’t fall into anything approximating a rut!
So why shouldn’t you, as a salon, spa or clinic owner or therapist, get a slice of this pie?
After all, you’re the skincare experts, using and retailing products that can be specifically tailored to the individual skincare concerns you’re treating.
Up to 60 percent of a salon, spa or clinic’s profits should come from retailing take-home products. Yet the average for Australian aesthetics businesses is a measly 4-6 percent.
Priceline Pharmacy makeup director, the internationally-renowned makeup artist and author Rae Morris, says their campaign is designed to encourage gentle improvements rather than extreme overhauls.
“We’re not talking drastic look and diet makeovers,” she says. “A few small adjustments to the daily routine can affect everything from how you feel about yourself to the amount of sleep you’re getting.” Herein lies a lesson for your business.
Matt Williams, co-founder and managing director of Professional Beauty Solutions*, is on a mission to show aesthetics businesses how to take the lead and to engage teams to supercharge the bottom line. He explains:
The definition of a therapist is: “A person who treats problems”. Therefore, you can’t expect the team to rock sales – unless you tell them to STOP SELLING!
I know that sounds counter-intuitive but here is the reason: Your team members didn’t get into this industry because they wanted to master selling and become a great salesperson. So teaching them better selling techniques isn’t the answer.
In my workshop Passion to Profits, the most frequent questions I am asked are: “How do I find and keep great people?”. “How do I get them to sell?”. “How can I make more money?”. “How can I attract more clients?”.
What I tell them will work is incorporating a very clear system for the team to prescribe beneficial take-home products that support all the good work that is achieved in the salon.
It’s a travesty that most people who go into salons for treatments still go and buy mass-produced products from department stores and pharmacies.
Your clients desperately want to be educated and guided by you … they see you as the expert.
I believe that the whole industry needs to see itself as having the same credibility when prescribing take-home products as a doctor has prescribing medication.
Does a doctor fear being seen as hard-selling the patient when they write them a prescription? No, of course not, and nor should the therapist!
We have recommended a wonderful framework for doing this called Recommend with PRIDE.
This and/or similar systems are used by some of our top retailing accounts as well as some of the top selling international salons:
P – Problem (address at least two of the clients’ concerns)
R – Reason (go into reasons why their skin is being affected this way and a solution)
I – Ingredient (talk about the ingredient within the product that will aid their concern. Never sell the product, instead talk about the ingredient)
D – Demonstrate (explain and show the client how that product is used)
E– Experience (share your experience of the product or tell another client’s success story)
The results can be extraordinary. Audiences light up when I show the how the smallest improvement in a few areas of their business can increase their profits by 24 percent. This type of result is achievable for any salon or spa.
If you are recommending products with the PRIDE method, that means that you are consulting and educating your clients at every visit.
Every therapist knows that clients’ skin never stays the same; in fact, it can change from day to day.
It could be drier in winter or more tanned in summer; everything from the weather to hormones to just general ageing concerns
Your clients’ skin will always be changing and can be different from one visit to the next.
It makes sense then that every client should be assessed at each visit and recommended a home care regime accordingly … evidently this isn’t happening [as per the Priceline survey].
If you’re not addressing your clients’ concerns and prescribing accordingly, you’re not only doing them a disservice but not doing your job as an aesthetics therapist.
And if you’re the owner of the salon, spa or clinic, you’re letting your profits go to the big department stores and pharmacies.
I believe that this is the greatest challenge that our industry faces.
We know that salons, spas and clinics offer clients a wide range of services that focus on improving the client’s skin.
Unfortunately the data shows that, more often than not, spa and clinic clients leave empty-handed, only to buy what they think they need from a department store, pharmacy or other retail outlet.
The saddest part is that many of the mass-marketed products most women purchase don’t even do what they need them to do.PBS conducted for salon, spa and clinic owners and managers, we discussed what we need to do as an industry and how we need to think differently about our responsibility to the clients visiting us for treatments.
A huge part of that responsibility is the home care routine for everything from cleansers and moisturisers through to serums and foundations.
What your client does between visits is equally if not more important than the treatments they receive when in your spa or clinic.
Prescribing your clients new products based on their current concerns is a win-win.
Your clients win because they get out of the rut and their skin will improve and the spa or clinic wins, not just with more retail profits but more importantly happier clients.
- Professional Beauty Solutions is hosting a 2-day industry event, August 19-20, of beauty and retailing education. PBS is distributor of LaClinica organic skincare, Image cosmeceutical skincare, Sunescape sunless tanning system, Cherry Blooms salon eyelash extensions, Body Sugaring Australia hair removal, Youngblood Mineral Cosmetics makeup, organic Wot Nots makeup removal wipes, and Dermalux LED phototherapy system.
