Take the hard work out of making new year business resolutions with these suggestions!
The start of the year is a great time to reflect on your salon’s progress over the past year and plan how you want your business to develop. Not sure where to start?
Here are my top 30 achievable business New Year resolutions:
Generate better publicity for your salon by improving your social media strategy. Start providing expert quotes to beauty industry websites, blogs, magazines etc. Too often the task of promoting the salon slips to the bottom of the to do list. If you want to attract new clients you have to make promotion a priority.
Focus on building business systems that can help increase efficiency, concentrate on the work that really matters.
Join industry groups and update on training. Maybe learn something new, directly related to your salon, which will add to your skills and add a new dimension of interest to your salon for your clients.
Build on the successes of 2022, rather than worrying about the lows.
Improve conversion rates from casual website visitors to appointment and sales.
Clients want an outstanding experience at a price they can justify. Make sure your salon provides exceptional personal service. You care about your clients, but unless you communicate and demonstrate it, you could lose them. Client satisfaction is not enough. The aim is not just to satisfy your clients, it must be to delight them. They expect to feel satisfied, so that’s nothing special. However, when you exceed their expectations, you have an overwhelming impact on them and their chances of coming back to you salon are very high.
Improve tracking – tracking responses to enquiries, emails, social media platforms, finances, client acquisition costs and average profit per client.
Re-evaluate suitability of marketing strategies. Take time out and plan your entire marketing strategy for 2023. Planning is vital if you want a healthy growing salon business. Business planning lets you take stock of what worked and what didn’t
Explore new markets as business environments continue to change.
Explore existing clientele for future opportunities.
Run a ‘client feedback survey’ for one month and find out what clients really think of your salon.
Plan to grow business in 2023
Understand clients better – get the information you need to start making improvements to better serve your clients.
Stay passionate and have fun. Create your own good luck.
Improve operational systems for growth. Review business processes and improve them to set up for significant growth over the next three to five years.
Build a better on-line presence
Launch a charity partnership to your salon – give back, knowing that whatever you give comes back several fold. There are all sorts of worthy organisations that make a difference in your community. Find a cause that matters to you and get your business involved.
Improve your website – make it more user friendly, easier to navigate, upload client reviews, increase your retail sales and demonstrate more of your work.
Review your social media pages – plan to improve your lead generation. Become more consistent and use lots of video content.
Review all employee responsibilities. There are four golden rules your team need to know when it comes to presenting your business:
- Happy people work better and convey that feeling to your clients.
- Keep your promise to clients – do what you promised to do, or better.
- Make a great impression – develop a distinctive look for your salon.
- Do quality work and sell your quality products.
Broaden your services in order to better serve your clients.
Outsource, focus and expand! Make smart, better strategic use of outsourced admin support staff – if they are half the price you are, you can spend more time on client work and make more money.
Get networking – set up partnerships and strategic alliances with your neighbouring business community. Join a new business organisation or networking group. There’s nothing like talking to other business people for sparking new ideas, refining old one and making new contacts.
Communicate goals for business growth to employees.
Support employees to continue learning as they strive to reach their goals and vision. Invest in staff training. Times are tight, competition is tough. How do you go about lifting the selling skills of all your team members? How do you raise their vision of excellent service? Invest in staff training and take your team to the leading edge in your market place.
Work smarter, not harder
Keep clients longer. Increase retention and average spend. Expand on the philosophy of providing an experience, not just a service. Ask your clients for their business. Are you sure you are getting all the possible business from each of your clients? Or, are you just assuming they will come back to you with all their salon needs? If you want their business, ask for it; it’s a three letter word that can turn your business around.
Learn how to delegate and do more of it. Delegation is the key to a healthy work/life balance.
Drop what’s not working for your salon and move on. All products aren’t going to be super sellers, all suppliers aren’t going to be ideally suited to your business. If a service, product or business relationship isn’t working for you, stop using it. Don’t invest a lot of energy into trying to make the unworkable work. Move on, something better will turn up.
Put time in your calendar for you. It is important to take time to recharge and refresh yourself. A healthy business demands time out. All work and no play is a recipe for mental and physical disaster. If you won’t invest in yourself, who will?
Remember small thing = big differences. It is the attention to detail that makes your salon stand out from the rest. It’s the little things we do that can have the greatest impact on how our clients perceive both your salon and you as individuals. It’s how you look, how the salon looks, how you speak and what you say. It’s all about the little courtesies and comforts built into the treatment experience that will raise your business above the competition.
Build a salon based on long-standing relationships with satisfied clients and ensure continued and sustained success for 2023 and beyond.
