Achieving sustainable growth for your salon, spa, or clinic requires a strategic approach that encompasses every aspect of your business. In this blog, I’ll dive into strategies to propel your salon, spa, or clinic to new heights. It begins with embracing an external perspective, undertaking a comprehensive self-assessment, and seeking insights from staff, and clients.
Understand your business from an outside perspective
Take a 360 degree look at yourself and your business.
To begin to understand your business, you need to ask yourself a question: What do my staff, clients, stakeholders and suppliers see in me and my business?
I recommend that you come up with some key questions and either send them out in a questionnaire or email them directly to people explaining the reason behind this exercise. You want to get as much feedback as possible, and be open to receiving some critical feedback, good and bad. It’s OK to feel scared or vulnerable at this stage, but know that the information you gather is invaluable to you and your business’s success.
Brainstorm session
Have you conducted a SWOT analysis for your salon, spa or salon before? It’s a tool that many businesses use to really understand your businesses successes and potential downfalls. The analysis looks at 4 aspects of your business: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.
You should conduct this with your internal team: your staff, business partners and other stakeholders, to create a comprehensive SWOT analysis. The findings from this can help you make decisions about what the future of your business will look like.
Mystery client promotions
A very good exercise to do for your salon, spa or clinic is to enlist the help of a mystery shopper. You’ll want to organise some mystery clients to come in and book a service and purchase retail. Let your team know that this is happening, the number of mystery clients that will be booked in during this exercise and between what dates this occurs.
Then, at the end of the promotion you can organise a fun night with food and drinks for your team and present the feedback to them. The purpose is to learn from this as a group to increase your level and quality of service, and reward the staff member that scored the highest points based on the feedback sheets.
The internal workings of a successful business
Systemization
Another important task that you do is to create or update your policy and procedure document. This is purely a document that states what is already happening in the business, but it is important to put it down in a clear and concise format for all staff, new or old, to follow and adhere to.
You need to be truthful and accurate when you write these, don’t put something in that you think looks good or is too ambitious, as you will ultimately lose interest in or stop doing that procedure
Some examples of policies that you might want to create or update:
- Mission Statement
- Training and Development Programme
- Remuneration and Incentives Policy
- Occupational Health and Safety Policy
- In-salon Service and Retail Policy
- Presentation and Dress Code
- Leave Entitlement, Maternity and Sick Leave
And there are many more that you might need to create. Contact Phillip to learn more about what policies and procedures you should have for your salon, spa or clinic.
Organisational chart
If you started your business as a sole trader or only a few staff, you may not have seen the need to create an organisational chart. However, as your salon grows and you hire more staff, it’s important to make it clear what the structure of positions at your business is. It needs to cover everyone who works at your salon, from the owner right down to your casuals and apprentices.
This is critical to any business as it draws a clear line of authority and communication for every employee.
Succession planning
As your business grows and develops, so does the structure and model of your salon, spa or clinic. You may want to start shifting away from the day-to-day running of your business and employ a salon manager, for example.
If you are working towards a particular goal for your business, think about if there is a needed shift in the structure of your team as there will be different needs, strategies and maybe even new positions that need to be established. There might also be redundancies in other roles as well.
Thinking and planning ahead is critical to the success of any expanding business, and by keeping your team’s structure in mind when planning anything, you’ll be assured your team has the necessary tools and resources to achieve it.
Creating a strong team at your salon, spa or clinic
Leadership development
It’s important that we all learn some leadership skills to benefit ourselves and our staff so we can create an awesome team culture and deal with situations that may occur in the day-to-day running of our salon, spa, or clinic. This also means that if you have team leaders or supervisors, they might also benefit in learning some leadership skills.
Identifying the leaders in your team
Identifying the right person for the right position is critical for the future success of any business. This also affects retention, culture and team spirit. A good hairdresser or therapist that loves their job should be encouraged to do better and reward them well as a good Manager should be also encouraged and rewarded in their role too.
Staff ownership
Focusing on training your leaders is great, but there are so many other aspects that you should be training your team in to ensure your businesses success.
Some examples include:
- Effective Communication
- Self-belief
- Confidence
- Accountability and Job Ownership
In conclusion, I know that the above points do work towards growing your salon or spa. I see the positive outcomes with my hair and beauty clients everyday. If you feel you are lacking in some or all of these areas, contact me for a complimentary 1-hour business diagnosis consultation.
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