What is your New Years resolution? How are you doing on it? Are you looking for happiness by praying to the diet and exercise gods? How about in the salon? What’s your New Years salon resolution?

If you are anything like the thousands that visit the salongeek.com every day, it will be a resolution based around making more money. Sure, the members making the posts on the site rarely come straight out and say ‘I want to be filthy stinking rich this year’ and they sure as heck do not come right out and say ‘I want to be able to at least make my car payment this month’. No, the posts are usually along the lines of ‘I want to work faster’, ‘I’m going to take more courses this year’ or the granddaddy of all… ‘How can I build my clientele?’ It doesn’t take a geek (read: genius) to look between the smilies next to their words to know that in 2007, people in the salon want to make more moolah.

Sadly, every year technicians in the salon set off to make more money – but fall down miserably as they get stuck back in the same rut that they were in the previous year because of a disjointed understanding of what truly makes a salon professional more money.

It’s the clients! Technicians wrongly focus on the areas they think might make them more money but actually don’t; they end up trying to work faster and harder to squeeze in more clients in less time. More clients in less time actually translates into less time to give the exceptional service that customers demand and are now getting from every single kind of successful business out there. Focusing on quantity instead of quality of experience means you give less for the customer while working yourself into exhaustion. Those technicians that take this path do not make more money; they trade quality of life and enjoyment of their passion for a few extra quid while their clients become free game for those businesses wanting to give the customer something to remember. The technicians that focus on themselves (quantity) instead of the quality of the customer experience turn their love of the salon into resentment for a job and customers know this.

What are a couple things that you can implement right away to start making more money in 2007 by taking care of the customer? There are hundreds, but let’s talk about book-ending the customer experience.

Beginning the experience

Sadly, the most important aspect of a successful salon is one of the most neglected; greeting the customer. I’m not talking about shouting ‘Yo babe, be with you in a sec’ from the backroom between inhalations of a lunch you have been working on between appointments all day. All highly successful businesses seize this opportunity to demonstrate how pleased they are to see the customer today.

Regardless of if this is their first or their 4,000th appointment, the customer must be greeted immediately with a genuine warm smile and a personalized greeting; ‘Welcome to Bob’s buff n’ stuff. Oooo… I love your combat boots. Where can I get a pair like those? How can I make your day one to remember?’

Did you get a similar treatment this past Christmas whilst out shopping? Did you feel a difference when that happened as opposed to the sales clerks who looked pissed off that another customer was interrupting their otherwise placid existence with ‘Ya, what can I get you today?’ The feeling of truly warm pleasure that the customer chose you today, is one that must be conveyed without exception every single time someone walks through your door.

Concluding the experience

This is the next most important process in book-ending the client experience: concluding the experience. Far too many technicians use the suicidal technique of abandoning the client at the front of the shop to get off to ‘more important things’.

Every single appointment should conclude the exact same way every single time regardless of the amount of times the customer has visited the salon. This process brings the treatment to a natural close, leaves no questions unanswered and demonstrates to the customer how important they are to you. What I suggest is a standard process that always shows results:

Walk the client up to the front of the salon and give them a personalized compliment about the treatment they just had (i.e. ‘Bertha, that colour looks great on your nails’ or ‘Wow Gretchen, that lip wax makes you look so much more feminine’). Physically take the appropriate retail products from the shelves that you talked about during the treatment and place them on the appointment desk, explaining how and when to use each one (This is not selling! This process is making professional recommendations and educating them on those choices as customers seldom if ever will enquire about products they do not know about).

Afterwards, with a genuine and warm smile, ask when you can see them again and book the appointment right then and there. Finally, ask them which of the products that you recommended, would they like to take home with them today, take payment for the treatment and retail and give them a genuine thank you.

If this is their first visit or you have not done this in the last 3 months, give them 3 business cards and say ‘If you enjoyed your experience today, please help us spread the word by telling 3 of your friends about us’. You will be shocked how eager clients want to a) help and b) brag about you!

The importance of this process can not be over emphasized. Customers demand to know that what they just paid you for, benefited them directly and immediately (the personal compliment on the treatment), what products would enhance that treatment between visits (as well as generate similar compliments from others) and that you genuinely care and value their custom (the warm thank you, eagerness to see them again and the request for them to brag about the experience).

Yea, this year screw the oath to the diet and exercise gods. They are a hell of a lot harder to appease than your clients.