January 2018 - Wynne Business | Spa Consulting and Education

How To Impress Clients With Valentine’s Day Special Treatments

Hopefully, you’re having a busy January with service and gift card sales for Valentine’s Day. In our recent post with Valentine’s Day Sales Tips, we shared what you can be doing to grow Valentine’s Day sales. You just need to remind the entire staff to put their best foot forward; be punctual, fully uniformed, and ready to assist with clients or inquiries at any time.

What extra special treatments do you have planned for your spa clients?

It is likely that you will see some new clients for services over the weekend, especially if you’ve put in place holiday promotions, or you may have regular clients who bring a spouse or partner to enjoy a couple’s-oriented treatment. Valentine’s Day is a good reason for clients to be thinking about their appearance, so beautifying treatments and services will be in order before a night out on the town. Your staff should be aware of this potential and adjust their approach accordingly; for instance, if a woman comes in for a facial and makeup application before she heads out for the evening, she would likely appreciate not having her hairstyle ruined during the services. If time allows, free ten-minute eye makeup touch-ups can introduce new clients to your makeup bar. Some spas will even keep some long-stemmed roses at the desk, and present them to female guests at checkout. Have your staff think about ways they can impress both new and returning clients with your high standards of customer care.

Depending on your location, you may attract some walk-in traffic for Valentine’s Day with attractive retail displays visible from the outside. An array of price-points on your Valentine gift sets may bring in some new clients, and if they’re impressed with your selection, displays and knowledgeable sales staff they’ll be intrigued enough to return. Needless to say, clean shelves and ample displays are a must through the weekend.

Gift card clients offer a double opportunity; both the purchaser and the recipient of the gift card are potential repeat guests. If possible at the time of the sale, collect the pertinent information on the intended gift card recipients so that you can market to them later. In order to get more mileage out of this dual purchase, some spas will offer the purchaser a voucher to use for a return visit of their own; $20 off a service valued at $60 or more, or a free upgrade on a weekday treatment. Perhaps a red rose for the purchaser too?

No matter the reason the doors open over the next few days before Valentine’s Day, each person who enters should be greeted immediately and with genuine warmth and friendliness. Of course, your well-trained staff is always aware of opportunities to make lasting connections with the guest, but it might not hurt to remind everyone to “show the love” especially in a month that can be on the slow side.

Spa Leadership: Managing Spa Staff Vacation Time

Spring is upon us and summer is around the corner. Which means that your staff will probably be looking to take some vacation time. While everyone deserves a vacation , it can be hard to look at empty treatment rooms. Planning ahead can help you to manage the vacation season so that the spa still operates smoothly and clients can be serviced.

First of all, does your spa even offer vacation or PTO (paid time off) benefit? Back in the “old days,” beauty therapists never received any paid vacation, but with the modernization of compensation plans, we are seeing much more of this. In fact, PTO is the second-most desired benefit to spa staff, after health insurance, and it is not all that difficult or expensive to offer.

Let’s say you have an esthetician who books $1500 in revenue per week, and she is earning about 1/3 of that or $500 per week. You can offer her two weeks of paid vacation every year, and the cost to you will be about one percent of her revenue production. In other words, not expensive as far as benefits go. If your staff receives a more aggressive pay plan, you can still likely offer one week paid vacation for a little less than one percent of their personal revenue production. If you are in the dark ages of high commission rates – you probably can’t do anything, and that’s a different conversation.

We know that working in a spa, while enjoyable, is still hard work. Your beauty therapists are giving, giving, giving to their clients all day, it’s a very “on stage” kind of work. They really do need some downtime; whether they take it all at once or in a couple of long weekends, it is something they should be encouraged to do. Everyone needs to recharge their batteries.

However, when you don’t have a therapist column available to book, that causes a decrease in revenue for your spa, unless you are lucky enough to have a substitute therapist arrangement. So the spa has to focus on ensuring there are available therapists, and that cash flow is not negatively impacted by paying for vacation time with money you did not receive.

Here are a few guidelines that may help you to be better prepared for vacation time:

Be clear when you are interviewing & hiring, and in your employee manual, in defining what your vacation or PTO benefit is, and what are the guidelines for using it, such as:
How much advance notice is required?
How long do they have to be employed to receive the benefit?
Does the benefit renew on a calendar year or date of hire?
Can the time off be pro-rated; i.e. can a 5-day per week staff member take 2 days off half-way through the year?

It is generally advised that PTO not be rolled over into the next year, and not be exchanged for money. Especially in a wellness-based industry, we WANT the staff to take the vacation.

There should be some restrictions so that the business is not negatively impacted; for instance, your entire esthetics staff cannot take vacation at the same time. Depending on the size and arrangement of your staff, you should set expectations that no more than one or two people can be out at the same time.

Do consider developing a group of reliable substitute staff; this is a good option especially for massage. When you interview a potential candidate that you like but do not have a position for, you can offer them work on an occasional, substitute basis, like filling in for vacation or taking a shift for a current staff member who has a conflict. It’s a great way to get to know someone before making an employment commitment, plus it provides a revenue option for the missing technician.

Do you need help creating a solid plan for staff vacations? Contact us for a free consultation.

What’s Your Biggest Spa Organizational Issue?

What’s your biggest organizational issue?

At first glance, your response might be, “Simple, I need to clean off my desk.”

But we’re talking bigger, deeper, wider organization.

We’re talking processes, procedures, protocols, etc., all of those words that “organized” people use. If you’re someone whose ears slam shut when you hear those terms, we’re probably talking to you!

Because really, you want your business to run smoothly, right? You want your staff to know the “rules,” and not have to stop to ask you questions all day. You want your clients treated with the utmost in care and respect at all times. You want to have a good reputation in your marketplace, so you can continue to attract new staff, as well as customers. And those things don’t happen by accident. They happen for businesses who have systems and structure, businesses that are, in a word, organized.

I know it’s challenging to feel organized in the spa environment. Some of the common spa work environment factors that challenge organizations are:

Operating Hours

In an office that’s open from 9-5, M-F, it’s easier to set aside some time for “busy work” such as end-of-the-year cleanouts and reorganization of supplies. You can stay an hour later one night, or come in an hour early one morning. We can do that in the spa also, but it’s a lot more difficult, especially as spas are often open six and even seven days a week, and the days are long. Some spas are open as many as 70 hours per week, and when the spa is open, there are hopefully clients there, making it difficult to tackle behind the scenes tasks.

Software

These days, most every spa has it. But many still don’t use it to its full advantage or are not even aware of many of the built-in capabilities of their systems. There may be existing solutions to some of your pressing problems, like tracking staff vacation requests, or professional inventory supplies, and certainly client files and marketing efforts. Yes, there is no time to take tutorials and learn, but really, are you getting your money’s worth from your system?

Isolated Environments

In the spa, strangely, when the business is at its most busy, no employees can be seen. Customer service, yes, but everyone else is tucked away in their treatment area working on-on-one with a client. This doesn’t make it easy to work together; you can’t lean into your fellow employee’s cubicle and share information, or work collaboratively. So this slows things down.

Physical Space

Since revenue-producing space is at a premium in the spa environment, there is not typically a lot of back-of-house space available. Some front desks don’t even have the luxury of a back counter for storage of retail supplies or pending sales, and many spa owners share their office space with the laundry. While this makes it very difficult to get organized, it also makes it even more imperative that we do so; with lack of resources, everything should have an assigned place.

Here is some useful advice from professional organizer and author Debbie Lillard, owner of Space to Spare. Lillard advises on her website that “You may never have a perfectly neat office, but you can be functionally organized by following my method of C.P.R.”

Categorize

Whether you are talking about your desk, a closet or the whole office, start to put things in categories. If one pile is too big, break it into sub-categories.

Purge

Toss whatever is outdated, no longer useful information, duplicate material or broken electronics. Keep the basics: a work table, filing drawers, a cabinet or closet for supplies, bookshelves, and maybe one whiteboard or bulletin board.

Re-arrange

When you are left with what you use, start to arrange the workspace into functional areas: equipment & supplies, filing, Action items (to do, to read, to call, to send), and put things where you naturally use them. Use bins or containers that you already have or purchase ones that are the right size for what you need.

Lillard website and books share a wealth of advice, and you can follow her on Twitter at @DebbieLillard.

So don’t be shy, wade in and get started. The new year is 10 days old already!

Valentine’s Day Treatments And Tips To Increase Spa Sales

You’ve just gotten the spa put back together from the winter holidays, and the next sales event, Valentine’s Day, is coming up fast.

Valentine’s is typically the smallest of the three big annual gift card events; December holidays lead the pack, followed by Mother’s Day, with the romance holiday third, but Valentine’s Day has some special things going for it. It is one of the occasions that lends itself to the booking of treatments during the holiday as well as the selling of gift cards, and it also appeals to both genders.

Add Valentine’s Day Treatments to your Menu

From the service booking standpoint, it’s easy enough to add a Valentine flair to your menu. In each of your service departments, select a treatment for which you have moderate demand and detailed protocols, and then tweak it by adding verbiage or swapping out steps, or both!

Ingredients such as strawberries, chocolate, champagne or roses, in some iteration, can be substituted for a component in the protocol. Words evoking love, romance, passion, companionship, or celebration can be worked into treatment descriptions, as appropriate.

Don’t forget to focus on treatments for couples, especially if you have at least one couples room. Create a Valentine menu insert with these newly created services and prices, and slip it into your regular menu. Of course, I’m sure I don’t need to mention to make sure that both technical and customer service staff have been advised of these changes/additions to the regular menu. Additionally, if you have special Valentine services, you will likely want to put a time limit on when they will be available; these are meant to be enjoyed during Valentine’s for a week or two. You don’t want to have someone show up in September asking to book one of these services, when you will likely have moved on and may not even have the products necessary in stock.

Boost sales and increase customer convenience with Valentine’s Day gift packages

Gift card sales do not generally kick into gear until the week of Valentines itself, starting the weekend before. Make sure you’ve got some Valentine-themed gift card packaging or presentation materials on hand, along with a supply of Valentine cards for those who are in need, saving them a trip to the Hallmark store. Place a selection of pre-wrapped retail packages near the checkout, including bath & body, candles & fragrance items.

A couple of days before Valentines itself, it wouldn’t hurt to have a selection of red roses available by the single stem, perhaps offering them to anyone who spends over a certain amount on a gift card.

More ideas? Contact us about our consulting services. We can help you design the perfect Valentine’s Day Sales Strategy.