Making the most of your of retail opportunities

As a salon owner, it is likely that your main priorities will include keeping your clients happy and ensuring that they return to you for their next appointment by keeping your appointment books in order and retaining well-trained staff. However, when your clients are pleased with their treatment and wish to maintain it themselves at home until their next appointment, where do they go to get the products they need? If you want to increase your retail profits, it is important that not only do you provide for your customers with an enjoyable experience, but that you and your staff make an effort to sell them the necessary products too. Here’s how you can make the most out of your retail opportunitiesƒ

Get to know your client

You can use your salon software to store information on each of your clients, such as notes on their previous treatments and the products they favour in order to help your staff know what extra purchases they might like to be offered in the future. By getting to know your clients you can create personalised promotions, texting them when new products you think they will like arrive in store and recommending products you feel they could benefit from. Your client will then come to depend on you for advice in that area and begin to trust the products you suggest. As any purely retail business will tell you, the more information you can gather on your customers, the better.

Consider the time of year

As Valentine’s Day approaches, salon owners will be provided with an ideal opportunity to promote their hair and beauty products. Who doesn’t want to make an effort for the one they love on February 14th? Most salons will become fully booked around certain special occasions and Valentine’s Day is no exception. Your clients will be keen to look their best for their big night so aside from offering them fabulous treatments, salon staff should also be offering them the products they need to ensure the look stays in place for longer. Every holiday and special occasion makes for a fantastic retail opportunity.

Check out your competitors

Are you aware which local shops and salons sell the same products as you? If you aren’t, you should be. In order to be able to price your products competitively and to ensure your customers choose to buy the products they need from your salon only, you need to explore how they are displaying them, what deals they are offering and how much they are selling them for. If you recommend a product that your customer knows they can buy for less just around the corner, you’ll be losing out on profit.

Provide free consultations

By providing free consultations, you can get to know your client and their needs, giving them with the opportunity to talk about their beauty problems while presenting you with the opportunity to recommend certain treatments and products to help. Through demonstrating how they should use the products correctly, you can ascertain that your clients will benefit from them and want to purchase more in the future. A free consultation ticks a number of psychological selling boxes; you’ll be positioning yourself as an expert, and many individuals will feel as though they ïowe’ you something in exchange.

Your salon management software can provide you with the programs you need to keep a track of the products your clients have bought in the past and when they did so, allowing you to know exactly what products they are likely to benefit from in future. By keeping an organised appointment schedule using your salon booking software, you can determine when your staff members have the time to offer free consultations or to spend a little longer with each client making recommendations and demonstrating how to use products. To find out more about the benefits i-Salon Software can provide for you and your salon, browse our website or book a demo today.