Action week: promoting business with client evenings

Holding a colour evening can be a dynamic and engaging way to showcase your colourists' skills, introduce new and existing clients to colour trends and, most importantly, it can boost your business by introducing new clients to your salon.

Here, two successful salon owner/managers outline how colour evenings work for them:

Robert Eaton, Russell Eaton, Leeds and Barnsley

We launch colour collections seasonally to our clients, team and local and trade press, which is a great way to create a buzz around colour and our salon.

We tend to link this with our product manufacturers' latest collections and our own techniques for that season. The whole team really gets behind this and loves passing it on to our clients.

I'm also thinking of holding a colour inspiration day through Facebook, which could be a great way to hit a young market. The day could be based around people calling in for colour consultations, quoting the Facebook event, and receiving an exclusive discount if they book an appointment.

We recently held an evening for an organisation called Forward Ladies, a networking group for Yorkshire businesswomen. This format (see above) works well for colour evenings and products nights, such as Christmas gift ideas and summer treats evenings.

We give goodie bags when clients leave, with samples, offers, and price lists - and they get 20% off if they book an appointment on the night. We had a 70% uptake on bookings on the evening. When we look at what we spent on food and wine against the new bookings, and what the new clients could potentially spend with us in future visits, it is definitely worthwhile.

Sean Hanna, seanhanna salons, London and Surrey

Colour evenings have long been part of what we do. Our most recent was in our Putney salon, where we held a seanhanna colour party.

We invite regular clients to come in for a complimentary treat, but they must bring a friend who could become a potential client. Honesty is the best policy here: let your clients know you are looking for introductions to potential new clients.

The client and her friend receive a complimentary shampoo and finish, a complimentary treatment, a complimentary head and hand massage, and a personalised in-depth colour consultation with a colour specialist.

The evening has a fun, relaxed, 'party' atmosphere: the music is a little louder than normal, and wine and nibbles are available. In the past, we've had live musicians, and, sometimes, offer professional complimentary make-up sessions. The idea is to make sure we really spoil the clients

For this to be successful, it's important that at least 50% of the clients are new to the salon. The whole point is to get new introductions, as well as inspire existing clients to try new ideas and techniques with their colour. We always offer a discount to clients who book a colour there and then - sometimes 10%, sometimes 20% - depending on what the individual manager wants to do at the time.

The last evening we had, 17 clients turned up out of 22 confirmed attendees - and one client even brought four of her girlfriends along. The evening cost £42 in sundry items. Eleven of the 17 clients made appointments for colour before they left the salon - and seven of those were brand new clients to the salon.

Over the years, we've had a few disasters: we had one party evening when only two clients turned up as everyone else cancelled, and we've had a couple of evenings where only two or three clients booked an appointment there and then.

But, by and large, we have found these evenings to be an extremely positive part of our colour growth strategy, and excellent for the teams, too.