Salon supplies invites salons to kick start their business

Salon Supplies welcomed salon owners and their staff from across the UK to its first Kick Start Your Business seminar, held at the Aviator Hotel in Farnborough. The seminar featured two inspiring presentations from L’Oreal Professional Products Division’s Monica Teodora and salon owner and motivational business speaker, Christian Hefti. Both speakers focused on the importance of offering clients a complete experience – a client journey that delighted at every stage. Monica shared with delegates finding of LPPD’s recent Consumer Market Insights report. “Behaviours are changing,” she said. “Consumers come with an expectation that is very different to 10 years ago.” Monica also stressed that the reason consumers weren’t coming to the salon as often had nothing to do with their wealth. “It’s a myth that people don’t have money to spend – what has changed is how they choose to spend it,” she said. In order to attract today’s discerning consumer salons needed to deliver a consistent client experience. “That’s why women go to a salon,” she said. “They go for the experience, the pampering the ‘me time’. If you don’t deliver every stage during every visit they will go elsewhere.” Monica also addressed the issue many stylists have with “selling” products to clients. What the stylists consider a hard sell was often no more than giving the client information on how to care for their hair, she said. One of the biggest complaints highlighted by the research was the clients felt nobody talked to them about the products they should be buying – hence why they often left the salon and went to a shop to buy them. “If you give the client a proper consultation the product is the end result of that,” said Monica. Colour also offered a massive opportunity for salons, said Monica, with the national average for clients having colour services in the salon 50% - “That’s an opportunity to get 50% of clients to upgrade to colour services,” she said. Christian Hefti, owner of BHP Hairdressing,  brought his first-hand experience of running a successful salon to the debate. He also stressed that it was a misconception to assume that because a client has just paid for a cut and colour they wouldn’t want to spend more on take home products. “Why do we worry about how much our clients are spending?” he asked delegates. He stressed the need for stylists and other salon team members to pick up on buying signals – for example if a client comments at the backwash that a product smells nice, tell them what product you are using. “Clients come to your salon for solutions to problems,” said Christian, making the consultation a golden sales opportunity. During the consultation it should be the client doing 80% of the talking, he said, although it was the perfect time to sow the seeds for a retail sale, which could be reiterated at the backwash and at the styling station. “Home care advice should take up at least five minutes of the time the client is in the chair,” he said.