Today’s business training for Nail Techs is one of the most important business lessons a Nail Tech could ever learn!
To keep the business of nails and beauty simple and practical, I want to share with you the only five ways that you can grow your nail business. These are the only five ways that you can make more money in a nail salon.
But – do you know what they are?
I hope this article comes as good news to you because if you do want to grow your nail business, there aren’t hundreds of things for you to do – in fact there are just five things. Get good at these five things, focus on them and your business (and your bank account) will grow.
1. GENERATE MORE LEADS, PROSPECTS AND INQUIRIES
Step 1 in the process of taking your business to the next level involves generating more leads, prospects and inquiries for your nail business. This usually involves advertising of some sort.
A lead, prospect or inquiry is a person that you have engaged with in a sales or marketing conversation about your nail salon, products and services. They are people who have become interested in doing business with you, but they have not yet bought a set of nails.
Whenever you do any form of advertising or marketing, you generate leads before you generate sales.
There are hundreds of ways to generate more leads. For example, a lead can come from your signage, from your website, your paid for Facebook Ad’s or as a referral from a satisfied client. A lead can even be generated when someone sees you wearing nail art on your own nails. The good news is, we live in a day and age where we have more access to our target market than ever before, and, it is getting cheaper and easier to market nail salons.
To increase the amount of leads, or people who are interested in your business, all you need to do is to come up with just two to three lead generating ideas that work.
As a business owner and Nail Tech, your goal is to generate only one lead every day. Just imagine, if you generate just one lead or inquiry every day, that's 365 people a year who can potentially become customers and buy your products and services.
The first goal your marketing plan must accomplish is to generate more and more leads. Lead Generation is also know as advertising.
Now I have good news for you. 99% of all the Nail Tech's you compete against stop and step 1. If you are a smart business woman, you will realize that if you implement the next 4 steps, you will destroy the competition!
2. CONVERT THOSE LEADS INTO PAYING CUSOTMERS
Step 2 in your business growth plan is to convert as many of those leads and inquiries into paying customers.
Now that you have more leads (i.e. people interested in you and your business) what are you going to do and say to get those people to book in for a set of nails and spend money?
Once again, all you need are two to three strategies to convert leads into sales. You just need two to three practical ideas to incentivize your client to book in for a set of nails. There isn’t space to give strategies in this blog post, but you can join one of our marketing courses for practical ideas.
Just imagine, if your nail business generated 365 leads in a year, and you have a conversion ratio of 30%, then within a year, you would gain more than 120 new paying customers. Leads and inquiries are important, but don’t get excited about leads, get excited about conversions. This means that you implement a lead generation strategy of any kind until you first figure out what you are going to do and say to get those leads to book an appointment when they inquire.
Here’s something to think about – lead generation costs money but lead conversion doesn’t. Why is it then that no one ever puts and time or effort into lead conversion?
3. GET YOUR CUSTOMERS TO COME BACK MORE FREQUENTLY
Step three in your business growth plan is to come up with two to three innovative strategies to get your clients to come back more frequently. This is known as frequency of purchase.
The question you must ask is, ” Now that I have a customer, how can I get her to come back more often?” So if your average client visits your nail business once every four weeks, what can you do to get her to come once every three weeks?
The average nail client re-books an appointment once every four weeks, in this case, the repurchase ratio is twelve times per year. By the way, this is the bare minimum for a nail and beauty business. If clients aren’t coming back at least once every four weeks, you have a major business problem.
4. INCREASE THE AVERAGE SALE VALUE
The next step to growing your business and your bank account is to develop innovative, practical strategies that entice customers to spend just a little more.
MacDonalds does this to you all the time. Every time you buy a meal from them, the person behind the counter asks you if you would like to supersize your meal. Sometimes you say yes, sometimes you say no, however, every day around the world, MacDonald’s puts loads more cash into their bank account just because they asked customers to spend just a little more.
So, the question to ask is, “What is the average Rand value of the customers who purchase from you?” You may discover that on the top end people purchase for R1000 and on the bottom end for R200. But, if you take an average of the quantity of purchases and then divides it by your turnover you may find that the average Rand value per purchase is R400.
With a little bit of sales thinking, you can implement ideas that get your customer to spend just a little more every time they come. Some clients will spend more, some won’t, but – at the end of the month, you won’t believe the difference this strategy will make to your bank account.
5. BOOST YOUR PROFIT MARGINS
The last step in your business growth plan is to boost your profit margins. You want to get the best possible return on investment for the least amount of time, effort and risk.
The profit margins you make on the sale of your products and services are really what it all comes down to. How much profit you can show at the end of the day determines how successful your nail business is. It is now time for you to come up with two to three ideas to reduce expenses and increase your profit margins.
Heres why profit is so important – if you implement the four strategies that we have spoken about above but your nail treatments aren’t making you any profit, then your business will get busy but it won’t make any money.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT: If you are working but your nail business isn’t making money, then you don’t own a nail business, you own a charity!
When it comes to cutting costs and increasing your profit margins, I must give you a word of warning.
NEVER CUT COSTS IN AN AREA THAT WILL COMPROMISE ON YOUR SERVICES OR CUSTOMER HAPPINESS.
Unfortunately, most Nail Tech’s cut costs by sourcing the cheapest nail products possible. The end result? They save a few Rand's upfront, but, the quality of the thing they sell - their nails - begins to drop. The end result? Customers stop coming back because they are not happy with the nails they paid for. Nail customers are the only people who put money into the Nail Salons bank account, so never do anything to lower the quality of thing your customers buy!
Take a look at the table below. I want to show you the potential your Nail Salon has IF you put this training into practice. Go through the 5 steps, come up with 1 to 2 strategies per step and execute your strategy!
Click on the image to enlarge
