Put in the research. We have an HR services arm, which also includes insurance. We could have started on the insurance piece four years ago. We spent two years researching what aspects of the insurance would be appropriate for the business. We went all the way to state legislators and insurance commissioners and to a legal team to educate us before we embarked on it.
I don’t run the company, but the person who comes to it has 25 years of experience. I know the business extremely well now, but I would not have embarked on it until I became a student of the business. … I’m not talking about reading a book; I spent a good year learning that business.
If you’re selling something and you don’t figure out who your target audience is and you don’t test the salability of that product with that target audience and you don’t do your focus groups, if you don’t put that level of time and energy into it, it’s a crapshoot. And personally, I don’t believe in crapshoots.
Measure behaviors. I don’t lay out a strategy; I lay out a desired outcome. From that desired outcome, we’ll challenge whether that outcome is possible and, if it is, how we’ll get there.
We constantly, on a quarterly, weekly and monthly basis, measure our results. We measure the results on all levels and that just makes ourselves and our team completely transparent. In doing so, we can make adjustments to the strategy. Things that are doing well, we accelerate. Things that aren’t doing well, we either redesign or we discontinue.
I actually take a backward approach to measurement. I believe in measuring behaviors first, and if the behaviors are in line with what you know to be the desired outcomes that that behavior can obtain, then the final result will be there.
We’re in the high-end salon business. So we know that a good consultation with a guest is of the utmost importance to deliver a retained guest. What do I mean by that? If somebody on the team who is doing the hair is asking the right questions or is asking a series of questions that’s leading them in the direction of giving them a good outcome, then I know the haircut becomes the least important.
The perfect haircut is not what’s important. It’s delivering to the guest what they really wanted. They may have come in and really wanted to know how to style their hair and were less concerned about the actual cut.
We have a process in place that goes through what a good consultation is. When I walk the floor, what I’m listening for is, ‘Are those questions being asked in the consultation?’ When they are, I know I’m going to get the outcome, which is a retained guest. When they aren’t, they break down. I could retain the client or I might not.
How to reach: The Salon People Inc., (727) 820-3170 or http://thesalonpeople.avedaflorida.com