4. Identify gaps in spend
“Review the reports of your top 10 clients and identify the gaps. If your top spender had a lot of services but only bought three products in the past year, for example, then where are they going for their retail?”, says McKeon. “Look that at the gaps in each client’s record then create a little plan of action for each.”
“I also categorise clients so you might take your top 100 and call them your A group, then the next 100 is the B group,” she continues. “Your first focus is to get those A group clients’ spend secured, then for the B group, the focus is on how to get them more excited about their skin or nails.
“Not necessarily how to increase their spend immediately, but how to get them more excited. But I would start with your top-level accounts because they’re already excited – they come in most often, have the highest dockets, and love what you have to say, so they’re an easy starting point.”
5. Revisit product knowledge
“Give everybody a product or service to talk about to refresh their knowledge, because if you’ve forgotten the details about what you’re trying to sell, that’s when you come across as pushy,” advises McKeon.
“Once, while I was still lying on the bed at the end of the treatment, the therapist came in with a 500ml cleanser and said ‘you have to buy this’. I asked why and she replied, ‘because I’ve been told I have to sell a product to everybody today’. That was very awkward because it puts the client under pressure, whereas you want the sale to be natural. It has to make sense to the client. There seems to be a distorted trend going on in the industry that we need to sell one product to every client but from the customer’s perspective that’s unhelpful. Put four or five products out and tell them why they’d help with home care, then let them choose if they want one, or all, or none of them.”
6. Drop your attachment to the outcome
“I bring everything back to the job description: it’s not your job to worry how much is in your client’s purse but it is your job to make recommendations, give advice, do a proper consultation and tell them what they need,” says McKeon. “But you have to drop your attachment to the outcome. So, if they say, ‘yes, I’m going to take home those products, and yes, I want to come on the course of treatments’, then that’s great. If she says, ‘thanks, that’s really interesting but I’m not interested in buying that’, that’s great too because there’s no more that you can do.
“The client will decide whether they want it, not you, but the reason therapists’ confidence gets knocked is that they get attached to the outcome and become upset if the client says ‘no’. I’ve tracked it and, generally after a ‘no’, therapists haven’t got the nerve to ask again for another three weeks – and that’s too many clients ignored – so we’ve got to get over ourselves and our fears, feel confident that we did everything we could, and move on with the next client."