Be Proactive With Clients And Get More Appointments

Last week, I gave you an idea about how to increase the number of weekly visits without having to increase the total number of clients in your salon.  This was done by creatively discounting “pre-booked” appointments in a shorter visit cycle.  (Visit cycle is the time a client takes “between” visits).

Well, what about all the clients that don’t pre-book their appointments?  Is there a way you can target those clients easily?  The answer is “yes”, but before I tell you how you can do this very easily with the HairMax salon software, let me tell you why this is so important.

It is widely known that people say “no” to sales pitches all the time for a variety of reasons.  Sometimes it’s because – they don’t want to commit to anything.  Sometimes it’s because – they don’t like to be sold anything.  Sometimes it’s because – they have no control over their schedule.

Who knows why they don’t, but the bottom line is that most great salespeople know that “no” rarely means “no” unless the person is approached SEVEN times.  The problem is most people stop asking for the sale after the very first rejection.  That is usually the difference between a moderately successful campaign and a wildly successful campaign.

So what does that mean to you?

Well, when you are “pre-booking” a client’s appointment, you are essentially “selling” them on the idea that they should come back within a certain period of time.  And sometimes, clients will take you up on the offer when you ask them the first time.  But, depending on how well you “sold” the idea (or more importantly, how well your staff “sold” the idea), you may only have moderate success.

But what if you could target all those people, who didn’t take you up on your initial offer, and you could contact them right before they were thinking of making their next appointment?  Do you think that some of these people might decide to book an appointment sooner than if you left them on their own to call?  Do you think this little extra effort would improve your overall effectiveness?

Well if you said “yes”, then you would be correct.  And the HairMax Salon Software makes it very easy for you to make this happen.  Here’s how you do it…

Simply go into your mailing system, and select all clients who visited your salon four weeks ago that have not already booked another appointment.  Pretty simple.  These clients are likely the clients who would be thinking about another appointment.  You can call them (which is the best way), email them, or simply send them a postcard.

Now, if your HairMax version does not have the “Has no appointments after” feature then you would have to upgrade to HairMax version 11.5.  But if it does have the feature, you can start using this right away.

One important thing to remember is this – you only want to target the clients who came in four weeks ago.  Not clients who only came in three weeks ago or two weeks ago or even last week.  So, in HairMax, you would select clients “who have been in salon since” 4 weeks ago, “who have not been in since” three weeks ago.  This would select only those clients who came in between 3 and 4 weeks ago.

Always remember it’s better to be proactive with clients rather than reactive to the whims of “when a client gets around to it”.  Ask for the appointment more than once and you will come out way ahead of your competition.  Use your HairMax salon software to improve your visits per week even after the client has said “no” the first time.

Best Regards,

Steve Sampson