Is Your Salon Growing Fast Enough?

I have a little test for you.  Let’s see if you pass.  I’m going to ask you two questions about your business.  If you can answer them both – you get an “A”.  If you can answer only one – you get a “C”.  And if you can’t answer either – then you get an “F”.  Are you ready?  Here they are…

 How many new clients are coming to your salon “on-average” every week?

 What are the top 5 reasons that they’re coming to your salon (i.e. Referral, Web-site, etc) and how many are coming from each of the five sources?

Now, if you can’t answer both of these questions…you’re flying the “plane of your salon” with blinders on.  No…really!

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re living in a different world than we were just two years ago.  And without trying to sound like “Debbie Downer”, it’s just a fact that we all have to run our businesses better today to make profits.  And if you’ve read the forecasts for the next 2-3 years – it isn’t going to change for the better anytime soon.

So you, as a salon owner, have to work smarter instead of just harder.  That’s right.  I said smarter instead of harder.  And if you’re one of those new salon owners – that’s just opening up your salon – this applies to you as well.  The key is to start off on the right foot and focus on the most important numbers.

Now, why is this information so important to know?  Well, new clients are the life-blood of any business.  And if you’re not getting enough of them – then you need increase your marketing efforts.  And if you’re one of those salon owners that basically eliminated your marketing because of the economy – you really need to re-evaluate.

Because this is the way life is going to be for the foreseeable future (in the United States at least).  But here’s the good news.  If you can figure out how to make gobs of money now…just think of how much you’ll be making when the economy actually turns around.

Now, I’ve gone through this a few times before but it’s worth repeating.  There are only three ways to grow any business. 

1. Get more new clients coming through the door
2. Get your clients to spend more money per visit
3. Get your clients to coming in more frequently

Well, we’re focussing on number one in this example. 

If you’re one of those salon owners that use HairMax salon software to run your business – you can find out how many new clients you’re getting every week by simply running an Activity trend report.  This is located in the Reports Menu under Sales. 

This report will tell you “on average” how many first-time clients you’re getting every week.  So, you may be asking – what’s a good number?

Well, its different for all salons – but here is and quick and dirty rule of thumb.  If the number of new clients per week equals 10% of the total clients you’re doing every week.  Then your salon is basically staying the same.  Meaning you’re not growing – by you’re not really shrinking too much either.

You really need to get into the 15%-20% range to really grow significantly every year.  So, in other words, if your salon is doing 300 clients per week…you should be getting 45 new clients every week (to really grow).

Either way, you need to know where your clients are coming from every week.  This tells you what marketing is working and more importantly what marketing is not working.  By the way, on that same Activity trend report (in HairMax) you can get your Average number of total clients you’re doing every week.

So, run the reports and see where you are.

P.S. In the new HairMax 11.6 (which we are testing right now), you’ll be able to get all this information in one quick easy snapshot.  So, keep your eyes open for the product launch that starts next week.

P.P.S. If you have any comments…please post them at the bottom.  I always like to hear what you have to say.

Best Regards, Steve Sampson

HairMax Salon Software is a product designed to be the best investment your salon has ever made.  It is not only the easiest and most powerful salon software on the market.  It is from a company dedicated to becoming the ultimate VALUE source to the industry.