Last year I did a couple of articles on Cost of Sales. The series was a little dry and theoretical and I wanted to follow it up with some practical points about how to monitor and manage your cost of sales so that you achieve as much gross profit as possible and this is something that all of us are interested in. Im not sure why its called Gross Profit, in my mind profit is awesome, not gross?
How many jobs have you had in your life? Lets re-phrase that question, how often do you change jobs? Are you a serial job hunter or are you a faithful hound, still working in the same job you have been for the past 25 years?
I was listening to Cape Talk / 702 this morning and the topic of unemployment was being discussed. On one hand you had employers calling in to say that they could not find young people with the right qualifications, experience or attitude and on the other hand you had job seekers of all ages calling in to say that either they were very qualified and willing to work but did not have the required experience (if they were young) or that if they were a little older they had years of experience but their age was perhaps working against them.
If you were offered an opportunity to franchise your salon tomorrow would you be ready for it?
Over the years ESP has worked with more and more salons that either have multiple salons and want to consolidate information and processes or that plan to open more than one salon and require integration of data and processes.
It has been very interesting to observe those for whom it has been easy and those for whom it has not. One thing we have learned is that structure and standards are a non-negotiable when opening more than one salon.
Many salon owners are not confronted with the extent of how problematic a lack of standards and structure is until they consider integrating their data and processes across multiple salons.
As a software company that is tasked with solving the problems faced by running a salon much of what we do involves identifying, mapping and streamlining the various business processes that occur in a salon. In order to write software to accommodate these processes there needs to be some level of standardization in place that we can write the programs around.
In this month’s article I thought I would comment on some of the salon business processes that we often encounter and that present challenges to salon owners. The goal will be to provide some insights that hopefully result in less frustration being experienced by salon staff and better results for owners.
When talking to owners who are researching software for their salons we are often quite surprised to find that they will be also be considering software that is not specific to their industry, ie accounting software, general retail software and even software designed for hospitality like restaurants. In my experience there is almost a 100% failure rate of these types of systems to satisfy the needs of salon owners and they end up writing off the money initially spent on these systems and purchasing a system that is designed for them.
When it comes to the wellness industry which includes beauty salons, nail salons, day spas, hotel spas (amongst other types of spas) and even will cross over in to the hair industry and medical aesthetics there are core businesses requirements and processes that are common to all. These include things like detailed Client Record keeping, Appointment Scheduling, the Sale of Retail and Services, Gift Vouchers, Loyalty Schemes, Commission Calculations, Stock Control for both Retail and Professional Stock and Communication with clients via Email and SMS (amongst other things).
I’m sitting at a restaurant in the new Cape Quarter, where I usually go to write my articles. While I am there my attention is grabbed by a customer who is visibly upset with the service that he has received and he is waving his hands around and raising his voice to a lady who informs him that she is the owner of the restaurant.
He is trying to communicate to her how unhappy he is and why he is so unhappy and she is trying to communicate to him the care she takes to train her staff to do their jobs properly. This situation was obviously not a great situation for the owner because there is an unhappy customer who is making a bit of a scene in front of other patrons. On the other hand at least she is presented with an opportunity to remedy the situation.
I remember working as a waiter while I was a student and reading an article written by the owner of the restaurant who was also the chairman of the restaurant board in the Western Cape at the time. In the article he was going on about how in South Africa patrons complain with their feet rather than with their mouths. What he meant was that people would rather not cause a stir at the restaurant if they were unhappy but they would just stop going to that restaurant in future, thereby complaining with their feet.
We have all experienced the feeling of annoyance after typing a long SMS or Email and just before sending you inadvertently push a wrong button only to find that your entire message is lost forever and you have to start all over again. If you have ever had a cell phone stolen then you will be familiar with the exercise whenever you receive an SMS of kindly notifying the sender that your cell phone was stolen and all your contacts lost and can they please identify themselves so that you can add them back to your contact list.
Most of us will also have experienced the cold sweat induced upon learning that your computer has crashed and no data could be recovered or that it has been stolen and there were no backups. If it was your personal computer then the extent of your loss will include things like important documents, emails and your beloved photographs. If it was your business computer then you may have been reduced to tears upon learning that your sales, clients, bookings and other important data have been lost.
If you own and work with one or more computers then you will experience data loss in some form or another and in most cases more than once. There are a number of ways in which this can occur from hard drives crashing, to theft, to fire, to being struck by lightning and even human error.
What do you do with your hard earned money? Do you invest it in the stock market, buy property, spend it on renovating your house, a new car, going overseas or do you just keep it under your mattress for a rainy day?
In last month’s article I wrote about motivating business owners to grow their businesses and setting achievable and measurable goals in order to do this.
This month I would like to talk about re-investing in your business in order to supplement the process of growing it that I spoke about last month.
When it comes to motivation in the salon it is generally the owner who is trying to motivation their staff. This will come in the form of motivating them to sell more retail, upsell on services, sell more of a particular type of service or retail, rebook their clients next appointment, follow up with clients and everything in between.
A lot of time and effort will go into monitoring staff performance, from using daily tracking sheets to more sophisticated business intelligence processes in order that staff appraisals can be done. Salon owners mentor hair stylists by setting targets for them, monitoring key performance indicators, sending them on training and if necessary reprimanding them so that the staff member can perform well.
The question that I’m asking, however, is are you motivated as a salon owner? What are the key performance indicators that an owner can be measured by? Who mentors the salon owner?
Have you ever been to a restaurant where the owner is physically present? I mean the kind where the owner walks around from table to table stopping to greet you and make sure that you are enjoying your meal. In all likelihood they will be a great character, full of charm and wit. They will get to know you and you will get to know them and your experience of their restaurant will be very much tied up with their prescence.
As a patron of their restaurant you will get to experience the essence of their vision. You will get to taste (excuse the pun) just what it is that sets them apart from the rest. You will get to experience their X-Factor. The more colourful they are the more “X” you will experience.