Are you guilty of putting your blinders on, working nose to the grindstone towards a goal until you reach it or the wheels fall off? Sometimes we do a happy dance when it all comes together, but sometimes we’re left wondering what went wrong. And when things go wrong, we start to blame things other than ourselves: my husband doesn’t support me, my salon owner is mean, the stylist next to me wears ugly shoes.
Well, if any of those things are true, we should get out of that situation and move on, but generally speaking, a blind spot is much deeper. It’s a flaw within ourselves that we can’t see.
If you’re like me, you’ve felt like you were doing all the right things yet still not achieving some of your goals. Blind spots are to blame. I’m going to give you the tools for some self-reflection and create some space to find your own blind spots in your business so you can reach success as quickly as possible.
Blind spot 1: Your business isn’t healthy
Not “Do you like it?” or “Is it doing okay?” But is it healthy? By most small business standards, annual income growth of at least 15% is considered healthy. If you’re in your first year in the industry, you should double your income this year over last year, and then it will taper off to close to 15% annual growth. But if you’ve built a client base and are about 80% full, you should be seeing 15% financial growth every year to consider your business to be financially healthy. If you made the same amount of money, it means your business is slowly dying off.
It’s important to have that growth is because the world around us is increasing. Your cost of business goes up, your rent increases, the cost of a tube of color goes up. The reality is if you’re in the position of making the same amount of money, if you aren’t seeing plenty of referrals and retaining your current clientele, you’ve got a blind spot.
Blind spot 2: You don’t have a target market
Every single client lands in a stylist’s chair based on a single marketing funnel. That funnel is designed based on our target market, which is a particular brand aimed to attract a particular consumer.
There was a time where it was cool to be a jack-of-all-trades. Clients don’t want that anymore; they want the person who’s best at balayage, extensions or men’s hair. It’s great if you can do it all, but when somebody’s looking for something new, they’ll take a look at your marketing funnel as a whole and know in an instant if you are a match made in heaven. If you have a target market and a brand built around that target market, they will experience that instant connection.
Blind spot 3: You don’t have a marketing funnel
Once you’ve created your target market and brand, we work through the three stages of the funnel.
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Awareness. This is where people find out that you even exist. Nobody will know you exist if you are not putting effort into the awareness area. Awareness techniques include Instagram hashtags, referrals, handing out business cards, local networking, running ads, Groupon. All of the actions that are taken that can point potential new guests toward your business.
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Interest. What happens is once someone is made aware of you and is interested, the next step they’re going to take is to look at your social media, also known as the interest level. The interest level includes Facebook, Instagram, even Yelp. A potential new guest will always check you out on social media before coming in to see you. If they don’t like what they see, they’re not going to end up in their chair. Why would they go to someone who doesn’t have it going on when there are a plethora of other people who have figured it out?
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Desire. If someone knows about you and likes what they see on your social media, they’re going to have a desire to see you. But think about this: when was the last time you tried any service-based business without looking at the website? Have you ever been to a spa without checking out the website first? Never. Having a great website is a real game-changer. If the guest lands on your website and loves what they see, there’s a great chance they will come to see you.
Now ask yourself this: do all stages of your funnel – awareness, interest, desire – speak to a specific target market? Can somebody look at any of those aspects of your business and feel like you totally have their style? Is all of your online marketing working to attract a target market? If not, that’s a blind spot.
I encourage you to look at the way you are representing yourself to the world and make sure it is truly in line with the clientele you are trying to attract to your business.
Blind spot 4: You aren’t retaining clients
Good hair is incredibly easy to find. Giving a great guest experience is where the money’s at, and today’s client is going to go to the salon where they get an incredible experience. And by incredible experience, I don’t mean great scalp massages. If we’re going to wow guests and get referrals, we need to dive deeper than that.
We hope that 30% of those new guests, meaning somebody comes in to see you for the first time, will come in for at least three visits. If they come in for three visits, they are considered retained and will stay with you for at least a year. If you’re losing clients here, there’s probably not enough wow factor in that first visit that makes clients want to stick around to see what you’ve got.
Then we have existing clientele retention. You will lose 10% of your guests every year – they move, get new jobs, whatever – but we want to retain 90% of regulars year over year. If you’re struggling to retain
Blind spot 5: No emotional connection
As a stylist, we have to emotionally connect with every person on the floor because guests want to leave our chair feeling like they are better off because they saw you as a stylist. How? By making emotional connections.
Making emotional connections is especially hard because often our experience suffers when we aren’t happy. If you’re going through a difficult time personally, it will affect your business. And if a visit with you feels heavy, nobody’s going to come back for that. If your clients are not feeling warm and fuzzy, something is going wrong that needs to be fixed. You are going to lose business month over month.
I know that’s a difficult pill to swallow and I encourage you to take it in little baby steps. And if that doesn’t feel like you, think about what’s the best version of yourself that you can be behind the chair? What traits and qualities can you bring out in a bigger way to allow those guests to emotionally connect? Trust me; it’s a game changer.
I hope this has helped you uncover some of the blind spots in your business today. We can all achieve any level of success we want, but first, we have to uncover those blind spots. Decide how much you want to make, what you want your career to look like and you can have that so long as you follow the right plan to make it happen.