Intro: Do you feel like you were meant to have a kick-ass career as a hair stylist? Like you got into this industry to make big things happen?
Maybe you’re struggling to build a solid base and want some stability. Maybe you know social media is important, but it feels like a waste of time because you aren’t seeing any results. Maybe you’ve already had some amazing success but are craving more. Maybe you’re ready to truly enjoy the freedom and flexibility this industry has to offer.
Cutting and coloring skills will only get you so far, but to build a lifelong career as a wealthy stylist, it takes business skills and a serious marketing strategy. When you’re ready to quit just working in your business and start working on it, join us here where we share real success stories from real stylists.
I’m Britt Seva, social media and marketing strategist just for hair stylists, and this is the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
Britt Seva: What is up and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host, Britt Seva and I thought this week we would talk about pre-visit guest experience.
Now, this is a little bit of an oldie but a goody topic. If you are a Thriver, this shouldn’t feel revolutionary. It’s more of like a touchpoint, a crosscheck, are we hitting all of our marks?
Going back, kicking it old school, how many of you were Thrivers from like 2017, ‘18, ‘19, ‘20, ‘21? Anybody who was a Thriver in that period of time knows that we have the pre-visit experience module, right? There was a module titled that and I’ll walk you through the lessons that were in there.
It’s called pre-salon phase: choosing your online booking system, offering online booking, creating a new guest booking page, streamlining the new guest request process—meaning the things that the clients do between landing on your website, checking out your business, and booking an appointment. Then transitioning your clients to online booking, which overcomes all those hiccups of “But what if they book something wrong?” All that. Changing your voicemail and managing texts and DMs, building the trust through your welcome email, getting your professional email address.
That was the pre-visit experience module that existed in Thrivers back then. Flash forward to now, and it’s moved around a little bit because now Thrivers is based on truly building a marketing and retention funnel, right? So the modules are designed as such. Now we have, talking about Module 3, the Desire Level. We have a ton of lessons in there, but when we get to lesson eight, we have something called the New Guest Success Path and that’s where all of this starts to get really interesting. We don’t have time to go through the whole path today, but if you’re a Thriver, that’s where you’re going to start. Module three. Then you look at New Guest Success Path.
Then we get into Module 4, which is called the Trust Level. Here’s where you see digital consultations, digital booking systems for success, initial communications, which is everything that happens before our clients even come in to see you. Greetings and warm welcomes.
Then we scoot down further to the Nurture Level where we have things like digital guest intake form, create your digital business directory, reconnection, consultations, all kind of other things.
So if you’re in Thrivers and you’re like, “Huh, I don’t know if I’ve learned this before,” it’s all in there. It used to be in your pre-visit experience module, now it’s broken up into these three modules based on building your funnel.
Okay, enough about that.
The reason why I believe this is so important and the reason why we’ve expanded on guest experience as we redeveloped Thrivers Society—it’s now in its third major iteration—is because trust with clients today starts way before they even come in to meet you. If somebody doesn’t trust you, you’re not even going to get a chance to meet them.
What used to happen back in like the nineties or something like that, eighties, nineties, seventies I would assume, is that you’d hear that a stylist was great through word of mouth, right? That’s how things were built. Word of mouth. You just trust your friend Josh, who said that the stylist is great. You go in to see them based on Josh’s suggestion and that’s it. You just trust whatever Josh said.
People aren’t that trusting anymore. The world has gotten a lot more complicated and our guards are up just naturally through nothing else but just natural evolution. Because our guards are up, you have to build trust with clients long before they even come in to see you.
How does that trust build? Messaging and communication. There’s only two ways to do it, and we have to do it really effectively and we have to do it online. There is no other way.
We say things like, “Well, if they hop on the phone with me,” yeah, but you don’t understand. They’re never going to hop on the phone with you because you lost them way before that point of contact even happened.
I have an office space, whether you know this or not, I have an office space and I showed up to my office the other day and there was a letter on the ground in my mailbox slot. It was from a local salon in the area where my office is, and I’m actually familiar with the salon. I opened it up and I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is so fascinating.” It wasn’t addressed to me. It was addressed to the previous tenant of this office and it was their holiday season announcements newsletter to the clients and this appointment request form thing. And I was like oh my gosh, as I look at this and as I read this, my mind is made up that I will never go to that salon.
It was funny because the communication that they had sent and you think to yourself like, “Wow, physical mail,” they probably spent hundreds if not thousands of dollars to send these letters out to people like me who will never even go in to see there. What a waste of marketing money.
But it actually made me lose trust in them and what it went to show is the power of communication and verbiage and marketing and positioning. They are aggressively marketing, but all effort is not good effort. In this instance, that was a terrible marketing strategy because it was laughable to me and so it tarnished the reputation. Did nothing to build and grow, and this is why that pre-visit experience is so critical is because every move you make is telling a story about you and your brand.
Here are the four biggest reasons why a client will not even book with you and this is why pre-visit matters.
Number one, they don’t understand your verbiage. If you’re using—this happens in a couple of different arenas. Sometimes you’re doing stylist speak, so you’re talking about extension methods as if a client understands. Probably, I would guess less than 20% of clients know what an I-tip is, knows what hand-tied extensions are, knows what tape-ins are. They don’t freaking know. When you’re using verbiage like that, you’re giving them way too much credit and you’re talking above their head.
Have you read the studies where they’re like, most people are comfortable having a conversation at a fourth grade level? You’re talking to your clients as if they’re two years into their cosmetology license. It’s so beyond their fourth grade level of communication. Sometimes they don’t understand what your verbiage is, they don’t even understand what you’re talking about.
I use extensions as an example, but it can be when you talk about color services, like sometimes you’ll use a name, like you’ll do session based and you’ll be like “The Blonde and the Beautiful,” and it will explain like what’s going on. It’ll say partial highlight conditioning, treatment, haircut, whatever. But they don’t know what blonde and beautiful means. They actually don’t want to be blonde. They want to be a brunette.
Let’s say—I’m currently a brunette in real life and I just want to have some lighter, brighter pieces. No chance on earth I’m going to book your blonde and beautiful service. I don’t want to be that. And so here’s what happens is, let’s say I message you and I’m like, “Hey Josh, I was really thinking about coming in to see you, but I’m confused as to what I should book. I’m on your website and I’m looking at your service packages and none of them seem to fit for me. Can you give me some information?” And he’s like, “Yes, you actually go ahead and book the Blonde and the Beautiful. I know it seems like it’s weird for you, but it’s just a light brightening highlight. We don’t have to make you a blonde. Book that.”
Well, Josh already lost me. I’m like, “Do you even know what I want? I feel like we’re not speaking the same language.” Maybe it could be argued, “Well, Josh is a blonding specialist. He doesn’t want people who are brunettes who want highlights.” Okay, well then I hope when I go to Josh’s social media, it’s all blondes and nothing else. No dimensional, like blondes, blondes, blondes for days ‘cause if that’s what he wants, then he can have services and verbiage like that. But if not, you have to ask yourself, “Do my clients even understand what I’m talking about?” So verbiage can get you.
Number two, doesn’t understand your pricing. If your pricing is confusing, misleading, you’re going to lose clients. There’s just no doubt about it. If people are looking at it and they’re like, “I don’t get it,” it is the rare client who will reach out to you and ask for an explanation. Most will just bounce.
If you don’t have a website at all, you’re losing a significant amount of clients. For those of you who don’t have websites and you’re like, “Yeah, but business is pretty good” or maybe business is stellar and you don’t have a website, do you want a business that is living up to its maximum potential or not? I have yet to coach a business to implement a website strategy and it has not helped their bottom line. I just don’t have a single example of that.
No matter how good your business is, a website makes it better. It makes it better for hiring great talent. It makes it better for selling services to clients. It makes it better for all the ways. If you ever want funding or financing or getting more Google reviews, your website counts.
So not understanding pricing, misleading pricing, pricing mysteries, all of that is a reason why you’ll lose clients.
Number three, they don’t understand your process. Again, if it’s misleading, like what it takes to come in to see you, “I don’t understand how to book an appointment,” “I don’t understand where I even start with all of this,” you’re going to lose clients.
In our mind, we’ve made everything perfect and easy. I do this too and I’m a victim of it as well. My team and I are constantly working on this. When you build your social media or you build your website, you think you’ve done it well, right? I mean, I hope so. You’re like, “Okay, great. I did this, this looks good. This makes sense. It’s easy to navigate.” My friends, as somebody who has done hundreds of website reviews at this point, it does not make sense. I know you think it does. I can see that you do. It does not. It only makes sense to you partially because of the verbiage you’re using. A lot of it because of your process and your layout. It only makes sense to you and your existing clients. You’re losing new clients because they have no idea what’s happening. They don’t know where to start. They don’t know what the steps are. They don’t know what to expect and because they don’t know all those things, it doesn’t feel safe. When it doesn’t feel safe, they don’t trust you. When they don’t trust you, they don’t book an appointment.
I did a podcast a few weeks back about a friend of mine who, I mean for literally days, I was trying to coach her through booking this freaking hair appointment. I was like, “Oh my gosh, it’s not that hard.” But unfortunately, it was that hard because the salon she wanted to book with pretty much blew it on all four of these accounts. Didn’t build trust, the process was super unclear, the pricing was super unclear, the website was exceptionally dated, the verbiage was all over the map. She didn’t even know what was going on. I had to hold her hand and I didn’t even know.
You have to ask yourself is it clear what it looks like to work with you? Do I know where to get started? And again, we do the kiss of death where we’re like, well, obviously you call us. Obviously you fill out this form, obviously you email us. No, nothing is obvious. As soon as you’re saying obviously, you’ve already lost. Nothing is obvious, okay?
Your process is a huge part of why you’re losing people.
Then number four, they just generally don’t trust you. Sometimes we lose trust with the content we create. Sometimes it’s our messaging, sometimes it’s the way we explain things. But again, a lot of this comes back to verbiage. If your messaging is no good, you’re going to break trust. You might be saying accurate things, but if you’re not saying them properly and the way that is necessary for trust to be built, you’re going to lose people.
What does a good pre-visit experience look like? Well, when I broke down those lessons and modules that are in Thriving Stylist Method, I gave you a lot of hints right there. So of course in Thriving Stylist, I walk you through, but just listening to the titles of those lessons should give you a lot of hints.
Imagine you’re going to book an appointment. Let’s decide what are we going to book an appointment for today? Let’s say we’re getting married. I’ve been married for, oh my gosh, how many years has it been now? 14 years? Gosh, it feels like that longer, but actually longer. We’ve been together for 20, so I haven’t planned a wedding in 14 years. So let’s talk weddings. Imagine that we’re planning a wedding and we’re looking at all the different florists that we could possibly hire for our wedding.
This is the same kind of search that clients do when they’re looking for a stylist or a salon and/or stylists are doing when they’re looking for a salon to work for. They’re not just looking at you. That is so naive when you’re like, “Well, they’ve heard about me. My reputation’s good. It should be fine.” No, it’s not fine. Your reputation’s good. Somebody else down the street’s reputation is 10 times stronger. There’s a buzz about everybody. You’re not the only one, right? No matter how high your perceived value is, the pre-visit experience has to stay strong.
We’re looking for this florist and we’re looking at all of our options. Let’s say we go to one florist and we look at their work on Instagram and it’s really good. Cool. We click the link in our bio and we go to their website and the homepage is just a bunch of pictures of bridal bouquets and then there’s a phone number at the bottom and a place to send an email. You’ve already lost me. I will not book you no matter how much the arrangements on the Instagram grid are exactly what I want. Based on that website alone, you’ve lost me a hundred percent.
I back out, I’m not going there. So then I’m scrolling some more and maybe I’m looking at some Google reviews. Look at some Google reviews. Again, I find somebody where I’m like, “Oh my gosh, yeah, this is the kind of work I’m looking for. This is cool.” I click to find their website. They don’t even have a website. They have an email address, they have a phone number. “You can text me.” Nope, you already lost me. I find it to be very rookie that you don’t even have a website and I’m not trusting you with my special day. So no, you lost me there.
It’s the same thing when people are looking to get their hair done. You can do good work, but somebody with a website is still going to beat you. They’re still going to win.
So no, you lost me. Then I go back and now I’m looking at TikTok and I’m looking at videos of bridal florists putting arrangements together. I find a florist in my city who is a hundred percent, like I can tell in their videos that energetically we’re the same. They’re overcoming all of my objections in the posts that they’re making. I can see that the work that they’re doing is very aligned. So again, I go to the website. Now on this website it says, “Welcome, you beautiful bride, you,” and it has a photo of the florist giving a hug to her bride on their wedding day. As I scroll down, it explains the process of working with them and it’s not super wordy.
I’m not saying write a sixth grade research paper on your website. Never should you ever. Your website should be 70% images, 30% text, very image heavy, but it’s got to be done right and it explains exactly the process, what it should look like, it’s easy on the eyes, it’s easy on mobile, it’s highly functional.
Then there’s a page that has the wedding florist bio. It doesn’t just say, “Look at our work.” It’s not just a gallery. I don’t care if this is a florist that has 15 employees. I want to know about the owner. So I go there and I click and I learn about the owner, and then there’s a little story about each of florists and what trainings they’ve had.
Do you know this? If you don’t know this, now you know, a friend of mine is a bridal florist and there’s amazing, amazing trainings to go to if you’re a bridal florist. Like really innovative stuff. So what are you into? Who do you follow? How do you educate yourself? What do you do on the weekends? Give me all of it.
Then I want pricing transparency. I want to be able to go and look at pictures. Something like this is going to cost something like that. Great. Okay. I’m into it. I’m into it. I’m into it. And then once they’ve sold me on, they know what it is that I want, I expect to get started. I don’t want to have to call you. I want to get started now. I’m here on your website. I’ve made up my mind and I want to get started now.
Those who are considering you for employment or those who are considering you to be a client want to get started now. They don’t want to wait for you. There has to be a digital form on your website that lets them get started now and it can’t be go ahead and book your appointment here. Not enough nurture, not a good pre-visit guest experience. “Click here to book your first appointment.” Too scary.
Remember, we talked about this. They don’t trust you yet. That’s like if you’re doing online dating. I’ve never done this. This is a secondhand account, you guys, okay? My husband and I have been together since 2002, way before online dating.
If you’re online dating, imagine that you match with somebody, they message you back and they’re like, “Amazing. Let’s go get coffee tomorrow.” And you’re like, “What? We have not even had a conversation yet. I’ve looked at your bio, you look cool. We definitely matched. I’m definitely not meeting you in person. You might kidnap me. That sounds scary.” It’s the same thing when on our website or on our Instagram. “Hey, great to meet you. Book an appointment.” That’s the crazy kidnapper on the dating app. You don’t want to be that person, okay?
So nope, we don’t do that. Instead, we continue the nurturing and they’re able to connect through our online experience in a way that allows us to trust them and them to trust us in a way that bridges the gap and builds the bonds and allows us to deeply connect with each other before the visit even happens.
How many of you were scared of online booking? Raise your hand. I see you. I was you. In 2014, we were very scared to turn on our online booking app because we were afraid of a couple things. One, that our clients would book appointments wrong. And two, that we would get clients that were not desirable for us. And when I say not desirable, I mean that they couldn’t get down with the way that we operated.
What would happen if we were positioned as a salon that charged a higher rate, so what if somebody got on our books, sat in our chair, had the consultation, our pricing was transparent, but what if they didn’t read it and now they’re here? They’ve booked an hour and a half of one of my stylist’s time and they can only afford half of what the pricing is offered. That was a real fear of ours. It was like, is somebody just going to irrationally book an appointment when they’re not really the right person to sit in that seat? That scared us. So for all those reasons, we really hesitated to pull the trigger.
Well, that’s another thing we cover in Thriving Stylist Method. All of your clients should be booking their online booking appointments flawlessly and it’s to you to ensure that happens. It’s your communication. It’s the way that your system is set up. It’s the structure you create so that there’s no surprises for you or for them. The client doesn’t want to have it done wrong either. Through this pre-visit experience, you are ensuring that you’re set up for success and they are fully set up for success in the process.
As you’re listening to this, I want you to ask yourself, do I believe I am doing everything I possibly can to ensure that trust is built with clients long before they’ve even decided if I’m the right stylist for them or not? Am I positioning myself as so professional, so communicative, so desirable that nobody would choose to go anywhere else long before they even step foot through our doors? If not, you have work to do. Because think about it, even once they have submitted that intake form, it could be an appointment request form, it could be—we talk about digital consultations form in Thriving Stylist Method. It could be any of those things.
Once they’ve done that, then what happens? What do you do to nurture that client leading up to their appointment? We talk about that in Thriving Stylist Method as well, right? You should be in communication with them before they come in to see you.
How many of you have had a new client come in, they walk through the doors, you stick out your hand for the handshake and say, “Hi, I’m Britt, so nice to meet you.” And you’re looking at them and they’re essentially a stranger. You can see what services they’ve booked for, but you don’t know anything else. That is an irresponsible pre-visit guest experience. You should never be feeling that way when you’re meeting a new client for the first time. Something is broken in your pre-visit guest experience.
When you are evaluating your own, I suggest that you start with the marketing funnel and start inside out. First of all, ask yourself, do I know my target market? Who am I trying to attract? Am I creating content and messaging that speaks to that person?
Then we go up a little higher to the Desire level. Is my website right and tight? Is it giving a concierge-level experience to those who land on that page? Is it clear? Is it concise? Is it transparent?
Then we go up another level to the Interest level. Is my social media actually building trust? Is it just showing that I’m a badass? Or is it actually bridging the gap between I can trust this person, this person can understand me, I feel like I know who this person is, even though I’ve never sat in their chair before? It’s very different.
And then last but not least, we have the Awareness level. Are you putting yourselves out in the marketplace where ideal clients can come in and start to build that trust with you?
Little crosscheck here on this Monday morning. Hope this has been a good one for you. As I always like to say, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
