How to Motivate Your Salon Staff to Sell

 

Let's talk about sales! Some people may cringe at this word "sales" as it can conjure up a cheesy car salesman schmoozing his way into getting a big commission. In this article, we want to shift that image into a caring, nurturing esthie who not only uses the best professional wax for hair removal and wax products but goes above and beyond to provide outstanding service. If this is you, you're worth your weight in gold, and it's time to cash in! Here, Starpil Wax talks about how to stay motivated and motivate your salon staff to sell by going over management styles, and shaking-off that tacky sales-person image while giving you some tools to productively boost sales for you and your wax salon team. 

Who is on your team?

When hiring and motivating your esthies, you've got to look out for team players or those with an "every man for themselves" attitude. If big sales are your goal, your team must be fully on-board with sales being a part of the job description. Aside from the team at large, each member is an individual with specific needs in the kind of support they need from you. Do you have young people fresh out of esthetician school working with you? How many "set-in-their-ways” seasoned pros are working in your wax salon? Do your beauty techs have families (even two-person families or those with furry kids)? Do you have team members married to their extra-curricular activities like a band or church? Take all of this into consideration for the whole team while working with your members as individuals to tailor a successful sales management plan.

 

It's not too late to re-establish expectations and find out how your team feels most comfortable working with you and sales. When hiring, look for people with sales experience, ask them about how they feel about sales, and what their approach to sales is. Ask the following questions to new hires. If you're refreshing your sales policy, ask your current esthies these questions in an email and give them some time to fully consider what they want to get from their experience.

 

• What are your goals with our working relationship?
• How do you like to be managed?
• What are your money/client/career/sales goals?
• What is your sales experience?
• How do you approach sales?

 

Exercise: Take a look at a standard monthly sales total. Then, try out the below exercises every day for a month and compare the potential sales increases.

 

Teaching sales as a service:

No matter who is on your team, training them with the mindset that sales are a service can be a game-changer. Hopefully, you carry products and use salon supplies that you believe in. Your products should work with a variety of skin types and be things you would recommend to your best friend, mom, or sister. If your client is suffering from ingrown hairs, for example, you know that Ingrown Hair Serum (Hair Puller) can remedy her issue. Not letting your client know about things that are going to help them is a disservice. That's why it's essential to know everything there is to know about a client's lifestyle and needs so that you can offer the right advice and recommendations.

 

We often think that casual conversations about our client's life or celebrity gossip are par for the course during a service. But every sentence uttered about Kim K is a wasted opportunity in learning your client's needs. It's OK to spill the tea here and there, but it's crucial to find the right balance in utilizing your time for maximum results for your sales and client satisfaction.

 

Exercise: Here is a list of talking points and questions you can give your team to ascertain their clients' needs so that they can provide the best educational solutions from Starpil Wax wax products and beyond. Ask them to try some of them out with their clients and discuss how they worked for them.

 

• How can your skincare routine be more convenient for your life?
• What is your least favorite thing about taking care of your skin?
• How are you liking the xyz you bought last time?
• What kind of post-wax care have you tried in the past? What worked, what didn't?
• How much time do you like to spend in the mornings before work getting ready?
• How are you applying it?
• What kinds of results would you like to see from your after-wax care? 

Find your client's pain points so that you and your team know exactly which products, application techniques, or lifestyle hacks to offer to make your product recommendations spot-on relevant. You never want to sell people anything that they don't need. Your team should pride themselves on building long-term trust and client-loyalty over short-term sales (which might include returns, complaints, and a loss of credibility).

 

Education as a service:

When you see someone needing help with bad style or bad makeup, you may want to run up to them so badly and tell them how to get it right. The cool thing about working in the beauty business is that people are coming to you for advice. From start to finish, teach your staff how to wax to provide valuable learning experiences for their clients. They should talk about the what, why, and how of certain products and techniques their using. They should go into ingredients, why they apply it the way they do, and why they've chosen it for this client and service.

Here’s some great education to send to clients: Don’t Go to the Wax Salon without These Tips 

Education is about sharing tips and tricks and finding the balance between casual conversation and providing solutions. When you use the above questions to determine a client's needs, it is easier to pick and choose which products and techniques are most essential for your clients to hear about. Educating your client expands their awareness of what's going on with a client’s skin, makes you look like the Bill Nye the Science Guy of waxing, and positions the products and techniques you're using as more than just some foo-foo-la-la pampering, but something that your clients can't live without! 

Exercise: Pick a daily educational point that you'll want your esthies to share with each of their clients. Give them tips and tricks on how to approach the subjects with their clients. This will help create educational habits among your team members. Here are some examples.

 

• The difference between hard wax vs. soft wax.

No matter what service, it's refreshing to flex your waxing knowledge about why you choose (for example), blue film hard wax over even the best soft wax for the service being performed.

 

• Which salon supplies and wax products are your favorites and why?

Talking about your salon tools (especially the ones you retail) can position products as solutions in an organic way.

 

• How to prevent acne after waxing.

This topic showcases after-wax care products and how to use them along with other tips for preventing acne after waxing.

 

• Eyebrow waxing

There are so many opportunities to upsell services surrounding eyebrow waxing and education. There are many ways to up your clients' eyebrow game from eyelash tints to lash lifts and eyebrow retail.

 

Offering sales training:

If you use Starpil Wholesale for your salon supplies or retail, or even another brand, you might be able to upgrade or reach out and have a brand rep come to your salon or spa to give you and your team a refresher course on the products you carry by them. Your Starpil Wax rep, for example, is a seasoned beauty educator in their specific field and the ultimate cheerleader for talking about the best professional wax for hair removal. They can answer questions and provide printed materials for your team to refer back to regarding anything in your hard-wax kit from blue film hard wax, and all things strip wax to any of the products you use by them. This can boost morale and increase your team members' product knowledge to pass on to their clients.

 

One of the most valuable things you can offer as an employer outside of healthcare, sick pay, or maternity leave is education. If you're unable to provide some of the former, make education a stellar benefit to working at your wax salon.

 

Ask your sales rep questions like Why is My Wax Tearing and Cracking?

Competition and teamwork:

Find the balance of competition and collaboration to avoid a cutthroat environment. Here is a list of fun exercises to keep sales-and morale up.

 

• Appoint weekly team captains to teams mixed with your strongest pros and room-to-grows to achieve a particular sales goal. (The team who sells the most eyebrow waxing aftercare gets…!) Always keep the teams rotating with different people. At the end of the week, discuss what worked and didn't work.

 

• Practice group effort "pizza party" realness within your team. Find incentives for your team to look forward to weekly or monthly. (As a team, if we reach this goal, we can add a new hard wax kit station to the salon!)

 

• Run your salon like a marketing company by having meetings filled with ideas from everyone on topics from how to build a community to increase sales. (OK team, what can I provide so that we know how to wax in a way that sets us up for successful sales?) 

 

Consider how you see your team:

The most beneficial aspect of boosting sales is how you relate to your employees. If your managing style is "my way or the highway," you're not going to get very far in a healthy environment that fosters trust or success. If you try to exert your authority without providing the support needed or think that you're above them—there will be no trust. If you're one who doesn't like to discuss important issues or allow feedback from your team, it's not going to be pretty for you, your salon sales, or future Glassdoor reviews.

 

These people are your partners in a certain sense. They're also entrepreneurs within your business. You're providing the marketing and the overhead and building to bring the customers in, but your staff is offering you a big chunk of their lives and getting those clients to come back. This is a team effort that starts with you. The harvest of sales comes from the seeds you plant within your team. 

 

Final Thoughts

Growing sales are a product of using the best salon supplies in your soft or hard wax kit, providing stellar results, using sales and education as a part of your services, and creating a winning team environment. What have you tried to boost your team's selling abilities? What have been your pain-points with sales in the past? What from this article will you try to turn it around? If you've found this article helpful, please share and let us know your thoughts in the comments below or in our Facebook group, The World of Waxing!

 

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