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Yeah
they’re everywhere now. New day spas are springing up
like toadstools after a rain. Seems that all you need to get
in on parade is a water spigot, some paint, and a stencil
to add the overused title to yourbusiness’s
sign. Voila! You’re a day spa! The sudden profusion
of plush or “me too” spa facilities has produced
sentiments  among the more established players that range from
annoyance to panic. Spa owners find themselves jealously sizing
up the threat that each new operation seems to present, looking
for their flaws and faults—any way to discredit the
legitimacy of a claim to the day spa distinction. And to make
matters worse these “unscrupulous” competitors
sniffed out your business while planning their own, and even
managed to lure away a few of your formerly loyal employees!
How could people be so sneaky and unethical? Forget
about it.
Look, you don’t have to love your new neighbors but
wasting time fretting about the effect they might have on
your own operation won’t help you address the real issue
at hand, that is, how to be the best on the block. And despite
the coming competition the good news is that it’s easy
to shine in the crowd—you just have to be willing to
focus on the parts of your business most others will often
choose to under-develop or ignore altogether. It’s not
the spa that has the deepest pockets that’ll prevail
over the others but rather the one that knows what spa customers
want most, and then delivers it to them consistently.
Now you really have something!
Before you spend too much energy circling the wagons to defend
your spa business let me share with you the surest way to
keep your customers, your employees, and your cash flow healthy
and happy. If you follow my advice you’ll avoid wasting
time and money reacting to perceived danger while building
a better and more competitive business.
Lesson
#1: Keep your cool.
It started with a rumor but now you have the news; a big luxurious
day spa is under construction uncomfortably close to your
own. Details pour in: they’ll have more treatment rooms,
more  locker facilities, that juice bar you couldn’t
afford when you were building and, dread of dreads, are offering
a higher pay scale than you! And it gets worse: they’ll
have a meditation lounge, more wet rooms, and even a day care
facility. You’re dead, right? Customers and employees
will be flocking to the new spa faster than day traders to
the next IPO, won’t they? You can see it now, appointments
canceling, checks bouncing, all because your spa is suddenly
out of fashion with the local market. Do you borrow money
to remodel, give suicidal raises to employees, drastically
lower your prices? Or give up? Hang on.
If you’ve done a good job pleasing your customers and
staff, that is, really understanding what’s important
to them and investing in the quality of these values you will
have little to worry about. I’m talking about the things
your business can and should provide that they look for most
in patronizing and working for you. For customers it’s
overwhelmingly consistent service quality and personalized
attention. They want to be received and served by a genuinely
friendly staff who makes them feel at home and appreciated.
They don’t want uneven quality, self-centered spa professionals,
or anonymity. Clients want to belong—to feel safe, cared
for, and valued.
 Employees have very similar values as customers do. Poll
after poll demonstrates that employees value education, growth,
recognition and appreciation far more than their income potential.
They want an ethical and understanding boss who is both consistent
and forthcoming with positive feedback about the good work of their staff—something
so inexpensive to supply and yet typically spooned out on
rare occasions. And while most spa owners and managers I meet
rate their performance in these areas as excellent, interviews
with employees and a sampling of the service programs regularly
paint a strikingly different picture. I’m talking about
the communication problems, uneven treatment procedures and
timing, heavy-handed or weak management styles, and poor staff
training if any meaningful training exists at all. It’s
time to take stock of where your company stands in the crucial
areas of genuine performance quality and see to it that you
stand head and shoulders about everyone else in your local
spa market.
Lesson #2: Be the most consistent in everything you
do.
How would you rate your spa’s service and hospitality
quality compared to o around you? If you believe you’re
the hands-down winner you will be blind to performance deficiencies
customers and competitors will find easy to spot. How often
do you or someone you appoint shop your own business for a
quality check? How else can you know if the reception staff
is following the proper procedures or if therapists are short-cutting
on services without it coming from a client complaint first?
Are your employees thoroughly and uniformly trained on all
spa service and sales procedures, or customer service techniques?
Are you absolutely sure?
In order to be #1 in these critical quality areas you will
need to put the following key steps into place:
 • Know what you want. If your spa were a play
production you would expect everyone on stage to know their
lines, their places, the timing of their delivery, be in the
proper costume, and to omit every emotion, attitude, and display
of conflict not written into the script. A spa is in fact a play, that is, a place where customers are treated to a
temporary escape from the real world, and where they are willing
to pay for experience. Nothing else should be included. Begin
by knowing exactly what this experience is supposed to be
at your spa.
• Train everyone— again and again. Sure your performers know the script but it’s the frequent
rehearsals that keep the performance crisp and consistent.
Never expect that an infrequent training will suffice to prevent
your service quality from drifting into undesirable “interpretations”
over time. The effects of training are diminished by the day
and must be repeated routinely in order to produce the results
you want. This is the tedious but essential nature of business
management—any business!
• Measure the performance for quality. Take
a seat and watch the show. Look for weaknesses such as uneven
sales between staff members, and client complaints about specific
policies,  procedures, or certain individuals. Spot-check the
service schedule for efficiency or unapproved “line
outs” by poorly motivated employees. And send in an
anonymous agent to sample your services to look for the quality
compliance you as manager cannot see. If your sleuth emerges
from the facial cabin having learned more about relationships
than skin care it is a sure sign that your team has gotten
out of step! Only you can fix the problem.
Lesson #3: Price yourself higher than your competitors.
Okay, you think, now he’s lost it! But I’m dead
serious here. The best spa must also be the most expensive—how
else do you afford all that quality? If you plan to be different,
hopefully meaning different in a better way than everyone
else, you must also demonstrate that difference in your prices.
Market realities dictate that quality isn’t free, and
that you cannot and should not desire to be both the quality and low-cost leader. However, if you do elect to
be in the upper end of the spa market you must be
in the upper end of quality, period. It’s quite useless
to seek the business distinction of being the same as but
different than everyone else. It just won’t sell.
Lesson#4: Love your customers and your employees shamelessly!
 I
know I’m repeating myself but this point seems to need
it in our business. If you want your loyal following to stick
around then you must give them what they value most: attention,
appreciation, and inspiration. This is something you won’t
find on most drafting tables or business plans, and it’s
also something all-too-often taken for granted. But the one
thing your competitors can’t duplicate regardless of
their startup budgets is the unique and rewarding relationships
you forge between yourself, your customers, and your team.
Business managers who truly take care of their people (those
who value a structured and well-integrated environment, at
least) will find them firmly disinclined to leave for the prospect of finding it elsewhere. And while a pie-in-the-sky
promise may lure some away from you it will never be the ones
who prove to be the most valuable as employees or customers.
In times of change the weak are frightened away but the steady
will remain. You’ll discover in most cases relief in
having lost certain employees who were never the most productive
or cooperative among your team. We’ve seen competitors
gloat over having stripped away some of our employees without
knowing the productive quality or management compliance of
these people, and this false confidence has even prevented
them from conducting proper employee background checks. We
have a saying at our spa that the easiest fruit to steal from
a neighbor’s tree is that which hangs lowest to the
ground. Just put it out of your mind.
Lesson #5: Love thy enemy.
Nothing gives more power to your competitor than
outright hostility from you. Your exposed anxiety weakens
everyone’s confidence that you have faith in the strength
of your spa, and this perception can put into motion the idea,
no matter how unfounded, that the pasture just might be greener
over there. Retain all of your ethical fortitude. Don’t
denigrate the new spa. Don’t raid their employees or
pay too much to keep your own in place (let them go bankrupt first!). Avoid lowering your prices to undercut
the new spa or throwing in more expensive customer perks when
you don’t need to. In other words stick to what has
worked well for you and then do it even better. In all likelihood
the competitor will try not to be the same as you are which
will make your uniqueness more appreciable.
Following this formula you’ll probably find that not
only will your business continue to grow and prosper but you’ll
save  yourself a lot counter-productive worry and expense.
New spas are risky ventures at best that come without
any guarantees of success. You, on the other hand, have already
passed the initial test of business survival.
You have experience and operating wisdom that the new spa
will have to struggle hard to gain in an even more competitive
market than you did. Just be glad it isn’t you, and
get some sleep!
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