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by Douglas Preston
If there’s any one business hurdle almost every spa or salon owner seems to share it’s that we can’t seem to get our service staff to get comfortable with retailing personal care products. It’s as if we’re asking  them to open the phone book and cold-call total strangers for new business. We have shelves stocked with effective skin and body care essentials. We have brochures, samples, and sales commissions yet only that rare individual who oddly enjoys product sales ever participates in the retail program. We have a lot invested in that inventory and, by now, we know that product sales are critical to our profitability, but we don’t have the strategy to make our retail department perform as well as our service sales do. How do you fix this?
The first step in solving the problem is to understand it thoroughly. In my consulting work I break every business dilemma down to its smallest sub-component, examine the pieces carefully, and then re-assemble the service or department using an improved plan. Most spa and salon owners spend more time reacting to business challenges rather than investing time learning about their origins. It’s also easy to forget now that we’re on the other side of the manager’s desk what our own attitudes were about our professional responsibilities when we were the service employees. Funny how a shift in professional position can erase former perspectives and yet it’s the value of our past experience that prepares us for a management role, regardless of how dysfunctional some of that experience was! Read on.
I’ll try to simplify a complicated problem, first, by examining the most common reasons spa and salon employees shirk retail sales, and then by offering some interesting and very workable solutions for this. I’m not talking about a single-dose tonic here—it’s going to require some learning and additional work invested on your part. But if you’re seriously concerned about all the revenue you’re losing because of anemic employee sales enthusiasm then you’ll find the effort tremendously worthwhile.
Why They Don’t Want to Sell (anything!)
 To understand why spa and salon employees avoid retailing like a dentist appointment you need to know how they feel about the act of selling, what they think it is and how they think (and fear) their clients will respond to them while doing it. Look at the common descriptions of sales and selling salon employees report to me during my sales training classes:
Q: What is your concept of a salesperson?
A: Predator. Insincere. Greedy. Pushy. Only interested in making the sale. Aggressive. Dishonest. Unprofessional.
It’s interesting how rarely I receive anything positive when asking for perceptions about sales and salespersons. And if our employees associate these sentiments and images of sales with themselves while engaged in retailing salon products how likely are they to feel excited or encouraged about doing it? Not very.
Q: Does your sales commission motivate you to sell products?
A: At the standard 10% not at all.
As the commission percentage rises so does the sales enthusiasm but income potential alone does not seem to be enough to disarm the negative ideas and feelings employees have with regards to selling.
Q: Do you receive enough sales training?
A: No, never enough.
I’ve seen more than one spa manager swell in disgust when their team tells me this. They know they’ve had retail classes on several occasions from product vendors and even sales trainers—so how can these people say they don’t receive adequate training? I’ll tell you later why they’re absolutely right about that.
Q: Was retail sales performance ever described as an essential professional obligation when you were hired for this job?
A: Not really.
 Is a picture developing for you here? It’s been right in front of us all the time but we, as managers, have been looking at the wrong indicators while trying to solve our sales problem. Let’s put it in a nut shell:
The reason our employees are reluctant or unwilling to actively sell the salon or spa’s products is because:
1. They’re afraid to be rejected because of the negative ideas they have, and believe their clients have, about salespeople.
2. The retail commission is too insignificant to motivate sales and defeat deep-seated selling fears.
3. Whatever training they’ve received didn’t address the ideas that prevent sales enthusiasm.
4. No one ever said that they had to sell products in order to get and keep their job.
All these sales-killing beliefs and attitudes boil down to one simple and expensive fact—that management has failed to train, inspire, and reward the spa or salon sales team with sufficient potency to make product dusting unnecessary. Worse still, when product sales is an employee option, many will simply opt not to do it no matter what the potential rewards might be. Instead they’ll concentrate fully on angling for a larger service commission as a means of making more money on the job. So unless you want to spend the remainder of your business career wishing that your employees would take product sales seriously, it’s time to create a serious sales program in your business.
 Designing A Sales Program that WORKS!
You don’t need to hire Zig Zigler to get your company retail program on track, but you do have to give this part of your business the same careful attention and skill development that you’re probably devoting to your services. Take your eyes off retail performance even temporarily and you’re likely to witness a swift downward turn in the numbers. Consistent retail follow-through is remarkable easy for employees to overlook, and service providing spa owners are often the worst in sales volume among the staff.
What’s needed is a business culture that routinely integrates retail and into all of its service programs—one that makes selling easy, non-threatening and, most importantly, a zero-option activity. This last point, the zero-option in completing product recommendations with clients is key because an optional policy means that you have no policy whatsoever. Don’t even try it.
I recommend the following plan as a model for designing a truly productive retail sales program in your business:
1. Commit to making retail sales a required and measured responsibility of your service employees. This means determining what the minimum monthly sales level should be for a full and part-time employee and establishing that as a benchmark for maintaining satisfactory job performance. You’ll need to decide upon an ascending rate for new employees who are learning product lines and  building a clientele, and another for seasoned technicians. Employees who fail to consistently achieve a reasonable sales standard should be consulted, offered additional sales training and support or, if nothing will work, reconsidered as a worthwhile member of your spa team.
It is especially important, not to mention fair, that you clearly spell out the sales responsibilities and standards for all new job candidates before offering them a position in your company. This little detail will save you many headaches, misunderstandings, and more than a few dollars.
2. Train well and train often in the art and science of spa retail sales! Don’t rely on vendor product knowledge and treatment classes to substitute for bona-fide sales skills training. Most vendor classes do not promote independent thinking or flexibility in product line selection. You need to know how to sell whatever you happen to be selling regardless of a manufacturer’s “philosophy” or the preferences in brand-loyal therapists. The company should reserve the right to sell what it wants and needs to sell because, as we all know, some product marriages become divorces but the need to do business as usual continues for both former partners.
 Look for sales education that’s open to multi-line sales and focuses more on overcoming employee sales fears and objections rather than treatment strategies. All the ingredient and application knowledge in the world will do little to lure a fundamentally fearful employee closer to the retail shelves.
Also, don’t depend on samples, brochures, printed bag, and even a national advertising campaign to put tooth into your retail program. Nothing does the job better than direct therapist-to-client product endorsement. So-called “sales support tools and materials” can easily encourage an employee to let those materials do the selling for them, and they don’t do a very good job on their own. Those ads and samples are reflected in the wholesale price you pay for your retail products, and as spas and salons demand more support from vendors the pressure to increase product prices elevates as well.
3. And speaking of product… if you want to offer your employees a motivating sales commission, that is, one above the customary 10%, you’ll need to consider selling at least some products that suggest a markup beyond 100%. Most spas can scarcely pay even a modest sales commission to employees when the price of a retail item is merely doubled. Once you have subtracted your cost of sales and operating overhead, little if anything remains in the way of bottom-line profit. It can take considerable sales volume to close that gap. A faster and better way would be to supplement your name-brand products at the 100% markup level with private-label options that offer 200-500% markup opportunity. These products are generally high in quality, have excellent packaging, but leave the marketing and branding up to the customer thus allowing substantial savings in the wholesale price. Since most products sold in spa and salons are driven by the recommendations of service technicians you should have no difficulty in successfully promoting and selling your own signature brand. Additionally, signature brands help you to protect your retail business from competitors who sell identical product lines.
With a higher gross profit margin coming from retail sales you can now afford to provide employees with sales commissions ranging in the 20+% levels—a truly meaningful compensation for anyone taking your retail program seriously.
4. Routinely promote sales participation through contests and performance recognition programs. The best way to discover what will really inspire your employees to engage in a contest is to ask them. I learned that a $150.00 gift certificate toward new shoes at Nordstrom was far more productive than a$200.00 hotel and dinner prize offered in an earlier contest. What turns you on may earn a yawn from someone else. Ask for suggestions at a staff meeting and go with the prize that generates the most enthusiasm. Set a minimum sales number for qualifying in the contest—you don’t want to give the prize to an employee who sold one item while no one else sold anything. We want to reward performance, not accidental sales, and we should expect to profit from the increased volume.
Be patient with the learning curve of your employees who must adapt to new techniques and standards. Some will leap from the starting gate while others defiantly stand still. Generously praise your star performers in the presence of other staff members without indicating disappointment in those whose sales weak. Everyone deserves time and support to work on improving retail sales skills. But don’t wait forever for those who refuse to include retail in their list of professional responsibilities. They may have a devoted client following and a wonderful personality but ultimately the sales-stubborn will cost you money and telegraph to others on your staff that your company policies are soft.
Best of luck to you! |
