THE POWER OF COURSES
If there is one thing that is certain in these trying times, it’s that we need to establish guaranteed turnover and bums on our seats. One sure way to do that, is to sell your clients a course of treatments.
If they normally come to your salon twice a month for example; a blow dry, sell them a course of 4 blow drys at a discounted rate. That way you know that they will definitely come twice as much and this will have an increased impact on your normal turnover.
Your client paid upfront for their services which means every time they come into your salon to redeem one of her sessions in her course, there is no payment to be made, as she paid up front. The thing is… people are natural buyers. Subconsciously they want to buy something and not paying for the service deprives them from the feeling of buying, this in turn will then open the door for selling home care to your clients more often or even more services or products.
Selling, for example, a course for result driven treatments like slimming treatments or facial peels, that need to be administered to the client once a week or every second week and that needs to be completed in a certain time frame to get the desired result, will need to be enforced. You can put an expiration date on the course, to make sure the clients receive the right number of treatments in the correct time frame to produce the optimum results.
You will have to make sure you have clear signage to inform your clients about the expiration date. So, if the client does not utilize their sessions within the designated timeframe, they will forfeit their remaining sessions. This will ensure that the client will follow the treatment plan and receive the best results possible. It will prevent the client coming for their treatments only every month or once every 3 months, instead of every week or every second week and then they complain and state that the treatments do not work, which would not be true if the treatments were performed at the frequency explained. So, an expiration date can be of enormous benefit for both the client and the business.
Examples of courses would be:
(The terms for purchasing a course are that your client purchase and pay for the course upfront at a discounted rate, to avoid paying the discounted rate every time they visit for a service which defeats the purpose. You need to receive the payment upfront)
- Course of 5, 8 or 10 Sessions of Blow Drys
- Course of 5, 10, 15 or 20 Sunbed Sessions
- Course of Specialized Slimming Treatment Sessions
- Course of 3 or 6 Laser Treatment Sessions for specific areas
- Course of 5 or more Massage Sessions
- Any treatment you would want to sell a course of…
Selling the courses is easy. It is managing them for each client that can become cumbersome and often causes confusion in the tracking of how many sessions have been used. Especially, if your client has purchased more than one course. A lot of the time, recording a session used can be forgotten and the client can end up receiving an extra treatment for free, or worse more than one treatment for free. Or the client has used her sessions up and is insisting that she does have more and you cannot prove that she doesn’t or when you use the card system, this card can get lost if the reception keeps it, which can cost the business a lot of money, or the client forgets to bring it with.
Poor management of these courses can end up costing the business money, instead of generating profit.
My Salon Software has a very advanced courses and sessions management function. It is easy to follow and keep a record of all the different courses sold to clients and tracking of their sessions used. You can also provide your client with a courses statement.
Don’t work hard, work smart!