Your appointment book is your business’s engine. It’s what drives your business. A busy appointment book means more business, a quiet one means more prayers.

But your appointment book is more than this, it is the function that manages one of your salon’s most important resources – time.

A good receptionist will make clients happy they phoned your salon. They will take down all the appointment details correctly, communicate well with their colleagues and simply ‘gets things done’. And the business will run smoothly.

An expert receptionist also understands the value of time. In fact every hour of the day, every day of the week, every week of the month and every month of the year has a different time value.

And this ‘time value’ is driven by demand e.g. There is less demand for appointments on a Monday or Tuesday than there is on a Friday and Saturday. And we all know about quiet times of the month and quieter months of the year.

Enter one expert receptionist!  She (or he) will, In addition to the above will sell time! She will not ask the client to choose the time and day of her next appointment. She will try to guide (sell) her to the quieter times and sell those first.

By now you will know which days are the busiest (Fridays and Saturdays) and which times of the days are most popular. This will probably differ from salon to salon. Now the skill is in trying to get the client to make an appointment outside of those busy times. For example asking the client if she would like to come in at the beginning or towards the end of the week gives you the opportunity to sell Mon-Wed appointments of Thursdays if she would like the second half of the week. Asking her if she would prefers mornings or afternoons gives you the opportunity to offer times outside the most popular ones.

Obviously, if a client knows she wants an appointment for 10am on Friday there is no sense in trying to sell another time or day. But not every client does so,  if you can successfully recommend quieter times and days to 50% your clients the result will a much busier appointment book.

Another way of ‘selling’ time to your clients is to pre-book the next appointment before the client leaves the salon.

This dynamic use of time will impact on your turnover by as much as 40%.

Certainly supports the argument that receptionist should be well trained and well paid.