If you are a first-time beauty salon manager, you might be overwhelmed by the rush of customers, managing your staff and expenses, and so many more things. There are various trials and hurdles you will have to cross in order to reap the benefits of joining the beauty industry.
But no matter how tough, with the right kind of determination and resilience, you will easily be able to manage your salon successfully and earn a name for yourself.
Having to manage a salon without proper guidance can often end up in a mess, so here are five tips for you to manage your beauty salon successfully.
1. Make use of customer complaint services
Reviews, both good and bad, form the backbone of your salon. While good reviews make you feel proud and happy, negative reviews tend to make one feel upset. But you must see this as an opportunity to better your salon and its services.
Only when you look at your beauty salon through the eyes of your customers will you be able to understand where you are going wrong.
First, check if your salon has a complaints log or not. If it doesn’t, install one as soon as possible. Make a list of things like:
What are the issues that most customers are facing?
Which employees do customers complain about the most?
Are the complaints made by the customers handled properly?
2. Have a vision
No plan is truly successful without a proper vision in mind. Establish your goals for the next one year or so, and discuss this thoroughly with your team.
Your goals can be anything – from winning more awards to attracting more customers through marketing strategies – as long as they benefit the company as a whole. You may even give a name to your mission statement and work accordingly.
Ask your teammates and co-workers to list down their visions too. If you feel there might be a clash of viewpoints, discuss this politely with each other. Only when you work together will you be able to grow together.
3. Observe
Often, observing things carefully forms most of the real battle. During the first few weeks or months of your new position as manager, you’ll be guided and trained accordingly. Be sure to observe and take mental notes as much as possible.
See how your employees are folding towels, conducting beauty samplings, cleaning, or handling reception. During this time, be their team member, not just a manager. When you take time to blend in and adjust, your employees see you as a true leader and approach you with their woes.
If you don’t take time to observe and learn everything, your approach might seem abrupt. This will alienate you from your employees who will see you as dominating or controlling. So the right kind of bonding and blending is essential in the first few weeks of your training.
4. Have an exclusive line of products
If you have an exclusive line of salon products all lined up neatly, customers will be attracted more. Make sure these products are premium-quality and professionally placed.
Check if these same products are available on sites like Walmart and Amazon or not. If they aren’t, then it’s a very good thing. Have these products placed for professional use and never overpay for products from famous brands because you expect customers to do the same.
Choose wisely which products go well and which do not. Many a time, beauty products that seem to be from renowned brands are not really the best.
5. Think outside the box
It’s good to observe your competitors and see where you can improve. But if you end up copying every other salon within a 3-mile radius, all of you will end up with the same services and customers won’t have anything different to say about you.
So you’ll have to be creative and think of strategies that are truly different from others places. Look for inspiration outside the beauty industry.
The global cosmetics market was around $380.2 billion in 2019 and is expected to be $463.5 billion by 2027. So it pays to think and do differently than others in such a huge industry.
Over to you…
These five tips will easily help you to become a renowned salon manager in your area. If you handle things cleverly and creatively, you’ll achieve success in no time!
