Top 10 Reasons Why I Can Never Retain Any Customers
What do your customers really want from you? No matter whether you're a salon, barber shop, spa or a complete wellness integrated centre - your customers want more than just great products and workable solutions for their grooming needs.
What they really want to know is that you, personally, are the type of person whom they can trust to get the job done.
Creative services - New perspectives and ideas
If customers could understand that they have a problem and come up with workable solutions on their own, they would do so. The reason that they're turning to you and your salon is that they're stuck and need your help. Therefore, you must be able to bring something new to the table even if means covering bad highlights with a darker global colouring.
Understand the customer - Be willing to collaborate
Customers just detest the sight and sound of someone trying to sell to them. Even if something's wonderful, they want you to work with them to achieve a mutual result. You can do this by being responsive to the customer's concerns and relevant problems. Ideally, customers want you to put yourself in their shoes, feel what they are feeling and then suggest corrective therapies. Customers need you to empathise. They want you to understand where they are, how their mind, body, hair and skin works, and the challenges that they face not just superficially, but in your gut.
Have confidence in your ability to perform services
Customers will not come to you and experiment with cosmetic or beautification services if you can't persuade them that you your team and your brand are equipped to achieve the promised results. It is nearly impossible to persuade a customer to believe in these things unless you yourself believe in them. You must make your confidence contagious .
Listen. Really, listen to the customer's requirements
When they're describing themselves, their skin, their hair, their body and it's needs, customers sense immediately when you are just waiting for a break in the conversation in order to launch into a 'sales pitch'. In order to really listen, you must suppress your own inner-voice and forget your goals. It's about the customer, not about you or your business needs at that point.
Understand ALL the customer's needs - Read between the lines
It's not enough to "connect the dots" between customer needs and your parlour's goals. You must also connect with the individuals who will be affected by your services. Understand how buying from you will satisfy their personal needs, like feeling nicer about themselves and more confident.
Help the customer avoid potential pitfalls - Be true
Here's where many beauticians and technicians fall flat. Customers know that every service they undergo entails risk but they also want your help to minimize that risk. They want to know what could go wrong and what has gone wrong in similar situations, and what steps you're taking to make sure these problems won't recur. For example a suggestion that the leave-in chemical at the time of hair bonding if kept for too long may permanently damage the hair, so it's better we keep it for lesser time even though that may not leave it poker straight. A customer will feel more secure in your hands if you openly discuss the pros-cons of any service they are undergoing. They expect you to tell them if taking the service you're providing is risky or it won't suit them or if it's just unnecessary or there are lesser expensive ways of achieving the same results. That takes real guts.
Craft a compelling solution - Don't just 'Do business'
Solution selling is definitely not dead . Customers want and expect you to have the basic skill of defining and proposing a workable solution for their needs. What's different now though is that the ability to do this is the 'price of entry', and it isn't enough by itself to win against a competing stylist or Spa. Customers don't have the time to sit and listen to cookie-cutter sales pitches of lousy services, however, they always have time for somebody who can redefine problems and devise workable solutions with convincing creativity.
Communicate the entire servicing process
Customers hate it when sellers dance around issues like price, discounts, availability, total cost, add-on options, and so forth. They want you to be able to tell them in plain and simple language, what's involved in a purchase and how that purchase will take place. No surprises. No last minute upsells. If a full body massage does not include a head massage, specify it before providing it and then surprising the customer at the time of billing.
Connect personally with the customer - Don't just be a beautician
Ultimately, every customer - masseuse / stylist / barber / technician / doctor, situation involves making a connection between two individuals who must like and trust each other. As a great guru once said: "All things being equal, most people would rather buy from somebody they like... and that's true even when all things aren't equal." In short, build a connect with your customer, whether new or existing.
Provide value that's superior to other options - Over deliver
And here, finally, at the No. 10 spot (below everything else) comes the price and how that price compares to services provided by other similar outlets. Unless you can prove that getting a particular treatment from you is the right choice for the customer, the customer can and will buy elsewhere. Having said that, this industry is price conscious for a few services but otherwise it's completely dependent on ones perception of the experience they may undergo and/or if it comes to them through word of mouth from the alike (Hint: Status Consciousness). The best customers don't want you to truckle and beg because they're trusting you to deliver. They want to work with proud, confident and successful people who can handle even the most difficult tasks.
Above all, customers want you to be honest with them. In fact, these 10 values are built upon a foundation of honesty. Without honesty, you have absolutely nothing to offer any customer.
