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02. Don’t Believe Everything I Say

When I spoke last time it was about the Italian Stallion and the 80/20 Principle, the irony is that 80% of you will do nothing about putting the principle to work for you.  And given the profundity of the principle not only in your business but also your life, I have to ask myself why?

Funnily enough, I do know the answer; I am the Queen Bitch of Everything after all.

But, before I answer the question listen to this story.

A few years ago a salon owner was facing a large and unexpected tax bill. She had 60 days to raise the capital but knew the predicted cash flow over that time would not be enough, nor was there enough money accrued in the savings.

So after having a bit of a melt-down and a minor panic attack she came up with the following plan: She made a list of the top 20% of the salon’s clients, clients who had spent the most in the salon in the last 12 months. Then she sent them a series of emails over 15 days asking them to book and pay for all their future appointments for the following 12 months.

The offer was sweetened by the fact if they did they would not only have all their appointments booked, but they would lock in their prices at the previous year’s rates.

The rates for the coming year were being raised 20%.

At the end of the 15 days she had raised £72,000.00. Enough for the tax bill and more.

She was clever and used the 80/20 Principle to her considerable advantage.  But most salon owners aren’t.

The reason that business owners don’t put the 80/20 Principle to work for them is because they don’t believe it is real. It’s not that the numbers don’t make sense to them, it’s that they have an emotional reaction to it and think it is wrong.

Well thinking is a dangerous sport when it comes to marketing your salon successfully and brings to me to the idea of Testing and Measuring.

I know the things I will ultimately share with you work as I have spent years doing them. But you shouldn’t just take my advice and you shouldn’t assume that the things I do or my colleagues do will give you the same result.

In fact, not everything will give you the same result and you may not get the same result every time. But what I will share with you has been tested and proven in the real world and definitely in salons like yours.

Everything I share with you is worth testing because it has generally been shown to work for most businesses most of the time in most circumstances.

For now you need to know that a lot of the tactics I will show you will be counterintuitive to your ‘feelings’ about marketing your business.

You will also ask your friends, family and staff what they ‘think’ and you will get a lot of opinions for sure, but what you won’t get is facts. When you are presented with any marketing advice or principles, you want to test them and then measure them to see what results you get and if they are going to work for you.

The only way to get the facts is by testing.

If you are going to take the view that “This won’t work for me because…” or “I know my clients won’t like….” you are setting yourself up for an unsuccessful business. Empirical evidence and hard results should be all you are after to know what works.

The 80/20 Principle works.

Testing and measuring show it to be a fact.

Don’t dismiss it because it feels uncomfortable and seems ‘wrong’.

Warmly,

Kat

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P.S. Yes the salon owner in the story was me. And it’s all true. It worked so well I repeated it. Well that’s what you do when something works isn’t it? Repeat it.

P.P.S. If you can’t wait for the next article and want to know more, get your FREE copy of my book Grow Your Salon FAST here. Just enter the code GSGVIP when prompted. You will have to invest in post and packaging so I know you are committed to reading it.  But don’t worry, your money is safe with my 100% Money-Back Guarantee. Click here to find out more.