I think that for most of us, (especially introverts) it takes a moment for any type of spa training to sink in. We need to mull it over and process it. Any questions that we have may not even formulate until we apply the process; do some hands on. But by then the trainer or consultant is long gone. Read More
For the past several years there has been an ongoing conversation about the difficulty of getting spa therapists to sell retail products. Most spa experts agree its important.. I gathered feedback from three industry insiders who shared their thoughts in recent publications.
Why does the word “selling” get such a negative response?
Nina Curtis, Founder and President of the Nile Institute weighed in this way. “Mainly because no one really wants to talk about it in the spa world where we believe it is only our position to make people feel good, well at least when it comes from the therapist’s mouth.”
Ouch. I totally agree and I’ve been saying similar things. It’s really critical. Remember when I said I taught myself to sell on the job? Seems Nina had the same experience. She says..
“I had this thought at one time as a therapist but only because during my basic cosmetology training no one presented sales as a part of my soon to be career. The same was true of my massage training. Nowhere during my training did any of my instructors present the importance of product selling in one of their lessons.”
Everyone in the company has a role to play in successful retailing and increasing revenue.
Industry veteran Lisa Starr knows this better than most. According to her, “Spas know that retailing is an important component of revenue generation, and yet many still struggle to reach hoped-for results. Who’s responsible for driving retail sales in your spa? Management? Therapists? Support Staff? Product Companies? It’s actually all of the above.
As with many initiatives, effective retailing starts at the top. The most impactful action management can take is to be purposeful in hiring and training staff who can create rapport with guests, and in creating compensation and advancement plans for therapists which include retailing benchmarks as part of the career path.
Without a doubt, therapists play the biggest role in retailing to spa guests. As the uniformed experts, their artfully presented home care suggestions, in tandem with their one-on-one interaction with the guest, will be the biggest driver of sales activity. Making home care recommendations MUST be part of every treatment on the spa menu.”
Lisa Starr– Spa Consultant, Management Educator, and Journalist
In Designed to Sell: Integrating Retail into Your New Spa Peggy Wynn Borgman talks about the importance of adding home care presentations to client workflow. She writes, “Our consultancy conducted a survey of spa shoppers that showed 93% of the spa client’s decision to buy home care was based on the recommendation of their spa technician or therapist.”
In the absence of recommendation, guests will buy familiar brands, sometimes refilling a product they’ve purchased in the past. This has led many spas to conclude that brands, not employees, are the most powerful source of sales. This simply isn’t true.
Massage therapists who post 10% of their total revenue in retail are top performers. Nail technicians and hair stylists who attain 15% retail ratio are stars. For estheticians, this number rises to 35-40% in the Stay Spa setting. But none of these employees have a chance to attain such numbers if they can’t easily make home care presentations to their clients as part of normal workflow. Most Stay Spas unwittingly make retail sales a challenge for even the most motivated employee.”
As you can see retail selling is spa has broad impact. But I feel it’s time for more spas to move beyond conversation and begin implementing. There is a culture shift that needs to happen. And if you’re not aware that this change is underway your spa is out of touch.
In my own experience, therapists who make on-point product recommendations raise the level of customer experience dramatically. This is why I focus on introverts and helping them use their natural listening skills. It shows that they are listening closely. It proves that they care enough about their guest to try and improve their well-being. This will keep your customers coming back.
So how do you do feel about spa retail training?
I became acquainted with Sheila Otieno-Osanya just four short years ago. Her consulting company The Spa People was gaining momentum and a fine reputation as she transformed many upscale award winning spas in Africa. Read More
In bench-marking studies from the past year, the average retail revenues at Five-Star hotel spas ranged from 3% to 10%. It’s a shame because with retail profit margins higher than services, they have the potential to represent 20-35% of the overall revenue earnings.
Some exceptional examples in the industry like The Spa at Hershey and Gianni Versace’s spa actually have signature retail lines which provide a whopping 45% of their profit.
But both have a system of selling that is consistent and effectively in place.
At too many spas, there is inattention to the impact of everyday processes. Employees perform with comfortable repetition without examining the effects or implications of their actions to the larger picture.
Here are three of the most common mistakes resulting in millions of dollars in loss of potential revenue for international hotel brands.
1. Non-existent Retail Process
In various parts of the world, spa intake forms that customers painstakingly fill out are required only for government compliance.
Shockingly, they are not used to initiate guest conversation because the therapists are unable to speak the customer’s language. So the form is simply ignored.
And in its stead, no process is put in place to ensure smooth communication between the therapist and guest. No mechanism or liaison is provided which guarantees that the appropriate treatment and product recommendations are given.
Guests are allowed to leave the spa without closure aside from paying their bill. Discussions about follow up treatments or home care never take place. This often results in feelings of disappointment. Of having paid a premium price for an experience that was nothing special and therefore unnecessary to repeat.
2. Non-selling Massage Staff
How many of your massage therapists sell retail products? With the exception of cruise ships, many upscale spas give massage therapists a pass on product recommendations. In many cases products that are perfect accompaniments and home care solutions to massage treatments are sitting in plain view on the shelves but they’re never mentioned.
Product recommendation is an important component to personalizing a guest’s experience. It’s a powerful and effective way to differentiate your brand from the competition. It has also been proven to stimulate return visits and customer loyalty.
By allowing your massage team to by-pass this step, your spa is sending a message that your level of service is inconsistent according to the treatment selected, and that sub-standard service is OK.
3. Annual Therapist Training
Does your spa team receive product training once a year that substitutes for “customer training”? Are you satisfied with it because its “free”? Guess what; it really isn’t free. It’s costing you a lot.
Product knowledge can now be accessed by almost anyone if they have access to the internet. Your customers often come to the spa equipped with far more product knowledge than your therapists.
To be competitive in today’s spa market, therapists must bring a different more relevant set of customer information skill sets. This requires regular training, feedback and refreshers.
If you’re not showing them how to deliver the best customer experience through active listening, engagement, treatment and product personalization your organization is behind the times and losing ground on revenue and repeat business.
Have you made any changes to the way you’re doing business in 2016?
A prospective client, the manager at an iconic Five-Star hotel spa in the Maldives told me that she lives on pins and needles every year because her staff is extremely weak at selling retail products.
When I asked how she explains her revenue numbers to senior management, she said “I only do an end of year reporting. We have a very rich client who flies in on his plane from the UAE each December. He brings his entire family and they purchase everything on our shelves.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Yet how many of us go to work each day with fingers crossed hoping for sales? When I first started out 19 years ago, that’s exactly what I was doing.
Well, there’s no need to be on pins and needles any longer.
I’ve partnered with Spa Standard to bring you a package that is highly affordable, convenient and language friendly. Most importantly, it will turn your team’s retail sales around quickly. Check it out here>> http://bit.ly/1U1JBWh
Huffington Post’s Workwell is an ongoing series about thriving in the workplace. When we at Moontide Consulting were asked to contribute we were highly honored.
As a spa training company which has merged with the best of digital marketing we decided to collaborate. Our featured article: The Intersection of Tech and Wellness.
Enjoy.
Despite the proliferation of introverts in the industry, old school methods of training are still being used in spas around the globe! This may be due in part because hospitality companies don’t often conduct personality assessments for their employees.
However, those of us who work in spas know that the serene atmosphere and mellow vibe tends to attract a more laid back soft spoken kind of person.
In the case of sales training, 99% of programs are designed for extroverts. Read More
Wellness is Hot! It’s gained global momentum and with drivers at the forefront such as Global Wellness Summit, or ISPA Conference and Expo there’s no slowing down.
Today Huffington Post began WorkWell, a series of blogposts and information on Wellness. What had initially been planned for one week has been extended to the end of January because of mass interest.
I’m really pleased to have my article Connecting the Dots Between Workplace Wellness and Therapist Training featured.
To check out WorkWell click HERE
As consumers become more knowledgeable about what other consumers are experiencing, the demands for excellent customer service increase. The vast majority of consumers say they will walk out of a store if they receive inadequate assistance from employees. Nowhere is this more impactful than in the luxury market.
Despite the importance of individual attention at luxury retailer stores, many consumers think today’s brands aren’t delivering. Only 38% of consumers said they receive better customer service in luxury retail than in non-luxury retail.
Want to read more of my article? It’s on Huffington Post-Click Here
Would Marilyn Monroe or Elizabeth Taylor have tolerated customer service shaped only by a checklist? No. Neither do today’s guests of The Beverly Hills Hotel, a favorite of those two actresses. While leading the 1,000 employees at The Beverly Hills Hotel and Hotel Bel-Air, I’ve seen how a customer’s experience can change based on something as small as a smile. At such moments, smooth operations and efficient processes are no substitute for an engaged, motivated employee with the instinct to do the right thing.
Yet luxury hospitality and retail businesses, like many other companies, can struggle to motivate employees. This is often a particular challenge with hourly-wage workers. Few organizations master it. As customers, we have all experienced an overworked and undervalued employee dismiss us with a shrug.
At our hotels, we keep our team motivated and our morale high by focusing on four important factors:
Financial Security
One of the most important ways that managers can help these employees be their best is to start by making them feel safe. Employees can only deliver great service if they have peace of mind. They can’t give their best if they are worried about their incomes or job security. Creating this sense of safety is really about speaking to two parts of each employee: his heart and his head.
Forgiveness
Fair pay is the basis for creating an organization where employees feel secure, but of course, it’s not enough. You also have to manage each employee’s emotions – that’s the heart. One of the most powerful ways to do this as a manager is to forgive errors. No matter how high your standards, perfection is beyond human reach. True forgiveness must be felt, not just stated.
When a person in my organization makes a mistake, I always try to ask: Are they repeating a mistake or making it for the first time? Can we forgive and teach? Sometimes the cerebral policy has to bend to the heart – because the employee made a mistake trying to do the right thing. Perhaps the employee took initiative to solve a customer problem for which we don’t have a policy. Looked at that way, maybe the mistake wasn’t a mistake after all.
It’s just as important to practice collective forgiveness. A hotel in San Francisco where I worked previously lost a 5-star travel rating after an inspector gave us a poor grade for front-of hotel experience. We had to connect head and heart to rally the team to win the rating back– even as customer volume was booming and we always felt short-staffed.
For two years, we nurtured excellence, meeting with employees one-on-one to analyze service. A secret shopper evaluated the team every six to eight weeks. At shift meetings, we shared the results, praising successes and noting mistakes. Individuals who scored well earned gift certificates or salary boosts. Soon, staffers were congratulating each other for 100% test scores. We shared positive reinforcement openly, but gave negative feedback privately, in combination with coaching.
Respect
When I arrived at The Beverly Hills Hotel, the employee entrance and locker rooms were, in the words of one colleague, “horrific” — quite run down and dirty. When you’re asking people to come to work in an ultra-luxury environment, this is a stark way to start the day. So we revamped the employee entrance to resemble the hotel’s iconic front-of-house arrival area for the guests — down to the green-and- white-striped canopy, palm plants, and red carpet. Today when employees come to work, they walk the red carpet, with music playing in the background. They have a sense of arrival and strong team morale.
Decisions like these lead employees to articulate not only that your company is a good place to work, but also why it is a good place to work.
Communication
To make employees feel safe, respected, and when necessary, forgiven, leaders have to make themselves available. At the Beverly Hills we have an open-door policy. Any employee can come see me with a question or suggestion. According to employee survey data, that policy helped overall employee engagement rise by 12% between 2010 and 2014. And at lunchtime, I frequently eat in the employee cafeteria, not the guest dining room, and I sit with different people in order to hear a range of feedback. This also gives me the opportunity to put our company’s good growth news front and center for our team, which reassures everyone in the organization – from the back office to the lobby – that their incomes are secure. It’s a positive, self-reinforcing loop.
To read the complete article by Edward A. Mady, Click here