I just finished reading Day Spa Association’s Retail Sales Snapshot Report for 2016.
Sales are up. However, if your retail to service sales were from 0-20% you only saw a maximum of 3% growth in 2015. Read More
Linda Harding-Bond
August 21, 2016
Tag benefits
Linda Harding-Bond
March 20, 2015
Selling the Sales Pitch
Tags: Asia, benefits, best, Bonus, brands, consultant, consulting, customized, diversity, Gill Morris, incentive, instructor, Lorna Mcleod, management, Moontide Consulting, negative, on-line, performance, product, results, retail, revenue, sales, selling, senior, spa, success, task, taught, teacher, Thailand, trainer, training, workshops Training
Most therapists enter the spa industry with the idea of providing service, helping or healing. The problem with retail sales training is that more often than not, the service component is not emphasized.
The view that retail is a customer service component and not the cumbersome additional task many therapists see it as, is one that is shared by Lorna Macleod, spa manager at Ribby Hall Village in Lancashire. “I always say to the therapists, don’t look at retail as a negative, look at it as a positive.
If you went to the doctor with a sore throat and the doctor didn’t give you anything for it, you’d feel cheated and I think it’s the same with spas,” she says. “We need to give customers something to take home that enables them to continue the benefits they see and the great feeling they have when they’re in the spa. If we don’t do that then we, as therapists, are not doing our jobs properly, we’re not fulfilling the clients’ needs and concerns.”
The problem, Macleod continues, is that therapists are afraid of retailing. “All therapists are frightened of retail because they feel as if they’re asking something where they’ll get a no back and no-one likes rejection,” she says. Gill Morris, director of training and consultancy provider GMT Training, which offers courses in areas that include sales training for spa and beauty therapists, agrees.
“Therapists are frightened to death of selling and that’s because they don’t know how to do it,” she says. “Education for therapists focuses very much on treatment, so they actually don’t know how to sell and don’t feel comfortable with the process of selling. That’s because they haven’t been taught it and if you haven’t been taught something, you don’t know how to do it.”
While many spas offer retail bonuses and incentive these, Morris explains, will have no effect if the skills required to push sales are not there to begin with. And while brands may be excellent at providing product training, product knowledge alone is not sufficient
Excerpted from Professional Spa and Wellness June issue “Selling the Sales Pitch”
Linda Harding-Bond
March 9, 2015
In theory the process of retail selling is easy. But when you’re a spa therapist and an introvert, the questions that you want to ask your client and the recommendations you’d love to make for them may get stuck somewhere between your brain and your mouth.
Here’s my advice; truly focus on your client, you’ll find that a lot of your nervousness will go away. Ask your client what brought them to you today. Don’t just ask them how they feel because most people respond with a simple “fine” or “ok”.
But if they were fine they probably wouldn’t be spending their time and money at the spa. So ask them specifically what brought them there. Ask them what they want to accomplish from their visit. And then use your advantage and power as an introvert and listen closely to their answer.
Determine the best course of action. Don’t EVER be afraid to recommend another treatment if you know that it is more appropriate. Be confident in your knowledge,you are the expert. There is nothing more disappointing than spending time and money on a treatment that did absolutely nothing! I recently went to a therapist for a Thai massage and she told me that it wouldn’t alleviate my neck pain the way that an oil massage would. Guess what? She was right.
Once you determine the correct treatment, focus on which products are needed for your client to continue their treatment and healing at home. (I’m assuming that you have knowledge of the products your spa carries). Make your recommendations by remembering to TSTS. Tell, smell, touch, and sell.
Inform your client of the product’s benefits and why you think it’s best for them, let them smell the aroma, allow them to touch it and feel the consistency. It will sell itself if you are enthusiastic about it.
Now go out there and rock that retail!