Last week we received quite a bit of response from our Blab “How Cosmetic Outlets Slay Spas”. Everyone wasn’t happy and they let us know so. Many felt as though dirty spa laundry shouldn’t be aired in public.
We never saw it coming. I must admit that it gave us pause.
But then we received an e-mail from the co-owner of one of the largest membership spa clubs in the U.S. who wanted to know more. Read More
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
I’d never heard of GripeO. Then last week I received a direct message from @GripeO_Outreach on Twitter. They were following up on an article published on Huffington Post about my lousy spa experience. They wanted to know if I was interested in escalating my complaint to senior management. Because I constantly write about the impact of social media on the spa industry I wasn’t surprised. The fact that I had been tracked on Twitter by a consumer service company was prophetic and intriguing. I wanted to learn more about GripeO_Outreach so I spoke with the CEO, Mike Klanac.
Growing up as an introvert I learned to adapt to an extroverted world. It wasn’t easy; sometimes it was just plain difficult. But I discovered that the axiom is true; what doesn’t kill you does truly make you stronger. Acting like an extrovert has had its rewards; it was necessary to develop that muscle and flex it hard if I wanted to be successful.
And successful I was. But after 15 years in corporate America as a training manager, it became too exhausting to play that game every day so I decided to switch gears and work in the spa industry. Read More
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”
