How to sell more products in your salon in 6 easy steps
Your time is limited. Because of that simple fact, you can't have a 100 customers every day.
But you can sell a 100 products.
Product sales can transform your salon from a solid business, to a great one. Becoming good at churning out products is thus an absolute key if you want a bit more cheddar in your life.
In this guide, I'll go over a four step process that will help you and your staff sell more products in your salon.
Let's get started.
Know your products
This is a fundamental one, but I still see many salon owners taking in a lot of products that they don't necessarily know a lot about.
If you don't know your products, it's a lot harder to sell them.
And even if you're a natural sales-person and manage to sell your products despite not knowing a lot about them, it's less likely that your customers will be happy about the product they got from you, making them less likely to want to buy from you again.
The best way to learn about a product is to actually try it out, or get one of your staff members to try it out. Preferably, you should try it out a couple of times and see what the result is.
If for some reason you can't try out the product, there are of course a lot of ways you can still learn about it. Ask your supplier to give you content to check out. Check if there are some product reviews on Youtube, or simply google it and read reviews on Amazon or other places.
Then, as soon as you find something useful, don't hesitate to share it with your team on whatever messaging app you use to communicate.
Ask Questions to learn about the customers problems
Salons are very unique in the sense that you get to spend a lot of time with your customers. During that time, inevitably conversations are bound to happen. And as the stylist, where that conversations goes is in large part up to you.
During those conversations, you should ask questions that might reveal any problems your customers might be having. If you're a hair stylist for example, you can ask questions like:
- What's the most annoying thing about your hair?
- Have you been experiencing any problems with your hair lately?
- What does a bad-hair-day look like for you?
- When are you the most happy about your hair?
- What kind of shampoo do you use?
During such conversations, your customers are very likely to tell you about something about a problem they've been having with their hair.
And if you know your products, you very well might just have the solution for them!
Give an example of how this problem was solved before.
After you've revealed a problem that your customer deals with, and you know a product that might solve their problem, there are still a lot of ways for you to botch the sale. From here on out, you have to be strategic.
A great way to go about the sale is to tell your customer about another customer that had a similar problem that got solved with the product you have in mind for this customer.
I recommend you say something like
Ahh yeah, there are a lot of people that have this issue. Actually, one of my friends has the exact same problem, and I gave her product X to see if it helped and it really did!"
These types of stories validate a lot in the eyes of your customer. In their mind, they go:
If her friend managed to solve the problem, why can't I?"
The most powerful question
From here on out, I recommend an incredibly powerful question. It's so effective I can hardly believe it sometimes.
The question is very simple. It's:
Do you think it would be a bad idea for you to try the same product?
It seems so harmless, but it's lethal. It's quite drastic to say "yes" to this question, so almost nobody does. And since nobody says "yes", everyone defaults to a:
No, it would definitely not be a bad idea
Which leads easily to the conclusion that they should buy the product.
Simple, but seriously powerful
Follow up
Everybody wants to find the perfect product for them. The reason for the process I've described thus far is to help you and your customer find that product for them.
The hope is that your first sale leads to a lot of others. Selling the same product to the same customer again and again.
So, the next time the customer comes, you have to be ready for a follow up.
The next time she comes, and you're in front of the register, ask:
Did you like product X?
If not, you can start suggesting new products that might help her with her problem.
But if she liked it, simply ask:
Would you like to grab another bottle?
Do this often enough with the same customer and eventually you'll find the perfect product.
The problem with this method is that it gets hard to keep track of what customer bought what product unless you have memory glue in your mind.
For those that don't have memory glue, Noona POS keeps track of all the sales you've made to each customer.
When checking out with Noona POS, you immediately see what the customer has bought in previous visits.
Go for it!
Product sales are a great way to increase the profits of your business.
But it can be tricky to sell products without the right approach. Hopefully, the approach I described here above can help you cut through the noise and turn your business into a product-selling-machine!
Try it out and let me know if it's working for you. You can contact me at jonhilmar@noona.is any time of the day.
All my best ❤️
