Salon Training Secrets from David McFarland
A true story about training that every salon operator must hear: In the early days as a sales trainer for ProTan & Fiesta Sun I vividly remember being at some random tanning salon in some god awful part of Ohio rattling off the plethora of secret ingredients I had memorized, and a horrifying thought hit me. Do I really suck at this? Just because I knew what was in all the products, it didn’t mean I could sell them! Even more importantly it didn’t mean I could TRAIN salon professionals on how to sell them! I was definitely well on my way to being fired :(
At the point of almost losing my job because I was awful, I decided to completely flip flop the way I trained salons. I spent the next 2 years honing my sales skills behind live salon counters. I focused on the art of creating engagement with a client, then using that report I had built to get them excited about their tanning session. Besides getting to keep my job a beautiful thing happened. As I became better at just plain ole interacting & talking with customers, that engagement opened the door to more product sales than I could have ever imagined!!
After that second year my job got unbelievably fun because I trained salons on what really mattered. Teaching them skills that would really make a difference in their tanning business! If they really honed what I taught, then they could take those skills into any sales job they would ever have.
The moral of this story: Focused & frequent salon training programs will always be the key to the success of your business. But not just any kind of training. The type of training that will make them better with the very heart & soul of your business- the customer! Create training programs that center around how to talk to clients and create relationships, not just product knowledge. Sure, product knowledge is great but if they can’t start a good conversation and build some rapport, they will never get a chance to even suggest a product!
The Ultimate Salon Training Secret: Once you get these training sessions going don’t stop. They only work if you do them on a regular basis because the only way to be confident and good at anything is practice, practice and more practice…. Good luck & happy training!!
PS I have several trips planned to the UK already so you never know when the Bliss team and I may pop in!!