Reach your goal: Setting sales targets for your salon therapists

It's important when learning how to manage a salon business to give your sales team personalised attention and individual targets to ensure they know what is expected of them and they perform at their peak!

Achieving sales volume goals is one of the biggest challenges that any beauty salon owner or manager faces. Many factors, under or beyond your control can affect that final sales figure. 

One manageable factor is the people in direct contact with your clients on a daily basis – your staff who are also your sales team. This is why good salon customer service is an important tool for how to increase sales in beauty retail. Each person working in your salon is crucial to growing the business.

It is wise to set an overall company goal, so you all know what you want to achieve collectively. Look at the big picture as it relates to that goal and itemise the plan and what needs to happen to reach the salon sales goal. It is critical to the plan to let each person know and understand where they fit into your plans.

Now, some beauty salon owners ask every person on the team to meet the same sales goals, but not everyone is capable of achieving at the same level. Some beauty therapists are better with certain services, others have a natural ability when it comes to retail, others work best with a certain type of client. Since you can't ignore these variables, you should learn to master the art of flexibility. 

Clever salon managers work with each person on their team to discuss what is expected of them to keep their column profitable. Ideally, each employee should be evaluated based on their individual skills, experience, knowledge and training. One 10 minutes individual meeting per person a week is what I advise.

Begin the weekly meeting by thanking the individual for their effort and service to the salon. Review how they did with their sales last week (for both services and retail). Then ask what they might improve on next week. Hopefully, you will be pleasantly surprised by some of the creative answers that emerge. Use all of the information discussed to move forward with new goals for the coming week, which will be reviewed next week.

Let the team member be in control of their goals by asking what their income goal for the next week will be. Then break that figure down into reasonable daily goals. Again, have them commit to their belief in that goal being achievable. Motivating your staff is instrumental to increase sales in beauty retail.

Before finalising the meeting, talk about promotions, events or special offers that you are running, so they can work them into their weekly sales plans. It is your role to help and to motivate, so always end by asking what you could provide along the lines of product knowledge, selling skills training to help them to continue to grow and achieve their weekly sales targets.

This type of personal involvement in setting and implementing achievable goals for your team members will work in your favour. You will get to understand what each person believes they can do. In turn, they will know what you hope they will achieve. 

The real win-win is when each person knows that you care enough to help them set individual personalised goals, they will then do their best to meet your expectations. It can also help to strengthen the core beauty business goals for the salon.

Liz McKeon is a successful Business Coach, Trainer, Author and Mentor, whose expertise lies in growing small businesses from scratch and taking existing companies to profitability.