5 Easy Steps to get MORE PERFECT CUSTOMERS!

From our research over the last 26 years in the salon and spa industry the most overlooked sources of profitable revenue growth is your current customer base.
While many salon/spa owners beat the drum espousing the importance of current customers, I have found that very few companies have a comprehensive current customer growth strategy that is communicated, monitored, and enthusiastically embraced by the entire organization. How about just a GOOD Referral Program?

Call MIKAL for a FREE 8 Page Referral Contest Idea Kit at 800-448-5420.

The first steps for getting more sales out of your current customers -- ranking your customers by sales and profitability and developing your Best Customer Profile.

Use your MIKAL Customer Ranking Report and run it with every criteria and print just 2 pages (not a ranking of ALL your clients) Once you have identified your best customers, you need to teach your employees to know who they are and to provide them with techniques and tools to uncover customer preferences and make every customer interaction count!

Five Techniques for Teaching Your Employees to "Grow" Your Current Customers

#1: Broadcast your Top Customers throughout the Organization
The first critical step to involving your team in growing currents customer is to share the Best Customer Profile. Be sure to include your Best Customer Profile as a primary part of your new employee orientation. We all talk with new employees about procedures, polices, company history and specific job duties. But rarely, if ever, do we let them know who are current best customers are, why they are important, and the profile characteristics of our best customers. These customers are the lifeblood of the organization and need to be top of mind with everyone. On an ongoing basis, broadcast your top customers throughout the organization. Everyone from the receptionist to the Salon/Spa Owner should receive a monthly "best customer case study" that provides an overview of one of your best customers, why the company is important, what its current status is and the value of that customer.
Use the MIKAL Advanced Daily Action Report to get a report of your best clients each day based on number of visits, service sales, retail sales, and loyalty points accumulated. Call MIKAL at 800-448-5420 for a sample report!

#2: Build Your Customer Preference Profile
The Customer Preference Profile was by far the most powerful tool we used to get more revenue from current clients. To build your Customer Preference Profile meet with your team and make a list of data elements you would like to capture for each customer. Many salon/spa owners have asked me, "What type of information should we collect?" Beyond the obvious contact and demographic information, you want to capture information that will help you and your team sell more to your best customers. For our salon and spas, we want to capture customers' age, marital status, credit card usage, home ownership, type of car/vehicle driven, age and gender. The ultimate goal is to have your team complete a Customer Preference Profile on each customer over time.

#3: Train Your Employees to Be Detectives
You have developed your Customer Preference Profile -- which addresses the "what" you should capture and the "why" -- to sell more to your current customers. Now comes the "how" Our primary training objective is to teach our employees to think of themselves as detectives -- to decipher the needs of current best customers and to sleuth out new best customer prospects. Provide your employees with key questions they can use in in daily phone and e-mail exchanges, in face-to-face interactions, in online surveys, etc., that will assist them in completing the Customer Preference Profile. Get all employees involved in thank-you notes, surveys, and visiting client sites.

#4 Keep Tabs on Your Customers with the Customer Activity Report
To help employees uncover new opportunities we developed and use theCustomer Activity Report. This report provides a snapshot view of the specifics of the relationship history with each customer, the number of transactions we had, its average transaction value, its last purchase date, the age of the customer, and its active status. This tool is particularly helpful in recapturing possible customer defectors and assists in timing marketing communications to the customer's buying patterns.

#5: Increase "Share of Customer"
Probably the most valuable tool after the Customer Analysis Report. This tool was one of the key drivers behind our efforts to sell more to our current customers. The objective here is to move your customers across your products and services lines and capture 100% share of your existing customers' salon/spa.
The first step is to make a grid that lists all your company's products and services across the top and the annual potential customer spend value of each product line. The last column is the "total spend" value if a customer purchases all of your products and services.

Next, list your top customers down the left side of the grid. Indicate which customers are buying which products and the customers' annual spend. If the total annual spend value per customer for all of your products is $2500 per year and your current customer is spending $1000 on a few product lines, you have the opportunity to capture an additional $1500 per year from this existing customer! And this is a cost effective sales opportunity as you will not incur customer acquisition expenses.
These five techniques have truly transformed my salon/spa. The focus on the value and potential of current customers across the organization helps us to maintain stellar customer and client retention rates, to cut sales expenses, and to achieve the easiest path to new revenue growth!

Call MIKAL for more marketing ideas and a FREE Recession Buster E-book at 800-448-5420 and www.mikal.com