5 Steps to Communicating SalonScale with Dawn Bradley
Hey, it’s Dawn Bradley here, and I’ve teamed up with SalonScale to help you navigate through the communication side of bringing SalonScale into your business. Helping you communicate with your staff and your clients with kindness, compassion, and empathy. Showing them you’re not doing something to them or at them, but you’re doing it for them. I’m so excited to dive into this and have you get excited about SalonScale.
So let me walk you through the five steps to communicating to your customer about the change that SalonScale is bringing to your business.
Don’t want to read all the steps? Watch here instead.
Step 1: Know Your Stuff
The very first thing and the most important I need you to know is to know your stuff. It’s not enough just to bring it in and hope that it does the work for you. You have to do a little bit of research. I know sometimes that’s not always the most fun and sexiest thing to do is to sit down and learn; but truly, the more you know how SalonScale works, and the more you learn the ins and outs of it, the better you’re going to be able to communicate
Step 2: Get into the Mindset of Your Customer
You want to start thinking like the consumer. So I want you to think about when you’ve been a customer somewhere and there’s been changes implemented to you and how have you received it? Can you think of a time where you walked away really frustrated? Maybe you have gone and seen somebody for a service over and over again, and it’s always been the same price.
And then all of a sudden it was a new price, a higher price, and nobody said anything and it seemed awkward, but there was nothing spoken and you kind of walk away feeling weird, like, “What’s going on?” Or maybe you’ve had a time where you’ve gone somewhere and they’ve given you a heads up and they’ve let you know that there’s a price increase coming or not even price increase, there’s a change occurring and you feel informed and you go, “Oh, that’s really exciting for them.”
I want you to start thinking about different scenarios you’ve been in as a customer and how it’s made you feel when they’ve talked or avoided talking about changes.
Step 3: The 5 Touchpoints of Change
I want to walk you through the five touchpoints of change because I know how uncomfortable and nerve-wracking just communicating, in general, can be. We also need to communicate things over and over in different ways. I think the average is people need to hear things seven times before they even take action on things. I really believe people have to hear things seven times before it really sinks in for them to understand.
Social Media Post
I want you to make sure you’re putting a post on social media; but, you can’t just stop there. Less than 6% of your following ever see a single post. I don’t know if you’ve ever gone onto someone’s profile and been like, “How come I haven’t seen any of this?”
Next, I want you to email them. It’s really important to send emails out to your clients to let them know because your inbox doesn’t have an algorithm. Everyone checks their email, but then again, not everybody opens their email and that’s why you can’t just stop at those two things.
Put a Sign Up
Make sure you put a sign up somewhere. Maybe on your mirror or your station. Having it be able to be a way to start a conversation because that goes into step four is actually have the conversation.
Communicating It
I know it can be uncomfortable and you can feel awkward, but how much more awkward is it if your client sees a social media post? They see the email, they see the sign, and you never say a thing to them. You can’t rely on those passive ways of communicating. You still have to have the conversation.
Reiterate
And then the fifth point is at the end of the appointment at the front desk, you want to reiterate it again.
Step 4: The Conversation
Step four is actually communicating it. We’re going to take the five touchpoints and infuse communicating into that.
Let’s talk about that moment that your client comes into the salon, they sit down in your chair, and you’re standing there going, “Have they got the email? Did they see the social media post? She just looked at the sign and looked back at me like, what now? They’re not saying anything.” This is the point where you really have to step up as a professional.
What I like to do is this: say your client’s name is Sarah. Just say, “Hey, Sarah, did you happen to see my email that went out this week? Or did you see my post?” That just gives them the opportunity to respond because here’s the thing, they might not have seen it.
Now you’ve had a conversation about it, you made eye contact about it. You’re on the same page. Saying, “Okay, I just want to remind you again about this is how things are with SalonScale. It’s parts and labor. You can see right here that the labor was this and the parts were this.” Isn’t that exciting? Let them get excited with you. Show your excitement for it and people will… that stuff’s contagious. Letting them be able to see behind the curtain is going to get them really excited.
Step 5: Embrace the Change
Step five – the last and most important step, because it’s all about you. You got to be the change. You got to think bigger. I know it’s scary and uncomfortable, but no one got stronger by staying comfortable.
If you’re not in the right mindset, and if you’re not believing in what this can do for your business and your future and for our industry as a whole, then you’re looking in the wrong direction. You got to focus on where you’re going and not get distracted by the people that are trying to hold you back. And find the people, the community, the SalonScale community that’s going to lift you up and help push you forward. You’re not in this alone. SalonScales’s here for you, I’m here for you. We’re here to make waves in this industry and show the world who we really are and how we can make a huge impact.
So you’ve got this community. I’d love to invite you over to dawnbradley.com where I’ve got lots more resources on communication and techniques and all things that can take that anxiety and melt it away. Because you shouldn’t be scared to communicate. You shouldn’t worry about what to say and I’m going to help you with that. So I know you can do it. I’m so excited for you to put these five steps into place and work on them. No, it’s not going to happen overnight and I really want you to be gentle with yourself. Your mind learns quicker than your reflexes. So give yourself time and grace to flow through this imperfectly.
