Over the last few years, it’s not unusual for nkd to have sold several thousands of pounds worth of waxing aftercare retail to clients within our own salon business* each month. (*To give you some context, we’re talking about a large salon business here specialising in waxing. Prior to selling my original Nottingham salon a year ago, we employed up to 15 staff, and generated half a million pounds annually from our two waxing salons.)
To be clear, there's no suggestion that you’re failing as a business or a therapist if you’re NOT selling thousands of pounds worth of waxing aftercare each month, and for the majority of you, that amount of retail (especially from aftercare from a single treatment area) would be unrealistic and unachievable.
But regardless of your salon/beauty business size and type (e.g. whether or not you specialise in waxing or not, and whether you’re a therapist working on your own or as part of a larger salon), you absolutely CAN still learn and implement lessons from our own experience and expertise in this area.
The first thing to say is that we all know that most beauty therapists HATE being told to sell more retail to their clients! If you’re reading this and you employ or work alongside other beauty therapists, likelihood is that the area of retail sales is a constant battle for you. If you’re reading this as someone who carries out the treatments yourself, likelihood also is that retailing to clients is *not* your favourite part of the job! Of course, there are exceptions to this but generally speaking, beauty therapists who “enjoy” the traditional convention of actively selling products into clients are still in the minority!
Having owned and run salons for the last 15 years, and therefore having been involved in training countless therapists up over that decade and a half, I’m very well versed in the challenges involved with trying to encourage beauty therapists to sell more retail! So, the first thing we do in our salons is to STOP looking at this from a sales perspective, because we know that it’s “the fear of selling” that’s the major blocker here.
The first line of the first chapter in our internal training manual, starts with the question
What do our clients actually want when they book in for a wax?
We then ask our trainees “Do they want a wax?”. And contrary to the answer that most of our new starters give, the correct response to this question is of course a resounding NO!
Nobody in their right mind EVER wakes up in the morning and thinks to themselves, today I want to get all of my hair pulled out from the root, just for the fun of it, despite the discomfort, expense and inconvenience it may cause.
Of course clients don’t want a wax when they book in for a wax (!) What clients actually want when they book in for a wax is beautifully-soft, smooth, hair-free skin for as long as possible in the area they're getting waxed. If they didn’t want this, then they would either shave, or not bother to remove the hair at all.
Beautifully-soft, smooth, hair-free skin for as long as possible in the area they are getting waxed obviously also means no ingrown hairs or other unsightly lumps and bumps, and for the area to remain regrowth-free for as long as possible.
Now we’re clear on this, we can all ask ourselves the next question:
Am I doing EVERYTHING I CAN today to help my customer achieve their desire for soft, smooth hair-free skin for as long as possible in between their waxing treatments with me?
Because if I do that, I know that I am helping my client get the results they really want, and as a result they are going to be happier clients and likely to become better, more loyal customers.
We’ve found that reframing the situation like this makes it so much easier for our therapists to be having the types of conversations that we want and need them to be having with their clients.
Our nkd therapists are not saleswomen – they’re educators. Therapists don't want to have to "sell" and generally speaking, clients don't want to be "sold to". But clients DO want a trusted expert to teach them and help them understand how they can get the results that they're telling us they want. You only have to look at the reviews below as clear proof of that.
Our salon clients respect the training and knowledge that they know all nkd specialist waxing therapists have and often tell us that that's why they came to us in the first place. So when their therapist tells them that they NEED a product or homecare solution in order to achieve the results they want, clients will listen and follow that instruction. (As a side note, eliminating the sale of superfluous or non essential retail will help massively here - if you're trying to flog goodness knows what just for the sake of profit every time clients come in, of course they're not going to take you as seriously when you do give them a genuine home care instruction!).
It's important also to directly link your waxing aftercare advice with your post-waxing home care solutions (you can't have one without the other!) and to make sure that you spend a decent proportion of your treatment time explaining to clients what they will need to continue doing at home to get the results they want. Again, if you spend the majority of the treatment time waffling on about what you had for tea last night or what your boyfriend wants for his birthday, of course clients aren't going to take your instructions as seriously or respect your expert advice as much and as a consequence, the amount of retail you sell will be lower.
The detail of exactly what waxing aftercare advice we do give our clients is a whole other blog. And of course, there are other conversations, as well as waxing aftercare and home care, that also need to be taking place to make sure that the client gets their wishes of this soft, silky smooth, hair-free skin, but that’s a different article as well.
But I’m in doubt that it’s as a result of this recognition and understanding of what our salon clients truly want when they book in for their nkd wax, combined with our business’s commitment to ensuring that we give every client we treat the best possible chance of achieving their goals (as opposed to simply “carrying out” the treatment which was booked in) which makes it easy for us to effortlessly integrate the sale of home care items into all of the waxing treatments we carry out, without any therapist feeling like they're being forced to actively "sell" or any client feeling like they're being overtly "sold to".
So before you disregard this blog or tell yourself that your waxing clients won’t buy/are not interested in/don’t want home care post-waxing retail products, take a minute to reflect on what you think they really want when they book in for that wax with you and in turn whether you’re really doing the best possible job you could be of helping them achieve this end result!
