Why Being Seen Isn't Enough to Grow Your Salon Business with Sue Davies & Phil Jackson

so welcome sue hello this feels very strange to to put the put the boot on the other foot doesn't it to kind of especially we're just i just had to press record because i'd forgotten i was in charge you are in charge but not for the next few minutes we're going to talk about your article i'm going to grill you okay about the article that you've got in salonpreneur magazine this quarter so why don't you briefly and i'm going to go a lot deeper on lots of these points anyway because there's some amazing stuff in there um so why don't you briefly kind of tell people what we're talking about today okay so what we're talking about is the second part of my um business brilliance method um which is facets which is about um being found getting people to act getting people to connect how you can engage with them the touch points in your business and then how you support people cool and that's a quick overview of it so we've got and we'll dump into jump into each of those each of those points so part one of your method was um foundations in bright which we talked about last quarter indeed um and then we're jumping into facets this time for stage two and the first part of that is about find which is about getting discovered absolutely um but the argument that you're making is that more visibility doesn't necessarily mean more marketing and i think it's a really important factor we seem to in and we are not the only industry that do this i think we put so much content out and we're everywhere we've seen all over the place um or we we think we're being seen all over the place and i think this is the biggest key to it is that we currently in us in our sets definitely because we're very much a before and after industry um most of our clients walk in looking one way and they leave looking slightly different in whatever it is that we've done and so we tend to use that as like a massive marketing employee if us especially in here i can't stand see the back of people's heads i find it really irritating um and it just makes me turn off so you can be really really visible but not be talking to the people that you want to talk to apart from the fact i don't have color and i don't have long bouncy blow dries um clearly um but i think we we can be all over the place and not be seen because when you when people are looking for you and they're searching with intention they are not necessarily going through the local facebook group trying to find who posted the last haircut or the last color or the last set of nails or whatever they're not looking for that at that point when they're when when they need you to be visible you aren't always there on social media and so being found becomes much more about a bigger shop window online it becomes much more about other places that you can get found where it's that those doors are open 24 7 and that can do its job for you even when you're asleep and so being visible is not necessarily just about how much content you put out it's just about your your consistency in where you show up and how well you show up in those places for me and i think that the prime example of that is if you look at your own feed you know i'm in the salon industry this is kind of what i eat sleep and breathe and yet that's not what's in my feed you know what what tends to be in my feed is you know blokes with their tops off chopping up logs and things like that it's it's just a the algorithm knows what i want to see and what i want to see is not before and afters of hair and nails even though i'm part of that industry and then and as much as you hate the back of people's heads i hate a set of nails holding on to the color oh no i know yeah i know i can live without that in my life it's very frustrating and all of those um although we don't get it so much like the on the brow photos and stuff isn't it it's like anything where we make a visible transformation can you imagine if we did it after massage i think what always makes me laugh with the brows and lashes is um they always look like they've been crying anyway because they've got tint in their eye or whatever they always look really upset with their new brows and lashes it's not even a great before and after anyway and i think people look weird because quite often the fact is a table from upside down and i know i was doing some work with someone um last year and i said to her like you do realize all these photos are upside down on your on your website and she said oh no it's a trend it's how everyone's doing it on instagram well it's that or look at people's nostrils i suppose it's just like oh no i can't and it probably me and my husband were like we just have to keep turning our heads we couldn't we couldn't write it in our heads it was like no i can't do that um yeah so there's that there's a whole thing of it now all those i mean that that is just you know we do need visuals but we don't need constant visuals we actually need to talk about and you know when we are being found we need to be talking about what we can help people with what their outcome is going to be and it's and it is in that but that comes into connection really but it's um yeah i think it's about it's about really understanding intention so when somebody's on social media what is their intention their intention is not to find a new hair salon or a new beauty therapist their intention is usually to kill time be entertained have a bit of time before the husband gets up in the morning you know it's those things isn't it yeah let's look let's look at some lovely boston terrier videos and just like and just go oh aren't i glad i've got one of those you know it's like that's what I do quite a lot of if you're either that or international politics is is my one at the moment um but I think that this there's just there's so much that we forget that is available to us to market our businesses and I mean you you know because I know we were talking about it recently is that you know the whole thing around Google is you know that that shop window's there all the time and like and people don't buy into it and it's just such it's such a wasted opportunity Because when people do have intention, the same as all of us, what's the first thing you do, you pick your phone up, you go on whatever search engine, generally, Google is most people, even though I've got Safari on so many of my things, I still go to Google. And you type in whatever it might be, hairdresser near me, nail tech near me, restaurant, tire changing facility, whatever it might be, we put that in. And that's when people are actually looking for you exactly if you're not in that space you are missing a massive trick and if you aren't there with your google business profile if you're not there with a website that supports the google business profile with that's optimized and has everything done on it and there's so many layers to that i'll be here all day if i go into it but there's just so many layers to what you can do with your website if you're not on directories there's all these ways that you can be there for the moment when someone is searching with intention locally and let's face it we're local businesses we don't want to say if you if you're providing a set of nails you can't do that to someone that's 150 miles away from you no so stop doing follow ladders and start doing google business profile so i'm gonna um throw a challenge at you then while we're looking at the find bit so let's say a salon owner's got 30 minutes just 30 minutes this week to do one thing to improve their discoverability what should that thing be sign up to google business business profile if haven't got it already and if you have got it already go on there and post some um put some posts on you should be putting when if you put as much effort into your google business profile as you do your social media accounts you would probably be far busier is there i don't want to get too stuck in the weeds because we've got you know a long journey ahead of us on facets but um is is there a kind of sweet spot for that is there a point where you know like at the moment people are feeling a lot of pressure to post on social media sometimes multiple times a day let alone every day does that have the same level of benefit on something like google business or is once a week enough or where are we at with that do you know what it's actually i was on a call yesterday and apparently a big international coach has just put out that we should be posting 500 times a day i mean that that's just ludicrous and i don't know what kind of business you need to be I think you need to be sort of like an eight-figure business to be doing that kind of stuff and have a team of people doing it for you. But we know on social media, we are expected to post generally at least once a day, maybe more. On Google, you have a presence that's there all the time. And the posts aren't necessarily there. You can see them as a feed if you're a client, but generally people don't see that. But what it does is it talks to the Google crawlers. And so even if you just put up one or two posts a week, and that is really all you need is just to keep feeding current information about what you're doing what you're selling what you're offering um and you just need to do that once or twice a week really this is the key to google you don't need to be on there all the time so just one or two key posts every week that have well well have good use of keywords and there's another thing like long tail keywords which is when you start getting you know things like how do i make my salon busier you know so there's a there's key like there's chains of words that you can use and ai can help you massively with this stuff but um but you know you need to have that stuff out there so that the google crawlers ping you up because nowadays there's only um 10 promoted businesses when on the google maps it used to be like 100 and they've dropped it massively recently so you need to be doing the right thing to get found let's move on to the a in facets which is act yeah what does that mean act means um yeah basically what you're it's your cta like your call to action what are you doing that's going to make them want to press the button um and so you need to have everything you do should have a call to action and we are none of us perfect and it's very difficult sometimes to remember that you need to put on there a reason why they need to contact you or a reason why they need some to take action but we should in an ideal world be putting a cta on everything we do and all like if for example on google or on your website i mean you can do it across your socials as well you can have buttons and you can have different like you could just use wordings that try and promote people to take action or you can have buttons and wherever you have those just making sure a that the links work and b that you know where the links are going so if it goes through to a funnel and you i mean i did some work with that on um a little while ago and i was testing a lot of different stuff for her and i filled out her email form it's a massive action taker on a website pop up do you want to join our thing yeah i do and actually i want to email you because i want to ask you a question and and when i came back i never received it but never received a response i emailed two or three times over the course of the review that i was doing never received a response and when i said to her she's like i don't even know where they go where they go like i'd go and ask your web developer if i was you um because all those little things you know you you want people to take action but you've got to be in charge of where that takes them to and how that makes them arrive in your world that's not the first time I've heard someone say I don't know where what that form does I don't know where it goes and you kind of think people are so careful about who they give their email address to if they're willing to do that on your website they're so ready where it is they're so ready to take action what a wasted opportunity yeah absolutely and I think that it's important we just we need to give all those little trip wires where they just go oh yeah now i'm going to do it and also one other thing we need to remember as well is that with the act thing is that people if they have to click too many times are not going to act so we need to reduce their clicks i think now there's a i was reading some research recently that was saying that we are now down to people can't do that within one or two clicks they're out and i don't know that obviously it's not everybody some people process but if you put too many clicks in their way then they're not going to act and i see that in my own behavior i see a lot of stuff particularly on um instagram adverts where you click on the advert because you're interested and instead of actually getting the information you want you get a questionnaire yeah no no i don't want to give you that much information i haven't got time i just wanted to know how much it was yeah i know i downloaded something the other day and i was like oh my god why did i do that and it wasn't it's a fascinating fascinating um like ebook but i thought i was i thought i was just going to get like a little pdf and it wasn't 20 pages long so i had to set time aside to go back to it and read it and i hadn't i just anticipated i was going to get like a you know a quick 10 point guide but no it was like six paragraphs and every point which was really interesting when i found time to read it but oh you've got you've got to be that invested to go with the follow-through yeah that's a lot that's a lot so moving on to c then we're talking about connection um which is i mean specifically we're talking about the trust before the booking at this point aren't we yeah indeed and i think go on sorry no no i was just going to say so talk us through that a little bit i think basically we we expect people to come to us. As new clients, they don't know who we are. They don't know what they're going to arrive at. They don't know what's going to happen when they get to us. And especially if they're coming for something that is a more personal service, whether that's intimate waxing or for massage. I'm sure we've had this conversation previously, about the fact we expect people to arrive in our world and literally strip down to their knickers and be undressed under a towel when they've known us for five minutes and so we have to kind of we've got to build that trust in all of that stuff that's out there in the world whether that's our business profiles whether that's our websites whether that's our socials how we show up and behave and present ourselves in our business is where all of that trust is built and the starts of that client connection and that's that client partnership are made and if we have inconsistencies within those touch points that they see a they won't connect with us so they're not could they not they'll find us but then they probably won't act they might see all your call to actions and everything but if they're not liking their subconscious is going to get little red flags going oh i don't know about that we saw that when we went to joe smith's down the road and we weren't sure if we liked that so or if they're going to be the same and we so we need to make sure the pathway to the act connect like the button that they connect with us is really important and that needs to work well and then when they do arrive in our world we've got to have already started that trust process so that when they do arrive in real life we can make that connection stronger and form a bond that means they don't want to leave us and that obviously takes time to create that bond where they become more loyal but it is it's a massively important part of it and how we get them is sort of like there's a blur between the act and connect because once they've hit the button and they've taken action they are beginning that connection process and as and as a human that that's a really important step for them to take because they're just going actually i have belief that they're going to be able to deliver what they're saying they're going to deliver and if you then when you meet them don't deliver that and you become inconsistent then they're never going to stay with you i think there's um i think the point that's really worth kind of repeating and perhaps diving a little bit deeper on is we're talking about the moment that trust starts to form and then you mentioned for example inconsistency has been one of those things that can kind of break that trust even before they've decided to come through the door um so what kinds of things are people getting wrong which which might kind of break or betray that trust which actually ultimately stops people wanting to go any further with that journey i think it's possibly the fact that um you may they may see you know it's we were saying with about the fact that people will they'll check if they see your google business profile they might go off and check your instant they might go and check your website they're going to go and check all these different places because we need so much validation now to know that something's credible and real and true um and that the images aren't false and all those there's there's so much fact checking that we have to do now so if you go to someone's instagram and it is all pink and fluffy um and you've got you know you've got all these images of people being um you know enjoying their experience everything and then you go on tiktok but you've got a team of people like a team of girls on there having a laugh and being silly and doing whatever because they think that's going to get them to go viral or whatever you start seeing the cracks because if you're trying to put out there that we've got this beautiful nurturing pink and fluffy salon you're going come and it's gonna be so nice. And then you see the team on TikTok behaving in maybe not such a professional way, it starts breaking, you know, and shattering the image that the salon owner is trying to put out there. And so you've got to make sure that when you go from Instagram, to Facebook, to website, to Google Business Profile, everything across it looks the same, the branding is the same, the methodologies are the same, the ethos is the same, the way that you talk is the same because if you say and it might not even be that obvious to you as the business owner but to somebody that's looking from the outside that perspective is a very very different place for them to be sitting from where you are and if they start seeing and it might even be little you know sort of like amber yellow flags that they're not quite sure something if something doesn't gel across everything you put into the world it gives people reason to not connect yeah and i think that that's the key everything needs to be the same for their subconscious to go yeah we feel safe here and if we don't feel safe we're not going to book and i think there's something i would just throw into the mix um from a pure marketing and and and money experience um is it's got to be accurate um i've had a lot of times when you know if i'm engaged with a new coaching client the first thing i want to do is stalk them i want to see their website i want to be on their mailing list i want to see all those things um and you know the website gives a particular image and and maybe images of the salon and um and they've got kind of a an estate agent lens on the camera making it look like this enormous space and then you get there and it's this you know it's a much smaller beautiful don't get me wrong it can be very lovely and cozy but But don't pretend you've got something you haven't, because that disconnects between what you're presenting and the reality. You might have got them through the door, but that's actually when we see a lot of problems with retention on new clients, is there's a mismatch between what you promised and actually what you delivered experience-wise. And I think, you know, we need to remember that our clients make a lot of decisions based on perception. And that's what they're seeing in front of them. But also, you know, their subconscious is going to be telling them so many, their subconscious has witnessed thousands and thousands, millions of things more than their conscious mind has. And if their subconscious starts going, that's when we've got feeling things started, like something's not quite right here. And if we give reason for their subconscious to start doubting, then we're going to potentially lose that client. And we just need to be real. and the fact that you know I mean you and I both love AI and I like I don't mind having a dabble with trying to create silly images and stuff but I do think I'm seeing a thing across like the internet at the moment across socials where people are starting to use AI images of themselves that look really I think it's cartoonified it's one thing because it's really obvious but I think you know that whole thing of like using AI to create something that looks a little a bit like you but 15 years younger um or whatever it just it's just disingenuous and i think that we really need to be careful that we keep ourselves very real and that we don't put stuff stuff out there that could be construed as not real because in this world we need genuine and i think that you know that's what's going to give people the trust to connect with you more i think that takes us nicely onto onto the e actually because we're starting to engage and we're talking a bit more about the the human side that that's going to take over once once someone's booked um so what does engage mean what does an excellent engagement actually look like to me engagement is about from the moment they connect with you and they take action and they've booked that appointment what do you do next um and what do you do from the moment they've booked through to the moment that they leave you after their treatment and that's and then it goes beyond slightly beyond that too but it's all of that point of like once they've actually met you or they've met your business and they've connected with you and booked you've then got an opportunity to welcome them into your business so for example most booking systems do this it's like you know they're going to do an email so you've booked your treatment you can tailor those emails so many of us have made the mistake over the years and i don't know people even understand that they can do this you can go into the back end of your booking system and you can change that so make it more personal make it more heartfelt make it more you rather than just go here's your booking you know you're coming at three o'clock on tuesday see you then you know because that's about the basics of what they do you know you've got an opportunity to tell them what to expect you know you're coming for an intimate wax this is what's going to happen you can tailor all of these emails and if you don't want to put it on the email you can put links in if you're coming you know go back to your website good for traffic good for google um put links back into your website so you've got like you know a pre-care guide i always have a pre-care guide on my cell i still do have a pre-care guide on my salon website because people need to know what to expect and um you know if they'd like for me if they're coming for a massage they need to know that they're gonna experience you know being virtually naked and they're going to be asked to lay down on my couch in the first five ten minutes being there i mean i i'm fortunate in my business i don't look back to back i've always got time so my consultation process isn't isn't rushed and if you know and i i will take time to build rapport with people but if you're in a busy selling environment you don't get that so helping people understand that your bookings are this amount of time you're going to have this much time to get ready there's much time at the end you know make all that process there engage with them help them understand how you operate so that when they get to you they know that they've got either a 60-minute slot of your time that your massage is going to be within or they've got a 60-minute massage with time before and after because it's important because they might book their diary around they're only going to be there for 60 minutes which with me that won't happen because my process is a 60-minute treatment with stuff i've rent and and so just those little touches and opportunities to just engage with them and welcome into your business we used to have a lot i'm um i don't do it nowadays but when when i had my salon we always you know we had like new client packs so that they got all the information they needed to take away with them information about our systems and about what um products being used and brochures and recommender friend cards and um loyalty cards and they've got a whole pack of stuff to take away with them then you're in their mind when they get home you need rebooking oh it just it goes on but it's that whole thing apart from you know we all go oh i'll give such wonderful customer service which we should, because we're professionals, we should be able to nurture and care for our client whilst they're in front of us. But it's about all the other stuff that goes on around it that makes any of the amber flags that might be there, any red flags that might be there, it makes them all disappear. So that when they leave, they hopefully have rebooked before they've left. And if they haven't rebooked, they know exactly what they need to do to do so. And you follow up on that afterwards, post treatment emails. and i think it's that managing of expectations is a really useful point as well just in terms of you know however wonderful your massage is if i was expecting a 60 minute massage and actually what i got is a 60 minute time slot it doesn't matter how big i still feel ripped off yeah absolutely so it's managing expectations educating what they can expect in most instances in spa that's the experience you have and i think in i mean i have experienced the same salons but i think it's just about clear messaging in the you know if you're booking us if you if you're booking a 60-minute time slot you're only going to end up with a 50-minute treatment and for some people that's like you know and you always know when that treatment's coming you know it doesn't matter if you're having a facial having your nails done having your hair done you always know when you're approaching the end of that treatment because there's there's certain patterns that the therapist or the technician will go through yeah that is that is the final moments of that treatment and if you're there and thinking i've only been on the bed for 45 minutes why are they why are they starting to why are they there already you know there's nothing worse than like and and and it's a foot it's a i don't know i mean it's not a it's a mistruth isn't it really i mean you're not necessarily lying but they're not necessarily getting what they thought they were buying exactly and it's that that mismatch is is where that's where complaints come in and all sorts of things too and also i think a lot of what you're talking about just makes life a lot easier um in terms of you know we all know that people that rebook on the day tend to be in sooner and they tend to be more loyal and all the rest of it well why not manage that expectation before they come in if they if they know you know if part of your pre-care is to say and to get the best results from this treatment i need to see you every four weeks then when you're asking for the rebook when they're in the salon it's easy it's an easy conversation and i think as well there's you know there's things like we um i have to say i don't i don't do it now which is a slap my face i should probably i should still do it but when i had my salon and you know my turnover was important and my client retention was much more important you know my my my sort of clinic side of what i do now is not the be all and end all i do it because i love doing it and i'm i'm not if i'm not as fussed as i used to be let's put it that way about client retention um but it's still important to me but back then it was like you know one of our biggest selling points was we give her like we give recurring appointments for the next year the next two years or everyone they wanted to book for we go okay we could do that you know have you enjoyed your treatment let's book you in for the next 12 months and you know and for some people that's like such an easier way of existing because then they've got that you know fortnightly appointment in and especially if it's a prime time appointment you know like sort of 10 o'clock on a saturday morning that's a really really prime appointment and if you can book that through for the next 12 months for them and they know they're never going to miss another appointment it's a no-brainer isn't it i mean how's that for customer service i think um this is a nice point to to move on because what we're talking about really what we have been talking about is a lot of touch points before the appointment and that takes us on to t which is touch points yeah because there's there is so many you know we we we touch our clients in many ways um all of them appropriate and um and it is it does go for me you know the first touch point is the moment they type in salon near me that's the first that's their first touch point to us is the moment they type those words in and the last touch point is when they come back through the door for the second third fourth you know that there's the touch points never really end it's just like it's an eternal circle of just all those ways that every time they connect with you you do the same thing that makes them want to keep coming back and it can be you know one of my favorite things that i talk about is how clean is your toilet um because i know i've been to salons previously where i've been in their news and it's like really what is this like the junkyard um dirty old clothes on the back of doors um dirty mop in the corner i won't shame the salons by saying who they are because it's just like it's shocking because they're salons that i would have walked expected to walk into you know the equivalent of being in the harrods toilet you know it's just and i've walked into their loos and just been wow that's not good wobbly toilet seat you know can i eat my dinner off i want to be able to eat my dinner off the toilet yeah and i think you know those at least a really basic thing but it's a really important factor because if you do have um that kind of area in your business or even you know if they have to go anywhere near your staff room you know making sure everything is on top is like top dollar because if you if they go into that toilet and they have a bad experience in there they're probably never going to book a longer treatment a long treatment with you ever again because it's like you know especially they're um either pregnant or they've got bladder issues or they're a more mature person the chances are they're gonna i mean i used to have one client she used to come to me she's like walking the dog go to the loo leave go to the loo and you know and and my toilet was an important place i had a lot of older clients and you know and things like that are so so important and we kind of overlooked them has just been oh it's just the loo but when was the last time you bleached your toilet really i uh my grandmother used to anytime we went out to eat she would always use the loo before we were allowed to go and sit down um because she said if you wouldn't do a poo there why would you want to have your dinner there but it's a really good point i said um oh god i can't think i can't remember i think it might have been a salon knife actually and they had and i've been banging on about toilets for years and when i went up we got we got commended for it on my scratch stars but like my my walls by the mystery shoppers every time because they always get told to go into the loose and like my toilets were sparkly and i had a toilet but it was you know it was clean all the time it was like you know we never ever let it get messy um and then this lady she was the ex um she was the virgin airlines um customer head of customer experience and she also managed customer experience for the 2012 olympics and so the first thing she put up was a picture of a toilet i'm like oh you're singing my song and and she said like you know they have on virgin aircraft one of the most important things they ever put into their customer experience was having a clean toilet i was like oh you're my favorite person i um flew to belfast last week and back and i was a little bit nervous because i was flying out of southampton which meant that the plane had the whirly propellers on the front which is hmm and i was a bit anxious so i read the reviews um and this guy had done a walkthrough video um and he said i can't really understand it but someone's taken a toilet roll and you know the grab handles that they have to make toilets accessible somebody had stuffed a toilet roll behind the grab handle and uh and it only stuck with me because it was still there when i flew six months later so it must have been the same plane because it was the same toilet roll stuffed in the same place i thought that's not great is it that means it's there for a mechanical reason anyway we've kind of got joined by dodger the dog yeah yes uh yeah we've got we've got hung up on toilets but actually those touch points aren't just in the salon are they the things that keep the client in your world between the appointments too yeah and it is and it is you know whether it's whether it's um in between treatment um appointments and appointments in between treatment emails anything like that you know how how how much do you make your clients feel sorry yeah i'm getting superseded by my dog um but it's how well do you make your clients feel welcomed in so i'm getting quite distracted by the dogs just decided he's going to be a pain um stay there dodge um but how welcome do you make your clients feel and that doesn't stop at the point when they walk through the door and before they leave you know you need to make them feel part of your community one of the things that um i remember when i did my my first ever scratch styles um entry we had to get testimony like that point it was like we had to get testimonials um from like i don't know like 30 clients or something can't we there's a lot of clients we had to get testimonials from and one of my clients who've moved from my home salon to my main salon was like it's like walking into sue's lounge and i just feel so at home and she's most amazing host and i was like that's a really odd way of describing it but it was because she felt that relaxed and she felt that welcome and that home and she knew i'd look after her and i would be a good host and i think there's an element sometimes we need to kind of remember that we are a host and they are our guests as much as their clients and they're paying us money we are inviting them into into our venue whether that's at home whether you're actually mobile and you're in their home but they're still you know you're bringing your world to them and i think you know all we need to do whatever we can to keep them engaging with that at all points and whether that is doing nice things um you know like just sending out you know how's everyone going email i don't know there's there's lots of ways we can do it lots and lots of ways we can do it that's actually why i'm a big fan of white label products as well because i think it's just a little touch point every time they go into the bathroom you're there um just that little bit of presence in their lives in a in a positive way i think is is hugely powerful yeah we used to have like white label um in our in our new client packs we always used to have like a little white label um like lip balm or that had our label on it so we're just always there yeah and one of the and actually one of the things i love and i keep meaning to do it and i keep forgetting i said i have the intention whenever i'm in the sun i'm like i must do that and i come back indoors and forget about it um but when i um used to use comfort zone they did an amazing thing and they always used they had like little cotton ribbons that you'd tie onto the client at the end and you put a few dabs of their beautiful tranquility oil on um and it just had like comfort zone written on it and they came in all different colors and they take it away so not only do they have a brand reminder on the wrist um but they also have the olfactory reminder of like what that smelled like and and the whole point of it they they use like they've got a neuroscientist that works with them and you know take these examples and make it your own you know it's like um they have neuroscience scientists that have worked out that if they can take that smell away with them they that smells going to stand that piece of cotton for a good few days and every time they smell it they're going to be transported back to your world i mean what a touch point is that amazing amazing and it is every and still people i've bumped into or just i got into i was actually a house the other day with my really old school friend who was a client of mine at my salon and she loved comfort zone that much she's really quite relieved because center parks now have it and we're not we're not too far from the center park so she goes to the day spa just so she can experience comfort zone just so she can smell that oil and go back to what it felt like the first time she came into my salon wonderful and that's i had that first towards that 11 years ago that she had her first experience with comfort zone and if you think how well that's still working 11 years on if you've got if you have like aromatherapy based products in your or even with some of the hair stuff you know i mean comfort zone is the same person as devon is and you know they their products are amazing and it is it's all all built from neuroscience yeah like staggering stuff and if you can click into that in someone's head so they have they love having that reminder of you and your business best touch point you'll ever find i think it's also there's a lesson in there around taking lessons from bigger businesses i think sometimes we see what bigger businesses are doing and go well that can't work for me um and i'm a big fan of letting the bigger businesses do the research and and take the brunt of that as well you know because it's costly to test stuff out and i think if you see a big business doing something that makes you go that's an odd thing to do well that's unusual scratch the surface a little bit and find out why because they will have spent tens of thousands hundreds of thousands sometimes testing and there will be a really good business reason why they're doing something that way um tiny example and then we'll move on to move on to our s um is the client promise that we had in our salon had a five-point promise and one of those promises was that we would offer you a conditioning treatment every single time you came into the salon and if we didn't you didn't pay for your hair that day yeah at all so it could have cost us you know hundreds great idea we sold loads of conditioning treatments which a lot of people would say is the best bit of their salon visit anyway so brilliant for us brilliant for the customer where did I get it from that came from tgi friday because tgi friday said if they didn't offer you a dessert you would get it for nothing um and it just got my head kind of going okay how can i apply that because there's there's something there there's something they've tweaked on there that actually makes that a good business decision um and and i think there's so many of these little clues in bigger businesses where we can kind of go yeah i'm going to pinch that i'm going to make that work for me because i can see why they've done that that way and it and it doesn't have to cost for i mean you know obviously that could cost you a lot of money um if you forget to do it but it's but those little things you know like having those little cotton ribbons you can have you know buy a stamp whatever you know it doesn't have to cost a lot of money no and it can make a really big impact in your client's day and in their life that you become memorable you just need to do something that makes you memorable absolutely i was um did you see the video from the guy i can't remember his name's rory something marketing guy he was talking about five guys the the burger restaurant um and how if you um buy a burger the burger is expensive because it's excellent and then you get the fries in the comb whatever and they always take another scoop of fries and throw it in the bag yeah um and he said you know it'd be so easy for them to cut costs by not doing that extra scoop of fries but actually that's the bit that makes people feel that they're getting something they haven't paid for something over and above something the business doesn't have to do yeah and that justifies then in your mind the fact that the burger is three times as dear as a mcdonald's burger they probably decided how many fries they wanted to give you and then downsize the coat maybe so the cone looks full but they're just giving you the extra but they're probably not it's probably it's got to be costed yeah of course or or it's just costed in that it justifies you you spending 16 quid on a burger i have to say oh my god i've only been to five guys in america years ago it's uh yeah it's a dear old burger but there we go um anyway let's move on to move on to s which which you've got down as support um though actually i think it could be shine i quite like the shine i know but my but my next one in the thing is shine i know i know we can't have shine in my head we're not supporting we're shining in this bit but tell us tell us about support i think it is i think so much this is about you know that whole we are humans and we need support because sometimes we are having a bad day sometimes we might need more in our treatment sometimes we might not understand how something works um and we we just as like as people that work in this industry we are um and i know we were saying this phrase earlier but we're humans making other humans feel more human and I think that's where the support bit comes in is that we we they entrust us with their care they entrust us with providing a service that's going to make them feel better more confident more vibrant they're going to you know just feel better in themselves you know there's I've done something with my hair I don't really get that whole although I just had a load of mine I just had it cut because I was trying to grow it and when I had it cut back to this it was just like the relief and the feeling I was back to me and my hairdresser was I can't believe that you're being this like wowed by having your hair cut to like a quarter of an inch whatever it is I would cut to I'm like because it makes me feel me and all the time I was growing out I didn't feel like me and I think and so she'll do whatever I want her to do love her because she wants to support what I'm going through and I think you know we we know that that's a key part of what we do but that support goes from all of those that beginning point of how easy we make it for them to book and if we've got a technical system we'll put what people perceive to be technical for most of us it isn't very technical but you know if you've got a booking system that someone who's not technical minded or is a technophobe whatever way you want to look at it if they don't know how to do that how can you support them through that process have you got something on your website that says like if you have difficulty with our booking system you know if someone's not fully literate or they're dyslexic you know that booking system may be a block for you so have you know have something on your site that's in an accessible font with accessible colors that makes people understand that you can help them just give us a call and we can still book you in and i mean i just had a client who was being booked a daughter had booked a voucher for her and she couldn't get through my booking system without wanting and she kept saying it was like oh no I've got to pay and it's like you haven't got to pay it's optional online and you don't but in the end she couldn't get through it so it's okay in the end her daughter phoned me and was like can we just do it over the phone because it's just this is just she's really struggling all of those little bits that you do I could have just gone I'll you know get on with it but you've got to help the people and you've whatever whatever it is they need assistance with you need to support them and whether that's with the home care after care with how they connect of you whatever it might be they just sometimes need to have a little bit of something extra from you it doesn't have to all be automated it doesn't all have to be um just yeah everything's on them to make the process work yeah yeah for sure um i think i'm after an opinion now um you've been customer facing for a few years a long time yeah yeah we can measure it in decades i think rather than i don't even know if i want to do that phil to be honest i mean i started working in my um my great aunt's shop when i was like 12 13 years old so i've like i've been a long long time um and i guess i guess the opinion that i'm after is um are we getting better at this or are we getting worse at this i think i think it depends to a degree i think it depends on your generation um and i think that um the older generations are probably better at being human and as steph stevenson would say human earring i didn't have that phrase um and i've told her i'm licking it because i just love it um but we're better at human contact i think and i might be casting great aspersions on the younger generations but i think that technology is disconnecting the younger generations from humans just by nature of what it does it does amazing things but it's disconnecting us slightly so i think that we we aren't we know we're seeing that um our younger professionals sometimes struggle more with that human connection element and i really and i don't know how we change it i don't know how we make that improve um that's another whole another whole conversation but i do think that we need to we need to remain consistently open to improving because even i mean you know there's stuff i mean i've been working facing clients and customers since i was a teenager in many different roles and there's always stuff to learn we never we can never stop because humans are changing and even the way you know like me saying that the younger generations of our professionals are changing and aren't so human focused in the way that perhaps we are or i am but that ultimately is the same way for the clients you know and we know that going forward that there's there's going to be a massive shift in that emotional connection to clients there's going to be you know a lot of um a lot more requirements for silent treatments and headspace and not being in their faces all the time so we've got to adjust as those of us that love that human connection and sit and have a chat and doing all that stuff for some people that's too much more and so we need to adjust how we into how we interact with people because sometimes our um overbearingness i'm sure they probably find it is a little bit too much and i don't want to be spoken to and then just to kind of wrap up i wanted to sort of pull focus a little bit so we we've talked about in the previous issue we talked about um the bright foundations and then we've gone through facets today what comes after facets um so that's shine and that is um service hygiene integrity growth and elevation i remembered more um and but that yes so basically it's just it's just all of those bits where we kind of get the gaps and it and it does i mean like the hygiene comes down so you know we can we can all be a bit lax sometimes with things um and i think that like the hygiene the toilet thing is just like a massively important thing to me clearly it comes up quite a lot um but that's just about it's like those are the more sort of finishing touches to what we do and it isn't like the elevate the elevation that i think is really important um because it's about how we elevate our businesses but it's also about how we elevate our industry and we're going forward we need to elevate our industry and make sure that we literally shine and make sure that we do the very best for our clients it's going to be a tough game going forward that feels like a good note to end on yeah thank you sue and just so everyone gets the plug in as well magazine still available on the website and sue's article is on page where was it page 81. straight opposite you can get the low down on our uh like nest cafe couple there you go thank you sue anyway thank you so much phil

A Salonpreneur Magazine visualised podcast conversation with Editorial Director, business consultant and creator of the Business Brilliance Method™, Sue Davies, inspired by her article exploring the FACETS framework and the client journey.

Many business owners believe they need to create more content, spend more time on social media and become more visible online. But visibility alone doesn't guarantee enquiries, bookings or loyal clients.

In this conversation, Sue explores the second pillar of the Business Brilliance Method™, FACETS, and explains how businesses move from simply being found to becoming trusted, chosen and remembered.

The discussion focuses on the client journey, from the moment someone searches online through to their first booking, their experience with your business and the touchpoints that influence whether they return.

In this conversation, we explore:

Why visibility is not the same as discoverability
Search intent versus social media scrolling
The role of Google Business Profile and websites
Creating effective calls to action
Building trust before a client books
Consistency across your online presence
Reducing friction in the booking journey
Creating meaningful client touchpoints
Supporting clients throughout their experience
How client experience influences loyalty and retention
Why businesses need to think beyond marketing alone

Sue also shares practical examples of how small improvements to client communication, booking systems, touchpoints and consistency can create a stronger overall client experience and encourage long-term loyalty.

This visualised podcast conversation is inspired by an article featured in Salonpreneur Magazine. The written piece explores the topic in depth, while this conversation offers an additional layer of insight and perspective, bringing the thinking behind the writing to life and allowing you to get to know the person behind the article.

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