Is Sales the Final Frontier? Carol Phillips BeauteeSmarts Podcast video with Tony Gordon
I have often thought about the idea of making sales training a bigger part of my company training, but I have relented. Not that we don’t do some sales training, we do. Sales are often soundly rejected by so many stylists. Most stylists want to focus on artistic, design skills and definitely not sales. Even if the logic of sales techniques bringing more people to work on and more ways to make clients look and feel great. Why not then? Sales are simply uncomfortable for so many people. I asked one stylist on staff, she said: “you risk rejection and worse it might make you unlikeable.” God forbid any of us to take the risk that we are deemed not “nice.” “Nice” is one of those universal goods, it is like a currency or an additional star are on some blanket rating system if yelp had one for individuals. She is so nice…., bless her heart. Oh, gag me!
Thank God for this latest podcast with Carol Phillips from BeauteeSmarts a sales training company for the beauty industry. She talks about the success she has found. She tells us about salons and spas with 30% increases in sales and individuals seeing massive growth. Take a listen to this 30 years veteran of beauty industry sales with clients from Canyon Ranch to 5 chair mom and pops.
This was a LinkedIn message I received from a former team member.
Carol
I thought this story might put a smile on your face. I was meeting with a client last week. After our meeting was over, we were reminiscing about Wichita in the 80’s. I mentioned I worked at CPDS (Carol Phillips DermaSystems) & my client shared this story with me… This woman’s aunt paid for her to get makeup lessons at CPDS. The aunt insisted her niece learn how to apply her make up correctly. She was preteen at the time. I laughed and told her I was most likely down the hall at the time doing a mani/pedi. To think we were that close & connected 20+ years later! She remembers it fondly as one of the happiest times in her life while her aunt was still living. She still has a small eyeshadow pot with your logo on it she refuses to throw out. She also still has some of the makeup brushes her aunt purchased for her; a testimony to the quality of your brushes.
I also was talking with our accountant who is a dear friend and now fellow church member. I told her this story & she laughed. Lynda & her friend Shiela had a bookkeeping biz and she would stop by the salon to drop off documents on occasion or send her mother by. Lynda’s mom has since passed away but was a dear friend too. Again, I told her I was probably down the hall working on a client or even took the docs from her. Until last week, we had never put the story together. Small world!
Have a fantastic day!
Michelle Vogt
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Michelle, THANK YOU so much for sharing that story with me. I am crying and it’s making it really hard to type. I am humbled that we could touch her life like that and that she remembers all those years ago. It just goes to show you the power of our industry and the long-lasting effect we have.
I have just launched a beauty school training program that teaches esti ( and now cosmo) sales and marketing. They have no idea sitting in school the effect they will have on their client’s life.
I think I still have a book Lynda gave me on how to read financial statements. think we were both NAWBO members in Wichita.
Thank for taking the time to share.
Carol
Writing emails has become little different from opening your mouth and letting unedited words flow.
The more we do it, the less we think. The more emails we pump out, the less we stop to think about the recipients.
After all, no one thinks twice about copying us on a thousand dull missives whose second line we never get past.
Still, emails annoy people. But there are ways to make them less annoying.
Jonathan Tisch, co-chairman of the board of Loews Corporation and co-owner of the New York Giants, has a suggestion.
He told The New York Times: “I also learned something in my first month at Loews Hotels in 1980. My boss told me that whenever you’re writing a letter–and it applies to emails today–never start a paragraph with the word I, because that immediately sends a message that you are more important than the person that you’re communicating with.”
Especially detail-oriented readers may have noticed that I decided to quote the whole paragraph because it began with I. Perhaps it shows how hard it is to stick to your own rules, never mind someone else’s.
It’s easy, though, especially in an individualistic culture like America, to have I so heavily on your mind that it obliterates all other basic concepts.
I want. I need. I must get bigger. These are some of the fundamental tenets of American life.
Go big or go home. And when you get home, shout: “I’m home!” just in case someone might think it isn’t the great You.
For Tisch, there’s a real purpose in avoiding the tall, slim, egotistical vowel at the beginning of thoughts.
He said: “When you start to train your thinking about how to not use I, you become a better writer, and it teaches you how to really think through an issue. What are you really trying to say, and how are you going to say it without starting the paragraph with the word I?”
To some, this might feel like semantics. But Tisch surely offers less a writing tip than a thinking cap.
Whether you’re selling, marketing, advising, solving a problem, or building a team, the focus is on someone else.
Indicating clearly though subtly that you are possessed of even a modicum of objectivity or even vague interest in the life of another can’t hurt, can it?
If you are ready to move your sales needle… then we need to connect.
Carol Phillips BeauteeSmarts
760.678.0022
300 Carlsbad Village Dr
#108A400
Carlsbad CA 92008