When spa sales aren’t where we want them to be, one of the first reactions I hear is:

“We need more clients.”

Maybe.

But before you spend another dollar on marketing, promotions, social media or advertising to bring more people through the door, I want you to ask a different question:

Are you maximizing the opportunity with the clients you already have?

Because sometimes the problem isn’t traffic.

Sometimes the opportunity is sitting right inside the business.

Start With What’s Already Walking Through Your Door

During a recent business review, I looked at well over 10,000 service transactions.

That’s a lot of people already walking through the door, receiving services, trusting the professionals and spending money with the business.

But fewer than 10% of those service transactions included a retail purchase.

That changed the question.

Instead of asking:

“How do we get more clients?”

I started asking:

“What’s happening with the clients we already have?”

Are they receiving a thorough consultation?

Are professionals making home-care recommendations?

Are appropriate upgrades being discussed?

Are clients rebooking before they leave?

Does the team have the product knowledge and confidence to explain what they recommend — and why?

Those questions lead to very different business decisions.

More Traffic Doesn’t Automatically Mean More Revenue

Marketing is important. New-client acquisition is important.

But bringing more people into a business that isn’t maximizing its existing opportunities can become a very expensive strategy.

Think about it.

If 100 clients come through your doors and very few receive a professional home-care recommendation, bringing in another 20 clients doesn’t fix that problem.

You’ve simply created 20 more missed opportunities.

Before focusing exclusively on increasing traffic, I want to know what’s happening with the traffic you already have.

Retail Is More Than the Retail Sale

This is another place where I think our industry sometimes gets retail wrong.

Retail isn’t simply about adding another product to the ticket.

When a professional recommends the right home care, they’re helping the client continue the results of the service after they leave.

That can strengthen the professional relationship, improve the guest experience and create another reason for the client to return.

And yes, it creates additional revenue.

But the bigger opportunity is creating a more complete client experience.

The service shouldn’t end when the client gets off the treatment table.

Look Beyond Your Top-Line Revenue

Your reporting system can tell you how much you sold.

But that number alone doesn’t tell you how much opportunity may have been left on the table.

Start drilling down.

Look at:

• Total service transactions
• Transactions that included retail
• Retail-to-service percentage
• Average retail ticket
• Units per transaction
• Rebooking
• Upgrades

You don’t need 47 reports.

You need the few numbers that help you understand what is actually happening inside the business.

Then get curious.

If clients are coming in but retail penetration is low, don’t simply tell your team:

“We need to sell more.”

Find out why.

Do they know how to conduct a great consultation?

Do they know the products?

Can they connect the recommendation to the client’s needs?

Have they been properly trained to make a professional recommendation?

Because “sell more” is an expectation. It isn’t training.

Before You Chase More Clients

There are absolutely businesses that need more traffic.

But don’t assume that’s your problem simply because you want more revenue.

First, look closely at the clients already choosing you.

What are they buying?

What aren’t they buying?

Are they rebooking?

Are they receiving recommendations?

Where is the customer journey breaking down?

You may discover that your greatest growth opportunity isn’t finding thousands of new people.

It’s doing more for the people who already walked through your door.

And if you need help identifying where those opportunities are hiding inside your business, that’s exactly the kind of work I do.

Carol Phillips
Founder & CEO, BeauteeSmarts Global LLC

Training Isn’t an Event: Why Behavior Change Takes More Than a Training Day

Have you ever had a great training day?

Everybody is engaged. They’re excited. They’re practicing. They leave saying, “That was great. We’re going to do this.”

And then Monday happens.

The schedule fills up. Clients are waiting. Someone calls out. Managers have fires to put out. And little by little, it becomes very easy for people to fall back into the way they’ve always done things.

After more than 40 years of training beauty and wellness teams, there’s one thing I know for sure:

Training can happen in a day. Behavior change doesn’t.

Expectations Are Not Training

This is where I think many businesses get themselves into trouble.

We tell our teams:

Sell more retail.
Rebook more clients.
Give a better consultation.
Recommend home care.
Talk about upgrades.

And then we become frustrated when those things aren’t consistently happening.

But before we call it a performance or accountability problem, I think we need to ask a much more important question:

Have they actually been taught how to do it?

Because telling someone what you want them to do is not the same thing as teaching them how to do it.

“Sell more retail” is an expectation.

Teaching someone how to uncover a client’s needs, make a professional recommendation, explain why they’re recommending it and comfortably ask the client to take it home?

That’s training.

Great Training Should Be Designed for Behavior Change

I’ve never believed training should simply be about standing in front of a room for a few hours, delivering information, handing everyone a workbook and calling it done.

People need to understand what good looks like.

They need to learn the skill.

They need an opportunity to practice it.

They need to apply it to the real situations they encounter every day with their clients.

And once they’ve been properly trained, leadership plays an important role.

Practice it. Coach it. Reinforce it. Measure it. Recognize it.

Not ten new behaviors at once.

Start with one or two that have the greatest potential to improve the client experience or business performance and keep working on them until they become part of how your team operates.

The Question I Care About 30 Days Later

I love walking out of a training room when the energy is high and everyone is excited about what they’ve learned.

But that’s not how I measure whether training worked.

I want to know what happens next.

What is the team doing differently 30 days later?

Are consultations better?

Are clients receiving more complete professional recommendations?

Is the team more confident?

Are more clients rebooking?

Are behaviors changing?

And ultimately, are the numbers changing?

Because the goal of training isn’t simply to create a great training day.

The goal is to create better performance after it.

Before You Blame the Team…

If your team isn’t consistently doing what you expect them to do, don’t immediately assume they don’t care, aren’t motivated or need more accountability.

First ask:

Did we actually teach them how to do this well?

If the answer is no, start there.

And if you need help turning your business expectations into skills your team can confidently and consistently perform, that’s where I come in.

Carol Phillips
Founder & CEO, BeauteeSmarts Global LLC