Small shifts in management strategies could create a great impact on the salon’s work culture. Owning a salon is one of the most exhausting, yet rewarding experiences you can accomplish. Managing a great team, taking styling appointments, responding to every email, and solving issues on a daily basis can make salon leadership qualities even better. With a few intuitive tools, however, you can manage your day effectively and meet your business goals that were hard to achieve previously.
Ways to Excel Your Salon Leadership
1. Make a To-Do List
If your to-do list is full of bullet points, it will be demotivating and you probably won’t concentrate your time on the urgent tasks that lie ahead and that actually matter. If you add tasks like a clean keyboard or color-code magazines in the waiting area, you’ll spend all your time doing those useless tasks. Keep your list minimal with a maximum of 5 points of your priorities that you need to tackle as soon as possible. When you make time for a goal-related task during the morning, it will motivate you and start your day right. With all the list on your mind, when you're completing tasks off your super smart to-do list, don't ruin things by multitasking. People always think that multitasking is great and can help you do things twice as fast. But haven't you ever seen someone walk and text on the sidewalk? They are usually haphazard for other walkers! Don't be like them, don't switch your attention from one thing to the next. Concentrate on one task, do it well, and move on.
2. Make Your Productivity Count
The emails are great! If you don’t like talking on the phone or accept long-distance calls, they can be extremely useful. But they shouldn’t constantly distract you from more important tasks that lie ahead. If you need to make an important inventory check don’t get distracted by the emails or notifications popping on your laptop or phone. Checking your email will sidetrack you and you won’t be able to concentrate on your task ahead. In your routine, allocate time to check your emails so you’re concentrated on that for 15-30 minutes and then log off. Make sure you give the same rules to your employees so your salon management is homogeneous.
3. Schedule Your Days
Plan your days way ahead and get ready to take quick glances at them every morning. By logging into your business account on scheduling or management software like Picktime through your browser, you can easily check your daily tasks anytime, any day.
You built your salon enterprise because you love cutting hair and you love meeting new people. You didn’t sign up for this to answer and make calls all day because that’s not what makes you excited about your work. Unfortunately, it’s inevitable that sometimes you do have to complete tasks you don’t love but overall, try to concentrate your time on the stuff you like. If you’re not into all that administrative work, why not get yourself an online appointment booking system? It will also create waiting lists for you, send reminders to your clients, schedule all your personal or business meetings, etc. All the boring tasks will be completed automatically for you.
4. Communicate Information Precisely
Communication is the key! Whether you have 10 employees or 1 in your salon, you need to put into place a system that works and that people use that comes under the salon leadership or salon management. You can’t communicate one way and your employees another: things won’t work out. There will be chaos and frustration. Be concise in your salon management, if you send emails to your employees keep them short and sweet (perhaps you've started getting the ideas). Same goes for your team meetings: don’t ramble on for long because people have an attention span of a toddler. Your team has a longer attention span! There’s no point in printing out a 2-page document of the day's agenda. Most people won’t be listening after your opening remarks. Make everything precise regarding your staff schedules and customer onboarding.
5. Customer Onboarding
The goal of customer onboarding is not only to reduce churn but also to showcase the long-term value of sticking with your business as opposed to a competitor. A good onboarding experience will build trust between you and your customer, guide your customer through any service bookings or required registrations, create engagement with you, and set expectations for the future. Engage all your customers online to get the best out of your services through Picktime.
With all these exclusive tips and tactics, you could add a feather to your hat and turn into a great manager or owner of your business. Don’t forget to sign up with Picktime, which is free of cost with great scheduling features at your fingertips. Sign up NOW!