When it comes to add-on services, these are some of the strategies I can tell you have definitely worked for me.  A few years ago I was seeing the same clients every two weeks at the same time every time and they had the same service every time. At that time I was working about 40 hours a week; I would probably see about 85 to 90 clients a month and do about 90 to 95 services on them. I just wasn’t offering anyone add-ons. The few add-ons that I did do, usually the client asked about.

Just like I talked about  two weeks ago, I decided to set some goals for myself and took some new classes to learn new techniques to bring back and offer to my guests. Jill is right; they were excited about the new skills and excited to try them out — all I had to do was talk about the new things that I learned in my class and my enthusiasm prompted them to try out the new service. That was the first strategy for offering add-ons to my guests that worked extremely well for me. Even today my clients are super excited when I go to a class or a show because they know I will come back with a new skill that I will use on their nails that no one else in our area does.

Planting a seed works well for me too. I have a lot of standing appointments and almost all of my guests pre-book their appointments. Often I will ask them for the add-on today and be turned down. However, I then ask them if they are interested in trying it at their next appointment, and I make a note of it or book accordingly for the next time. At least half of the time this strategy works for the guest to take me up on the offering. This way they are being offered the new service a couple of times during the appointment. It’s all about those planting those seeds; they are bound to germinate at some point.

Fast forward to now. I am working about 36 hours per week; seeing an average of 105 guests a month and performing an average of 186 services per month. This means that approximately two-thirds of my guests are taking me up on the add-ons that I offer them. This is a huge improvement on my schedule. I still have a lot of people I have serviced for years that used to just come with their check filled out and wear the same polish they had for months, but now they will try out new add-ons and enjoy the new services regularly.

— Sandy