We're finishing our series on client events. We have covered so much over the last few weeks. Here are the final preparations to make your event a success.

Station Set Up: Make sure that all of the stations and the entire salon are sparkling clean. Remember this is the first time potential customers have been to your salon. Have all of your stations free of clutter and only have the products you are using represented. Talk about each product and explain to your client why you are using it, how it works, and what the benefits are. This will make you stand out. Make sure your business cards are readily available — you’re going to be handing a lot of them out.

Signage: Make sure you have all of the stations clearly labeled with large signs so clients can easily find the stations that are providing the services they want. How awful would you feel if clients were standing in line for what they thought was a brow wax when they really wanted a gel-polish. We had clients wait in line for services at our event. They were fine with this and our lines were only a few people deep. Our event went a lot longer than we expected due to the number of people that attended. This is why having all of your employees in attendance is so important. Next time, I think we will have sign up times and have someone assigned to finding these people and getting them to the correct stations. This way our clients and guests can hang out, enjoy refreshments, chat with others, and look at our products.

Frequent Buyer Card: I have talked about this in previous articles. This is a card my salon has calls “Style Miles.” It's our product punch card. For every $20 you spend, you get a punch. When you have accumulated 10 punches, you receive one product free (up to a $20 value). We let clients know about this card at our event nights. We want them to know when they buy from us that the money they spend here helps to supply our staff with education. This is also our way to reward them for shopping with us.

Pre-book Incentives: We want to give our existing clients and our new clients an incentive pre-book before they leave the event. This is our call to action. If we just let them walk out the door, the chances of them calling to book a future appointment diminish. But having them book before they leave helps them to keep that appointment. They received a $20 gift certificate for any full service if they pre-booked a service before leaving the event. You can add their name to a drawing if you choose, whatever you want to do will work. I recommend that you have something to entice clients to pre-book. Any kind of incentive will help.

Suggestion Box: We placed a suggestion box in the front area as well and asked our clients a few questions on a half sheet of paper. We asked, “Who do you see here at our salon? What services do you wish we offered? What could we do to make your salon visit better?” and a few other questions. We asked out Top 100 to fill these out and place them in the suggestion box. This was eye-opening and allowed us to know what our clients are interested in and thinking about our salon.

Product Specials: Have a promo that is only available the night of your event. This will increase your product sales. We paired up shampoo and conditioner combos and gave them 20% off. Pair them up and use a colorful ribbon to bind them together. Make a display with a big sign that states, “tonight only”. It’s also our 30th year in business, so we also had buy one product get 30% off the second product. This really increased our product sales for the night.

Gift Bags: We had brochures from our product lines, our salon menu, and product samples from each department. We had shampoo, conditioner, and styling product samples. We had lotion and skin care samples too. We also placed a sticker on each of the samples stating “If you like this product, bring the sample when you’re finished and get 10% off of a full-sized bottle. All of the gift bags were assembled by our employees during their downtime. This was a great way to get rid of the samples and small-sized products we had hanging around. It also allowed our clients to try new products and enjoy a gift bag of goodies.

These are just a few of the things we did to make our event successful. If you have had a client event and have a great idea, please post it on the comment section of this article. We would love to hear what made your client event a success. Others can learn from you, so don’t be afraid to post it!

Client events — one more way to help you stand out above the rest and become the BEST!

— Jill