While Jill continues discussing how to set up a hand-washing station, I am going to take a step back here and update all of you on the business-building techniques that we talked about a couple of months ago. We have been using these at my salon and we have had good success with them, especially for the nail tech who is rebuilding her clientele after moving back from Maui in February. Now that I have some data I would like to share it with you.

We have a tracking system that we use and recommend to all of our employees in order to help with goal setting and keeping track of what we actually do in the salon daily. I am using this system to derive our data on the Business of the Week promotion and the Gift Bag Drop success. Her first month of being back she saw 36 guests in total, and five of those guests were referrals. Her repeat/request guest count was 13 (that number represents clients who called and asked specifically for her). I think these numbers are not too shabby for starting on the 7th of the month, that month being February. Essentially these numbers only represented three weeks of the month. We started to do the Business of the Week and the Gift Bag Drop in that month.

Last month her guest count jumped to 59 total guests — that’s 23 new guests for the month. Eight of those guests were new referrals, and 27 of them were repeat/request guests. That’s awesome! So far this month her numbers are very close to last month’s numbers and she has gone back to Maui for a week to pack the rest of her things. I really have to credit the business-building ideas for helping her to accomplish this in so short of a time frame. Those promotions have really helped to get her name out there in the community and to bring business to her and the salon. We continue to do them and are excited to see where we are in six months.

— Sandy