Almost every salon owner I have spoken to finds it challenging to get stylists to recommend products and services their salon can provide. There are, however, many types of ways in which you can incentivise your team, in order to get them selling, from vouchers to free products or even money. This article outlines a fun way in which salon owners could look to promote sales from their stylist teams. It’s a cross between Battleships (which you may have played when you were younger, and an advent calendar).
In a nutshell
Make an advent calendar, where behind every door is a mystery prize. Each time a stylist sells your target product or service, they get to write their name on a door. Once all the doors become full, those who continue to sell can cross off names of their teammates whose names are written on the doors and replace it with their own. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of entertaining rivalry and healthy competition!
How to do it
Decide how many doors you want on your chart and how long you want the competition to run it for. 20 is a good number for a team of four – assuming they can recommend 5 products a week each, they would be able to fill the calendar in one week. If you ran it for two or three weeks, you would also have enough time to get some of that healthy competition going.
Decide on the prizes
I would recommend having a prize for each door, even if it is as small as a chocolate bar. You should have a mixture of high, middle and low end prizes on offer that could be anything from shopping vouchers, equipment, products or education courses. You know your team the best, so make sure you throw in some prizes that will really motivate them.
Make your chart
There is a simple way and a difficult way to do this.The simple way: get a whiteboard and draw on the doors and number them all. On a piece of paper write down what prize is behind each door and seal it in an envelope and keep it somewhere safe. Then get your stylists to play the game writing on the whiteboard and rubbing people’s names off as they ‘sink’ them and write their own name on top. When the game is finished, you can open the envelope in a staff meeting and reveal who has won what. The harder way: this involves actually making the advent calendar. Stick two sheets of card together, the one at the front with doors half cut out already and the one at the back has the prizes written on it. When you peel back the door at the end of the game, you can see what prize is behind it.
Set a target
Give your team a target, whether it is selling a particular service, recommending multiple products or something else. The target should be achievable and every time they reach (or in this sell), the target, they get to write their name on the door. Once you’ve completed your game time, then read out the prizes and you’re done!
Let us know how you got on and what your team thought of it.