When is the right time to leave?

There’s no better time to do this than during a quieter period for your salon. After the Christmas/New Year craziness, in the depths of winter, or whenever things slow down a bit. It’s the best time to reflect on what you want, so that you don’t find yourself in the same situation a year down the road, and a year further into a bad situation.

When you don’t feel special

The salon experience should always feel special for your clients, and for yourself. But what happens when it doesn’t? When it feels more transactional than a special relationship between you and your client. For many salon owners, the marketplace experience leaves them feeling more empty than fulfilled.  

If your salon is still listed on a marketplace, it’s very much about recruitment (at a cost), not retention. Clients are brought in via a third party platform, with third party communication and branding. They are treated like one of many, because they are. 

Competing on price against other salons in your area is going to result in people looking for a deal rather than becoming loyal clients. Sure, it might fill more chairs initially, but when you reach a level in your business, you’ll switch from wanting customers, to retaining clients (the ones you want to keep, anyway). 

You also want clients receiving communications from you and your brand, not from a third party business or website. After all, it’s your brand, service and the amazing client experiences that will keep them returning. Turning customers into loyal clients creates a stable source of revenue and will also help you grow your business through that all-important word of mouth.

“I don’t want to pay a percentage for every customer that I worked hard for. Systems are there to support you, but they’re not the ones doing the hard work. Timely’s pricing is honest and clean, we know what we’re paying every month. I’m a customer for life.”

– Kyri, Russell’s Barbers

When the trust is broken

If you can’t trust a partner, you’re not set up to succeed. Be it a software provider, co-worker or life partner, it really is the foundation of any successful relationship. At the start, you tend to have a certain level of hope and trust that they won’t mess you around, waste your time or harm what’s important to you (like your business).

Then it happens. A new client receives an email appointment reminder that is not from you. You have no idea what it says. The client calls you saying they have received email after email from the third party. It’s not your email, not your website, you have no control over this. They get annoyed and cancel. 

Or you might decide to drum up some business by sending an SMS campaign, only to receive a surprise bill for it the next month that blows out the budget. This is after you were told it was ‘free’ software.

It gets harder and harder to let these things go as they impact your business, your revenue and your reputation. If you start feeling this way, it’s time to think about how your business aligns with your partners, and how you want your clients to be treated.

“When you’re getting something for free, it’s often too good to be true. When you look at the nitty-gritty, it’s just that – too good to be true. I can’t trust something that doesn’t tell me where my client data is going. I’ve worked hard to build up my client base. Free software is not worth the risk.”

– Tyson Mendes

Not wanting to change

When Sarah, a beauty therapist from Brisbane, opened her salon, she invested a lot of budget into the space and high quality products. The admin side of things wasn’t a huge priority for her.

Things worked well for a while, she ran a small business, didn’t need large email or SMS campaigns, and the ‘free’ software she had was doing its job. Then her business started to take off. Her client base was growing from her own referrals, but all the extra fees from the software were eating into her profits.

An upgrade was needed, but as it got busier, it felt even harder. Then in January, after the rush,  she created some space in her downtime and did her research. She spoke to friends in the industry, trialled some options, and eventually landed on the right salon software for her business.

If the idea of change is making you put important things off, you could try approaching it like Sarah did. Pick the right time, don’t rush it, and choose the system that suits you both now and in the future.

Don’t stay because you don’t want to change – you deserve better.