While crossing the Atlantic after attending the Global Spa & Wellness Summit (see p88), I reflected on points made by the speakers. Retail expert Paul Price shared some great information on how to improve the sales experience. He spoke about in-spa marketing, digital marketing, emotional selling, appealing to peoples’ dreams and more. He had great things to say but – yes here is the but – as an industry we’re terrible at selling products!
We only have a sliver of the self-wellness product market share. Why? Because spa teams don’t like to sell. Why are we so bad at retailing? It’s due to the lack of systems and training and, importantly, it’s also due to the lack of consequences when targets are not met.
Of course performance expectations must be set first. To improve performance, leaders need to outline obligations in detail and set targets for both treatment and retail volume per guest. Then they need to measure them daily and reward and recognise when it’s worthy.
But what happens when targets are not met? Typically when a team member doesn’t recommend retail, there are no established expectations and consequences in place – and this is the biggest mistake I see spa owners make. Every day guests come and go, leaving empty handed. This habit is costing spas major revenue. This is the only industry I know where a team can perform only half of their responsibilities (treatment without retail) and keep their job.
Spas need to address the ‘what if’. What if staff don’t reach retail targets month after month? What are you willing to do? You can train and coach them, but if they still don’t do it, what will you do? How much money are you willing to lose because your team doesn’t view retail as one of their responsibilities?
Contact Dori Soukup
Twitter: @inSPArationMgmt