F&M Hairdressing: Prepping for a Successful New Year
As another year comes to an end, it’s time to start prepping for another successful year in the salon. Brian MacMillan, Salon Director at F&M Hairdressing shares his tips.
It is important to look back on the past year in the salon and prepare for the year ahead. I’m going to give you some business advice on how to efficiently prepare for a successful new year in the salon.
Reflect On The Year
The first step for prepping for the new year is to reflect on the past year. It’s important to do this with great detail, go through and highlight what went well and what areas you could improve on in the new year. Be critical on yourself and really analyse all areas of the business to truly make the most of this process. If there are areas that went really well, note down how they went well and continue on with this in the new year. For areas that you can improve on, look at why and how you can improve on this. A good tool to for this would be to conduct a SWOT analysis, where you can look at your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
Feedback
There are a number of techniques that will help you to do this reflection and analysis. Firstly, a good place to start is the feedback from your clients after all they are the ones bringing money into the salon. Listen to them and feed this into your plan for the new year. It is also a great idea to take feedback from your staff, listen to them and value their opinions your team should want the best for the salon. Then the next step I would suggest is to use your salon software to analyse the data from the year. For example, you could look at retail sales or when your busiest periods are, there are lots you can find out from your salon software.
Set Goals For The Year Ahead
The next step I would take to prep for the new year is by setting goals for the year ahead. You want to make sure these goals are clear and achievable you don’t want to set goals that are unrealistic as you would be setting yourself up for failure. When setting the goals, you should prioritise what you think is important for the year and what is less important. These goals can include things such as to increase clientele, to boost retail or anything at all that suits your salon and what you would like to achieve.
Goals
Once you have chosen your goals, it is a good idea to break them down into more manageable ones that will help you to achieve the end goal. This will be you plan set in place, once done you should plan time in the year to review your goals it’s always good to check your progress and adapt accordingly. Also, don’t forget this very import step which is to communicate your goals with your team so they are aware. This is a good way to get all of your team involved in the success of the salon and boost morale.
Strengthen Your Online Presence
Lastly, with technology being bigger than ever you should look at strengthening you online presence. This is something that you should plan to keep on top of throughout the year. This involves assessing both you social media platforms and website to ensure they are all up to date and current. First up, take a look at your website and ask yourself these following questions: does it need a revamp, does it work on phones, are the images high quality and when did you last update it? These are all great starting points to ensure your website is current.
Social Media
Next you should take a look at your social media platforms and assess how they are performing. You want to make sure you are visually telling a story about your salon and showing off your skills. It is also important to ensure you are continually engaging with your audience and being consistent in this. This helps to build a good relationship with your clients and encourages reviews which is key. Building up reviews is great to bring in new clientele and of course there nothing quite like word of mouth.
Preparing for the new year can be a daunting task, but if you follow these steps you will be sure to succeed. Running a salon is a continuous journey of growth and adaptation on your way to success, but the new year is the perfect time for reviewing and resetting. So take these tips in your stride and I wish you good luck in the new year.
For more info on the brand, visit F&M Hairdressing here.
