Our March Goal

We had neat staff meetings this week at each of our two locations. We introduced our March promotion which is designed to get clients to try a higher level service (our signature haircut instead of our basic haircut). We give them a special deal on it, but only if they prebook. So it becomes a prebooking promotion as well.

In presenting it to the clients we are focusing on wanting them to get the full signature experience - we're not focusing on the prebooking, although they need to do that to get the deal.

So in our meetings I told each group how many basic haircuts they did in January and asked them how many they thought they could convert to a signature cut under this promo. To my surprise, estimates like 50% and 60% were tossed out. We crunched some numbers and actually ended up closer to 30% for our goal (considering we need to clear two hurdles...get them to prebook and choose a higher level service). We set two goals - a base goal that is achievable if we focus - and a stretch goal that we will only hit if we totally kick butt. The rewards - for the base goal we will bring lunch in for everyone and close the salon down for an hour so everyone can enjoy the meal together. For the stretch goal we get the lunch and $25 per person. The increase in sales will more than pay for these incentives when the goals are hit.

The reason I describe the meetings as "neat" is that we had so much input from the team. The managers did not just assign a goal to the team. We discussed it and agreed together. In this way the team owns it and they are more likely to work for it. The other interesting thing is how high their original estimates were! They weren't aiming low for something they would hit easily. They put out numbers that will really challenge them.

Now each location is designing their own scoreboard so they can keep track of their progress. We also did a little role-playing in our meetings to help script out the delivery of the offer to our clients.

I'm anxious to see how it goes! I think everyone is ready for the challenge.

$1,000,000 Milestone

What would you do with your team to celebrate hitting the milestone of $1 million in sales for the year?

Goals

We've only been setting salon revenue goals for about the past 5 months. Getting everyone engaged in the business and working toward the goals is a difficult process that takes time. As I looked at the final numbers for October tonight, I found myself frustrated that we missed our revenue goal by a pretty significant amount (8%).

But then I brought up a spreadsheet I keep that shows key data from 2004 forward. As I looked over the historical information I was reminded how far we've come. And I was reminded that we don't have to do it all in 6 months. This is a marathon, not a sprint; a crock pot, not a microwave. I need to keep it all in perspective and keep heading the right direction.