Sell! Sell! Sell!

I go to conferences. Sometimes I learn something. The last few times I have been there to teach something. But the one thing that gets me is the “sales seminar”. I understand that there are many salespeople out there that do not know how to sell. Just like there are many other people out there that do not really know their jobs and need to be ‘upgraded’ and ‘motivated’. But a lot of times these seminars are all about closing. Remember the Glengarry Glenross scene where Alec Baldwin gives a speech about ABC, Always Be Closing. Closing is the end for them.

Really? The end is not the closing of the sale. The end is not when the client comes back a couple years later looking for something new from me. For someone running a business that has been around for just shy of 50 years there is no end. You are always making sure that your clients are happy with what you are doing. This is what keeps 1. the business enjoyable and 2. the business viable.

I am always having a phone call that starts “I was in to see you several weeks (months, etc) ago and I have decided I am ready now. Can I come in and see you?”

If I followed the advice of the sales gurus I would have done one of two things when these women were in my salon the first time. 1. I would have pushed them to buy something when they were not ready and made sure they never came back again no matter how nice it was or 2. pushed them so that they did not buy something and made sure that they would never come back to see me again. It either means you have an unhappy ‘client’ (if you want to call her a client), or you have someone out there that came for advice and got a sales job. That does not work for me.

I LIKE talking about hair. It’s fun for me. I LIKE showing a woman what can be done about her hair loss. Sometimes I can be a bit bewildered when I show a woman something that is so perfect for her look and she still declines, but that just means she isn’t in that space yet. She sees the problem but is not ready for the solution. And that can take time. Hence, the phone call out of the blue later on.

So its all good. I have two women coming to see me today that are ‘call-backs’. One is going through chemotherapy and the other is thinning. It means to me that they liked their experience here the first time and that they didn’t find anything better in their travels. The result is I have to really make sure that they are especially happy.