Do you teach them or tell them?
My wife is better with computers than I am. So, if I am having a problem with something I will usually ask her and she usually ‘TELLS’ me how to do it.
On the other hand, if I go to the Apple store [which I do a lot] they ‘TEACH’ me how to do it. [I love the apple store :-)]
Telling someone how to do something isn’t going to work if they haven’t been taught both the ‘how and the why’ first.
So, just because you tell your team to sell retail, to rebook or up-sell additional services doesn’t mean they know ‘how’ and certainly doesn’t mean that they will.
That applies to you too, just because you tell yourself that you need to ‘start or stop’ something, doesn’t mean that you can or will if you lack the sufficient skills.
Training is the key…
The most successful people or businesses in any industry, recognise that to be successful, it is essential to invest both time and money in growing your people, and that means continual training in every aspect of the job.
Often salon owners will say to me, “But I can’t find good people”. Don’t make the mistake of always thinking that you can’t afford to employ the calibre of person that you need.
More often than not, the key is to look for people who have the ‘right attitude’ first and then train them to have the skills you require. There’s a great expression, “Recruit for attitude and train for skill.”
If you look at any of your favourite brands, whether it’s Apple or Starbucks or a favourite brand in any other sector, you will see that those that succeed recognise that to deliver a consistent product and experience synonymous with the brand requires people that are well trained. So they continually invest the resources of time, money and people to ensure that they can consistently deliver the calibre of service or product promised.
So, how much do you budget for training?
I was told once that apparently McDonalds reinvest approximately 15% of their revenue back into training their people. I don’t know if that’s an accurate figure or not but you can be sure that they invest a massive percentage of sales back into training.
Whether you like McDonalds or not is irrelevant, but you have to recognise that one of the strengths of McDonalds is that no matter where in the world you visit their restaurants they offer a consistent product and experience.
The reason they are able to do that is because they ensure that their people have the skills needed to deliver both the product, and the experience consistently, and they achieve that because of the time and money they invest in training their people.
So, how do you compare? How much do you invest in training your team to become the people you need them to be? Because there is little point in ‘demanding’ that your people perform to the standards that you dream about if you are not prepared to invest the time, the money, and people resources to train them to be able to perform to the standards you want.
So, what about you?
How much do you invest in training yourself to become the person you want to become, and earning what you want to earn?
Regardless of whether you are an owner, manager or employee, ultimately it is not someone else's responsibility to turn you into the person you want to be.
When all is said and done, that responsibility lies with you, no one else owes you anything, so what seminars, what books or other resources are you investing in to turn ‘you’ into the person ‘you’ want to be?
There is a great quote from Nelson Mandela who said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”.
It’s the same for your salon too.
Thank you for watching…
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Have a great week!