Should I enter the hairdressing awards?
I was asked that question recently by a salon owner who was contemplating whether or not to enter the hairdressing business awards.
Over the years I have been both an entrant and a judge in numerous hairdressing awards, so I have experience of what’s involved in putting a submission together and the benefits of entering, regardless of whether or not you win.
Anyway, my answer was that although entering awards and putting the time and effort into putting submissions together can be both a time consuming and a costly exercise there is a hidden benefit regardless of the outcome.
And that benefit is that, putting together a submission for a business award forces you to look at your business, to look at the way you attract and look after clients, to look at how you attract and look after your team, and to reassess all the systems, benchmarks and business practices.
In short, it forces you to step back and take an overview of your business and you probably don’t do that enough, so that’s got to be a good thing.
So, how important is winning?
Obviously winning is always good, sometimes I have won and sometimes not. But, I have seriously always believed that regardless of whether you win or not, the real benefit is actually in the questions that you are asked about your business and have to ask yourself along the way.
Inevitably there is a deadline date by when you have to send your submission in and mine was usually right down to the wire. But, as I put the final package into the postbox, I was always aware that it represented my business at that point in time, and as long as it was in a better place to where it was the previous year, then in my eyes I was a winner, regardless of what anyone else thought.
Are you winning?
You don’t have to be entering awards to ask the questions, so ask yourself; How well are you managing your people?
How well are training your people?
How well are you using social media, from Instagram and Facebook and the other various social media platforms to attract and keep new clients?
How well are you informed of exactly what the productivity benchmarks are telling you about your team, your business, and perhaps more importantly, what are you doing with that information?
When I entered awards whether I won on the day or not, there was one question in particular that used to drive me forward, it’s the most important question of all, which is…
“How could I do it better?”
So, whether you enter awards or not as a follow-on I suggest you sit down with your team and brain-storm “How can we do it better?”
- How can we look after our clients better?
- How can we look out for each other better?
- How can we do our marketing better?
- How can we use social media better?
- How can we make our training better?
- How can we make our award submissions better?
Thank you for watching…
Have a great week!
