Mentoring your team is a vital part of your role as a salon owner. It helps your team to learn to see their business within your business and shows that you are truly invested in growing them to be the best they can be.
I recommend weekly sessions with your team members but first you need to have the following things in place….
Salon software
You need to make sure you use and understand key reports that you need, to monitor your teams successes and their weaknesses. All too often I hear people say that they sell loads of retail, but then when we run the report, it turns out that they sell an item to maybe 15% of the clientelle, and the reports don’t lie.
With your reports, they need to show you your KPI’s and staff utilisation at least, as a basis for mentoring.
KPI's / Goals
Your team need clear goals to strive for, and remember that a goal without a plan is a dream, so you need to set goals and make plans with your team members about how to reach those goals.
At Bamboo we benchmark colour, home hair care, treatments, rebooking and average client dollar spend. Once you understand these figures in your software, then you can mentor your team and show them how to track their own benchmarks on a regular basis.
I recommend striving for the following benchmarks (yes they are achievable, I’ve seen them achieved, and now with all the bond treatments available, you should be able to blow the treatment benchmark out the park):
Colour 50% (every second client)
Treatments 33% (every 3rd client)
Home hair care 50%
Rebooking 50% as a minimum! Should be around 75% though.
Retention 80%. This varies depending on how your computer system reports it, but we all know how hard it is to get new clients, so the more we retain, the better!
With the average client dollar, it depends on your pricing, the main thing is that you track it and watch it grow. This is a good basis for working smarter not harder and as your team get closer to achieving their benchmarks in colour/home hair care/treatments, their average client dollar will climb.
Wage structure
To get your team on board with benchmarking you must reward them. Not only does it make them happy financially, it acknowledges their effort and actions.
I recommend Bamboos sliding payscale, which is based on how much a stylist needs to turn over to be profitable, and this varies from salon to salon depending on staff numbers and overheads etc. It’s super easy to understand and makes it so much easier to do wages, plus stylists will be able to calculate their wages alot better too and see the instant rewards.
How does an in-salon mentoring programme work?
First, you need to launch it and get the teams buy-in! Discuss it at one of your normal meetings, teach them all about benchmarks and show them the flow on effect of their wages increasing etc (because who doesn’t want a pay rise?!?!). Then you need to allocate 15 mins per team member per week to mentor them. Sounds simple doesn’t it ;)
Weekly one on ones - accountability
A really important part of the mentoring culture is weekly catch ups (at the start of your financial week). You need to allocate 15 mins per team member to mentor them on their figures, on a one on one basis, as this is the accountability part. This is designed to give you a bite size amount of time to go over last weeks figures, (benchmarks and productivity gap) and talk about the strengths/ weaknesses, what worked well and what didn’t. You then need to support them in areas of weakness, talk strategies for the upcoming week, and get them refocused and set to smash those goals!
If you’re on the floor…
Lead by example! Have a mini meeting with yourself and set your own goals, let your team know what you are focusing on this week and be accountable to them. But, you must lead by example so you need to be achieving the benchmarks yourself.
And if you’re on the floor or not, 15 mins of mentoring a staff member will pay off much more in the long run compared to doing a clients hair yourself.
This may sound like a challenge, but it is truly one of the best ways to grow your team as stylists, and strengthen your salon culture. Once you get this up and running, the flow-on effect will be massive. I challenge you to find out for yourself.