The Power of a Personalized Experience & Non-Confrontational Communication

Hello, my friend. Welcome back to The Modern Hair Stylist podcast. Today, I want us to start off with an exercise. So, say yes to yourself if you offer a custom-tailored service to every one of your clients.

Say yes to yourself if you offer drinks in your salon. Say yes to yourself if you give your clients a scalp massage every service, every time. Say yes to yourself if you stay on top of your education when it comes to your hair techniques. I guarantee you, if you said yes, then your other peers, the other people listening to this episode also said yes.

So, what does that mean? It means that you are offering a fundamental, with a lack of a better term, basic experience. These are things that your clients are looking at as basics. They are coming in and they are now expecting that type of level of client experience.

They're like, "Yeah, my hairstylist better be going to ongoing education and staying on top of that. Everything's changing so fast, this is what I expect," right? "I expect my client to be on top of the newest trends. I expect for me to be able to go in and show this inspiration picture and for my stylist to know exactly what to do with it."

Clients nowadays have had experiences in multiple salons where it's elevated, there's drinks, they have a scalp massage, et cetera, et cetera. These are now just the fundamental basics of how we offer a client experience in today's day and age. If you're not offering those things, at least, I highly recommend that you start. But we also wanna consider, too, not just getting to the baseline, to the fundamentals, to make sure that we're matching everybody else in our area.

We wanna go above and beyond everybody else in our area to stay competitive and to increase our retentions and our referrals, and to make it so that there's a psychological switch in our client's brain that really shows them that this is a valuable next-level service. Like, you are walking into a very different type of salon experience. That is the type of experience that will allow you to scale to multiple six figures, I promise you. But it's not just about the fluffy snacks and the scalp massage and the this, that, and the third.

It's about what your client actually experiences when they walk into the door and how you use your amenities and the possibility of your experience to match it to what your client's needs and wants are in that specific moment. As we know, as a human being, you as a human being, your needs and wants change every single day. You may go into see your hairstylist one day and you might have this one mood or attitude or this one want, but then you're gonna go the next time and maybe it's a completely different circumstance and you need a completely different experience for both your hair, but also the actual experience in the chair. So with that, we're gonna be talking about customizing and personalizing the experience today.

Then we're gonna be talking about non-confrontational communication, and how the way that consumers are doing business now with other businesses is they don't want a lot of communication, and we're starting to really ge- get a lot less comfortable with one-to-one, face-to-face confrontation. And in order for us to do business really well and match the client's behavior and wants, we need to make sure that we know what we don't know. And we're only gonna know what we don't know if the client is honest with us. So, non-confrontational communication will allow us to learn these things to be able to very honestly, truthfully, and safely connect with our clients in a beautiful, next-level way that sets ourself apart from every other stylist in your area.

Every single person who has gone through my programs, I will guarantee you are implementing things that nobody else is teaching within this industry and no other stylist is doing within this industry. I guarantee it. I'll put a million dollars on it. And so I'm gonna be giving you a little bit of a sneak peek into what that looks like today.

So, if you're ready to get into it, let's go. What's the tea, friend? My name's Hunter Donia, industry business educator for hairstylists, but my friends just call me Hunty. Whether it be growing your clientele, making more money, or automating and streamlining your systems, in the next 20 minutes or so, you'll be hearing realistic, actionable strategies to create a beautiful career for yourself behind the chair.

So, if you're ready to get into it, welcome to The Modern Hair Stylist podcast. So, clients' expectations are wildly different now than they were in the past. So, a personalized experience is something that you can implement to set yourself apart. 80% of customers say that they are more likely to do business with a company if it offers personalized experiences.

People do not want to feel like just a number anymore. People do not wanna feel like they're going into a hair factory, right? Oftentimes, we look at hair factory kinda feelings when it comes to double-booking, right? Or when it just comes to everybody gets this cookie-cutter same situation.

Or you have Linda who has come to seen you for 10 years and you just have Linda come in and you guys don't even talk about the hair. You don't even talk about the experience. You're just so comfortable with her that she just comes in, you mix up her color before she even walks in, and you have her drink that you assume is her favorite because she has been drinking it with you for 10 years, ready for her... Ready to go for her.

That is what it looks like to lose the personalization and start to create a hair factory kinda feeling. And with double-booking, going back to that, double-booking, if you're just churning people out all day every day back to back, then... And you're not making sure that you're doing something to mitigate that feeling that clients may have that comes with that, then you may be actually losing way more money than you could possibly make by double-booking to make more money. And there's 100% ways to make double-booking work for you and make great money doing it and still give your clients a great personalized experience, and some of the things I'm gonna talk about today, you should take into consideration if you are a double-booker.

It's about so much more than offering snacks and drinks. It's about making it so the experience is custom tailored to that person's wants and needs in that day, and giving your client every sort of which way an option to be able to create a choose your own journey situation, even before they walk into the door. And what that brings me into is we need to allow clients to communicate with us in a non-confrontational way, not just once they're coming in for the first time where they fill out your digital consultation form, but at every single appointment. So I had my client, Linda, this happened to me a while ago back when I was working in a team salon.

My team salon, they changed over to a new color line. And when we changed over to this new color line, I had done Linda's hair maybe three times, and this new color line had us start to implement these paper, um, consultation forms. And they're basically to s- like help you sell more retail basically, 'cause you know how freaking product lines work, right? And I didn't start implementing these pamphlets until maybe her third time coming to see me, and there was a question on there saying, "Have you had any allergic reactions?"

And Linda said, "Yes," and I was like, "Linda, what's the tea? Like, you checked off that you had an allergic reaction to color. Like, what's going on?" And she was like, "Well, the past two times I came to see you, my scalp was, like, itchy and burny and, like, I was just too nervous to tell you 'cause I didn't want to be a bother after using this new color."

I said, "Linda, what the hell? I wanna make sure that you have an amazing, comfortable experience, and if you had told me this, I would have been able to do something about it immediately." But Linda didn't want to be a bother, nor did I take responsibility to give Linda the time and space to be able to share this with me. But as soon as I gave her a non-confrontational way of communicating this with me, with no judgment, with no face-to-face confrontation, she was able to share it with me.

And that's where the beauty of digital forums comes into play, and modern technology and the ways that we communicate with our clients. So it's vital that we have non-con- confrontational spaces and procedures that allow our clients to tell us these things. And I think an in-person pro- uh, pamphlet, having somebody fill that out, is absolutely inconvenient, and I don't think that it's, it's something that you should do at all. I, I don't think...

I think there's a lot of benefits to it, but I do not think it's h- how you should go about this. I teach how you should go about this in Pre-Visit Pathway in a really beautiful, seamless way that does so mu- much more than just bring your client experience to the next level. But what you should be doing is just giving your client the opportunity in a non-confrontational way every single appointment. It's also vital to allow your clients to opt in and out of parts of your service as well.

So, um, what I teach inside of Pre-Visit Pathway, the way that we roll this out to clients is we ask if people even want to have these next level experience opportunities, right? So for example, if you include a scalp massage in every single one of your services, what makes you think that every single one of your clients wants a scalp massage? Now, I think somebody who doesn't want a scalp massage is crazy, trust and believe, 'cause it's my favorite part of the service, but one of our students, once they rolled this out to their clients, was shocked because 24% of clients opted out of her scalp massage. And you don't know what you don't know, and your clients aren't gonna share this with you unless you give them a beautiful way of sharing it with you in a non-confrontational way.

And when you're asking all of these things, you can't just ask these things in the chair. You have to make sure that you know these things before they actually get into the door, because there's so many different things to consider. But if you don't ever even give them a chance to answer it, then you're gonna lose out on this really impactful important information. Like, you may have people who are, like, have a really sensitive scalp.

I had somebody, I have a client, Val, she got into a majorly awful car accident at a very young age, and it wasn't too long ago, and her sca- her skull fractured into, like, thousands of pieces. It was insane. Like, the fact that she's alive is such a miracle, and I'm so blessed to be able to take care of her today. And she has to make sure that she wants to opt out of the scalp massage, or if I do a scalp massage on her, she wants it to be a very light pressure, and she's able to customize that experience every single time before she walks into the door.

And it's not the same every single time she comes to see me, 'cause sometimes she's more tender-headed than others. So if you don't know these things, if you don't give your client a chance to tell you, you won't know and you'll be offering a shitty experience, and your clients won't tell you, they're just gonna go to another salon, right? So non-confrontational spaces where you can get your clients' honest answers can be really impactful and help you with retaining clients at the end of the day. I also hear a lot of the time, like, "Oh, I offer a really elevated experience with my clients and I, and I make it customized."

Because like I shared earlier, like, maybe you have Sally, and you know that Sally gets this to drink with you every single time that she comes to see you, so you just have it ready for her before she walks into the door. What if Sally wanted something different that day? Why are we just assuming what our clients want? In the last episode, or I'm sorry, in the next episode of The Modern Hair Stylist podcast, I'm gonna be talking a lot about the assumptions that we make about what our clients actually want from us in today's day and age.

We need to stop assuming. We need to start asking, and then building procedures into our business that work for both us and the client. Your clients' needs and wants change daily, and giving them autonomy over the experience they have with you will improve that experience and blow them away. I know that a lot of people maybe will, you know, have this expectation that, "Oh my God, Sally is, like, a super talkative and social person, and that's, like, how this appointment's gonna go today.

Like, I'm a social person and she's a social person, so we're just gonna gab this entire time that I'm doing her hair." What if Sally wants, like, one day where she just doesn't want to talk to you? Like, I know that I go to my hairstylist, Freddie, and I love Freddie and I love talking Freddie's ear off and us going back and forth and gabbing and keke-ing. Like, it's fun for us.

But there's sometimes I wanna go in there and I don't wanna talk. I wanna open up my laptop and just focus on my work or just close my eyes and not talk at all.But because this is the standard and the set expectation that Freddy assumes of me, I am too nervous to tell him that's actually what I want, right? 'Cause we don't wanna be a bother, we don't wanna be invasive human beings, that is the majority of your clientele and how they think and how they interact with you.

If I had a non-confrontational space to share that with him before I walked into th- into the door, imagine how different things would be and how much of a better experience I would have. So, with that, non-confrontational communication can really help you unlock a lot of the truth that your client has. Giving them a space to tell you if they really liked last time's hair, like, result or not in a non-confrontational way instead of asking them face-to-face, instead of being like, "Yeah, I liked it," they'll be able to be like, "Well, I did like it; however, I want these adjustments," right? On a digital forum, how brilliant and excellent.

So, customization of the experience, personalization of the experience, coupled with non-confrontational communication can be absolutely massive for your success in the long term and setting yourself apart from other salons in your area and making a better, bigger impact in your clients. The testimonials and reviews that I get from my students after I teach them how to roll out this strategy in a really seamless way, the way that it's not just s- that they make absolutely more money passively, that their retention goes up, that they get more referrals, it's also that they're actually making such a difference in this, in these people's lives too. Because some people want to come to see us and we can create these beautiful personal havens for exactly what they need in that moment, for whatever they're going through, whatever their emotional needs are. Do you know how powerful that is, that we get to make that type of impact in our community?

You have so much power, and I love teaching you how to unlock that power within my programs because I love that we, as an industry, collectively get to make that impact. You just have to be willing to put in the work and commit to that and grab the opportunity and do it in a way that's proven and successful with a proven roadmap, right? Okay, here's another statistic to blow you away. So, 90% of leading marketers say personalization significantly contributes to business profitability.

When you offer something that no one else is, you essentially eliminate the competition. Because maybe, let's say, you raise your prices, and Linda is like, "Ugh, this is too much for me. I'm gonna try somebody else." Linda's gonna go to somebody else and she's not gonna get the same lit personalized experience with you and she's gonna come right back to you and figure out, "Oh, wow, paying that newer, higher price was absolutely worth it, and I'm never gonna even think about not paying as much as I need to, to come see you again."

So, you are completely eliminating the opportunity for your clients to even find something better that's for cheaper in your area. As we move into this stage of capitalism where there are massive corporations, such as Madison Reed, like, the box color company creating salons, right? Like full-blown service salons, and then Amazon Salons, not to mention the Great Clips and the Hair- They are offering services at a very discounted rate and they're selling retail and they're actually pushing clients to do their hair at home. As those companies, those smart, massive conglomerate companies are creating these experiences th- where people can get things for a lot cheaper, you need to make sure that you are being innovative and that you are offering something completely different.

This is how you do it. So, another statistic is personalized services are luxurious by nature and customers are willing to pay a price premium up to 13% and as high as 18% for luxury and indulgence services simply by receiving a great customer experience. So, the more you personalize the experience, the more that you bring it to the next level, the more your c- the more money your client is willing to spend with you, and then you can raise your average ticket because now you have the opportunity of your clients saying yes to more add-ons. And the way I teach my cli- my students how to do this is super non-confrontational and they're adding $50 to $100 more per day in their business behind the chair without a price increase and without more clients.

So, by going above and beyond, you become a specialty service provider and you are no longer a commodity. This makes your clients be willing to pay higher prices for your services and stay with you longer because there's no other comparable option, and most importantly, helps you make a beautiful impact in people's lives, right? That's what we got into this industry to do. That is my why for why I serve you, is because of the domino effect that it makes in the world.

You have so much power to create a beautiful experience day in, day out, and that's what will allow you to be a successful business owner, but also have beautiful fil- fulfillment and passion in your life and not be on the road to burnout. So, if you wanna create personalized experiences, if you want to use innovative technology, strategies, and tools to be able to create non-confrontational communication that elevates the client's experience and creates more work/life balance for you, then I highly recommend that you check out my programs where I teach you the step-by-step, how to implement everything beautifully and roll things out to your clients in a way that makes sense and is seamless. And I would love to absolutely work with you and untap all that beautiful potential that you have and set yourself apart from other- every other salon in your area. So, thank you so much for tuning in today's episode of The Modern Hairstylist podcast.

I hope that you have a blessed rest of your day. Peace out, girl scout. Bye-bye.

End of transcript. © 2023 Hunter Donia LLC.