Business management guide for salons, spas and clinics

business planning

Business strategy, planning and goal setting

When creating a business plan for the year and setting goals for your salon, spa or clinic, here are a few key things to consider.

Reflect on previous years and update your goals

Think back on the activities you carried out last year and in previous years. What worked and what didn’t? Did you achieve your goals? What could you improve on?

Dust off your old business plan and update your goals. Having your short and long-term business goals documented will not only boost your motivation, but also help keep you focused throughout the year.

What’s your unique selling proposition (USP)?

An important part of business planning is knowing your unique selling proposition (USP).

A USP is a clear statement of what a client can expect when they visit your salon, spa or clinic. When you know who you are, you know how you can serve. And that’s what makes businesses successful. Understanding what sets you apart from your competitors will help you to set clear goals for your business, and market yourself most effectively.

Having a strong USP speaks directly to your target audience and it tells them exactly why they should visit your business. This will also help you to be clear of who your ideal customer is. Find your business’s USP.

unique selling proposition for salons

Set SMART goals

There’s a reason SMART goals are talked about everywhere. This goal setting framework is simple and effective, especially for larger projects.

Specific:

Your goal should be clearly defined and easy to understand. For example, if you want to improve your rebooking rate, do you need to do this across all your services or only some?

Measurable:

You need to know when you’ve achieved your goal or how you’re progressing towards it, i.e. your rebooking rate is 40% and you want it to be 60%.

Agreed upon:

Get agreement on your goal with everyone who needs to be involved in helping to achieve it. This could be your salon manager, your team, and your business coach.

Realistic:

Make sure your goal is achievable with the resources, knowledge and time you have available. Putting unrealistic pressure on yourself to get more done rarely ends in goals being achieved.

Time-based:

Set a realistic timeframe to achieve your goal. This should allow you enough time to achieve the goal but not too much time that it causes you to lose focus on the goal.

financial planning

Create a financial plan

In order to create a financial plan and budget, you’ll need to know your numbers. You need to know what it costs to open your salon door each week. Identify your salon’s weekly income and plan a budget knowing your incomings and outgoings.

How much does it cost to open your doors each week?

If you don’t know this then ask your accountant. You can then take this number and work out how much it costs to run your salon each hour. How does this align with your pricing structure?

What’s your profit and loss (P&L) statement?

This summarises the revenue, costs and expenses incurred during a specific period.

What is your wage percentage?

Generally the two big overheads in a hair salon are your stock and your wages. Ideally your wage percentage should be around 30 – 35 % of your turnover. If this is out of whack then you either have a problem with your pricing or your productivity or both.

Is your pricing right?

Your pricing structure should allow for extra time and product usage. You can’t take a one size fits all approach to pricing – extra grams of colour and extra application time costs must be passed on to the client. Also watch the time allocation – if you have stylists stretching booking times you run the risk of losing profit on those appointments.

Set financial goals

Once you understand where you’re at with your finances, you can set financial goals and specific financial targets that will lead you on the path to success.

Your financial goal could be to increase your revenue by a specific amount, but you’ll also need to know how you plan to achieve that.

For example, you could:

Reduce your average client revisit period
Increase your client retention rate
Increase your new client rate
Increase your client retail attachment

Kitomba Salon and Spa Software’s business summary report enables you to see how your business has performed over your selected period of time with each of these client metrics and more. Find out more about these client metrics and how to improve them.

Create a marketing plan

Now that you know what your business goals are for the year, who your target audience is and the budget available for marketing, it’s time to devise a plan for promoting your salon, spa or clinic.

To find out the best marketing channels and activities for your audience, read our blog, The best marketing channels for salons, spas and clinics, and learn how to create a strategic marketing plan.

You can also check out our marketing guide, which covers everything you need to know about marketing a salon, spa or clinic.

team targets for salons, spas and clinics

Setting targets for your business and team

Targets are a key component of a profitable and successful business. They motivate and focus your team to achieve goals that can grow your salon, spa or clinic and drive more revenue.

When choosing which targets to track, you need to understand what your overall business goals are and what areas in your business you want to improve. This will help you to decide which targets to set.

You can set business targets, staff targets, or both. To learn how to set targets for your salon, spa or clinic, read our guide: How to get started with retail and sales targets.

Introducing targets to your team

After you’ve set your retail and sales targets you’ll need to get your team onboard! It’s important to be thoughtful about how you do this, as your approach will affect how your team feels about their targets, and ultimately how successful they’ll be at meeting them.

Our top tips for introducing targets to your team include:

Communicate your ‘why’
Pick your timing carefully
Upskill your staff
Be realistic

Read the article, how to introduce targets to your team, to find out more.

How to track your team’s targets

Targets won’t achieve anything if they’re not being monitored and tracked, so it’s important that you understand how you’ll achieve this before introducing targets to your team.

If you and your team can successfully monitor targets it will give your staff a clear understanding of their targets, how they’re tracking towards them and what they need to do in order to achieve them. It will also give you the insight required to be able to support your team to hit their targets.

Kitomba Salon and Spa Software enables you to set targets for your individual team members and their progress will be updated automatically based on what they have sold. You can then run a report to see how each team member is tracking towards their targets, and you'll see your business's progress as a whole.

With Kitomba you can track seven different targets:

Total sales
Service sales
Retail sales
Appointment retail sales
Total appointment value
Average appointment value
Client rebooking

These targets can be set weekly or monthly, depending on what suits your goals and team.

"Team targets should be all inclusive, taking every operator into account. Remember to set realistic targets for your team and expect that as a team they will be able to achieve more than if operating as an individual. Work hard on team cohesiveness and unity – this will stand them in good stead for achievement."

– Malcolm Gibbons, Salon Business Coach