After years of holding our collective breath, it appears that the economy is finally trending in the right direction. Growth is looking good, and inflation is under control. The big economic indicators bode well for the next few years, with projections of steady improvement characterizing the forecasts. This is a tremendous thing for small business, because once word gets out via national and social media that things are looking up, people will begin to breathe sighs of relief and allow themselves to enjoy services that reach further than just ‘maintenance and necessary.’

Remaining top-of-mind with your clientele means gearing your marketing and promotions to ‘meet them where they’re at.’ (Pardon the grammar, but the phrase works, here.)  Where they’re at may be in a place where they are giving themselves permission to purchase services that move a tad beyond the pure ‘have to’ into the ‘ok, so I also want this add on..’ arena. That can mean extending a 60 minute massage to 90 minutes, choosing to go with a deep conditioning following a style and highlight, opting for a mani/pedi combination in lieu of just regular manicures, or choosing the rejuvenating facial with ultra-softening mask over the basic facial.

Up-selling now requires finesse and a good plan. Look at your service menu and consider ways that you might entice your clients.

Are there ways for you to add perceived value to the next-tier services without incurring real costs? When clients perceive they are receiving more for their money, they’re likely to invest in the next option ‘up’ the menu.

Will something as subtle as opting to list your services from most indulgent to more economical help? Order of sight matters, too. If your clients are seeing your most economical services at the top of your menu, they’ll have to think harder about moving to the next level than if they see the most indulgent first and the middle option (the one you’re wanting to encourage now) right below it.

Winning higher level sales means your clients will be enjoying services that they may have waited years to justify and you’ll be generating a boosted revenue stream as well.

Now’s the time to get creative with ways to enrich the experiences of your clients and create higher average tickets as you do it.

It’s another win-win.

It’s inevitable we all need to raise our prices sometimes. But raising your prices can be scary. There is always the fear that you’ll face uncomfortable push back from clients. Or even worse, drive them into the arms of your competitors. Here are a few strategies that can help make raising prices a comfortable and regular part of your business.

Have a pricing plan in place.
A pricing plan helps you track and calculate prices for your services and products. If you don’t know the cost of doing business and how that changes in your business over time as market prices and demands change, then you won’t know what is the right price for you to charge and when it is time to raise your prices. Having a plan that you evaluate regularly makes price increases part of your normal business practice and something your clients will come to expect. It’s also smart business.
A pricing plan can help show you when it is time to raise your prices, such as:

• Your competitor has raised their prices
• You have incurred an increase in costs

It can also help you choose the right time of year to raise your prices. Most retail businesses raise their prices in October, in advance of the holiday season. But, as you look at your pricing plan, you might find that there are certain times of the year that will emerge as a good time for you to do a price increase.

Knowing the right time to raise your prices and understanding why they need to be higher can make it much easier to explain to your clients why your prices have gone up.

Consider changing your pricing structure or the way you package your services.
Rather than a flat out rate increase, you could find that changing the way your services are structured or creating bundled or add on packages could give you the rate increases you need while still remaining attractive to clients. Try tiering prices into low/middle/high offerings, such as haircut; shampoo and haircut; or shampoo, haircut, & blow dry. Or bundle your offerings into premium packages, made up of one of your signature offerings bundled with a mini add-on treatment. These sorts of changes can lead to price increases that come across as more value added in the eyes of the client.

Be honest, not apologetic, with your clients about the price increase.
Tell them you are raising your prices. Be up front and honest with them. Highlight any increased value you are offering as well as any investments you have made in your business or your staff. Even a simple, “We’ve increased our prices so we can continue to provide you with the great service you expect from us.” is a good way to handle the announcement. But don’t shy away from telling them about it and don’t apologize. This is a business and part of running a business is that sometimes you need to raise your prices. Being up front with your clients about it will make them feel better about the increase.

Raising prices is a part of doing business and it is a key way to keep your business flourishing and help it grow. By making sure you understand the underlying reasons driving your price increase and feeling comfortable talking with your clients about it, you’ll make the price increases easier for everyone involved. You’ll protect your bottom line and your clients’ satisfaction.

Is the concept of courtesy in business an antiquated idea? Are we allowing our busy-ness to interfere with professional courtesy and communication? At the risk of sounding a little bit too much like Andy Rooney, here, let me just say that if we don’t take the time to be courteous we’re displaying a serious lack of professionalism and deserve the consequences. The good news is if you run your business based upon respect and common courtesy, you are already ahead of the game in a world that is inexorably sliding into a place where manners and respect feel like antiquated and trite ideas.

This gives you a definite edge! Not only can you employ courtesy to help set your business aside from many others, you can be a positive influence – over time those people who do business with you will most likely follow suit which makes the world a better place, right?

We talk a lot on this blog about building relationships. In fact, I have built a career on that, and as a result  enjoy deep, lasting, respectful relationships with colleagues as well as clients. Relationships matter, and nurturing them at every possible opportunity makes all the difference.

There is a trust factor there. There is respect. There is appreciation, and an understanding that time is valuable.

Before I go any further into why the element of courtesy is essential in any relationship, personal or professional, let me address excuses I’ve encountered for avoiding simple business courtesies and how applying the exact opposite behavior can work for you.

Technology. In a day and age when we are besieged with pleas for our attention in the form of emails, Tweets, Facebook posts, and voicemails, there has never been a more important time to manage the technology in your life and make it work for you instead of allowing it to rule your every waking moment.  Just because you get a thousand virtual requests for your attention every day doesn’t mean you ignore them. If you let people in, then respond accordingly.

Busy-ness. The ‘I’m too busy to get back with you, even in a cursory way’ response is ridiculous. Simply taking 10 seconds to drop an email response to a request for a meeting, even if you know you won’t be able to attend, extends a courtesy that will prove you are professional and deserve the same treatment in return. Responding is the point; the length of the response is not.

Apathy. I’ve run into people who only ping you or acknowledge your existence when THEY need something from you. Suddenly you’re the center of their universe, when, if memory serves, they’ve completely ignored emails or voicemails directed specifically at them, and have failed to mention said attempts at communication during casual runins in the hallway or at business events. Guess what? You should always respond. Ignoring an email or voicemail just makes matters change into larger issues that can ultimately erode trust and undermine efforts to actually support a project or conduct a successful business deal.

While we’ve all encountered many excuses for NOT practicing courteous business, maybe we should consider how living by the Golden Rule might just serve us, here. We all wish to be treated well, so we should all treat others well, right? That is what most of us were brought up believing, and, thankfully, many of us practice that ideology as consistently as humanly possible.

How does the courtesy concept translate to solid business practice?  Anyone in the service industry knows that response is everything, whether it’s voicemail or email being used as the venue. Timely, respectful responses to client questions and concerns translates to trust and ultimately loyalty to your service, over time.

Delivering on your promises is another huge factor.  This means time promises, service promises, results promises. If you say you’re going to meet with someone at 9:30 a.m., be there a few minutes early and be prepared. Disregard for someone elses time is a huge red flag and implies you are either disorganized, disrespectful, or just plain disillusioned about how the practitioner/client relationship dynamic functions. If you promise to provide the best indigenous blue corn body scrubs west of the Mississippi, then you should be sure that happens. If you promise to address esthetic issues in a series of targeted treatments, then do your very best to deliver on that promise.

Face-to-face matters. Training your staff to extend all appropriate courtesies to clients will provide two benefits – you will be empowering those employees to provide outstanding customer service as a matter of course, and your clients will feel confident booking services. Remember, referrals come from happy clients, and if you’re treating everyone with the utmost respect and, yes, courtesy, they will not soon forget it nor will they hesitate to recommend your spa, salon, massage or esthetics practice to friends and family.

Practicing courtesy simply means conscientiously practicing good business communication. The net results of consistent practice? Happy clients, more referrals, and stronger relationships, overall.

Do you want to engender loyalty and strengthen your business as a whole? That may be easier than you think, and simply involve supporting your employees’ pursuit of continuing education as well as providing in-house training which focuses on best business practices relevant to yours.

The key, really, is committing to constant improvement – your own, and, of course, your staff’s. If you follow solid business development strategies, share those with your team and encourage a constructive feedback environment you’re well on your way to enjoying sound day-to-day operations. When everyone is on-board with management objectives, and feels their input is not only welcome but encouraged, you’ll find your business’ energy level rising and level of service following suit.

It turns out being heard, being encouraged to develop professionally, and feeling supported in the course of business matters a whole lot to those individuals you’ve brought into your spa or salon.  The results speak for themselves – better morale, happier clients, and a general sense of being on track as a small business. The whole concept of ‘us and them’ is an outdated management approach that is both short sighted and fails to encourage personal buy-in and dedication on the part of your employees.

Enlisting the ideas, the creativity, and the energy of your professionals will net very positive outcomes. The first step involves planning which includes input from your team, then incorporating that feedback where it makes sense to do so. No, this doesn’t mean ceding your right to nix ideas that simply don’t fit into the business model, it means sharing the business model with your staff, then evolving over time to use valuable ideas as you grow your business.

From an employee development standpoint, all of your estheticians, stylists and massage therapists need continuing education for licensing, of course, but also to encourage periodic and valuable interaction with their peers and to grow their skills, foster creativity and stay abreast of current treatments, trends and practices. Ensuring your professionals continue to pursue requisites as well as develop expertise in their given areas is a simple as considering education a necessary endeavor, not simply an annoyance that makes scheduling a challenge.

Providing an environment that truly fosters growth and education begins with committing to do so, then laying the foundation over time. Bottom line? If you’re dedicated to the development and support of your professionals, they will return the the favor. It’s a simple and beautiful cycle.

All of us are constantly striving to improve and grow our businesses. And there are so many ways to go about doing that. We can read recommendations from experts, or talk to other local business owners about their strategy. We can study success stories and do research or hire experts to advise us; but, the truth is that your business is unique and what works for someone else might not work for you. So a little bit of experimentation with new strategies or solutions can often be the only way to know for sure.

Now is a great time to bring experimentation into your business model. You could try focusing on testing out one new thing a month. If it works: Great! Now you can start looking at ways to wrap it into your permanent business model. Or you might find that what you were doing before is the best choice after all. But growth can’t happen without a bit of experimenting. Here are a few things you could try experimenting with in the coming months.

Test out a new service offering or different business hours
People’s lifestyles, schedules, and needs are changing all the time. And your business needs to be ready to adapt to meet those new needs. But it can be challenging to integrate changes into your regular business practices. So try testing out a new service offering or different business hours on a smaller scale. Offer mini-treatments of your new service to your VIP clients as a free or reduced price add-on or a special promotion. You will be able to get feedback from your clients and staff and then decide whether or not to incorporate it as a full offering on your main spa menu. Or offer extended business hours one day a week to see if the interest is there to fill that extra time. Your clients will show you they are interested by taking advantage of the extra availability and your staff might be interested in having the extra time as well and will volunteer to work those hours. Either way, by the end of a month or so, you should know whether offering extended hours or a new service on a more permanent basis is a good idea, for both your staff and your clients.

Revamp your Loyalty Program
Your loyalty program is very popular with your clients. But maybe you’re getting some feedback from them on other things they would like to see in the program. Or maybe you’re seeing what other businesses are offering their clients and want to bring your business more in line with theirs. Why not try implementing one this change on a small scale as well. You could try offering a new reward to just your VIP clients for a few months, and then get their feedback. Or maybe create a new monthly feature to your rewards program where each month you offer something unique and special at or above a certain tier for a limited time. (Sephora stores do a great job at this with their changing monthly reward offerings.) This lets you try out new reward options on a short term basis and evaluate their success.

You could even choose to experiment on a small scale with a completely new rewards system with a select group of clients – maybe VIPs or your newest clients. This is a great opportunity to try something drastically different from your regular offerings. Get feedback or suggestions from your clients and staff on what their dream Loyalty program would look like and then take the pieces that make the most sense for your business (& your bottom line) and test them out. Testing these things out on a smaller scale gives you the opportunity to evaluate what works best for you and what doesn’t. From there you can take the new things that work and implement them across your entire Loyalty program.

Change Your Social Media Approach
We all know that social media is important. From Facebook and Twitter, to Google Plus, Pinterest, & Instagram, we are all interacting with each other on social media all the time. So a great place to experiment with ways to grow your business is with your social media strategy.

Maybe you want to try out a new platform, like Pinterest or Instagram. Start by creating an account and posting on a regular basis. Be sure to let your clients know with announcements in the spa as well as on your other social media accounts. You’ll be able to track the effectiveness of this extra platform based on the number of followers you attract and maintain.

It might be that you think that more regular and engaging posts on your Facebook and Twitter accounts might generate more interest, and more business. So experiment with posting more regularly (perhaps daily for a few weeks) or by putting up posts that encourage feedback and invite your clients to join the conversation. Try out a month’s worth of regular questions that invite your clients to participate. These could be related to offerings in the spa or salon, or could just be lifestyle or personal interest questions such as “What is your favorite summer beauty tip?” or “What is your dream summer trip?”

Try increasing your social media involvement over the course of a month and then evaluate any changes you have seen in activity. Are you getting more or less hits? This will let you determine whether the extra engagement on your part is something worth implementing permanently.

Experimentation is a great way to effectively build and flex your business over time to take advantage of a changing market. Be sure to make some time regularly to brainstorm ideas and then commit to testing these things out over the course of the year. One of the best ways to come up with new things to try is to ask your biggest cheerleaders: your staff and your top clients. Without buy in and participation from them, no change will ever really work. Ask them for suggestions. Involve them in the testing process. Then ask for their feedback and listen to it.

It could turn out that your new idea or strategy is a complete failure. A lot of experiments are. But it might turn out to be just what your business needs to grow. Even the failures have a lot to teach us about how we can make our business better. Either way, you’ll never know unless you try.