35. How to get MORE from your salon suppliers

Hello and Welcome. Do you ever get frustrated with the relationship that you have with your suppliers, manufacturers and their representatives when they come into your Salon. I think it’s an under-utilised relationship and they could be adding value to a lot of businesses in a lot of different ways. So let’s get stuck in, five ways your rep could be helping you more: Free training – if a rep comes in and they have a new product that they would like you to stock, I always ask the rep to come into our team meeting and explain the product features, the benefits and the best way to sell that product through to your customers. Promotions – train your rep, what you want is a phone call, Facetime or a Skype conversation with that rep, the day or the day after they hear about that cycle of promotions. Stock control – get your reps to help with stock control. At the beginning of a supplier relationship, they will know the products that are easiest to sell; they will know the ones where you might need to stock an extra few items. Espionage – you will not get a rep to come in and tell you about what’s going on in the Salon down the street, but what they will be able to tell you in a very anonymous way how things are working in other Salons. Honestly it’s an absolute gold mine when you get that relationship right. Staff incentives – anytime you have a new product which is being added to your range, I would definitely ask them for some sort of staff incentive, get them to talk through the new product, talk about the feature, the benefits and by the way we’ve got this fantastic staff incentive as well. I hope that’s been useful to you, if you’ve got anything to add to the conversation head over to the Build Your Salon Facebook page. Don’t forget to hit subscribe, I do a broadcast like this every single Monday and I would hate you to miss out on the content that I’m sharing. Until next week, take care.