Work smarter, not harder. That’s what multi-location salon owner, entrepreneur, and color expert Jaye Edwards want you to do this holiday. Here are three of his top tips for making the most of the holiday rush. 

Firstly, I was a hater on promotions. I used to hate promotions. I thought it cheapened my brand. But, as my brand aged, I realized that promotions are actually a gift to the client—they’re able to get more value out of something they weren’t able to before—so #1 is actually gift vouchers.

We encourage our clients to buy gift vouchers for their friends and family. When they do that at their appointment, they actually get a $100 discount off of their service. I hate using the word 'discount,' and I don’t use that in my marketing, but I will say you’ll get a $100 credit onto your appointment if you buy a $500 voucher for your friends and family. So, we actually saw an increase of revenue over the 4 weeks in December before the holiday season or vacation season. In my biggest salon we increased our sales by $30,000. Honestly, for us, has been a huge game changer, particularly over the last 3 years since we’ve been doing it.

Utilize the products that haven’t sold well during the year. I think one really important thing is to work with the brands that we have in-salon to be able to make it successful for us, especially during the holiday season. So, what we do is we have a shampoo and conditioner and a particular styling product that hasn’t sold that well through the year, then we would say you can buy this shampoo and conditioner and get this styling product with a small discount on it.

What that helps us do is move stock that’s been sitting there all year collecting dust and collecting money, and then we’re able to move it. We’re not making as much money as we would normally selling it at full price, but you are moving stock, so it’s not dead stock anymore.

The incentive I like to focus on for my team is retail conversion. What that means is the highest percentage of clients buying retail at their appointment. We do a tiered incentive, so the highest number gets $100, the second highest number is $50, and the third highest gets 2 movie tickets. It doesn’t have to be like that, you can have it in whatever way you want.

Sometimes we’ll even partner with the other brands we work with. For example, clients with clothing brands or retail brands, we’ll partner with them. I’ll give their stuff to gift, they give my stuff to gift, and that way there’s actually no money exchanged and actually really lucrative to do it that way. That for me definitely increases our retail sales overall because they’re not only earning commission, but they’re incentivized to sell more.