Taking the Sales Pressure Out of Facials

Many spas have a quota philosophy-written or unwritten-with both estheticians and therapists.

From a therapist point of view, I find it difficult to “encourage” clients to buy a product unless I have personally experienced the service and product and would use it on myself…and since I’m not convincing at (let’s say) telling tales, it’s best for me to avoid the subject if possible.

I am very pleased to hear that a spa has turned the pressure valve off the estheticians; hopefully more will follow. We provide wonderful services and if the visitor wants to buy the product, I’m quite sure they will ask where to purchase it.

Anitra, First let me say that I love your blog, it is informative and confirming. Thank you.

Part of opening Lavender Fields Day Spa was a “competitive analysis” and “focus groups.” On this topic the results were the same as your findings.

I remember visiting a spa for a facial and the esthetician was fabulous. Her technique, manner, and product made for a very relaxing, rejuvenating treatment.

As she was escorting me to the desk for check-out a canned sales speech began and the over-ambitious pressure immediately took me from relaxed to defensive as I was being sold.

I could see in her eyes she didn’t want to do it, she felt she had too.

I do not mandate sales quotas (never have) and when hiring a new esthetician I remind them that we do not push sales only suggestions.

If the Client shows interest, be knowledgeable and informative never forceful.

And you know, my sales figures aren’t bad at all, in fact they are pretty good.

There has been a lot of talk about retail within the spa industry. I realize that my philosophy goes against everything that you’ve been told about retail in our industry, but I can’t hold back any longer.

According to the new “Marketing Demographics or the Day Spa Goer” report, only 3.9% said they will spend 50% or more of their total visit on “home care”, 30.9% said 25% and a whopping 65.1% said the they will spend NONE.

Our experience looking at the books of scores of Spas around the country is that most Day Spas ratio of retail to service is less than 15% and Resort Spas are less than 8%. That does not mean there are not plenty of Spas doing far more than those amounts, but the reality of the matter is that very few accomplish higher conversions than that.

So why all the hoop-la about retail within our industry? The product companies would have us believe that that is where the profit is, frankly they are wrong, and I am the heretic for saying so. If you focus on the retail side of your business in hopes to make up for lack of profitability on the service side of your business you will find yourself in DEEPER trouble than before. The service side has to be well run, filled to capacity, and profitably before anyone should think about enhancing retail, and here is why:

Think of your service inventory of rooms and providers as bottles of products that you sell, in very much the same way you might sell retail. The difference is when you are selling retail products and you fail to sell a bottle on the shelf then you have not lost money, that bottle is available to sell tomorrow also. However the inventory of service capacity that you have is lost and gone forever, it is as if you threw away any inventory that was not sold and took it to the dumpster at the end of the day.

There is also a myth in our industry that “retail dollars” are more profitable than “service dollars”. Nothing could be further from the truth, if you think about it I think you will agree that wholesale product cost, plus shipping, plus retail commissions adds up to almost 70 cents on the dollar which is roughly the same as what the average Spa makes on a service dollar. The difference is that service dollars come in much greater volume and therefore the repeat service client is what we need to make our business sustainable and profitable.

An interesting point learned from the above mentioned survey is that many Clients said they were turned off by retail, they say that they went to the Spa for relaxation, and were put off with anything more than a mention of the products. Many said that next Spa visit they would go elsewhere. It should be mentioned of course that some people love to purchase products and that shopping in itself is therapy for them, particularly younger generations. The lesson here, I believe, is to design an approach to retail that is more consultative than in your face.

Folks, if you’re focusing on the retail side but your service side suffers then it is like a Doctor focusing on your hang-nail while you have cancer. And IF I am wrong about all this, and the money IS in the retail then you should close the Spa and open a beauty supply store!

Having said all that, retail is a fine supplementary business that will naturally grow as your service business grows, and when you feel like everything is running perfectly, and you could not squeeze another dollar out of the service sales then my friends feel free to focus on the retail side of your business. Until then always be thinking “Rebooking before Retailing”.

I felt that this recent focus on retail that we are told will save our businesses is dangerous for most Spas that struggle and will only save the product companies rather than our own.

There I said my piece, many of you will disagree with me, but I see this daily with Spa businesses and see the trouble retail hath wrought.

Best Wishes & Healthy Profits
Skip Williams

The spa retail apologists and detractors take a vociferous but completely uneducated position with regard to the so-called “disturbing trend” of retail “quotas.” The fact is that many of these self-professed experts have no idea how to gracefully integrate successful retail methods into the spa service mission, and then require a specified productivity level as a feature of that business activity. Far easier to just dismiss that very necessary retail revenue stream as trivial or insufficient to affect a spa’s bottom-line performance, something I find absurd in relation to an intelligently managed spa business. If you permit any aspect of customer service to be invented and delivered by mere employee discretion, that is, without careful planning, training and performance measuring, then the result might be something more like the expected offensive or neglectful one feared by some spa owners and pundits. To simply order spa employees to meet a sales goal does nothing to prepare them for the means by which they should achieve that goal, and here we’re talking about methodology, not some free-for-all product push.

The truth is that spa retailing is mindlessly easy to succeed in if you possess the essential will and technique for it. My former spa sold well $1 million annually in employee-recommended skin care and makeup products, one of the highest retail to service sales ratios in the US with nary a complaint about pressure or unpleasantness. We were also one of the most celebrated and award-winning spas in the country. How could that be? Because sales pressure was never applied to the process of selling! How offensive is it for an esthetician to ask a client in the initial consultation if the wouldn’t mind a few recommendations on professional home care following the treatment? This is called “permission selling”, providing the client with the opportunity to agree or decline the advice. And they rarely ever declined it? Why? Think about it: what does a skin care customer concerned with the process of aging or acne control expect of the professional hired to address it? Certainly not a mute “if you want it you have to ask me for it” approach! Imagine visiting a doctor to address an infection but the doctor refuses to prescribe medication as a polite no-promoting courtesy to the patient! Is it “professional” to compel clients that often prove to be passive with spa therapists to seek the advice of Nordstrom or Macy’s — businesses all-too-happy to take the customers’ money, when it could/should have been done by the expert who had the closest contact with their skin?

I recently spoke before a large audience at an aesthetics trade event in Las Vegas and asked my audience if they had ever been recommended any sort of personal care product at a resort spa, including those there in that city. The answer was a unanimous no! I then asked if they would’ve been offended had a therapist made a simple suggestion of a sunblock, body lotion or moisturizer. Again the answer was no. When asked if they would likely buy a product from a polite therapist in that selling situation most said that they would. And I know that I would’ve, too, had anyone ever asked me to try something at a resort spa. It’s never happened.

The plain fact is that that there is a patent terror of sales among spa professionals, not all of them, but an unhealthy majority. They fear rejection or negativity on the part of the client, they feel guilt, they lack confidence and training so, of course, the reaction to this task is one of dread and avoidance. Leaving sales training up to product vendors, of which I am now one, or to observing the technique of your best seller with her outgoing, winning personality will not translate into a team that is warm to product or service selling. And permitting the default hallucination of sales as something naturally akin to hawking time share condos is just simply wrong and irresponsible. Sales equaling pressure is no more a foundational fact than is business equals success. Both are options, and those options are based on the skill of those managing them.

Our most successful estheticians at the spa, and we employed a great many of them, were also our most successful in terms of clients and repeat following. I performed as a professional esthetician for 16 years and was both the most prolific producer in both service and retail dollars, and eminently successful. This is not possible through the use of pressuring and offensive tactics.

Another shallowly considered assumption is the one regarding the profitability of service sales vs. retail. Those service dollars will certainly come in as superior if you unwisely allow retail sales to languish and sell only products that permit a 50% gross profit margin, something I would never counsel my business clients to do. Privately branded products not only sell well but offer margins unrestricted by brand msrp’s. Also, those spa owners interested in building business equity will do well to create income in proprietary product sales as the company-owned brand accrues value in its own right. Why leave all of the business value to the unpredictable loyalty of spa employees with free will and a faithful following to haul away? Be smart, not superstitious.

It’s damned hard to make money as a spa business owner with its daunting management demands, huge labor costs and crushing overhead. To abandon the retail aspect as important is yet another tilt in the slope to failure. requiring employees to do their duty as professional skin care advisers is not a punishment but a moral career obligation. That spa technicians may steer clear of that expectation is understandable, but that it is largely due to an unfounded fear unmitigated by effective sales training is unsupportable.

As business owners we never are offered the true look at the only meaningful device for measuring a business’s true success: a valid schedule C, a legal statement of taxable income. Profit and loss statements can be cooked for anyone’s amusement but what you turn in to the tax man had better be accurate. It’s one thing to raise the honorable flag of “ethics” but quite another to prove the performance value of those decisions.

When you know that you can successfully sell a river of product, keep your customers and employees, and make real money in doing so the alternatives sound more like accommodations with failure than sound business principles. There is a better way if you want one. And that’s a fact.

Very sincerely,

Douglas Preston

I can not agree more with mr.Douglas Preston!. Nobody knows better your client’s skin than you “”the skin care therapist”!So it is your job to SUGGEST home care regimen,know how to do it and the client will be grateful and loyal.Gaby Voiculescu,owner of SKIN CARE BY GABRIELA,3 locations .
We do not push ,but the way we talk to clients showing ways to achive,improve quality of their skin ,and above all,the knowledge is what makes them to ask us to sell them what they need!. We are not sale persons,we are the prescription therapists.Did you ever refuse a doctor’s prescription?
Make suggestions ,be honest ,do a memorable treatment and the client is yours for ever.

One of the problems here is that most spa owners don’t teach their therapists HOW to recommend products in a way that is educational, fun, and personal to their clients. We are a practitioner-built industry, and often times the owner (with the same retail sales-phobia) tells their staff they “should” sell, and perhaps makes a half-hearted attempt at setting sales goals. This results in the horrifyingly stiff sales pitch at the end. The estie is given a requirement, but no training on how to reach the goal! So she’s got a knot in her stomach, acts tense, and OF COURSE the client feels it. Ugh. I’ve been that client before, too. It’s a buzz kill when you want to shop and treat yourself, but you’ve got a suddenly-awkward therapist or front desk team trying to rush you out the door.

It’s all about learning to make your best recommendations as a professional, putting the focus on your client’s needs/interests, and making the shopping experience feel just as fun and pampering as the treatment room.

Why do you think they call it “retail therapy?” It’s a treat and reward! And isn’t spending money on your physical and mental well-being a large part of what the spa business is about?

In spirit,
Jaya Schillinger

I spent years as a Beauty Director for Nordstrom (in the SF Bay Area) – and I was taught selling strategies from each cosmetic/skin care line that were represented (and we are all aware that most of the stuff there is pretty packaging)…and I had no trouble selling 2k per day (on the busy days)..

So, when I got my license and got into the spa arena (I was the Aesthetic Supervisor for a Starwood Luxury property in South Fla – I was amazed that there were no expectations, no goals and most of all no training….

I immediately applied the same Nordstrom techniques of clienteling to the spa, conducted regular sales training and viola’ – about a 50% sales to service ratio….(consistently).

That’s why training, education, scripts, role playing are so important. It’s also why the staff must love the products – and should be an integral part of the product making decision. In addition, regular secret shopping will ensure that everyone is on the same page.

The entire “education” portion of the facial should take no more than 2 minutes, tops.

The truth is customers are going to purchase products from somewhere – why *not* it be from you (the practitioner). It’s to easy to lose a customer over a free gift at Macy’s..

It’s more about people’s belief system than anything else – if they believe it to be hard, difficult, not realistic..well of course they won’t be able to achieve it.

One more thing (sorry, but I am very passionate about this)..the idea is to give a great service and then *educate* your client – and let her make the choice.

Warm regards,
Jennifer

As a regular spa-goer who just happened upon this thread, I can add a customer’s point of view.

I have to say that I’ve left most of my spa experiences pretty disappointed in how little I actually ever learned about how to take care of my skin. Most of the estheticians were very nice, and a good massage during a facial is relaxing, but I’m in there because my 45-year-old sun damaged skin needs help! I’m not shy; I’ve always asked questions and even point-blank asked for recommendations about what to do at home, and still, very little advice at all, no questions about what I’m using or doing at home, no product advice nine times out of ten. No questions about why I’m there or what’s important to me. Now that’s frustrating.

I finally found a wonderful esthetician to whom I’ve been loyal for about a year now (with no plans to go anywhere else so don’t worry Janice if you read this LOL!) and my skin has never looked better. Why? Because in addition to giving a really nice facial, she takes a genuine interest in me/my complexion, and sits me down and talks to me face to face for a few minutes before each appointment. She taught me how to take care of my skin at home. Not just product, but simple dos and don’ts that don’t cost a thing, like telling me not to use hot water to wash my face or to put on moisturizer while my skin is still damp. I’ve bought literally thousands of dollars of product from her, and never once did I feel like she was pressuring me or that the spa where she works was pressuring her to “push” product on me. She’s just really practical about telling me what she thinks will solve the problems I have, then as Jennifer said, it’s my choice from there. I’m sure there are some people who don’t want to buy products but at least educate and give some options!

And by the way my husband and I are both high school teachers, so it’s not like we have a lot of disposable income. I do take pride in my appearance though and I see good skincare as a worthwhile investment in me. And my DH God bless him loves seeing me feel confident in my appearance and even he comments on how much better my skin looks.

So from the customer’s perspective, I’ve had far too much of services that leave my skin looking nice but leave me wondering what to do about my fine lines on all the days I’m not getting a facial. I think those here that are saying good training is what’s needed are right on. As a teacher, I wouldn’t expect my students to ace their English test if I didn’t do my job to teach them how to succeed, and this is no different.

Now whether or not retail money is crucial to a spa’s success, that I don’t know. But when I wasn’t getting anywhere with getting advice from an esthetician, I was spending all that money at Nordstrom or Sephora, so as someone said here, why would you let a customer spend their money elsewhere if you can help them, make them feel good and improve your income?

Hope everyone here doesn’t mind hearing from the customer side. I hope somewhere an esthetician or spa owner reads this and it helps them have happier clients!

These are brilliant observations from savvy, accomplished and ethical skin care professionals, reading the above! They understand the true relationship between top-level skincare services and the need to guide clients toward the proper methods for self-maintenance. That the advice might involve the possible purchase of products they carry isn’t an objectionable affront to clients but, done appropriately, a service as essential if not more so than the facial itself. Consider that we may see a client in our treatment room, if we’re lucky, on a 4-week cycle. That means 30-days of doing whatever they may in between using whatever they night discover sans our skilled knowledge if we follow the logic of those opposed to pro-active product management and recommendation. The so-called retail “quotas” some experts speak of, and I’ve never met a single spa owner that actually had a quota in place but, rather, an expected ratio between service and product sales, is not intended to squeeze the customer or flummox the service professional. It IS, however, a means by which spa owners attempt to require their employees to do what they should be doing all along: suggesting home care! This only works when the performance standard is coupled with intelligent and often reinforced product sales education/training. As Gabriella and Jennifer wisely noted, both well-qualified esthetics professionals, the method by which products are offered to clients is everything. The product giants Dermalogica, Pevonia (and even the humble Preston Private Label) do not survive by backbar sales only. It’s the retail trade that generates our true operating revenue is largely the result of esthetician-driven retail support. To suggest that product manufacturers are the evil force at work in the halls of day spas is ridiculous to the extreme. In fact, it is these very companies that provide the majority of professionally useful education and training for our esthetics colleagues, not beauty schools, private trainers or trade shows. This constitutes an enormous expense for these companies — excuse us for trying to recoup a fragment of it through spa-based sales.

The service industry has long been involved in pro-active product promoting and we all have been benefited by it. Imagine a restaurant waiter that refuses to mention the daily specials or ask you if you’d like wine with or dessert following your meal. Restaurants, heavily dependant upon the sale of alcoholic beverages to make up for the low profits on prepared food sales, will not long keep the server whose wine sales are below par. Wine is where the profit is but it’s the food attraction that gets them to buy and drink it. Have you ever been offended by the server offers you a Cabernet or Cheesecake option? Cosmetic sales constitute the bulk of profitable sales for department stores. Ever wonder why these counters are almost always located squarely at the store entrance? It may be annoying to get cashier’s a pitch for a $18.00 extended service warranty on a $20.00 electric pencil sharpener or your 20th can of leather protector when buying a pair of work boots, but these offerings usually rattle out like a kindergartner reciting the morning pledge of allegiance during the last week of the school year. Dull, wrote words not a persona conviction about the value of the thing being described.

But let me put it more in line with the customers’ experience at a spa: let’s say that you and a close friend are scheduled for the same facial service at the same spa at the same time. You both are greeted by your respective estheticians and are simultaneously led away to a blissful experience. However, following your treatment, you are returned to the waiting room with a thank you and cheerful goodbye while your friend is being thoughtfully instructed on a few homecare options, including written instructions, and perhaps a sample or two. How do you feel about your treatment by the spa in relation to what your friend received? This is a common occurrence in many day spas and a leading complaint over short-changed customer service. Are you a hopeless care appearance-wise? Did your therapist cut corners with you while your friend was given better attention? Even if you didn’t plan to buy anything at the spa that day why weren’t you at least given an opportunity to learn something that Kathy at Bloomingdales never told you? This is a classic and common case of the “ethicist” (nee: fraidy cat) denying a client the awful crush of high-pressure sales tactics. Yeah, right…If you visited a spa massage therapist complaining of chronic shoulder pain who would be the better professional for you: the one who tells you to try and relax more (if that much!) or the one that has a heated and fragrant flax pillow to wrap around your shoulders for a few minutes following the session? “We have these available here and a lot of people that use a computer all day find that it helps to relieve the tension buildup. They’re right over by the checkout counter should you get hooked on this feeling!” Wow! Ring me up! But, sadly, I’ve never gotten even that much help from my self-proclaimed “healers”. Why not? Because they’re ethical, that’s why! Thanks for the help… I feel much worse.

One more thing: spa owners need retail revenue and profits to help retain customers or sales in the face of an employee’s tendency and oft-performed right to depart with a fat slice of the spa’s customers in tow. That sudden and painful drop of $60K+ in service and retail sales is no a soft blow to the small business owner. The sweetest and most permissive among them will experience this — it’s just in the DNA of independent-minded spa employee.

So, I congratulate you all for having the courage and professional fortitude to recognize a poorly planned position on a very solvable and, frankly, management fostered problem regarding spa retail sales. You are the role models for those truly committed to customer care and career success!

My best,

Douglas Preston, President
Preston Inc.

PS: Dear Sandra Gardner

That was as beautiful a client testimony for the proper performance of professional skincare as I’ve ever seen, and I’ve read a lot of them. Would you be so kind as to allow me to quote your post in future spa retail training classes my company performs? We would be much obliged and our students/their clients richly rewarded by this oh-so-clear view from a truly qualified source!

My best,

Douglas Preston

douglas@prestoninc.net

PSS: Please forgive the lack of edits in my last two posts. In these blogs you’re committed to what you send and can’t go back to clean up your errors.

And that’s “rote” not “wrote!”

Thank you Mr. Preston for your kind comments, and even though I’m an English teacher I’ll forgive your typos!

Please feel free to use my quote for your classes and I will also send you an email to get more information on your company. Janice has mentioned that her spa sends her to trainings sometimes, and it sounds like yours are something she’d really enjoy.

My pleasure, Sandra! If this blog will permit this post you can learn more about our training at http://www.prestoninc.net. We will also be producing a very valuable spa technician education schedule at the Feb. 2008 Day Spa Expo in Las Vegas, NV (details of this program not yet on the DSE website: http://www.dayspaexpo.com) Many thanks once again!

My best,

Douglas Preston

This is Kile Law, owner of Blue Water Spa . We are the spa that Anitra writes about with no sales quotas. I generally check Anitra’s blog the day I receive it but I’ve been out sick. What a wonderful surprise to know you elected to include us in your very informative blog. Thank you.
Any topic that creates so much interest from aesthetic professionals should get a lot of attention in our meetings and magazines.
I appreciate the opinion of everyone who has posted. If I may, I’d like to share a little of what went into my decision of not having sales quotas in the spa. First, like most of you, I was a client long before I was a spa professional. I remember driving away from great spa treatments feeling stressed or frustrated because I felt pressured into purchasing products I really didn’t need and many times couldn’t afford. Any time I had this experience, I never returned to the spa that pressured me when I was in a vulnerable post facial haze. I also have experienced the frustration of trusting aesthetic professionals and feeling cheated because they didn’t seem to care enough to educate me on what products or services could give me results I wanted.
As a spa owner, I want never want our clients to feel stressed after a nice treatment because they feel like someone is going to push products on them. Likewise, I want our clients to benefit from the considerable time we spend researching exceptional products and treatments. I want them to learn what is available to help them whether or not they elect to purchase products or add on additional services. I also don’t want our aestheticians to feel pressured to ‘push” something they may not really believe is ideal for a client for fear of losing their job or fear of not making enough money. In my opinion, the answer is education, and good communication. All of the aesthetic professionals at Blue Water Spa are well trained on our products. They use the products and feel confident that they produce phenomenal results.
We will soon be celebrating our 5 year anniversary and many of our providers have been with us since we were new. They aren’t afraid to tell me if they don’t like or don’t understand a product or a treatment we are considering for use in the spa. Finally, we don’t sell products we don’t really believe are great. We don’t discount products that don’t live up to our expectations, we get rid of these products! I only recall this happening once, but candles and soaps that didn’t live up to our expectations were donated to a shelter.

It’s not easy for spas. But simply treating your clients (and staff) the way you want to be treated pays off in the long run. Some of our staff policies can be found on our site and perhaps might be of interest to some readers.
I genuinely appreciate all the comments and I’m happy to answer questions. Go to to send me an email. I will keep checking the blog and answer questions for all to read for anyone who is interested. Thanks!

Kile – Thank you for your comments and I hope you’re feeling much better!

I’ve been a massage therapist for over 20 years, I was also a purchasing agent for over 13 years and agree with you 100%.

My massage work has been mainly in the medical field, but I’ve always had a post with a spa. Through the years, and the older I get, the more I realize that people come to me to relax and/or ease pain – in other words, to forget about the world out there.

Everywhere we go we are over stimulated to buy, buy, buy. Lord, how many types of toothpaste are there now?

When a client comes into my room, I treat them with the respect I would want – which for me equals focusing on the work at hand – no pun intended! After the massage I ask them if they have any questions – then we go from there. That gives the client the opportunity to either ask about products or continue to simply enjoy the peacefulness of their treatment.

So…three cheers for you, Kile, and as I said before, I hope other spas follow suit.

Hi Sandra!

Don’t know if you’re still keeping up with this thread, but if so, I’d like to ask permission to quote you, too.

I just got asked to write an article for a trade magazine on retail, from a customer’s perspective. Some of your thoughts would sure be useful! I hear similar comments from people all the time, but it’s nice to be able to put a name to them.

I’ll check back here for your answer, but you can also give me an okay by email at Jaya@InspirationInc.com

Thanks!

PS: Hope this is okay with you Anitra!