Amy: We are here at the Carlmichael Salon in San Francisco. And this is Russel Thompson he is the owner of the salon and we’re not cutting any hair today.

Russel: No, we’re talking about business.

Amy: Business, so we’ve got a lot of questions today about how the economy is effecting stylist in America and all of the world. And how are they are going to make money in this times?

Russel: Well I’m glad that you ask that question because right now we are in trying times and the things are changing a lot in the way in our clients that are looking at spending money on themselves. And spending money on these types of services which is changing.

And what we have to remember is that we are cannot place this up in a position where we’re a commodity. Where clients are comparing us as a price situation and we tried very hard in our salon when people walk in or people calling do not give any an exact price for a certain service. We actually ask that they come in or sit down with one of our consultation.

So we can move that service out of a price commodity and make it about the quality of the service that you’re going to get for that money. Rather than just being set-price. So the first thing I like to talk to you about today is client building, client relationship building. And this is so important right now because people are used to working online and doing everything online and buying everything online. When they finally come into a salon or into a business they want to feel they have like a relationship there.

They want to feel connected to that.

Amy: There’s our void because of being to that there’s not enough face to face contacts, so they’re doing the interactions their emails, on MySpace, Facebook so how do you add friends into your real life salon?

Russel: It’s important to create a system and every body can do a difference system we have a system here that we work on.

Amy: Will you share it with us. Does everyone here use it? So let’s hear it.

Russel: So our system starts with different guests. Now they would stay as recently done and the top reasons for people who living in salons surprisingly enough number 1 is cleanliness.

Amy: Cleanliness so immaculate in here from the moment I walked in smelled cleaned looks clean, clean person greeting at the door. You use the restroom very clean.

Russel: As a modern day it is not even get the chance we think clean the salons a lot of it’s perceptive cleanliness too. And it’s important that when you sit a client in your chair that you have given them the same clean station that the 1st client of the day got. So between each client even if you’re running late a clients’ not going to remember that it took you a minute more because that’s how long it takes to sweep your station blow the higher hair up your station. Reorganize your products. Make sure there’s no dirty towels on the station. That takes about a minute.

Clients not going to remember that extra minute but with they are going to remember is that they felt like they were sitting to a dirty spa.

Amy: That’s true and then that’s the number 1 reason why they don’t come back. So what’s the 2nd one?

Russel: The 2nd one is rude frontdesk. Rude aren’t helpful, so it’s very important to create system at the frontdesk and make sure that you’ll hire and support the frontdesk to be friendly. So we make sure that we address people by name because that’s a very important and you try to use somebody’s name during the service as much as possible.

Amy: Your sofa is amazing.

Russel: So we make sure that everybody is greeted with a smile and by their name and then we make sure that each client, each new client to the salon gets a tour of the salon and we take them to the entire salon and explain the environment what’s available to them. And we show them where we had a little bar.

Amy: So let’s see what that tour is like.

Russel: So you want to come in? I give you the tour.

Amy: And so you greet them by name all the receptionist.

Russel: We make sure the receptionist greets them by name. So we first introduce them to the products that we carry and this point we’re carrying Chirogi and Lenoro Grail and we’re use these products because they’re more naturally based in they’re inline with we want to create in the salon.

With this salon used to be an art gallery before it became a hair salon and so we tried to keep that art gallery feel. So we have rotating artist every 2 months and we have receptionist for them and that creates a little but of buzz and excitement and gets clients in here that we wouldn’t normally see. So as we move to the space when go pass.