Issue link: https://www.ascpskindeepdigital.com/i/291744
Create your free business website! www.ascpskincare.com 23 Check Your Percentages The percentage of your income that comes from home-care sales as compared to services is strongly tied to the success of an esthetics practice. Every esthetician should know how to figure out his or her percentage and should monitor it frequently throughout the year: it is a proven way to predict whether your practice will continue to grow, or whether it has some problems you need to address. The method is very simple: figure out the dollar amount of services you sold in a particular time period (this could be a year, a month, a week, or even a single day), then figure out the dollar amount of your product sales for that same time period. Divide the first number by the second number. The result is your home-care sales percentage. For example, if you sold $1,000 in services and $100 in home-care products, you would divide 1,000 by 100 to get a result of 10 percent. If you sold $1,000 in services and $400 in home-care products, your result comes to 40 percent. Different specialties in the spa and salon world have different minimum percentages that are said to predict success in attracting and maintaining clientele. For example, the most successful nail technicians have a home-care percentage of 20–25 percent, compared to the average of 7 percent in that specialty. The most successful estheticians have a home-care percentage of 40–50 percent; the average esthetician is at 17 percent. Generally speaking, an esthetician whose home-care percentage stays below 20 percent long-term will not be successful. Forty percent indicates a steady, but possibly slow-growing, practice; anything above 40 percent indicates a successful practice. What's happening in those practices with low percentages? It usually means that a sale only happened because a client had to ask for a product. It also means that a high proportion of this practice's clients are not using professional home care between bookings, and therefore will not be getting good results. When a high proportion of your clients don't get results, it's obviously not a good sign for the future of your business. Boost Your Percentages If your home-care sales percentage is low, what can you do about it? There is no need to feel that you are simply "bad at selling," since we've already explored why home-care sales should be an educational process, with the focus on the consultation and not the sales pitch. Instead, a low sales percentage usually indicates the professional needs more knowledge about the products he or she is recommending to clients. This knowledge must include the active ingredients and what they do, the kind of skin that will benefit from those ingredients, how the client should use the product, and what the results will be. If you do not know how the product works, why it works, and why it is appropriate for this particular client, you will not sell home care. But there's one more proviso: if you know all those things, but cannot explain them to the client, you will not sell home care. Many estheticians have the right product knowledge but have not developed their skills in how to explain it in ways the client will understand.