How To Motivate Your Staff To Sell More

Are you a salon owner that really struggles to work out how to motivate your staff to sell?

Well, you’re not alone.

A very common question that I get as a salon coach and mentor from our community all the time is, “Hollie, how on earth do we motivate our staff to sell more?”

And I first hand experienced this because I owned a spa myself for 10 and a half years, which we sold in January 2020.

And I of course, had to deal with unmotivated staff in my business, too. S

o how do you motivate staff to sell more?

Well I’m going to share an extremely simple and obvious tip, but it’s something that most people don’t think about.

Because when we’ve got staff working for us, and they’re in doing a treatment, or they’re doing hair style, and they come out and we want them to go and sell, we find that they don’t.

We find that they’re scared to, we find they’re fearful of sales, they’re scared of rejection, they don’t know quite how to sell, they don’t know what to do, or that the sale and the enthusiasm just isn’t there.

And they kind of just let it go.

And before you know it, that clients walked out the door, nothing in hand.

This is very, very frustrating for a salon owner because part of the experience and part of the job of being a therapist or a stylist is to take your client through a journey from the beginning of their treatment all the way to their home care as well.

It’s part of the whole client journey and experience.

So if your staff aren’t doing it, there’s probably one problem.

And the biggest problem is they are just simply not motivated to.

And the biggest issue and this is what I’m solely going to address in this video, is the biggest issue is we don’t get to the root of what motivates our staff.

So we think we’ll offer them 10% commission, we’ll offer them, you know, a little bit of income extra at the end of the month.

Or if they hit this, it might go up to 12% or whatever.

Now that’s brilliant if you have a team member who’s desperate to have a bit of extra money in their pay packet at the end of the month. T

he problem is most staff aren’t motivated by that, not because they don’t want more money because most people want more money, but because they don’t associate the experience of sales with the extra few quid in the bank account at the end of the month, because when they’re actually going through that sales process, they’re thinking in their head, “what do I want more; to put myself through this difficult situation, and in three weeks, I’ll get a few extra pounds – or just walk away from the situation, save myself this difficult moment?”

And walking away is going to outweigh the temptation of having a few extra pounds in the bank account at the end of each month, for most people.

Okay, some people are extremely money driven and are desperate for the extra money and they’ll work really hard.

But they’re the exception to the rule.

So what do you do?

Well, what you need to do is you need to look at your team, and you need to work out what motivates them individually.

Have a look at what it is that they do at the weekends.

Think about how it is that they dress, think about the makeup that they wear.

There’s going to be lots of individual features and traits about all of your staff members, things that they’re going to be interested and things that they’re going to be driven by.

For some of your staff members, things like meals out will be very, very exciting because they love to eat out with their boyfriend.

Or it might be they love to go on holiday. They absolutely love to go on holiday and it’s what they live for.

So could you motivate them with holiday vouchers or took extra time off if they achieve certain goals?

Is it that you have noticed they particularly like a brand of makeup, could they earn themselves vouchers to go and buy makeup based on their sales?

Get to know your, your staff, your team members, and get to know what makes them tick.

Sit down with them and find out what drives them.

Ask them, what would motivate you to sell?

What would help you sell?

Because you can put all the training in the world, you can put all of the structure to help them go through the sales process, you can help them with how they speak to the client and how they put it into the journey.

But if they’re not motivated, because what you’ve got on the table is not of interest to them, they won’t do it.

Because motivation is about wanting the reward more than you want to not do what you have to do to get that reward.

One has to outweigh the other, right?

If you said to yourself, do you know what, I love my food, but I’m going to go and run 10 miles and if I can run 10 miles today, I’ll give myself a biscuit at the end of it. T

hat’s not going to be enough of the goal for somebody.

But if you said, we’re going to go out and have a slap up meal and really enjoy it, it’s going to motivate that person to run those 10 miles.

You’ve got to want to do the work less than you want the goal of the other end of it, that’s the only way we can overcome a peak when somebody is unmotivated.

So you need to tap into your staff, you need to find out what it is that they want.

And you need to give them that opportunity so they can be driven by something that truly motivates them.

Now for me when I was younger, it was holidays.

I worked in sales jobs, all of my life until I came into the beauty industry.

And if somebody had come up to me and said, “You know what, Hollie, I’m going to pay you holiday vouchers for every person you recruit, every house you sell, every, every loan that you write for somebody“, then  I would have been so motivated!

Find out what makes them tick, tap into it might be something different for different staff members, that’s okay because if they’re pushing retail, because they’re getting something at the end of it, then what a wonderful, wonderful business you will have and you will be the thriving.

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