ANTICIPATING THE ACTIVTY: ACTING AND NOT ENDURING

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Fortunately, some of the periods of the year remain intense moments of activity. But we have no choice but to note that even if these periods are still good ones, the consumers have modified their behavior and some of the events of the year become less important for them. Furthermore, the great tendency is to decide oneself at the last minute which leads sometimes to important "rush", sometimes source of frustration when you don't any choice but to refuse people.
In order to anticipate these fluctuations of activity which lead to dead periods and intense periods, we must ANTICIPATE as much as possible. Of course, anticipation is not an exact science. But the fact of anticipating the future with logic enable us to look to the future and to imagine what would be good to optimize the activity.

Anticipating its number of hairdressers:
It is essential that all the members of the team be present during the intense periods of the year. Indeed, it is important to explain in advance to your collaborators why they can't go on holidays during these moments and why the presence of each of them will be necessary.

Anticipating the propositions for the clients:
Each intense periods of the year can correspond to specific offers, in terms of services but also in terms of propositions of products. For example, the back-to-school period is the occasion to propose to repair the hair and the skin which suffered from the sun and the water.

Anticipating the commercial offers:
To increase the success rate, it may be interesting to prepare well constructed commercial offers which will boost consumption. For example, creating a price special back-to-school on the hair color theme with an adapted promotional offer. These offers will be visible in the shop window.

Anticipating the traffic:
In order to increase the traffic, we can also decide to submit special offers to clients in advance, by mail or text message. The offers must be adjusted at best in order to avoid reducing too much your margin but must be sufficiently attractive to encourage many clients to come.

Anticipating the quality of service:
The intense periods sometimes make forget the necessity of keeping a real quality of service. No pretext can justify a bad reception, an absence of advice or an approximate result. The challenge of each one during these periods is indeed not spoiling the quality viewed by the clients, while saving time during the different steps of the visit of the client.

Anticipating the training of the teams regarding fast techniques:
While the number of clients is increasing, you can't let a colleague use his/her old highlights technique which last three hours whereas there many people waiting in the salon. The training to faster techniques, which give also great results, will be an asset to work fast and taking care of all the clients coming in the salon. If some hairdresser have not been trained, you must know how to divide work according to the skills everybody.

Anticipating the orders:
During intense periods, no way to be out of products. Everyday products and novelties will be ordered in advance.

Anticipating the number of hairdressers:
Encouraging leaves, recuperation of hours, training.

Anticipating the animation of the point of sales:
Slack period can't mean fatalism and in no way you can cross your arms waiting time to pass. Animating the point of sale through special offers is necessary.

Anticipating the commercial offers:
Contacting the clients again via commercial by mail or text message. These offers will be special according to the kind of clients and if you have an adapted software and a good base of information.

Anticipating promotional prices for some days:
During the slack periods, the days traditionally calm are calmer as usual. It is recommended to create special prices for these days in order to encourage an impulse purchase for the clients who pass in front of the shop window.

Anticipating the quality of service:
The calmer periods tend to decrease the quality of the service. The cumulated calm make laugh and is often the occasion of thinking negative. The client mustn't be a victim of this ambiance, on teh contrary, the calmer moments are the occasion to even give pertinent advice.
Anticipation enables you not to hide behind the circumstances and stop hearing that you couldn't do better because there is too much people or because there wasn't enough clients…