How to Optimize Sales When You’re Fully Booked

Last week I shared my review of Paul Jarvis’s “Company of One: Why Staying Small is the Next Big Thing for Business” to outline that, if you’re thinking of growing your spa business through team or facility expansion, it may be a mistake (if you’ve taken on the mindset to grow at all costs!)

Sound intriguing? It is! I picked up “Company of One” in November and was immediately fascinated because, as a former spa owner and longtime thought leader in the spa industry, I know that the majority of us are ‘company of ones’: defined as a sole proprietor with no partners or stakeholders, company of ones⁠— which many solopreneurs and spa teams are⁠— entrap themselves in a ‘growth at all costs’ mindset because they think that the only way to grow their company of one is by scaling their staff and/or facility space.

The work-around? Two words: scaleable systems. But before I take a deep-dive into that, let me recap “Company of One” and why its teachings are as refreshing as they are beneficial.

“Company of One”: A Recap

Written by a fellow Canadian business owner located here on Vancouver Island, “Company of One” poses the following question: what if the most effective way to achieve and retain success in your spa business isn’t to scale, but instead to stay small? As Jarvis writes, “‘Company of One’ introduces this unique business strategy and how to make it work for you, including how to generate cash flow on an ongoing basis.”

The idea that, as a spa business owner, you don’t necessarily have to expand and incur more expenses in order to develop your business will come as a relief to many of you; I know that we all feel a constant pressure to be retaining more clients, improving our monthly cash flow, and putting 110% of our time into our business-- and, if we don’t, then we often feel guilty that our spa business isn’t growing at a breakneck pace. 

To stay small and still beat competitors, “Company of One” suggests that you ‘outreach and outshare the competition-- not outscale’. What does that mean, and how can you optimize your sales by doing this if you’re already fully booked? Well, it all harkens back to the scaleable systems I mentioned above. 

Acknowledge Your Spa as an Educational Resource-- and Use It

The first step in optimizing your sales when you’re fully booked (without complicating your business by scaling outwards!) is acknowledging that your spa is a valuable educational resource for your clients: while, when we’re fully booked, we may start feeling a sense of urgency surrounding hiring someone to handle this steady flow of clients, refining what you are already implementing rather than starting up new initiatives is the most valuable takeaway from “Company of One”... and what you can start implementing in your business today.

One of the easiest and most effective ways? Leveraging yourself and your brand as an authority in the spa industry. Client education should be at the forefront of your marketing because what you teach your clients-- as well as how you teach them-- sets you apart from others in your niche. Freely sharing the what and the why behind your business (such as your treatments, your products, and your consultation process) fosters a community of trust and respect that bolsters the opportunities for not only client retention, but new client acquisition.

Start (and Stay!) Consistent With Your Email Marketing

Another overlooked tactical area is email marketing: while the benefits of consistent and strategized email marketing include easy-to-track metrics, high ROI, and bolstered website traffic, email marketing also has the added boon of building your credibility through educational and personalized content. 

Why is email marketing so effective in the industry? Well, let’s face it: the nature of a spa owner’s services is one-to-one, which creates a low ceiling of opportunity. If we’re relying on sharing our knowledge only when clients are at the spa we miss out on an enormous audience, as there are only so many hours in a day and only so many clients booking appointments! 

Popular email marketing platforms such as MailChimp, Constant Contact, and Mailerlite are simple, customizable, and highly effective methods of communicating your depth of expertise to your entire client list (old and new!) in under one minute: yes, it will certainly take you more than a minute to craft your email content, and yes, it will take a few hours to build your first email list and send your content out to the world, but the ROI on email marketing is exceptional. 

One of my favourite examples of the benefits of email marketing for spa business owners is as follows: a few years ago, one of my coaching clients was launching her new facial and I was encouraging her to send an email campaign to her list. She didn’t have much experience with email marketing and was trepedatious about my suggestion. However, after she caved to my advice and sent the email, she texted me the following day saying that she was completely shocked at how well it worked! That one email had 19 clients from that list blowing up her phone to book that treatment… all before she had even gone to work that morning!

Mine Your Sales

Another pre-existing system of yours that you can leverage when you’re fully booked? Getting familiar with your spa metrics! These include sales, productivity, your retail-to-sale ratio, pre-booking ratio, average tickets, and client retention. Learning how to most effectively track these metrics-- as well as how to tweak them in your favour-- is another step to keeping your spa business small while still out-performing your competitors. 

As a spa business owner, I know that you probably don’t dig data. I get it! I was you until I rolled up my sleeves and actively practiced my metric-tracking methods. Not tracking and analyzing your spa metrics means that you’re leaving money on the table: growth solutions are hiding in plain sight within that data.

Measuring your spa metrics becomes even more essential when you’re fully booked. When you’re fully booked, your productivity is likely around 90% and you no longer have room to add more clients. So how can you work around that by analyzing and utilizing information from your spa metrics?

 Let’s say your average service ticket is $95 and your average retail ticket is $56: by knowing these numbers, you can improve them by suggesting upgrades, add-ons to treatments, and/or fine-tuning your consultations and sales conversations to bolster retail sales.

Remove and Add Services

As a spa business owner, your spa will not only always be growing, but also evolving. If you’re fully booked, it’s time for a market positioning analysis to level your spa business up.

Think of removing and adding services like pruning greenery; the dry, brittle leaves need to be cut to make room for lush new leaves to grow. Similarly, prices need to increase and low-level services need to be removed in your spa business. 

I know it’s hard to tell some of those long-term manicure clients that you won’t be seeing them anymore, but I assure you that letting go of the services that you’ve since outgrown opens up space for more advanced, higher-ticket treatments-- and treatments that will, guaranteed, encourage both long-time clients and new clients to keep coming in. It’s possible that you may even need to reassess your cost-per-treatment so that you are 100% sure of your profitability moving forward, but that’s normal; remember, as a fully-booked business the gold is in creating and fine-tuning your existing systems to milk them for all the opportunities they can offer.

Looking to Leverage Your Systems?

“Company of One” reset my perspective on spa business growth, and I’m sure it did for you too! Realizing that you don’t necessarily have to expand your team or your facility in order to keep growing your profit was a jaw-dropper for myself, so I can imagine how you feel.

If you are looking to leverage your existing spa business systems but don’t know where to start, be sure to get in touch with me today to join the many spa owners who I’ve helped take their spa’s growth to the next level.