Salon reporting shouldn’t be something that only managers can see. Everyone on your salon staff can benefit from visibility into company reporting, from the leadership team right down to receptionists. Pulling back the curtain on reporting is your opportunity to start teaching junior team members how the sausage gets made, from service and product sales numbers to things like petty cash.
It’s easy to understand revenue goals from a bird’s eye view — here’s how much money we’re aiming to bring in this quarter, and here’s how many client bookings or product sales we need to make in order to do that. What’s less obvious is how an individual employee can make a contribution toward achieving those goals. Your FOH team should understand sales at every level, and that means understanding the moves you’re making as a business to get the books balanced and achieve the growth you envision. It all starts with the numbers, and it applies to everyone on your staff. Even an apprentice shampooing hair should be aligned with your company’s goals.
At the same time, it’s upper management’s responsibility to make those goals digestible and actionable for everyone on the team. When I was a FOH manager, we had one-on-one meetings with stylists where we’d share visualizations of our company’s revenue goals. Bar graphs or similar graphics are an excellent method for conveying information at a business-wide or individual level. We also put reports in the context of time spent and efficiency. For example, if a stylist was making 70% of their money from custom highlights but only spending 16% of their time performing that service, we looked for ways to help them shift that ratio.
The best ways to push your salon management career to the next level also overlap with effective team leadership and overall salon success. The bigger the difference you make to the people you work with and the company you work for, the more valuable a leader you’ll become!
I hope these tips help you in your own FOH management journey. If you have your own thoughts on how to evolve a career in salon management, please share in the comments! I love reading your stories.