Are you struggling to master the ebb and flow of your spa business’s sales and bookings?

Let’s be honest: one of the aspects of being a spa owner that drives us all crazy is the (seemingly constant!) ebb and flow of spa business bookings and sales. If you’ve been in the spa industry for awhile, you know that we have times when we’re swamped with clients and other times when the only sound in our spas is crickets. 

December and February are, because of Black Friday, Christmas and Valentine’s Day, particularly busy-- especially if you offer personal services like waxing or pedicures!-- as is the summer season. Your spa likely begins to hum with activity in May which lasts until September… which kicks off a dip in business that lasts until December comes around again. But does a balance exist between an influx of business that’s sometimes hard to manage and tumbleweeds rolling through your treatment rooms?

The answer? Yes. The caveat? Mastering the ebb and flow of your spa business means, by default, committing to mastering both your time and your strategic thinking-- rather than opting for shiny new marketing tactic that’s flung at your clientele at the last minute as you panic at your spa’s schedule (or lack thereof). Remedying that fluctuation in revenue is especially important for teams, as you’re trying to have enough staff to support the busy times but often can’t carry that labour-cost load during the quiet teams. 

The good news? Once you’ve filled the holes that were contributing to your slow months and begin to have more consistency with your bookings and sales, that new system works to mitigate those extreme highs and lows. The end result? Your leadership, team management, time management, and cash flow are steadier than ever and only improve over time. 

Today, I’ll be sharing my main three tips to fix your spa system and see those results if you’re tired of grappling with those constant highs and lows. The first one is…

#1: Get Ahead of the Game

Before I go into detail about how to get ahead of the game, ask yourself this: how far in advance are you planning your monthly marketing? If the answer is, “The week before the new month begins”, you are way too late to affect any meaningful change in your bookings.

This is a huge problem that I see across the board with almost every spa. Because spa owners are so busy juggling both their (often hectic) professional and personal lives, not planning your marketing in advance locks you into a state of, “Oh my gosh, everything is happening right this minute and I have a thousand-and-one fires to put out.”

The key to ensuring that your marketing is A) worthwhile, and B) actually going to work for you is planning your marketing at least one month in advance, with the ideal being three months in advance. This time frame gives you enough leeway to research your past promotions and offers (if they fit your ideal client’s interests) and craft a multi-channel strategy that includes social media, email, website, and in-spa advertising. There are a myriad of inexpensive or free online tools at your disposal that you can use to create and schedule these content calendars in advance: since consumers have a notoriously short attention span, if you’re relying on only one or two social posts scattered across the month to promote bookings, you’re minimizing the exposure of your messaging instead of maximizing it. 

For example, a recurring concern for the majority of my private coaching clients is a slow January. What we did is, in November, I strategized for them to offer a bounce-back coupon to their December clients so that all of the clients that came in December were given an incentive to re-visit in January for a particular service-- and, in my free Facebook community group, one of those clients commented that that bounce-back incentive earned her fourteen facials (which were a new treatment launch!) booked for January...by mid-December!

Monthly offers like these emphasize the importance of planning out your marketing at least one month in advance: if you’re not currently doing it, then it’s a leadership habit that needs to be changed, otherwise you will always be behind on your monthly offers-- which, in turn, directly affects your booking outcomes. 

#2: Sometimes Slow(er) is Welcome

“But Kirsten,” you may be asking, “I thought we were discussing how to make my revenue more consistent!” Some of you, however-- especially if you’ve been in the spa business for awhile as an entrepreneur-- will already recognize that slower months can sometimes be a welcome respite for implementing team training, brushing up on new team tactics, creating performance reviews, dedicating time to your marketing, enjoying vacation time, or finally having the time to dig into researching new services, product lines, or equipment.

The bottom line: take advantage of the high-and-low flow more strategically to either refresh yourself or better your spa business’s internal systems. If you and your team are going full-throttle all year serving clients, it can be difficult to find the time to step into your leadership for team support and new growth initiatives. Using those quieter months to strengthen your spa team skill-set and company culture will only serve to benefit the rush times.

#3: Analyze the Past

I know y’all don’t love analyzing data (and who could blame you?!) but I’m telling you, when data can help you to see the patterns of your sales and, in turn, prompt solutions… data can end up being very exciting! In terms of analyzing ebb and flow, you’ll want to pull reports that are monthly: it’s not enough to know that you’re slower in January, March, September, and October. You need to know exactly how much you’re up or down each month so that you can dissect which services, promotions, launches, or events actually work-- and ditch the ones that didn’t perform well.

The second key course of action is to use some sort of scorecard to track and measure these results. For my clients, I use a spreadsheet that has all the metrics of each month laid out in order so that we can easily cross-compare promotions and find patterns. Once you start seeing those patterns, you can shift into problem-solving mode and repeat what’s working, develop new tactics to strengthen what’s working, and, finally, drop the things that aren’t.

Analyzing past reports also ties back to tip #1: by giving yourself enough time to analyze your monthly sales and bookings reports, year-by-year you have then given yourself the opportunity to see where the gaps are in your yearly business planning and, in turn, create strategies for each month before those slow times hit. 

All in all, you don’t have to be a slave to the ebb and flow of your spa business’s bookings and sales-- instead, create and schedule your marketing in advance, capitalize on those slow months, and be sure to track your monthly data to make marketing even easier and more worthwhile for you in the future. And remember: regardless of if you’re a team or solo, I have a very exciting Spa Business Accelerator program starting this January that will help you to wrap up your unfinished 2019 growth projects while simultaneously setting you up for success in 2020.