Monday, November 10, 2008

MANAGEMENT TOOL NEEDED FOR A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS

Larry, thank you for newsletters, I appreciate the information I get off your blog. You’ve really helped me to be more profitable. You are certainly an asset for our industry. What I was wondering is how you would answer this question. “What is the most important management tool that a salon owner should have?” I know you’re going to say good financial statements so make that other than good financial statements, “What do you think the most important tool an owner should have?” Clare

Clare, thank you for your kind comments. We are struggling to help the salon industry be successful. It's words like yours that keep us going.

You're right, good financial statements tell you where you’re going. You understand that, so I won’t get into it. Your question is, what’s the second most important? How would you like to have a friend – person that is a genius at booking appointments, can track retail sales by individual, can monitor the frequency of clients, can look at prebooking, has memorized client’s birthdays and important events, and can determine when a client hasn’t been in for a while? Finding someone like that, especially someone who can do that with a smile on their face, is probably an impossible task. Even though we cannot find an individual like that, we can get the same information from our salon software. There is excellent salon software out there that can provide an enormous amount of management information. The key is having the software in place and knowing how to use it.

One of the things we find with most of the software companies is that they are very good at what they do, and as such, they have the ability to prepare numerous reports. The key for salons is finding those reports that give them the information they need and then using those reports. As part of our services to our clients, we pull many of those reports and do some summaries so that we can spot trends. Trends are very important. If you can see an upward or downward trend, you can correct or capitalize on those situations.

Thank you for your inquiry. I hope this helps you.

Larry Kopsa CPA