Dawn Bradley is the owner and creator of Dawn Bradley Hair and Dawn Bradley Academy. She is an educator & mentor, a world traveler, and an absolute sales dynamo. Throughout her lucrative career, she's worked alongside industry mavens from London to Australia, and her work has been featured in Salon Magazine and Fashion Magazine among others.
I sat down with Dawn to pick her brain about how she has curated a luxurious salon experience that makes newbies fall in love and keep her booked up all year.
I wanted to know: what’s in Dawn’s secret sauce? How does she get her loyal, adoring clients to fall in love and keep coming time and time again?
To start, she recognizes that first impressions are important - but just as important are the second, third, and fourth experience a client has. She aims to recreate the “first-time feels” every time a client visits her salon, and she nails it.
“Whether [a client] is brand new to you for the first time or they’ve been coming to you for ten years, that consistency and experience need to stay there. The moment that people feel like they’ve been put on the backburner, [it’s over.] If the experience doesn’t line up with their initial first impression, it doesn’t matter how many people you get coming in,” states Bradley.
Dawn has done lots of cool stuff to create the WOW! factor for visitors to her salon. From candy buffets to chai tea lattes to bringing her dogs to work with her, she’s made a big impression on her clients.
“I can’t tell you how many times the candy and my dogs got Insta’d and I got tagged in it, instead of their hair. Creating an experience like that, people will drive an hour out of their way to come see you because of X, Y, Z and it has nothing to do with the actual service you’re giving them.”
But Dawn doesn’t just offer neat perks to keep her clients wide-eyed and excited - she’s a master of hair studies and an incredibly skilled artist. A veteran in the beauty space, Dawn’s spent almost two decades perfecting her craft and learning valuable business skills all along the way. She’s put just a tad of her vast collection of knowledge into her free e-book, The Client Attraction Playbook.
“The first three steps [in the playbook] are the only ones you have to do. The last four are as if you’re on auto-pilot. Once you get people in and have that mastered, your clients start doing the work for you.”
Dawn says that the trick to getting your best clients to come in often is to create such an exceptional experience that people can’t help but talk about your beauty business to their friends, family, or even strangers.
A first step in building your ideal salon experience is foreseeing common business pitfalls to avoid. Dawn has discovered many of these firsthand during her career, and sees lots of other beauty business owners making the same mistakes she did when she started out. At the heart of the problem, as with so many of the challenges we face in our careers, is a lack of confidence.
Confidence, says Dawn, is the most important ingredient in any business owner’s secret sauce of success. And unfortunately, showing a lack of confidence in your service to clients can really mean the difference between providing a memorable, magical experience and one that will leave them questioning rebooking with you.
“The biggest thing I hear from service providers is they don’t feel confident enough. They don’t establish trust and authority off the bat. If you don’t start out with trust and authority, people will try to bulldoze and bully you,” Dawn explains.
When you’re providing a personal care service to a client, they trust that you’re the expert and know how to give them what they ask for. But if you come across as insecure or unsure, your clients may take that as a sign that you don’t know what they need - and that’s how you invite problems for yourself.
“I’m sure we’ve all experienced a client that’s tried to tell you that they know hair better than you do. When I was a fresh new stylist, being a people-pleaser, I just wanted to make them happy. You can communicate, ‘hey I’m the professional’ in the way that you speak to them and the way you hold yourself. Build that trust and authority by communicating clearly and educating them on what’s possible,” Bradley says.
Building confidence takes time and practice, but Dawn has good advice for exuding an air of expertise and skill even if you’ve still got your training wheels on in this department:
“Imagine who you want to be ten years from now. Now show up as that person. You might shake, your voice might crack, and you might be sweating like crazy, but eventually, you won’t have to pretend to be someone else or take someone else’s confidence. All of a sudden you’ve got it.”
When Dawn first started marketing her business, she got lots of butts in her chairs. But very quickly she realized that at least half of them weren’t a good fit for her, nor was her business the right match for them.
“I got really good at booking people, but I started realizing that it’s not always the right people for me. It was a 50-50 chance that the new client was the right person for me, and my regulars couldn’t get in. [So I thought,] ‘how can I weed out the people that aren’t the ideal client I want in my chair?’"
Dawn’s idea to filter out the ideals from the not-greats was to create a blog post. But not just any blog post: a recommended first-read for anyone considering booking with her.
“I created this blog post called Dear New Client. I wanted people to read this blog post first to understand how I did things differently than most hairstylists. It either made people go, ‘oh my gosh, I want to see her more’ or ‘she’s not the right person for me’.”
Her blog post worked like a charm, doing exactly what she had intended: bringing in more of her ideal clients who were excited to see what she was all about, while cutting down bookings from people who would be less likely to rebook in the future.
Out of this experience, she learned that a blind spot for some prospective clients and new salon owners alike is not asking enough questions of each other before they begin the relationship.
“Most people don’t ask enough questions in the first appointment. We fill a lot of the blanks on our own. I’ve found that taking 15 minutes, adding that on to your first appointment, and really getting to know the person [is helpful],” Dawn explains.
Dawn says that truly connecting with your clients and seeking to understand their needs is an undervalued opportunity to create a lifelong client.
“The number one feedback I’ve got from clients is no one’s ever sat down and listened to what they actually wanted. They were in a hurry to get the foils in or get the color on. So take that extra time in the first appointment to get to know them.”
Dawn adds a paid 30-minute consultation to every first appointment with a new client for this purpose - “People are willing to pay more if they’ll get heard.”
Another often-abandoned aspect of keeping clients happy and loyal is the upkeep of your service once they become regulars. Dawn says that once you establish a level of comfort and understanding with a regular client, you may begin to let your high level of customer service begin to slip slowly.
“The biggest slippery slope is that [beauty business owners] will ‘wow’ at the first appointment, win [clients] over. All of a sudden they become a regular. You look at your schedule, see it’s your regular, [and think,] ‘I don’t need to impress her, she already loves me.’”
This can be a client-losing habit, says Dawn.
“That’s where I see so many people losing their business. The easiest way to grow your business is to serve the people well that are already there. It takes less work, less time, less money to keep people in your business. So continue to wow.”
So you’ve added the WOW! factors to your salon experience. You’ve asked the right questions to find your perfect match, your ideal client. You’ve had your first appointment and it went really well. Now, you want them to come back again and again.
How do you get your favourite new clients to rebook with you? Dawn's not shy about simply suggesting it to her clients at the end of their appointment.
“When that first client comes in and you’ve enjoyed them, let them know. At the end of the appointment just say, ‘This was so fun! I’m so glad I got to meet you. Just wanted to let you know a lot of my clients book their next appointment [now], so let’s get something in the books.”
What happens if your new favourite client says no to rebooking? Dawn says she often hears beauty biz owners stating that rebooking doesn’t work for this reason - but it’s all in how you ask for the appointment.
“Give them a compliment, tell them how much you loved and enjoyed them. Let them know that you book up in advance. Let’s get something for three months from now in the books and you can always reschedule or cancel. Get them to get in the habit. You lose clients if you don’t get them into a routine and a system.”
The final step in creating lifelong regulars for your beauty business is following up and staying connected. How does Dawn manage this last crucial piece of the puzzle?
“Good marketing is when someone thinks of you when you’re not in front of them. Social media is great, but you’re competing with thousands of other people. You should be emailing people. Come up with a special every month and email your clients. It’s not even that people are taking advantage of the special. It’s that [reminder of], ‘Oh yeah, I wanted to book an appointment with Dawn.’’
Dawn’s emails aren’t just reminders to book an appointment or to announce a sale or an offer. Her emails are genuinely funny, and entertaining content will always warm people to you, which in turn can get them back in your chair.
“A couple of weeks ago [in my email] I talked about how I almost peed my pants in the grocery store. I try to keep it entertaining. I want to make sure that people just enjoy reading it, even if they don’t book with me or sign up for my program.”
Above all, Dawn says that the magic she provides for her clients really started to consistently show up when she embraced being okay with being weird, quirky, and funny with clients.
“I think for the longest time, I felt very robotic. [I wondered,] ‘I’m doing all the right things. Why am I not getting results?’ and [I realized,] it’s because I’m not being me.”
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*Psssst* I know a secret. Your ideal clients are waiting to find your business, and they’re closer than you think.
I have a VIP program called The Ad Lab! I’ll be teaching you exactly how, where, when, and why to run Facebook and Instagram ads that will have your new favourite clients in your chair so fast your head will spin!
Class is starting so soon, and I am very excited to teach the next round of beauty business professionals how to grab the attention of their dream clients using Facebook and Instagram ads.
Don’t let your dream clients be on your wishlist - go get ‘em!
Xo,
Stephanie.
