Successful salons can have clients traveling to them from several hours away. There's something special about salons like this that you can't find anywhere else. In other words, the client feels that they will benefit so much from the services of this particular salon that it is worth their time and money to travel to this particular salon, to be treated by this particular professional.
If you are starting your own salon and don't have extensive work experience and/or a client base, it's usually not a wise idea to get picky on which customers you want to serve. On the contrary, you welcome all and everybody - every door opening or click on the booking calendar is music to your ears!
After some time in the industry, an entrepreneur learns to identify the customers they can serve the best. Just be yourself and don't try to be something else, it all happens naturally. Your personality and the way you act may not be appealing to everyone, but that's fine. More than fine - it's essential, because you will not fall in love with a lukewarm or impersonal salon.
External factors in your salon also affect your ability to stand out. The way you, your website and your premises look influences and partly determines the kind of customers who'll come through your doors. For example, you might be too casual for some people, and too fancy for others. By tailoring the look and feel of your establishment to your own personality, you'll have customers who "look like you", and you'll be able to serve them particularly well.
Within work experience, your skills have developed, and you've found out what you're good at, what you like to do and what people are willing to pay more for. As your skills develop, difficult decisions have to be made when building your range of services. Practically this might mean two things, depending on the size of your salon:
As a great rule of thumb, you should only set up your own one-person salon if there is enough demand for your particular expertise or trait. This way you can serve most suitable customers for you, leading to high loyalty of customers and many things about your job will become easier. As your salon grows, everyone in your team should be a top performer in their field. Then it becomes easier to stand out.
Hold on to your existing customers and actively build a loyal customer base. Keep a record of what has been done with the client, what services they have used or what they may have said they are considering. Customer register systems that are linked to appointment booking make this much easier.
Also think ahead about what you could suggest to your customer. A great customer experience is made up of many small factors, such as remembering whether your customer wants coffee or tea, or whether they want their coffee black or with milk.
Make sure your skills are and remain up to date. High-quality trainings will inspire you, get you excited about your work and help you stay on the cutting edge of your field. Your customers sense your passion and experience it as an added value. Your customers will want to be able to rely on you to guide them through the latest trends.