How to Gain Client Loyalty as a Hairstylist

I’ll never forget the beginning of my career as a hairstylist. I KNEW I was going to be successful. I KNEW I was going to be great. And I KNEW my career would be amazing. But I didn’t quite know how to make all of these things happen.

In beauty school they taught us the basics for sure. We knew how appointments were supposed to go, they taught us that we needed to do consultations-ask questions, we knew that we needed to do our best to give our clients exactly what they wanted, we knew we had to work lots of hours on our feet and of course we knew that our career success was dependent on what others would give us so we had to bend over backward for them.

But one big thing we weren’t told was how to get new clients and when we got those new clients how to make sure they would always come back to us.

I started my hair career back in 2007. Our economy plummeted months later. I lived and worked in an industrial town in northern Indiana that was hit harder than most other areas. The unemployment rate was over 20% at one point. Bad really is an understatement. veteran hairstylists were having a really hard time maintaining their schedules and clients because people just couldn’t afford to get their hair done. It was the first time ever that the economy impacted our industry. It changed things.

Within a couple years I just had this feeling that it was time to move on. I wasn’t seeing the results I wanted and I didn’t know what else I could do to get them other than going out on my own to figure it out.

I started at our local Ulta store. That job taught me how to HUSTLE and get over my fear of going up to people and asking them to be my client. I would utilize every promotion we had and talk to all the customers throughout the store with the goal of getting them to get their hair done. I quickly saw that I could do something with this job and I quickly started to intimidate the other stylists I worked with. My environment quickly turned toxic for me. Luckily, I had filled out some salon online profile that I had no hope would get me anything and a district leader for another corporate salon found that profile. She loved what I said in it and asked to talk with and interview me for a SALON MANAGER position.

If you’ve read my previous blogs, you would know that I did end up taking that ob and became a manager for a salon inside a Walmart. It was a walk in salon-an environment I never dreamed I would ever work in. The salon was dying, the Walmart was dying, and I found out I was pregnant with my second child almost immediately after starting the job.

I had a lot of hard stacked against me. But I quickly learned that if I was going to be successful I would have to make it happen.

I first started talking to all of the customers who passed the salon. I would talk with them and talk with them and let them know I was new at the salon and would love to do their hair. Eventually I would get more customers to stop and talk with me and eventually take me up on getting their hair done with me. I started to see progress…. then I had the baby. And a few months later I was a single mom with 2 babies.

The odds were DEFINITELY stacked against me now. But I refused to fail. So I really started taking a look at what I was doing during my work hours. I realized then that I was never guaranteed more than one client. When a client came in, it was my job to talk through everything with them with a goal to get them to get more than just their $15 haircut they signed up for.

At first I tried to sell everyone things. I would let them know the other services I offered and how I would love the opportunity to do these services on them. Then I started to try to curate my offers to each specific person’s needs. I would tell them the exact color service I would love to do. I would notice some hair issues they had and tell them how I could help them with their issues. I gave them answers to issues they never knew actually mattered to them. And the more I focused on telling my clients more services they could get done, the more they would come back and ask for those specific services. Suddenly, my numbers increased and those clients I had been talking with started to return and I had to focus less on trying to get clients to come in and MORE on getting clients to STAY in my chair.

During these first couple years at Smart Style we had a retail educator come in. She was the one who made me realize that as a hairstylist I AM a SALESperson. Sure I am doing a service that helps people, but I also have to sell my services to them. I have to educate them. I have to make sure they understand how to take care of what I give them at home. I have to make their job EASIER. I can still see the woman who gave us this class. She was a petite woman with a HUGE personality from Boston and she was in my salon inside Walmart in a run down area-I seriously want you to get the picture of where I was located for this part of my career. The Walmart I first worked in has since been closed down. Anyways, I can’t remember her name but I can remember how much she drew me in and inspired me and I would say that it’s that educator that helped me start to realize what the heck I was doing.

I took my job seriously from the beginning. And now I was ready to move forward. I started to do everything differently-starting with my consultations. I went from asking my clients what they wanted to do to asking them other questions about their hair like what they liked and didn’t like and what results they were hoping to accomplish. Then, I repeated everything back to them and laid out a plan for them of what their appointment would look like. I laid out what they would need to have at home-even if just shampoo and conditioner, and they loved it. I can still remember a woman coming in and getting her hair done telling me she used shampoo and conditioner from the Dollar Tree and when I asked why she just told me because nobody told her what else to use so she thought it was all the same.

This. This is when my career SOARED.

My clientele grew quickly. I started to train my salon on how to do the same things. We went from a dying store to a top store. And we still were in the same dying location. 🙃

Young 23 year old me had no idea that I was the reason we started to succeed and succeed so much. I had no idea that what I trained my stylists to do is what helped my salon succeed so much. And I had no idea that this realization and process is what would carry me throughout my career from Walmart, to independent, and to hair extension specialist.

When I think through what brings me the most business, its my client experience. And my client experience doesn’t focus on the extras that most people do-its giving them an experience that is hair results focused.

This single realization has been on my mind for MONTHS. And months ago I realized it is something I need to help train others on but I am just not sure where to begin and how to begin. Who do I talk to? How do I get my voice heard?

My heart says that I must create a training to help hairstylist, especially young hairstylists who see their career shaping up to be much like me. I owe it to them. I owe it to their future clients. I owe it to our industry.

Stay tuned to see what the future holds for all of us! 🥂