Last week my husband and I went to Anaheim for a combination of family business and business-business. Being in the hospitality industry is both a blessing and a curse. The curse part: you can’t ever have a “pure” hospitality experience; you dissect it. (Spouses of hospitalitarians can quickly detect the telltale gimlet-eyed stare when their mate begins to analyze rather than experience a meal.)
The evening we arrived, we went to Downtown Disney, a cluster of high-concept restaurants and retail stores outside the park. Our mission: watch the second half of the game, find some dinner, and catch a show at the House of Blues after the game. We had hoped to accomplish this all at HOB.
We began with hostesses outside the venue. While smiling is the law inside Disneyland, the HOB team was clearly under strict orders to project facial expressions consistent with its core theme of “the blues.” Though not as grim and grizzled as true bluesmen, these young ladies were well into mastering Stage One Blues, known to the layperson as “indifference” and “boredom.”
There were no tables available, we learned, but we could drink until something opened up. The ostensible “Superbowl Party” inside, sponsored by JACK FM, featured nothing resembling a large screen TV. A brilliant bit of blues branding, this enabled us to experience a taste of the bitterness and disappointment so popular in the Mississippi delta.
In the throes of our own personal blues, we abandoned the HOB and sought Superbowl solace in the arms of the Jazz Kitchen nearby. There we were seated with great enthusiasm by a young lady who seemed to have been waiting all her life to serve us. Though the television facilities in the Jazz Kitchen were, if anything, a bit worse, the atmosphere in the room where the Superbowl Party was taking place was heady. There was a buffet of deep fried everything; heartfelt, inebriated shouts of “Who Dat!” and Mardi Gras beads passed out whenever the Saints scored. Bosomy older ladies in oversize football jerseys jumped to their feet with every play. Our earnest young server brought everything with ceremony, effused over the offerings on the menu, and managed to bring me the cryogenically cold martini I always order and never receive.
When my spouse returned briefly to the HOB to inquire when the music would be starting, the hostesses informed him with absolute certainty that there was no music that evening. In fact, they added, there would be no blues at the house of blues for almost a week. My husband was in a mild panic, since we were there specifically to see our favorite tribute band, Platinum Rock Stars.
“Honey, are you sure this is the right House of Blues?” hubby asked doubtfully. (Given the dishevelment of my perimenopausal brain, he’s right to be worried.)
I texted the band manager.
“We’re setting up now,” he assured me. Fueled with righteous indignation and a bit of Grey Goose, I marched back to the HOB hostess stand to inform them of their grievous error. PInetop Perkins or Honeyboy Edwards would have admired their near-total indifference, not forged by years of hard luck, hard liquor and disappointment, but freshly minted somewhere in Orange County.
Saints triumphant, we headed back to the House of Blues. Wristbands were affixed to prove our ability to drink. (Later we would learn that they ran out of wristbands and stopped admitting people to the show, ensuring that the venue remained half empty–like the bluesman’s proverbial glass.)
In her book “Branded Customer Service,” Janelle Barlow argues persuasively that the ultimate expression of a corporate brand is the people who work on the front lines. House of Blues has taken this deeply to heart. We encountered a scowling female bartender and a sound crew whose dedication to their job rivaled that of a prison trusty.
After rocking out to blazing micro-sets of Led Zeppelin, Boston, Def Leppard, Van Halen, and Bon Jovi, we were ready to head back to the hotel. Outside the HOB, David Victor, the band’s charismatic lead singer, who impersonates Robert Plant and David Lee Roth with equal ease, chatted amiably with some of the show’s attendees, including an 8 year old boy. (Whether or not this was branded behavior for a Platinum Rock Star is debatable.)
Little Jacob was a “Rock Star” video game afficionado, who’d we’d observed singing passionately along to virtually every song while his mom looked on proudly. She told us that it was his first live show, and then he and his sister had their pictures taken with David, much to their delight.
Walt Disney would have been proud. Pinetop Perkins, maybe not so much.
Congratulations. If you’re reading this, chances are you survived 2009 and are working your business strategy for 2010. No one I’ve talked to is budgeting for growth (we’ll all be delighted if it happens.)
We’re constantly asked what the successful spas have done, are doing, to strengthen their operations. I’ve been happy to hear how many companies whose top line plummeted still posted a substantially better bottom line than in 2008. Our own Preston Wynne spa is a good example. Sales were off 22% in our Silicon Valley day spa in 2009, but the bottom line was 500% better. That didn’t happen by accident, of course–the survival instinct is a great motivator.
We also had a blowout gift season during the holidays, with the final tally showing our sales up 16% from the previous year. That was the result of aggressive promotion, deals that encouraged larger purchases (we gave a $50 services gift certificate, which expires in 90 days, for every $200 in gift cards purchased.) Another spa in our Northern California Spa Leadership Round Table became, in her words, “her own Spa Finder” selling a limited number of gift cards at a substantial discount. While we are not a fan of discounting, the limited-edition approach is a great way to protect perceived value. (We used this same “only x available at this price” approach this month to sell costly cellulite therapy packages. We had a stunning response.)
Here are some of our key observations, looking back at the Year from Hell.
Cost cutting was a way of life, but we saw the limitations of that approach in hotel spas especially. There’s only so much you can cut before folks start to question your price point.
One trend we noted is that hotel spas are being given more voice in the way they market to day and past guests. Hotels have stopped “tolerating” their day guest segment and started actively courting a local market. Results-oriented and wellness-driven programming (though not too far off the beaten path of stress reduction and de-aging) has helped resort and hotel offerings increase their appeal to affluent locals, who are willing to pay a premium, but not for a “fluff and buff.”
Isolated destination spas were hit much harder than facilities near population areas.
Day spas were generally more resilient, in part because of their ability to “run and shoot,” as opposed to having more entrenched and institutionalized ways of doing business. If you were a large, lumbering property in 2009 you were in a world of hurt. We didn’t see a lot of creative, guerilla-marketing ideas emerging from that sector of the spa industry. Defensive cutbacks, again, don’t take you very far.
Salon spas performed the best. Clients still need their regular maintenance. Skin care services have outperformed massage, because massage is being commodotized in many areas by budget operations like Massage Envy. (If I need a kink rubbed out of my shoulder, I may be willing to let a stranger to do that, but I’m not going to play around when it comes to my face–I’m going to my trusted esthetician.) That is not to say that higher end massage services are being outmoded–it means that you need to offer a real experience to get people to pay the premium. None of this “phoning it in” business that we still see in so many hotels and resorts.
Retail has been hit hard, but retail-focused, spa-flavored operations (i.e. CVS Pharmacies’ new Beauty 360, et al) are on the rise. The spa channel needs to get much more creative to win back its share of consumer beauty spending. Part of the challenge is structural. Visit most any spa and see if it feels like a place a passer by or browser can go shopping. Spa design has focused more on grand architectural “entry statements” than engaging customers with shopping and buying cues and good retail design–which can be grand in itself. (Want ideas? Attend the GlobalShop expo in Las Vegas this March.)
Expecting all our retail to come as the result of services is an outmoded idea. Retail must be more experiential, going beyond the tired boutique approach. We must embrace the idea that some of our clients are going to be retail, rather than service, clients, and if we didn’t insist on making service the price of entry, we’d have many more customers who just want to shop with us. Some Successful Survivors have this “retail first” attitude, not making it the cherry on top of their revenue, but making it the tail that wags their spa dog.
Those big retailers sniffing around the spa world aren’t stupid…they know that there are higher sales per square foot in a retail store than a spa. A token spa presence (sometimes one treatment room) is enough to give them the spa cachet and win that customer. Spa purists may cringe, but Successful Survivors shrug it off as industry evolution. They “follow the money.”
Exclusive and unique products are vital to customer loyalty. Successful survivors use private branding in their retail mix, though it is not always obvious as such. Fewer and fewer sophisticated operations just slap the spa name on a private label product–they’re actually creating brands.
Events and parties are surprisingly strong. This is a very supportive trend for resort and day spas, and those who have *unique environments* are finding there is a steady demand for social events. Spas have become a mainstream venue for entertaining. Successful Survivors are reaching out to their marketplace to make sure that there is awareness of their event and party capabilities.
Successful Survivors were creative with their marketing mix, but they didn’t drop everything to start Tweeting. Facebook Fan Pages were a favorite way to build community and get the word out about events.
I often heard old media like the Yellow Pages kicked around. However, YellowPages.com is now the 17th ranked site in the world, and the only way you get in there is to have a presence in the book. Though it’s fairly expensive as a per-click program (we paid about $1.95 per click last year) the Yellow Pages customer, online or not, is on a mission, not wandering. AT & T just added a new direct mail postcard program that we’re trying too–no minimums, incredible targeting capabilities, about $1.00 per card, all in (though there is a base subscription of $200 per month). I’ll let you know how that works.
In general, the Successful Survivors group shared these traits:
- they worked hard on building value for customers, taking nothing for granted
- they aggressively managed utilization but segmented their customers so they were not bombarding their entire customer base with special offers
- Instead of relying on discounting, they created lower-price point services (45 minute format, for example) that still enabled them to protect their value proposition but offered customers the opportunity to “spa” for less
- they reduced overhead expenses continuously, but protected expenditures that had high perceived value for customers. In our spa we call this law “If it touches the customer, it has to be perfect.”
- they reduced the richness of compensation plans
- they suspended paid time off benefits, and this year, are partially restoring them as a perk for employees who meet their sales goals
- they got their managers out of their offices and onto the floor
- they communicated continuously and were open about their financial health with their team
- they cadged clever ideas from other industries
- they used inexpensive marketing tools, including social media, to talk to their clients and build business
- they improved and/or paid close attention to their web presence
- they set goals, coached, and “touched” their team members every month
I am pretty confident that 2010 will be nearly as challenging as 2009. It’s hard not to feel fatigued by this record-setting recession as it drags on, bumping along the bottom. One thing is certain: sharing strategies with other spas is a great way to increase your business intelligence. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again–form a round table with your peers (non competitive spas in your region) and get together every other month to share what’s worked and what hasn’t. It’s free and it’s fantastic.
Be sure to join the Wynne Business group on Linked In, where such sharing is highly encouraged!
We’d love it if you’d post your best marketing idea from 2009 here as a comment.
The Q & A portion of our classes and presentations is by far my favorite part. I learn so much from these discussions, and often wish I had more opportunity to scribble down some of the fantastic ideas I hear in the classroom. Since we actually operate a spa in the San Francisco Bay Area, I’m constantly trolling for great new concepts, just like you.
But, just when things get rolling–and some really fantastic ideas come rolling in–time’s up.
No topic has been hotter in our real-world, Northern California Spa Leadership Round Table this year than sales and marketing. So we decided to create a free, live marketing round table for all our subscribers, on Tuesday, January 18, at 10 a.m. Pacific/1 p.m. Eastern. We’ll start with a very short overview and then open the floor to you–soliciting your best ideas, your questions, even your worst marketing nightmares. This is a no-holds-barred discussion, designed to draw out the collective wisdom of our savvy community of spa professionals.
The round table will be moderated by Lisa Starr and me. You can also contribute by online chat if you don’t feel like opening your mouth.
For a little bit of left brain action, we’ve Lisa and I will be joined by David Victor of Accelerator Enterprise Technologies, whose company creates websites (including Preston Wynne Spa’s, and the recently relaunched Wynne Business site) as well as online marketing programs for spa and beauty businesses.
Attendees of our seminar this week can download this MP3 file, to be used with the pdf of our Powerpoint presentation. A great way to share the program with team members who couldn’t attend, and an opportunity review and revisit key portions of this fast-paced presentation!
Remember the media-whipped gift card buying scare of 2008? Last year, holiday shoppers were exhorted to buy merchandise, not gift cards, in case stores went out of business before the cards could be redeemed. The bad press took a toll on service businesses, and spas suffered badly.
Though the retail sector is not rebounding, and prominent companies are still vanishing from the landscape, the gift card story is last year’s news, and the media needs fresh new scares to stoke the engines of holiday panic. Thus gift card retailers, your services as enemies of the state are no longer required!
Long before the holiday season, we began noticing a distinct thaw in gift card sales. Most spas I’ve talked with say theirs began in October. In our own Preston Wynne Spa, we finished November with gift sales up 22% above last year.
Certainly, spas love and need the cash flow from gift cards. But 2009 was the first year that most spas redeemed more gift cards than they sold, which somewhat soured the love affair. Accustomed to (and adoring) the notion that “20% of them are never redeemed,” spas were rudely shocked.
But more important, we think, is that gift sales are a leading indicator. Gift redemptions closely track sales in general. In other words, when few gift cards are being redeemed, business in general is slow. When gift cards are being redeemed at a brisk pace, business is booming.
Numbers are funny things–they can tell vivid stories, but not always the ones you expect them to. Gift redemptions as a percentage of sales is a key number that I’ve observed for years. I like it to hover around 17-20% of total sales volume. If it drops below that, and especially below 15%, we’ve got a demand problem. If it rages above 25%, we’re churning a lot of new guests and not retaining enough of them. (Sure, in January you can expect to see these overheated numbers. But the holiday lump passes through the snake pretty swiftly.)
We just concluded our holiday client appreciation party and gift card preview. We threw a truly shameless “gift with purchase” at our clients this year–a gift certificate (expirable in 90 days, as promotional gifts are) for a $75 “Small Indulgence” treatment for every $150 in gift cards purchased. These are 45 minute treatments, and include a massage, body scrub, facial and a deluxe 75 minute pedicure.
Perhaps not surprisingly, as this was our richest offer ever, we sold 70% more gift cards than last year. Like most of you, I look forward to a time (a long way off, no doubt) when our clients no longer need spectacular promotions to get them to take action. But like most of you, I am delighted that they are taking action at all.
So, if our generally higher gift card sales are saying what we hope they are, 2010 may finally show growth. (Join us for our first webinar of the New Year, “Back in the Black,” and we’ll talk about what to do in the meantime.)
Have a very prosperous gift selling season, and please share your favorite promotions!
When can your spa stop doing sales training? Never.
No need to feel like you’ve failed if you’ve watched performance slip, dip, bump or bottom out–it’s time to reinforce, repeat, and help your team build better habits. Repetition may feel tedious, even primitive, but it’s an absolutely essential discipline in business. You get tired and frustrated, hearing yourself repeat the same things. (Some business leaders insist that until your staff actually makes fun of your catch phrases, you haven’t gotten through.)
We’ve been in business for twenty five years, and have an absolutely stellar team. Yet we’re continuously reviewing and revisiting the Selvice (selling through service) process. We’ve posted a free clip from the 80 minute Selvice sales training DVD that Wynne Business produced on You Tube. It’s a top quality educational tool, with lecture and role-play “before and after” demonstrations in a real spa setting.
We all know that the two big motivators of human behavior are 1.) avoiding pain and 2.) gaining pleasure. For years, the spa industry grew on the obvious attractions of motivator #2. And life was good.
But times have changed, and the spa industry been remarkably slow to pack away its “champagne wishes and caviar dreams”. (If you’re still larding your marketing communications with words like “luxurious,” “indulgent,” and “exclusive,” please go to the back of the class.)
This year, it’s all about helping your guests overcome pain. Results-oriented services are withstanding the recession’s battering far better than those perceived as merely relaxing. Even stress relief is looked upon as a guilty pleasure. (It’s a recession–everyone‘s stressed out!)
Maybe you’ve only used the word “pain” sparingly til now. Perhaps a discreet mention in the copy for a massage treatment. But many, if not most, of our clients are living with pain, and don’t even realize that their spa therapist can actually do something about it. You need to tell them.
No, we’re not recommending a return to dreary YMCA-style rubdowns with smelly liniment. Pain relief can and should be…fabulous.
Our newest offering, Thaiyurveda, is a Thai-inspired warm herbal poultice massage. The treatment, created by the inimitable healer Camille Western, is exotic, intriguing, and incredibly effective for pain relief. (I maintain that even listening to Camille describe the treatment in her melodic Puerto Rican accent is pretty good therapy.)
We introduced our new Thaiyurveda Warm Herbal Massage during a recent client spa party, with “bite size” samples administered on a table smack in the middle of our spa lobby. Guests swooned with delight…er, pain relief.
The next time a client calls your spa to inquire about treatments, make sure your staff asks, “Are you experiencing any muscle pain or discomfort?” “Sell in” with pain relief, to get them onto the table, but “sell through” with a luxurious experience, to get them to return. Offer motivating series specials (we like a summer ‘mini series’ of just three treatments.)
With a slight attitude adjustment, your spa can join the companies who know that “no pain, no gain,” is one of the great truths of marketing during a downturn.
Your next website is going to look different than your last. And not just because it’s going to include the little Twitter birdie and the exhortation “Follow Me!” on your home page, or the Facebook icon, leading them to your spa’s Fan Page or Group.
Your customer conversation is truly going online. Why let your spa lie there and take the pummeling of Yelpers in silence? You can be part of the dialogue. You MUST be part of the dialogue.
Social media experts agree, this is not a one-night stand. As with all effective marketing campaigns, social media campaigns are for the long haul, not just for “crying wolf” as one expert calls it. They take time and nurturing. And golly, no one has quite explained how they’re going to make money yet. But the collective wisdom is, we all need to get on the train, even if we’re not sure it will take us to Profitville.
“I don’t have the time!” protest small businesses. But I think we all agree that we have time to talk to our customers. If a customer calls you on the phone, you answer it. If ten customers did, you’d answer those ten calls. And maybe hire someone to help you. Even spas are finding social media geeks within their teams and turning over much of this dialogue to them. We know that talking to customers is Good. And talking to customers generally leads to selling things to customers.
So when it’s time to re-imagine your website, your Newsroom page is going to be a lot more dynamic, not a mouldering graveyard of old media placement pdfs, as most of ours currrently are. We’re as guilty as the next, for the moment.
No, our website’s new newsroom is going to look a lot like this souped-up baby, The Social Media Newsroom, a copyright free template from the nice folks at PR Squared
I’d love to hear from spas who are getting results from social media. What are you doing?
I’m a fan of looking outside my industry for fresh ways of solving problems, and I was delighted last month at SpaExec NYC to have a chance to do just that.
Leo Renaghan, Emeritus Professor from the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, delivered the keynote address, “Creating Customer Value in a Down Economy.” Providing insights into the social and emotional factors that affect economic decision-making, he encouraged the spa marketers in attendance to reframe our marketing messages to increase perceived value.
His thoughts on pricing impacted me the most. He explained that when consumers are given a choice of soft drink sizes that includes Small, Medium and Large, Medium beverages are sold the most. When Extra Large is added to the choices, Large beverages are the best sellers. Why?
Consumers perceive the Large to be the best value, but only when juxtaposed with Extra Large.
So perceived value is very much about context, and pricing has an enormous impact on perceived value. Yet the spa industry’s understanding of the price-value equation is only just evolving. What sort of pricing context do we offer our customers? As little as possible, it seems. This probably springs from a shared misapprehension that we are “above” pricing tactics, such as dropping a service price to $99 from $100. In any other industry, such practices are accepted. But the spa industry has a stubborn affection for increments of $5.
It’s not just about reducing price. Another example Renaghan provided was the improvement in sales that followed a product when its price was adjusted from $105 to $119.
How could one apply this example to services sold in the spa? At our spa, we decided to roll out a new promotion, called “Small Indulgences,” designed to appeal to consumer’s thawing desire to treat themselves well after months of sensible behavior. American consumers don’t seem to do well with privation, and thought the “I deserve it” ethos is now officially unfashionable, it is also utterly indelible.
Small Indulgences was inspired by a very similar promotion being offered by one of the spas in our Spa Leadership Round Table, a group of Bay Area spas that get together every other month to share best practices. Avant Garde, led by the irrepressibly creative marketer Blanca Caballero, has been running their “Spa Tapas” promotion with great success for over a year.
We decided we wanted to focus attention on our menu of 45 minute spa treatments, which are normally priced at $75, as well as a luxury pedicure that is 75 minutes, for $75. So our menu consisted of a facial treatment, a massage, and a pedicure, to keep things simple.
One “indulgence” can be had for just $69 (a mere $6 off its normal price, a discount that most consumers would sniff at were it described as “9% off.”) Two can be purchased for $129, and three can be had for $199. And in every case, the discount is less than 10%.
Voila! Small, medium and large. (extra large will be tested next!) The consumer suddenly has choice. They’re in the driver’s seat. The first purchase, the single Indulgence, is virtually a no-brainer, because that price point is so low. It opens what I call the “shopping door” in a consumer’s head. (I’m sure there is a real scientific term for this phenomenon: you agonize for a half hour about whether to buy the dress…yet once you decide to buy it, you add a pair of shoes and a cute shawl. What just happened???)
So, while they’re convinced that they deserve one little Indulgence…golly, that “Medium” starts looking good. Two spa treatments for $129? You can’t beat that.
We launched the promotion through our favorite medium, the e mail blast, limiting it to weekdays. We had a strong response, stronger than we got for our “Buy a full session treatment and receive an additional 30 minutes of treatment with our compliments,” which of course is a much better value.
This is yet another cautionary tale for folks who think throwing discounts at their customers is the best way to improve sales. We call discounting the “D” bomb, but I think “D” is the grade that marketers deserve if deep discounting is all they can come up with. (Come to the front of the class and write on the chalkboard “I won’t mindlessly discount my great spa services” 100 times!)
“Small Indulgences” doesn’t tear down our brand, or create expectations that more and more free stuff will be shoveled out as time goes on. It actually enables a new guest to try our spa, or an infrequent visitor to return more often; it taps into the midmarket price point without diminishing our brand promise. Wouldn’t you rather have a bona fide spa experience than visit a storefront budget massage place? (Hint, luxury spa operators: there is a way to beat ‘em at their own game, and it doesn’t have to cost you giant chunks of margin.)
Renaghan recommended the book “Predictably Irrational,” as a great introduction into the often baffling art and science of predicting consumer behavior. I can’t wait to read it!
I love being a spa marketer, and cooking up wonderful new ways to promote spas. But more and more, I love other people’s ideas (OPI.)
This idea comes from Preston Wynne, but more precisely, from a Preston Wynne employee, one of our newest.
We had a team retreat in February and created “three commitments” for the first half of the year. One of these commitments was, “Do something you’ve NEVER done to market the spa in a new way.”
Where do the best new ideas come from? Your new people.
Our newest esthetician came to me and asked me if she could have permission to send out her own “March Madness Special.” She wanted to send an invitation to any client who had not yet rescheduled with her to come in and enjoy another facial treatment, and, as her gift, she would lavish them additional thirty minutes of upgrades.
She didn’t want or expect to be paid for this time. It was her gift to them.
Employees often forget that spas are making a contribution too, when a service is given away using time that could otherwise be sold. But Jennifer “got” that. She knew this was an equal contribution. Our mutual unsold time could be invested, at no cash expense, to bring her customers back in. She thought that was a pretty good deal. She was more interested in generating activity than in being compensated for every minute of her time. She knew that she was sowing the seeds to grow her clientele. And she was delighted that we were willing to go along with her plan.
Fussy marketing maven that I am, I had to control my impulse to refine Jennifer’s offer. “March Madness” isn’t a phrase you’ll find in my copywriting. Was it too shrill? Was it incongruent with our brand? But I controlled my impulse to control, because I didn’t want to squelch her radiant enthusiasm. This was a fantastic idea, and it was totally aligned with our team Commitment. These are moments that managers dream about.
Jennifer told a few of her co workers about her idea. Two others joined the “March Madness” promotion. Others pooh-poohed the idea of “working for free.” The Madwomen busily prepared their personal offers, and put them in the mail. Jennifer herself mailed out 70 cards. Their energy was contagious. Even the skeptics were curious about what was going on.
We ended up crafting an offer for the estheticians and for the body therapists, so we’d have a SKU in the system for each of the unpaid “Madness” treatments. Other than that, this was grassroots marketing all the way. Into the mail their cards went, and we waited for the response.
It was swift and enthusiastic. Jennifer’s book began to fill. So did Elena’s, the first massage therapist to get on board. Word traveled quickly, and the “Madness” spread.
In fact, this offer has garnered the best response of any we’ve done this year. Why?
1. It’s personal. It came from their service provider, not from the “business.”
2. It’s timely. It touched them at the moment they were ready for another treatment, and leveraged the fresh memory of their great spa experience.
2. It was sent via snail mail. Say what you will, but internet marketing fatigue has set in. A hand addressed card is a real attention grabber these days. If you’re finding that your e mail blasts are generating fewer returns than they used to, mix it up!
3. It’s a great value. Full stop.
This offer is also one of the best business builders we’ve done. Why?
1. It is focused on creating the behavior that we need most from our clients: repeat visits. It cements the relationship.
2. It showcases us at our best, in a longer-format treatment that will deliver more benefits to the client. It’s not our “base sticker price” treatment. It introduces clients to irresistible upgrades they might not otherwise have sampled, and they’ll be back for more.
3. It shows our staff that they have influence over their clients, and builds their confidence. Think the “Madwomen” will be shy about inviting these clients back? Probably not.
