March 11th-13th in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
If you own, manage or plan to invest in a spa, this program is a must.
If you’re already involved in spa operations, the Spa Director’s Management Intensive will help you tackle your toughest management challenges. If you’re planning to open or acquire a spa, you’ll leave this program with a clear understanding of the potential risks and rewards. If you’re considering a career change or advancement into spa management, the Spa Director’s Management Program will put you miles ahead of the competition.
Unlike most management training courses, the Spa Director’s Management Intensive is rigorously updated and relevant to the current business climate. Hot button-topics like yield management and recession-era employee morale issues are part of the curriculum. Unlike most other consulting/education firms, we actually own and operate a successful 27 year old day spa in California with fifty employees. We’re in the trenches with you in this difficult business climate–we have to walk our talk. We share what’s working now.
Class size is limited for maximum interaction with the instructor. Registration closes March 8.
Visit our registration site
Details on location, schedule and what to bring follow this agenda, below:
THE AGENDA
Financial management skills for directors and managers
• Overcoming your “fear of financials”: financial literacy made easy
• Managing by the numbers: how to really use the information you get from your financial statements
• Budgeting basics: how to set financial goals that make sense
• Positive cash flow vs. profit: the critical difference
• Capture rate and its impact on the stay spa financial plan
• How to evaluate the effectiveness of your employee compensation plan
• Best practices in compensation design
• Performance incentives to motivate your team when you can’t give raises
• Plugging the profit “leaks” in your operation
• Understanding the impact of discounts and promotions
• Understanding the legal and accounting issues of gift card sales
Sales and Marketing
• The only three ways you can grow your sales
• Marketing modalities for spas: what works, what doesn’t
• Event marketing essentials
• Marketing trends: the good, the bad, the ugly
• Millenials vs. Boomers: understanding the next generation of spa goer
• Best practices in spa web presence
• Getting the most out of your printed marketing collateral
• The why and how of spa packages
• Social media: roles, responsibilities and ROI
• Advertising: where to spend your budget now
• Understanding yield management
• Crafting more compelling and less expensive marketing offers
• Understanding your real cost of customer acquisition
• What “retention” means in your spa (it’s different for day, stay and med spas)
• The role of the local market in hotel spas’ success
• Should your spa market with online coupons?
Successful Spa Programs
• Why the spa menu drives vendor selection–not the other way around
• The pros and cons of “branded” treatments
• Innovation vs. profit: keeping it simple
• Modular menu design
• Optimizing workflow while ensuring safety and customer satisfaction
• Best practices for managing back bar costs
Retail Management
• Ending the disconnect: making retail happen in a spa
• Creating a more profitable retail mix
• Best practices for optimizing your inventory turns
• Salesflow: redesigning internal processes to support sales success
• Effective recommendation tools that spa employees love to use
• Scripting that sells
• Best practices for partnering with vendors
Leadership
• Understanding social styles and their impact on interpersonal communication
• What your team needs from you and how to give it to them
• Recruitment: how to hire the best employees
• Why the customer actually comes “second” in a great spa
• Why you’re doing everything yourself and how to stop it
• Why you can’t motivate your staff and what to do about it
• How to produce great staff meetings
• Best practices in employee discipline
• Performance appraisals that improve performance
Quality Management
• Moments of Truth: why little things are a big deal to your guest
• The Experiential vs. Transactional spa
• How to manage quality in the “closed door” spa environment
• “We don’t need another hero”: how consistency creates great service
• The three essential ingredients of world class service
• How to instill a “quality” mindset in your entire team
• Spa Speak 101: helping your team communicate with quality
• Teaching your team to effectively resolve complaints and perform service recovery
• Comps, refunds and redos: how to use them wisely
• Inspection: the key to success
LOCATION:
Historic Independence Park Hotel, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
CLASS SCHEDULE:
Sunday to Tuesday:
9:00 Continental Breakfast
9:30-5:30 Seminar
TUITION
$1599 per person
10% discount for more than one attendee (co workers, colleagues and friends are welcome to register, but one credit card will be required for the complete tuition payment)
10% discount for earlybird registration by February 6
Combine these discounts and multiple attendee/earlybirds and get 20% off
Registration closes March 8th
INCLUDES:
- Continental breakfasts
- Lunches
- Coffee Breaks
- All course materials, including our famous Spa Director’s Text
- One hour complimentary telephone consultation after you return to your business
WHAT TO BRING:
- Business cards to share with classmates
- Your current spa menu, if existing (copies if you’d like to trade with classmates)
- Your financial statements, for your reference during class
- Your floorplan, for your reference during class (if available)
- Your top three “learning takeaways” wish list for the course
Visit our registration site
What was the last truly significant innovation in the spa world? The last new business model? The last big industry-wide treatment trend?
I hate to say it, but I think it was the introduction of budget spas to the industry–Massage Envy. And while ME has done a good job of democratizing the spa experience by reducing the complexity of the business model and the price of the product, if you’re competing by offering a lower price and greater operational simplicity, well, it’s “everybody into the pool.” And that’s not a Blue Ocean strategy.
We’re not technology driven–there’s a good reason for that. But it’s technology that drives big changes. In the wake of Steve Job’s passing, we’ve seen Apple’s astonishing game-changers recounted over and over in the media. Not just things done a bit better, but things done completely…different (Steve, a bona fide genius, could be forgiven for shunning adverbs.)
What would you do “different” if you could? Not just the next whiz-bang Experience Shower, but something that radically shifts the way people think about spas and spa-going? Something that gets a lot more people to become spa goers?
Maybe we need to spend a bit more time thinking “different” instead of simply refining a twenty year old business model.
November 13-15, Saratoga, California
Taught by Peggy Wynne Borgman, Wynne Business Executive Consultant and Lisa M. Starr, Wynne Business Senior Consultant
If you own, manage or plan to invest in a spa, this program is a must.
If you’re already involved in spa operations, the Spa Director’s Management Intensive will help you tackle your toughest management challenges. If you’re planning to open or acquire a spa, you’ll leave this program with a clear understanding of the potential risks and rewards. If you’re considering a career change or advancement into spa management, the Spa Director’s Management Program will put you miles ahead of the competition.
Unlike most management training courses, the Spa Director’s Management Intensive is rigorously updated and relevant to the current business climate. Hot button-topics like yield management and recession-era employee morale issues are part of the curriculum. Unlike most other consulting/education firms, we actually own and operate a successful 27 year old day spa in California with fifty employees. We’re in the trenches with you in this difficult business climate–we have to walk our talk. We share what’s working now.
Class size is limited for maximum interaction with the instructor. Registration closes November 11.
Visit our registration site
Details on location, schedule and what to bring follow this agenda, below:
THE AGENDA
Financial management skills for directors and managers
• Overcoming your “fear of financials”: financial literacy made easy
• Managing by the numbers: how to really use the information you get from your financial statements
• Budgeting basics: how to set financial goals that make sense
• Positive cash flow vs. profit: the critical difference
• Capture rate and its impact on the stay spa financial plan
• How to evaluate the effectiveness of your employee compensation plan
• Best practices in compensation design
• Performance incentives to motivate your team when you can’t give raises
• Plugging the profit “leaks” in your operation
• Understanding the impact of discounts and promotions
• Understanding the legal and accounting issues of gift card sales
Sales and Marketing
• The only three ways you can grow your sales
• Marketing modalities for spas: what works, what doesn’t
• Event marketing essentials
• Marketing trends: the good, the bad, the ugly
• Millenials vs. Boomers: understanding the next generation of spa goer
• Best practices in spa web presence
• Getting the most out of your printed marketing collateral
• The why and how of spa packages
• Social media: roles, responsibilities and ROI
• Advertising: where to spend your budget now
• Understanding yield management
• Crafting more compelling and less expensive marketing offers
• Understanding your real cost of customer acquisition
• What “retention” means in your spa (it’s different for day, stay and med spas)
• The role of the local market in hotel spas’ success
• Should your spa market with online coupons?
Successful Spa Programs
• Why the spa menu drives vendor selection–not the other way around
• The pros and cons of “branded” treatments
• Innovation vs. profit: keeping it simple
• Modular menu design
• Optimizing workflow while ensuring safety and customer satisfaction
• Best practices for managing back bar costs
Retail Management
• Ending the disconnect: making retail happen in a spa
• Creating a more profitable retail mix
• Best practices for optimizing your inventory turns
• Salesflow: redesigning internal processes to support sales success
• Effective recommendation tools that spa employees love to use
• Scripting that sells
• Best practices for partnering with vendors
Leadership
• Understanding social styles and their impact on interpersonal communication
• What your team needs from you and how to give it to them
• Recruitment: how to hire the best employees
• Why the customer actually comes “second” in a great spa
• Why you’re doing everything yourself and how to stop it
• Why you can’t motivate your staff and what to do about it
• How to produce great staff meetings
• Best practices in employee discipline
• Performance appraisals that improve performance
Quality Management
• Moments of Truth: why little things are a big deal to your guest
• The Experiential vs. Transactional spa
• How to manage quality in the “closed door” spa environment
• “We don’t need another hero”: how consistency creates great service
• The three essential ingredients of world class service
• How to instill a “quality” mindset in your entire team
• Spa Speak 101: helping your team communicate with quality
• Teaching your team to effectively resolve complaints and perform service recovery
• Comps, refunds and redos: how to use them wisely
• Inspection: the key to success
LOCATION:
The Inn at Saratoga in beautiful Saratoga, California.
CLASS SCHEDULE:
Sunday to Tuesday:
9:00 Continental Breakfast
9:30-5:30 Seminar
TUITION
$1599 per person
10% discount for more than one attendee (co workers, colleagues and friends are welcome to register, but one credit card will be required for the complete tuition payment)
10% discount for earlybird registration by October 16th
Combine these discounts and multiple attendee/earlybirds and get 20% off
Registration closes November 11th
INCLUDES:
- Continental breakfasts
- Lunches
- Coffee Breaks
- All course materials, including our famous Spa Director’s Text
- One hour complimentary telephone consultation after you return to your business
WHAT TO BRING:
- Business cards to share with classmates
- Your current spa menu, if existing (copies if you’d like to trade with classmates)
- Your financial statements, for your reference during class
- Your floorplan, for your reference during class (if available)
- Your top three “learning takeaways” wish list for the course
Visit our registration site
The “online coupon” phenomenon is creating tremendous chaos in the business world. Small businesses have a love/hate relationship with companies like Groupon and Living Social, but consumers are besotted. To the harried small business owner, it seems as if deep discounting has become the only way to market (it is, if you listen to Groupon reps.) Consumers’ e mail boxes are stuffed with a steadily mounting heap of “daily deals.”
But there’s one unintended consequence of all this discounting that doesn’t seem to be on the radar yet: inflation.
Money, like water, finds its level. If dizzydizcounts.com grabs 50% of my 50% off service, and I’ve gone down that coupon road, ultimately I’ll be raising my suggested prices to enable constant discounting. Department stores have done this for years, knowing that a substantial percentage of their fashion inventory will have to be sold at discount.
As well, as small businesses turn to mindless, cattle call extreme discount marketing, their profits will drop. What do you do when you’re staring at a P & L and the bottom line has dropped out? Hey, let’s raise prices and sell more coupons! In the ecosystem that is the free market, endless discounting will just lead to endless price increases.
We’re already seeing “discount fatigue.” Discounts are sexy when they’re deep…and rare. When they’re deep and common as dirt, they lose their cachet for more affluent consumers. Once tickled by the novelty of a shocking discount, even the customers from the Affluent demographic recognize that the spas who pimp themselves this way are not the ones you take home to mother.
Churn is very hard on a quality spa, and discounting can turn your facility into a churn-factory. It’s hard on employee morale to work with demographically unqualified customers, people you can’t retain no matter how happy they are with your service. It’s hard on employee morale to have your compensation discounted for the promise of future business.
If you’re going to go down that road, any deeply discounted offer you concoct should still be at the net price point of a full-price treatment, i.e., if you’re giving 50% off, it should be on two treatments, not one. And for heaven sakes, unless you just opened your doors, you have a database full of inactive clients who’d love to receive your very own 50% off coupon, and share it with a Friend. They are far more likely to be retained than Newbie McNotip.
Seriously–if you’re gonna get naked, do you really need to pay Groupon to take off your clothes for you?
Discounts encourage a mentality that is the exact opposite of what a clientele-based business wants to cultivate. Discounts train customers to want more discounts, not to be loyal to that kind and generous business that offered them a discount last year.
My last conversation with a Groupon rep lasted for about an hour, an entertaining bit of gladiator combat that I initiated. I was impressed by his passion and we had a fun and lively debate. Here’s what I told him the Groupon promise boils down to: “We’re going to fill your spa with a giant Caterpillar tractor scoop full of dirt. In that huge scoop of dirt is some gold, and it’s your job, Ms. Spa Owner, to find it. If you don’t find it, it’s because you’re blind, not because it was, in fact, nearly 100% dirt.”
In other words, the only reason our discount lovin’ Groupies won’t toss away that next 50% off coupon for Trollop Spa, and offer to stay with you and love you forever, is that you didn’t provide them with a quality service. Groupon, a company that’s blessedly virtual, unsullied by the bricks-and-mortar, blood sweat and tears work of delighting actual clients in the real world, would have you believe that if their customers don’t return to your spa at full price, it’s because you suck.
Groupon is the fastest growing company in history, and it’s not surprising. Parasites usually grow faster than the hosts on which they feed.
Compensation plans can make or break a spa. What’s yours doing?
Join us for this pragmatic discussion of the essentials of healthy compensation plans. Find out how your program measures up, and get a preview of what’s ahead as the economy recovers.
Agenda:
- The bottom line: what you can really afford to spend on compensation
- The upside and downside of pure commission plans
- Profitable retail commission plans
- The state of benefits today
- Using independent contractors: the last word
- Bonuses and incentives that work
- The right process for converting a bad comp plan
- Safe and sane rules for advancement and increases
$99
70 minutes
Click here to register
Click the “Upcoming” tab and then the “Register” link.
Most companies today recognize the need to articulate their core values. Core values provide the compass that guides the business. While business strategies should constantly be evolving, core values, like true North, don’t change. In stormy times of stress and change (hello!) Core Values provide a secure anchor. They can remind us of who we are when we are considering compromising our principles. They can help us focus on what’s truly important. They can help us make decisions and set priorities. They can be used as a touchstone when coaching an employee and a measuring stick when hiring a new team member.
But where do Core Values come from? Jim Collins is one of the world’s experts on the importance of core values in organizations, having researched them extensively for his books “Good to Great” and “Built to Last.” He writes
“… you cannot “set” organizational values, you can only discover them. Nor can you “install” new core values into people. Core values are not something people “buy in” to. People must be predisposed to holding them. Executives often ask me, “How do we get people to share our core values?” You don’t. Instead, the task is to find people who are already predisposed to sharing your core values. You must attract and then retain these people and let those who aren’t predisposed to sharing your core values go elsewhere.
I’ve never encountered an organization, even a global organization composed of people from widely diverse cultures, that could not identify a set of shared values. The key is to start with the individual and proceed to the organization…”
Who should create your core values?
Management teams or owners usually initiate the process of clarifying and identifying values, but as Collins points out, this can’t be a top-down activity. If Core Values are simply handed out to the team, they are often ignored or even ridiculed as more silly management-speak, or worse. (As the cynical Dilbert proclaims, “values are a type of emotional illusion common to children, idiots and non-engineers.”)
Identifying Core Values is a process of discovery, and for that process to be relevant and resonant in the lives of your team members, it needs to involve as many of them as possible. Agreeing upon your most cherished Core Values is a ritual that, when properly facilitated, can bring all an organization’s members closer together. Articulating core values is not simply an exercise in word-smithing. Word-smithing is important, but it actually comes last.
How do you identify core values?
We like to compare the process of identifying and articulating an organization’s values to diamond mining:
- We collect a lot of ore, filled with rough diamonds
- Together, we sift through the ore and carefully select the best gems
- We polish and cut the best gems
- We proudly set and “wear” our gems
How many Core Values are enough?
Good management is a lot like parenting, according to business “growth guru” Verne Harnish of Gazelles (gazelles.com). He says, “have a handful of rules and repeat yourself a lot.” That “handful of rules” are your Core Values. Because it’s difficult to retain more than three concepts, we strongly recommend limiting your Core Values to three—a handful, if you will.
Some companies use single words, others prefer to use phrases that explain the behavior expected. For example, at Preston Wynne Spa, our Core Values are
- WOW our customers 100% of the time
- Build and protect a fun and harmonious work environment
- Achieve our goals and keep our commitments
What if I don’t like the Values my team comes up with?
It’s extremely rare to have the Core Values process deliver Values that are different from yours. Why?
The people in your company ultimately reflect and agree with your true Core Values—that’s why they’re there.
One important reason to work with a facilitator in this exercise is to ensure healthy balance in the Values. For example, when you talk about Core Values with your team, especially teams from hospitality and helping professions, expect the conversation to get fairly animated. Teams that deliver intensive customer service are highly interdependent. Positive interpersonal relationships are crucial to their happiness. Their values tend to focus on interpersonal relationships with one another.
The facilitator ensures that all stakeholders are strongly supported by at least one of the Core Values: employees, customers, and ownership all have slightly different needs and agendas. The “kumbaya” values of your team may not acknowledge the necessity of making money, for example.
An easy way to describe this is to think about the “three relationships” each team member experiences in the organization:
- Relationships with co-workers
- Relationships with customers
- Relationship with the business
Rather than establish these limitations at the beginning, we try to encourage a very unstructured discovery of personal values as they relate to work. Too many rules early in the process can restrict the free flow of conversation and ideas. Instead ask,
- What’s important to you at work?
- Why do you work here?
- What do you like most about your coworkers?
- What do you like most/least about the organization?
- What behavior do you think expresses a true professional?
Engaging people to talk about what’s bothering them also helps uncover core values. For example, the “A Player” individual who feels she is burdened by teammates’ lack of responsibility will help articulate the need for teamwork.
Core values are aspirational, too. In other words, you don’t have to be perfect at “living” your Values, 100%, to claim them as yours. You can all agree on what’s important and essential and use this to move in that direction. The purpose of Core Values is not to simply say “this is who we are,” it’s also to say, “this is who we all want to be.”
How long does it take and what happens?
While a traditional Core Values process can take a long time, we’ve developed an approach that is surprisingly quick and remarkably effective. By effective, we mean that participants feel heard and respect the outcomes.
A Wynne Business Core Values retreat is a process that usually takes one day. We’re able to work with even large groups because of the process we use.
AGENDA
9:00 a.m. to 10 a.m. What are Core Values and why do we need them?
This introduces everyone to the purpose and importance of Core Values and helps everyone to understand their role.
10 a.m. to 11 a.m. Core Values “Mining”
Individual and group exercises. For the group exercises, employees are divided into cross-functional teams of about six persons
11 a.m. to 12 p.m. Core Values “gem selection”
Through a fun and interactive “Post it Vote” process that effortlessly creates consensus, we narrow down the gems to three value concepts.
12 p.m. to 1 p.m. Core Values Polishing, first phase
A facilitated discussion to ensure that our three “rough gem” concepts work for the team. Adjourn general session
1 p.m. to 2 p.m. Lunch break
2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Core Values Polishing, final
Following the final polish, we discuss the publication, use and reinforcement of the Values through the company’s systems. For example, will team members be evaluated against the Values during performance appraisal? How can management employees make Core Values come alive? What methods will be used to publish and share the final polished Core Values? How can we coach using them?
5 p.m. Adjourn with your new Core Values!
A resounding thank you to the readers of American Spa magazine, for naming me as one of your Favorite Spa Consultants for 2010! It’s been an privilege to be part of this industry for over 26 years. I join some marvelous company in this honor. A great way to end the year!
See the article here
Lisa just returned from Les Nouvelles Esthetiques in South Africa–she loved every minute of it. The vibrant spa community members she met there impressed her with their professionalism, vision and a real thirst for practical, real-world management education. Here’s the Powerpoint from her presentation at the conference, one of her top-rated and most impactful classes.
Questions and comments are always welcome!
The Four Cornerstones of Spa Success, from Les Nouvelles Esthetiques Conference
Hi, Jane,
After evaluating the Groupon model we decided it was not a good fit for Preston Wynne Spa. I’ll explain exactly why, as I think it may be helpful for you to hear as you approach other companies in the spa and salon industry.
Spas need to be much more strategic about the number and type of clients we seek, and deep discounting is a crude tool at best. We have very high cost of sales because most of us pay our workforce when a service is done (either through a fee for service or by commission). This is not a model where you can add customers and and automatically increase profit, where modest incremental profit x volume = success, as in a movie theatre or bowling alley or whalewatching boat. Even a restaurant has indirect labor costs.
To us, there is no point filling our most popular and profitable times with Groupon customers, and Groupon did not, at the time, enable us to limit redemption periods to weekdays. (In fact, I got some attitude from Ms. XXXX, i.e. who said scornfully, “we’re not just here to sell your Tuesday morning at 9 a.m.”)
I will say that she produced one spa reference who *was* pleased with her Groupon promotion, but I don’t know the spa’s age or location, both factors that make a world of difference these days.
We are actually experimenting with an offer with one of your competitors, one that enabled us to control much more of the factors involved and targeted our prime demographic, not the Free World.
I am deeply, profoundly unconvinced that Groupon customers consist mainly of potentially solid, loyal potential clients. Discounting has not been shown to create loyalty in past studies done on this marketing modality. Discounting creates a relationship in which there is an expectation of further discounting. Discounting is a depressing, stunningly un-creative and ultimately zero-sum game. (There is always, as I tell my consulting clients, someone who is dumber or more desperate than you.) The participants in Spa Week, another periodic discount promotion, who have come to our spa were uniformly high maintenance and low performance. And they were self selected spa fans.
To me, Groupon and its host of imitators are simply feasting on the carcass of recession-battered, desperate small businesses. And if that is the recipe for the fastest growing company in history, God help us all.
*That’s* why we don’t want to play.
Jane, that’s probably more than you wanted to know, 
and I encourage you to pass my comments on to your management team.
Thanks!
Peggy Wynne Borgman
We posted this short, funny, customer service video on YouTube, showing common sales and service “horrors” that happen in spas and salons everywhere, ruining chances of retaining guests, rescheduling, and retailing. Each vignette illustrates a fatal flaw–some obvious, some more subtle–and all of them re-enactments of real spa employee behavior I’ve personally experienced. It’s a great clip to show at a spa staff meeting, and certain to get people talking.
When you’re ready for the horror to end, you’ll find each of these scenes, along with vignettes showing the proper way to “replay” each, on our 80 minute employee training DVD, Selvice: Seven Steps to Abundant Sales and Stellar Customer Service. On our site, there’s an introduction sequence and a short example of the DVD’s “before and after” curriculum.
Thanks to BoomCycle Online Marketing for their stellar video editing on “Tales from the Spa.”
