Raise Your Game as a Service Professional

Ivan Zoot – salon owner, trainer, coach, mentor, educator, author, and inventor – shares tips for success as a service professional.

Why raise your game?

By raising your game and your professional etiquette in your business, you become a busier stylist or salon owner; you can make more money, earn better reviews, and create a place where people want to work. Your clients are going to book more services, they are more likely to buy more products, and they are definitely going to tell their friends and family about the experience that they had in your salon.

In a recent event with Ivan Zoot, he shared what it means to raise your game as a service provider:

IvanZoot: I describe the beauty industry and your career in the beauty industry as a ladder. A ladder is made up of individual rungs.  Nobody expects you to get on the ladder and touch the top rung right away. There are rungs on the way up. I use my career as an example. I’m on the ladder, and I got on the ladder a long, long time ago. I’ve been climbing. The object of the game is to go one rung higher every day. I have been climbing long enough that I can’t see the bottom of the ladder. It’s hard for a lot of beauty and barber professionals to relate to who they were when they first got into the business. We didn’t know anything, we’re good at anything, and we’ve come a long, long way. We all have. We’re on the ladder; we look down, but we can’t see the bottom of the ladder. 

The exciting thing is that no matter where you are on the ladder, there is always another rung. There’s always that opportunity to get a little higher. There is always that foot or leg up, and this list we’ve created is a great example of one more foot or leg up. But when I look up on my ladder, like many other beauty professionals, I can no longer see the bottom of the ladder; I can not see the top. I wonder if the top exists. I don’t think there’s a point where you get to, “I’ve made it; I’m done!” 

It’s exciting to me to keep climbing and to be the guy behind you on the ladder pushing you up. Occasionally, I’m the guy on the ladder reaching down behind me and going, “Give me your hand. I’m going to yank you up a couple of rungs!” I use the ladder analogy all the time.

There are 100 elements on the list. I bet that anyone reading this or watching the video can look at that list and find things on it that they are nailing. Things they are doing an exceptional job of every single time. At the other extreme, I think we can look at the list and say, “Oh wow – I never really even thought about that as it relates to serving my customers and the growth of my business.” Those are the two extremes, but in the middle of that list is the 80/20 rule. There’s 10% of the stuff that each of us is probably nailing and 10% that never really occurred to any of us. Then there’s the 80% in the middle, where there’s a huge opportunity for people to “level up” in that way.

That’s where the 100-point checklist comes in. Download it, take the test, and grade yourself or your team. Even give the list to someone else, and let them “secret shop” you and your business to see how you do in the eyes of others.

Download your 100-point Client Experience Checklist HERE