We are a week further and although everything has change, nothing has change. Or at least this is how I perceived a lot of things the past week. This really leaves me with a surreal feeling at times. The difficulty for me is that I have no frame of reference to fall back on and this seems to be true for most people I have interacted with. The greatest thing about this is that my resistance to new ideas has fallen away the past month.

It seems to me that we become our own worst enemies the moment we reach a certain level of comfort. We create, I think mostly unconsciously, these comfort zones that we get stuck in, to our detriment. The corona-crisis has certainly helped me to unstuck from some of my comfort zones in a short time.

In the previous article we have mainly looked at preservation of our resources and ideas on how to deal with an immediate crisis. For this article I want to look at ideas on how to adapt and keep our businesses running.

Have you been following up with your clients during the lockdown? In a salon or clinic we are so used to having our clients coming to us. Since this has not been happening lately, have we been going to them. I do not mean physically, but have they heard from us. There are much to say about general social media communication, but have you been contacting individual clients? One easy thing we can do is to ask our clients if we can send them their usual purchase. Just because a client has not been to the salon does not mean that she stopped using the consumables that she used to buy from you. This is also a good opportunity to send her a little tester of a product that you think may be useful to her.

Have you implemented some visual communication platforms in your client follow-up? What about a Q&A once or twice a week when you have a group call with your regulars and answer their personal care questions they may have. You can also use this idea to keep revenue coming in. Do a paid on-line consultation and return a part of the price in the form of a discount voucher for a treatment when you reopen. You can for example ask €25 for a consultation and then give them a €10 discount voucher at the end of the consultation redeemable on a future treatment.

Have you tried out some on-line selling platforms to make sure the retail part of your business keeps going? Therapists have the tendency to shy away from selling and retail. During these times this part of your business is that will make or break you.
We also have to make sure that we motivate our clients to come back to the salon or clinic the moment it is possible. Maybe you can send your clients a little handwritten note with a gift card for a specific add-on to a treatment.

These are just some very basic ideas we can carry out to make sure that we stay in business. One thing I know for certain is that when I start to implement one thing, it leads inevitable to the next thing. I think that it is important now not to get stuck. Move on to the next thing. It is now the time to make sure we have value to give our clients and society in general. All systems build on general, average and mass will collapse in times of social distancing and reduced participation.

Seth Godin has been spoken for years about the concept of the minimum viable audience. The goal isn’t to serve everyone. The goal is to serve the people you can offer value to. Look at your business goals and calculate the smallest client base you need to achieve this. All you need to do now is to give the best value possible to this group.