Spas Build Revenue and Customer Bond with Retail Sales

Are you realizing a significant part of your revenue from retail? If the answer is no, you are missing a great opportunity. Just ask Suzanne McCormick, director of the Water's Edge Resort & Spa in Westbrook, Conn. Nowadays, McCormick attributes 40 percent of the spa's revenue to retail. As important, she believes if you aren't selling retail, you actually are doing a disservice to your clients, who want to know how to extend their treatment at home in between spa visits.

Training Staff for Sales

While many professional spa facial and body treatment products, such as BIOTONE, offer a retail component, don't expect products to sell themselves. Just having products on display might attract some customers, but your goal is to make retail as much a part of your offering as possible, McCormick advises. To achieve this you and your team need to do two things: listen to your customers and build prescription sales into your services.

"We've trained our staff how to engage customers in a dialog and ask questions to find out what kind of products they would consider for use at home," McCormick says. "Our staff might ask if a client likes the fragrance in a product, for example. Or they might learn from the conversation that a client is having a persistent dry skin problem."

McCormick points that traditionally selling was more comfortable for their estheticians, who are trained to analyze the skin, than for the massage therapists. But with training and even the aid of little scripts to help get a conversation started, all of the Water's Edge Spa staff now are on board asking questions that open the door to retail sales.

At the end of every treatment, clients get a prescription sheet - BIOTONE has them for purchase - which has a place for the client's name, the professional who provided the service and what products were used during the treatment.

"We've even had the retail products ready at the front counter for the client to consider as they are settling their bill," McCormick says. "It's never a hard sell; we suggest the products at a number of client touch points while the client is in the spa but there