Rebooking – Why Bother?
• Written by Colin Shove
Rebooking, what's the point?
Your team member with the highest re-booking rate averages 56% more in revenue than the combined average of the remaining members of their team.
Put simply, the higher the rebooking rate, the higher the sales.
Below, we’ll show you how you can use The Salon App to make your month work for you, and generate more rebookings in the process.
Your team member with the highest re-booking rate averages 56% more in revenue than the combined average of the remaining members of their team.
The elephant in the room
Why are we so accepting of quiet spells and worse still so good at justifying why they happen? This is not a post lockdown thing, it has always been the case, we draw on well used (and accepted excuses) like ”it’s being the week before payday” or “it’s raining, and who would want to come out in this?” or “it’s sunny and who’d want to be stuck inside?” “The school holidays have started”. I could go on but you get the picture and I’m sure you have heard them all. Post lockdown we have had to deal with clients and team self-isolating, the “Pingdemic”, the weather has been simply dreadful and now it’s absolutely scorching. Our clients are used to visiting less frequently bla bla bla.
This is true. But if this is all so predictable, why not try and do something about it? If you can book your diary more evenly and make your clients work for you, then you’re going to take more money and make more rebookings which will pay dividends down the road.
…92% of salons experienced a 15% downturn in June compared to May
The facts
How do we know that, you ask? We did a little bit of research of our own and found that when we compared sales of randomly selected salons in the Salon App database for their results for April, May and June 2021, we discovered that 92% of salons experienced a 15% downturn in June compared to May. And for those salons that were an average of 15% down in June, we discovered a reduction in the overall rebooking rate by 20%. So in other words, the fewer rebookings a salon has, the lower the salon revenue will be. Or reversely, the busier a salon is, the higher the proportion of bookings is.
The other 8%
What about the other 8% who did not experience a June downturn; who bucked the trend? They saw an average 14% increase in June’s sales. And here is the rub. Without exception, they either maintained or slightly improved their rebooking percentages in May. So the salons who focussed less on rebooking in May took less money in June and the salons who maintained their rebooking efforts in May saw an increase in June. Analysing Salon App’s results, we found that a 15% increase in the rate of re-bookings actually creates a 10% increase in sales overall.So really, rebookings are a very simple answer to how to improve your salon’s efficiency and profitability.
Without exception, they either maintained or slightly improved their rebooking percentages in May.
Two benefits of Re-Booking
Just incase it wasn’t explicitly obvious, improving your salon’s rebooking rate is a guaranteed way to do two things for your business:
- It increases the frequency of your client visits, meaning your team will take more money in the long run, and have more opportunities to sell add-on products and services to increase the average transaction value.
- It reduces the number of new clients your business needs to attract before reaching capacity, which means less time behind the scenes trying to win work, and more time actually doing your work.
So if you’re feeling inspired and would like to see how Salon App can help your salon improve its rebooking rate, get in touch below.
