3 Reasons Why You Should Teach You Clients How To Style Their Hair

Have you ever considered teaching your clients to style their own hair? You might be thinking, “sure, I’ll just go ahead and teach myself right out of a job”, which would make sense. Plenty of stylists have lucrative income streams from up styling, blow-out, and braiding services. While it may sound a little counter-intuitive, but there might be something to holding regular education opportunities in your salon.

It’s worth considering that the clients who can afford to have someone else style their hair consistently, will likely continue to do so. Time is money, after all. And maybe by expanding your offerings, you could be creating opportunities to reach clients who don’t have access to those same resources. Teaching your clients to style their hair beyond walking them through blowing out a fresh new cut could go a long towards building your relationships and your retail income.

Reason #1: Attract New Business 

If you’re looking for ways to attract new clients into your chair, teaching a styling class may be something to consider. Meeting in a class setting gives both you and your prospective new client a chance to size each other up, without a lot at stake. A classroom atmosphere is a great way to assess how the two of you communicate and whether or not your skill set is the right match for that clients desired look. Offering a styling class is also an easy way to try out new marketing techniques. Testing out different pricing models and incentive structures can give you invaluable insight into what works for your current client base. Maybe the idea of getting 25% off a   of their choice isn’t enough of a driver to purchase a ticket for a braiding class but getting half off a ticket for their friend is. There are plenty of ways to incentivize your current client base to help you bring in new clients, the trick is finding the strategies that work best for you.

Reason #2: Sell More Retail

There are two ways that teaching a styling class can help you sell more retail products. The most straight forward way is to offer a class based on a product that is currently on “special” form your manufacturer/distributor and pass along the savings to your clients. This saves you the step of figuring out what the discount on the product should be, along with what type of styling technique should be taught. You could build out a class calendar based on product specials alone.

The second approach takes a little more time and preparation but could reap far more rewards in the long run. You could plan a class based on the finished look. Let’s say that you were planning to create a 1-hour class, teaching three different braiding techniques. You could consider creating a braiding “kit” beforehand, that would include all of the tools and products needed to accomplish all three looks. You could choose to either have the cost of the kit included in the price of the class, or you could offer it to attendees, afterwards. Either way, you have just sold several products, in addition to class tickets.

Reason #3: Building Relationships

Outside of ticket and potential retail sales, there is no immediate financial gain to offering your time, talent, and expertise to your clients. Instead of simply investing in the direct monetary growth of your business, you will be building trust with your client base. The more your clients see you as their “beauty coach”, the more likely they are to seek you out for more services, and also to recommend you to their friends and family members.

Also, the feeling of seeing a parent light up after finally nailing that fishtail braid their child has been asking for, is pretty priceless.

Beauty professionals have a unique gift that when shared, can strengthen whole communities. It’s not just in creating a beautiful new look or keeping up with trends. It’s never really about the finished look or technique. At the heart of it all, by highlighting and encouraging clients’ natural beauty and teaching them skills to do the same on their own, you’re giving a truly priceless gift: confidence. Now that is a gift worth sharing.