Talk Skin Academy Podcast

Why Traditional Therapist Training Might Be Sabotaging Your Success

• Katie Howell • Episode 3

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Ready to unravel the trials and triumphs of retail sales in the beauty industry? I, Kate, promise to guide you through my personal journey - from grappling with skincare product sales to mastering the art of understanding clients' lifestyles and needs. We transform the concept of retail sales by emphasizing relationship-building over mere transactions. The conversation takes an interesting turn as we dissect the differences between American and British beauty education and its impact on skincare conversations.

But that's not all! We also have an exclusive offer for you - a comprehensive course that's going to supercharge your knowledge in the beauty industry, and it's currently at a whopping 30% discount off in person and online courses. It's a fabulous opportunity to enhance your expertise and bring your A-game to the beauty industry. Go to my website and  use code blackfriday30 at checkout to get this great offer

In person courses: https://www.khspaconsultancy.com/talk-skin-academy/

The Skin Expert Consultation Course (online): https://talkskinwkate.thinkific.com/courses/professional-skincare-made-simple

Remember, you're part of the conversation - we welcome your thoughts and questions on our YouTube channel. So, turn up the volume and prepare for an enlightening chat on retail sales and skincare education, paving your path to success in the beauty industry.

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Kate:

Hey everyone, welcome back to another podcast with the Talkskin Academy and myself, Kate. So today we're going to talk about sales, retail sales. I think the bug beer of all therapists existence right like we ate it when your management or you've got to think about retail sales. And I hope at the end of this podcast I'm going to empower you to start thinking as retail sales as a positive thing in your business, not a negative thing. And trust me, I have been there. So let me take you back a few years Now, as a lot of you if you've watched a few podcasts back, my first ever job was with Steiner one spa world and Steiner are on the cruise ships and they want you to sell retail because majority of the services that we make would go to the actual cruise line and all of the retail would go to Steiner.

Kate:

And because I was in what they call the top money-making column, which is the facial column, I had an awful lot of pressure and I had huge weekly targets and I did not hit those targets at all for the first couple of months because I didn't know how to sell skin care for the absolute life of me. I got told how to sell skin care, the ingredients, how to sell the product, who the skin care is for, but I didn't actually get taught how to educate to sell. I just got told to sell, and this is the majority of the issue that you're going through. You're told how to sell, but not actually how to connect to sell, and so this is kind of what we're going to talk about today in this particular podcast. So I'm going to take you back. Like I said, when I first started with Steiner, I was making between about three to five hundred dollars, and I was in dollars because I was working on the cruise ships. So three to five hundred dollars, which is around about, probably, say, a hundred to two hundred pounds. If for anywhere else, I don't have a clue. So yeah, so you know, not bad. I mean, I did a part, a poll, on the Talkskin Academy's Instagram not that long ago, and 86% of you said that you make less than a hundred pounds in retail a week, which is just insane, and so it tells me two things, and we'll go into those two things towards the end.

Kate:

So, when it comes to retail, what I realized is that there is a way of doing it. The first thing I realized is that people don't like being so too right, they do not like being so too. And so what I started to do? I started to create a system. The system was building a relationship. If people needed to get to know me, I needed for them to get to know me very quickly because, again, most of us are on a time frame right, we're what? 15 minutes max. We've got to get to know our clients, do a consultation, get them on a bed, do the treatment, get them off the bed. Recommend. It's a quick process.

Kate:

So I had to learn a system that allowed me to make a quick connection very quickly, and it started off from the handshake, and it started off with specific questions that I asked each of my customers to get the answers that I needed to be one to be able to wow them with their facial and to be able to understand where the skincare was, to be able to either recommend a whole new routine or to maybe implement a couple of ingredients that their skin needed, based on their lifestyle and what they would tell me their skin was going through. And so the skin expert consultation system was starting to take form, and so what I realized is that the first thing that you have to do is you have to build a relationship with your customers. You have to find out about them. What are their lifestyles, what are their hobbies, what are their stress levels? Their stress levels massively impact their skin. For instance, did you know that when it comes to your estrogen levels, your progesterone levels and your testosterone levels, those hormones, those pesky hormones that make them basically break us, a lot of the receptors in our skin, facial skin the majority of them are here, right here, on our facial skin, and compared to everywhere else in the body, which basically means that stress massively impacts the facial skin in such a either positive way. Think of pregnancy when there's a bunch of estrogen flying around the body because they're creating a baby. That skin glows. That's why we got that beautiful glow right. But as soon as we hit menopause and our estrogen levels are on the floor, what does our customers tell us? My skin looks like it's falling on the floor. It's changed overnight. It's all down to hormones and stress affects the hormones. So knowing how stressed they are is not a simple question as how stressed are you? Six, okay, moving on, that massively indicates as to why the skin could be doing a certain thing.

Kate:

So I started learning all about this as well because, again, I wasn't taught any of this. I had to go and educate myself on all of this information that I was trying to find out from my American clients. The one thing that I loved about Americans is that they actually knew more than me. So the American education is very different to the British. When in the British education you're taught massage, facials, manicures, pedicures, the whole damn thing, right In America, if you're a facelist, you're an esthetician, so that's all you focus on. You're basically like a miniature dermatologist. That's what you kind of learn. That's how to talk skin and facials. But let me say in the UK we're not taught that way. We're taught to know everything and we get told now, as we get older, that you know you niche down on one thing and become good at one thing. But when you actually go through your education you're just taught to know everything and be good at everything. I mean it's impossible to be good at everything unless you're in it for 20, 30 years.

Kate:

Anyway, moving on, another round for another day. So I realized then that the Building that relationship was down to how I asked those questions and then the following questions that that led once they'd give me their answers. That then allowed me to get the information. Like I said, if you want your clients to really open up to you, you they have to like you, like they're not going to tell you how stressed they are, why they're stressed if they don't like you. So if you're finding that your consultations are quiet, that there's tumbleweed just flying across the floor as you ask questions and there's really no response, because you haven't done the first thing, the fundamental thing of get off, allowing your client to actually like you. So get you know. If you're going to work on one thing first, just work on getting people to like you in a very short amount of time. One of the ways you can do that is the handshake, and we'll go into that another time.

Kate:

So next is the information, and the information is only through, you know, building that relationship, then the education, then that's when you get you know, that's when you start to wow your clients, that's when you know you can literally transform their whole opinion of you talking about how your estrogen levels and their receptors are connected majority to your facial skin, how testosterone went, you know, if you've got a kid, that's going through puberty and they're getting tons of spots. The reason being is because testosterone is linked to the sebaceous gland, the oil gland, and when they hit their puberty, their sebaceous glands double in size. And on top of that, testosterone is going crazy around the body to fuel a strong boy or a strong girl, and so they're going to get breakouts because of what's going on internally to build a strong human being. How do we deal with that? Well, now you know why it's happening, let's explain what you do to get rid of it or to support it. You can't get rid of it because there's no physical way.

Kate:

Skincare, no matter what they say, no matter how good their marketing is, cannot support hormones going crazy to build a body. They can't. So you're telling them this makes more sense to them. You're not, then, just trying to sell a lot of products. You're making them understand why their concerns are happening, or why their loved ones concerns are happening. And guess what? You are their expert. You are their guru. You might be brand new to the industry, but you know more than that person in that room. So, yes, you will be the expert. And this is how you become phenomenal at retail sales, because you haven't just gone straight to the well, this has got salicylic acid and this does xyz and this exfoliates the skin, because we know for a fact that actually a skin, a young skin, shouldn't be over exfoliated because it causes barium impairment, which then causes sensitivity.

Kate:

I mean, for instance, right, so one of my students she finished she's doing a level two in Ireland because she can't come to me because it's too far away to do a qualification in level two visuals. I totally get that. So she decided to go and work and go and get her qualification from a college, no less. The lecturer that was teaching her at the time asked her a simple question what cleanser should you use on an oil based skin? My student replied back oil, would she or them reply back no, you use clear cell, claricell, claricell, like Claricell, like this is what lecturers in 2023 are teaching you guys, the youth, the beauty therapists of the next generation that Claricell, which is the opposite of what you should be using on an acne skin, is being taught in a freaking college.

Kate:

I mean, I knew we wouldn't do, why we can't sell shit just because you get told to sell Claricell. Anyway, and this is the problems that we're having, right, because then what happens then is you sell Claricell. Claricell doesn't work. So not only are you branding Claricell, but you're also branding yourself, because remember and this is one thing you're gonna hear from me time and time again you are your biggest asset. It's not your products, it's not your equipment, it's not the it's you.

Kate:

People come for facials and for skin expertise because you have that knowledge. And this is what. If you're struggling to retail, if you're struggling to build connections, it all comes down to your consultation. It's the most important part of your entire business, because without that consultation, you do not build connections. Those connections do not then stay with you and they do not recommend you because you haven't done that. First and foremost is you build that connection, that relationship that bonds you two together. That stops her from going to anyone else, because she's loyal to you, because you have not just tried to sell her a product or a facial for God knows what reasons. You've sold her a product, you've sold her a facial course, because you've listened to her, you've found out her pain points and you've educated her on those pain points. This is what makes you phenomenal, this is what's gonna build your business and this is what's gonna make you succeed in a very, very, very busy industry, especially facials.

Kate:

So I'm gonna end it there now because I think we've had enough rants for today, but I hope you understand that you are your biggest asset, not your skincare, not anything else, it's you. So if you're wondering what you need to do next to help build your business, it's start focusing on what you don't know, and if consultations have been one thing that you actually didn't even think of that could be a huge detriment to your business, then this is where maybe remember we've got Black Friday currently going on with the Skin Expert Consultation course, which is the course that I put together. That is all of my techniques, tips and advice on how to build the best consultation, including knowing everything you need to know about the anatomy of the skin. There's two modules. There's two full hours just on those things how to talk acne to your clients, diagrams, videos, everything. It's literally a very visual presentation, very visual course, because I'm a visual learner and the majority of you guys are as well.

Kate:

How to talk aging skin, and we go through collagen, elastin, sugars, everything that you need to know to wow your clients. We go through then dry, dehydrated and sensitive skin and then, once a quarter, we all jump on live. You're invited to come, jump on, live with me and I talk you through how to actually utilize the routine that your clients are going to do at home, so you can teach them how to get the best out of their products and their ingredients, which again leads you to be their absolute expert in getting the best skin of their lives. And that's exactly what you want, right For a business. You want your clients to have the best experience and the best skin.

Kate:

So if you are interested in learning more and increasing your knowledge and expertise, then this is something that I'd highly recommend, and right now there's 30% off, which basically means that the course is normally 350, and at the moment it's just 245. So, if you are interested, pop yourself over to my website and you can get the link. You can go and get it and, pretty much, then you can go and start researching and basically increasing your knowledge straight away. But that's just something if you wish to do. So, look forward to the next chat with you. Like I said, any questions pop onto YouTube, pop your questions underneath this particular video of me having a full on rant about ClarisL, and I will see you next time and, yeah, look forward to seeing you. Bye, everyone.