MIKAL Salon & Spa Software

AND SO THIS IS CHRISTMAS, AND WHAT

HAVE YOU DONE........

Let’s run our reports and look at our progress:

- Has your average ticket increased at least 4% in every

department?

- Did you raise prices through out the year?

- Are your receptionists turning into Preceptionists?

- Are your regular e-mailings happening regularly?

- Is inventory down to the bare bones for tax purposes?

- Have you sent the price check customers a little package?

- Are you using the New Customer Welcome Book (and new customer retention is over 50%)?

- Is your customer information in the computer all cleaned up?

- Are your employees using the evaluation and goal setting systems?

- Are you happier with your business than this time last year?

If some of the answers are not what you would like them to be call MIKAL immediately and schedule time in for our Winter Success Club or an on-site training visit with us!

Not using MIKAL Software? Call us for a 15 minute internet presentation and see what you are missing!

For 2016 we need to get our New Year promotions going. Flip back to last January and see what you would like to concentrate on. Make time to visit with each staff member to discuss 2015 and plan on 2016.

Fred Dengler

800-448-5420

[email protected]

Experts will be at Camp MIKAL

Michele Perroton Business Development Manager for Demandforce will speak and consult with you on your social media strategies! Michele has vast experience in the salon and spa industries and has been a guest speaker at many industry events. She is plugged into the Intuit/Quickbooks family of products and has great insight into the e-marketing trends in our industry.

David McKendrick Strategic Partner Manager for Open Edge will inform you of new credit card compliance requirements and smart card migration - don't be left behind!

David has deep experience in the credit card processing industry and specializes in salons and spas. He is up to date on all the compliance and legal regulations required as well as having experience and knowledge of the best practices and procedures to keep your information secure and your company in compliance.

Jenny Wolff Salon/Spa Gift Card and Loyalty Programs Manager with Raco will show you the latest in loyalty and card programs that increase sales. Many new technologies are being introduced! Jenny brings with her over eleven years industry experience with a major mobile computer and printer manufacturer. Her considerable experience in printing systems allows Jenny to deliver complete end to end card printing solutions to her salon and spa client base.

Others experts to be announced......

CAMP INCLUDES:  Camp MIKAL Sept. 12-14 2015  Camp MIKAL is New New NEW!  New Classes on Marketing with a detailed support CD

New Classes on Business Management   New Camp Book stuffed full of time saving and money making ideas

3 days of classes, 4 meals, cocktail party, book, training CD, more.....................

PLUS a $100 software coupon

See you for Camp MIKAL!   Fred and your MIKAL Camp Team

[email protected] www.mikal.com 513-528-5100 www.freddengler.blogspot.com/

Is your Salon or Spa ready to make some serious money for Valentine's Day?

MIKAL Salons and Spas are ahead of the curve and are taking advantage of the big Valentine promotions now with our award winning software. See the ideas below and give us a call with any questions! NOW is the time to get your promotion together. Don't be paralyzed by a slow economy and don't let the retail stores get all the Valentine Promotion $ales!

Valentine Sales are happening right now - are you set to plug into them?

- Get your decorations up NOW. If you don't have any take the idea from Tracy one of our MIKAL owners: Tracy says "I didn't have much money and one of my stylists took me to the dollar store in town and there were TONS of cute things. For less than $20 we got window decorations, heart shaped baskets, Red and White wrapping paper. I ran my Inventory Ranking Report and set up a table with all the slooooooow moving items with a sign 40% off. We set up the table with an area with the wrapping paper I got at the dollar store and allow the clients to wrap their purchases for free! Slow moving Product is flying off the table and clients love the ability to do their own gift wrapping for free. They have even sent friends in to get items. Also be sure to set the items up in your MIKAL inventory as Non-Commission so you don't pay commission on these liquidation items. Does your software system highlite the products that you need to MOVE NOW and maximize your retail profits?

- Sell special Valentine Gift Cards: Vince has special cards printed by Raco Industries that have Valentine graphics and preprinted amounts of $50 and $100. He uses the MIKAL gift card system to track the sales and redemptions. Note: MIKAL Gift Card processing is FREE - no fees or charges except for your card costs. Vince says this is his third year doing it. Vince says: "Clients come up to the front desk where we have the Valentine gift cards displayed and just buy them as quick point of purchase items. The display is what sells the items. I get a small run of cards done special by Raco. They look great and are inexpensive. Patty Jones at Raco gets them for me fast." Raco's number is 513-984-2101 or 800-446-1991.

- Do you have a Spa Sampler package to sell? Sonoma Spa puts a package together of services including a manicure, 30 minute mini facial, 15 minute chair massage, hair styling service, and make-up touch up for $99 for Valentine's Day. It is only redeemable Monday thru Wednesday from 9am to 5pm but includes complementary baked goods, a single rose, and a chocolate treat to take home! Last year they sold and booked 300+ of these packages by advertising on the radio the first 2 weeks in February during rush hour drive time 7am to 9am and 5pm to 6pm Monday thru Friday only. Solare made sure they had booking experts available to take the calls and credit cards charges right over the phone. Note: they also upgraded over 50 of the calls to the Valentine Day of Rejuvination that costs $449! MIKAL has the easiest to sell and redeem package tracking system in the beauty industry. Sell series, standings, and day packages with just a few simple keystrokes with your MIKAL software. Call us for more package ideas!

- Do you have your MIKAL Packages implemented, Client Loyalty Points Program, and Inventory Ranking report run for the Valentine's Day promotions? Call your MIKAL support team to get the systems in place and bust this recessionary trend! Call us at 513-528-5100.

- If you were a MIKAL client you would be booked for the MIKAL Class in March at our Cincinnati Training Center or see us a a dozen Beauty Shows this season. Call us for dates and locations or see our Show Schedule at http://www.mikal-salon-software.com/shows-and-seminars

Does your software company host dynamic meetings like ours or just want you to WEBINAR with them? We will convert your information to our system, come ON SITE at your location and train you and give you friendly experiences support for dollars a day! Call us for our special conversion package pricing! 800-448-5420.

- Do you have the amazing MIKAL SIX software or some other package that just is not measuring up? See the power of the new Management Dash Board, the Automatic Autopilot E-marketing system, and get a FREE Salon/Spa Policy Manual e-mailed to you if you call and give us 15 minutes to show you an Internet based presentation of our award winning software. Call and ask for an e-mail of our information package on MIKAL SIX. It is an awesome upgrade.

- Go to our web site and listen to our Award Winning Tablet App streaming video and download our 32 page Idea book - they are FREE - WWW.MIKAL.COM then come to Chicago, San Jose, Orlando, Baltimore, Texas, Seattle or one of our other shows and put a plan together to profit in these wild economic times. It can be done!

Fred

Co-Founder

The MIKAL Corporation

[email protected]

WWW.MIKAL-SALON-SOFTWARE.COM

Here are some conversations I have had recently with salon owners on - how am I doing?  How much should I be making.  Interesting insights...

In these cases the owner is hands on management with 2 doing some services.

I only have a few truly absentee owners. I do have a few that do services full time and have a manager. One of these has a hair only business and she does 4 full days a week of hair. She pays the manager 40% of what she does in services almost 50K a year and expects the manager to handle her 12 stylists and 1 full time and 2 part time receptionists. She does not have a bookkeeper and her accountant does payroll and vendor checks. This is expensive I think.

In an absentee ownership situation I must speculate that the front desk costs are used to hire one more qualified manager and the balance would come from the owner’s compensation.

Owner compensation was given as 8% to 14% of sales. This figure I have no way to verify.

My most verifiable example is the 1.6k salon/spa.

The owner does 2 days of services a week and manages 3 (probably really 4) days a week. She said her total income from the business is about 180,000 (includes her salary, the commission on the 2 days looks to be worth about 40k a year at 50% of her sales volume, and end of year bonus she takes) and that is about 11%. If she didn’t do the management or services I would not expect her to make more than 6% net/net so that would leave 3% or 45+ a year for a manager?

WARNING DO NOT BE A VICTIM

I know - this the last thing we want to thnk about.  So put the right controls and rules in place!

Over the last two years we have experienced a sharp rise in theft at our salons and spas. Theft

in your business will rob you of all of your profits. If you run at 10% profit and $500 is stolen from

the salon/spa you have to do $5000 in sales to pay for the theft. Remember that you pay for

theft out of profits, not out of sales. Some of the theft is due to the economy but the majority of

the theft is due to lax security and management policies!

Don=t let thieves victimize your business.

Here are the steps that will tighten up security and

reduce the chance of theft:

1.) Make your customers the cash police. Print a receipt for

every transaction and give every customer a receipt. Set

up the system with a receipt printer and automatically print

receipts for every transaction. Put a sign at the front desk

that tells customers to call you for a free gift if they are not

given a receipt.

2.) Change your password monthly. All your management staff should guard their passwords

and change them regularly.

3.) Set the system to log off automatically every 60 seconds. That way the terminal will not be

left open with a high access level by accident.

4.) Check all refunds and voids. If you are getting more than 2% of daily totals as refunds and

voids there is theft at the desk. Call customers that received a refund and ask them about the

transaction. Make sure an explanation of all voids is documented on a receipt and put in the

cash drawer each day. Save these voids and see if the same employees have a lot of voids.

Call customers who have voids and ask about the transaction.

5.) Spot check all gift certificate and gift card redemptions - especially on older certificates and

cards. Check with the customers and see if they in fact came in and used the certificate/card.

6.) If your inventory is off (products are missing) don’t just look for it going out the back door with

staff. Watch out for product being sold to customers that is not run through the point of sale

transaction. If a customer returns a product make sure the product is listed in their buying

history.

7.) Expire old gift certificates and make it an owner or high level management job to allow old

certificates to be redeemed through the supervisor mode. Only owners and high level

management should have the supervisor mode for anything.

8.) Never have the person working on a cash drawer balance the drawer. Have a different

person (a closer) do the balancing and cashout.

9.) All coupons and discount offers need to be counted and closed out each night. Count the

coupons like cash and check them to the discount amount on the cashout report.

10.) All work tickets must be resolved each night with a sale, or a no-show transaction. Check

the customers with the no-show items each week and call them to verify the no-show.

11.) Set the access level for viewing Gift Card and Gift Certificate numbers. (4.6) Lower access

levels can sell & redeem, but cannot view the numbers.

WARNING

DO NOT BE A VICTIM!

1. RECEIPTS

2. PASSWORDS

3. SET SYSTEM LOG OFF

4. REFUNDS AND VOIDS

5. GIFT CERTIFICATE & CARD REDEMPTIONS

6. PRODUCT SALES

7. EXPIRE

8. USE A CLOSER

9. COUPONS AND DISCOUNTS

10. RESOLVE WORK TICKETS

11. VIEWING OF GIFT CARD & CERTIFICATE NUMBERS

MIKAL is your ultimate salon management system. The MIKAL Platform system gives you all the tools you need to market and manage your salon along with the ability to expand with over 20 advanced options!

• 6 Security Access Levels to keep your data confidential

• Daily Cash Start-up with a receipt marketing message

• Point-of-Sale Processing in as few as 8 keystrokes

• Split Tender Payments

• Multi-Window Operation at Point-of-Sale

• Sales/Payouts/Refunds/Voids all from one easy screen

• Continued Sales for families making one payment

• Sales Comment Lines for detailed notes

• Automatic or On-demand Sales Receipts

• Programmable POS Cursor Movement to fit your business

• Bar Code Ready

• Quick Customer Look Up by Name, Phone Number, or Address

• Inventory Catalog Search

• Dollar and Percentage Discounts on sales

• New Customer Addition Window

• Work Ticket Printing with detailed customer history

• Customer Buying History Window with unlimited transactions

• Batch Daily Work Ticket Printing by employee or times

• 99 Custom Work Ticket Formats to match your employee requirements

• POS Work Ticket Recall by Number for quick customer cash out and exit

• Customer Personal Information with 36 items of information

• Day End Balancing and Reporting system

• Detailed Transaction Listings by payment method, employee, or transaction

• Daily Operator Productivity reports with 50 categories of detail

• Daily Cash Out Reports by register and accumulated

• Batch Day End Processing updates all your information in minutes

• Inventory Maintenance screens with detailed ordering and sales history

• Employee Maintenance screens with service and retail sales

• Unlimited Years of Inventory Sales History

• Unlimited Years of Employee Sales History

• Vendor Account Information

• Unlimited Years Salon Sales Performance History

• Pay Type Sales History with ten pay types

• Unlimited Years Advertising Analysis in ten categories

• Unlimited Years Sales Tax History

• Customer Purchase History detail with unlimited transactions

• 600 Character Customer technical information Card

• Customer Listings With 28+ Criteria and 8 output formats

• Customer Label Printing 28 Sorting criteria

• Continuous & Laser Customer Postcard printing

• Customer Letter Printing

• 99 On-line Postcard Formats that you create

• 99 Customer Letter Formats for in-depth mailing programs

• On-demand Daily Cash Out Reports so you can check daily sales at any time

• Daily Transaction Margin Reports to track profitable areas

• Sales Activity by Hour and Day to spot trends in the business

• Inventory Listing Reports

• Inventory Reorder Reports with suggested reorder amounts

• Inventory Sales Reports with unlimited years of trend analysis

• Inventory Margin Reports with gross profit percentages

• Inventory Price Listings

• Employee Performance Reports with percentage sales and category detail

• Employee Ranking Reports in six areas

• Employee Trends Analysis Report

• Salon Sales Analysis/Comparisons with Unlimited years of history, percentages & averages

• Salon Advertising Analysis with Unlimited years of history with trend analysis

• Salon Sales Tax Reporting

• Departmental Sales Tracking in 50 categories with comparisons

• Average Ticket Salon/Operator

• Customer Requests tracking

• New/repeat Customer Tracking

• Inventory Ordering/Receipts

• Referral Tracking System

• System Enhanced Twice Each Year with updates available

• National User Meetings twice each year for our customers

Did you know that the MIKAL platform has all this????

Marketing Hot-line (800) 448 - 5420

Voice (513) 528 - 5100

TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR BUSINESS

Here are some quick business building (saving) ideas that need to be put in place ASAP to turn a business around.

Why not operate this way all the time???

Cash crunch?

Try these things:

- Get relief from your landlord. Send a letter asking for a rent adjustment till the business gets back on its feet. Ask for six months free, or four months prorated over the next 18 months. They don=t want you to go out of business!

- Inventory - return everything is not a hot seller. Get a credit and use the credit to buy only the hot selling items and items needed for the most popular services. Redo the retail displays with product info, theme displays, baskets etc . . . so the retail area still looks full.

- Any inventory you can=t return put on a sale table and get rid of it for 10% over cost. Put a big sale sign on the table and mark it down!

- Vendors - call them and tell them you need 90 days on this bill and will keep current with all present orders. Have them hold the old bills for 90 days and pay COD for current orders. Do not fund the cash flow of your business with your vendor=s products!

- Review all of your staff costs. Who can go? Whom can you cut back? Who is doing things you can do? Cut the assistants, receptionists, cleaning people, anyone whom you can cut back. Feel bad about it? Would they feel bad if they left you for a higher paying job?

- Take no money out of the cash drawer or petty cash. Period.

- Check for cash problems at the front desk. Is your inventory count correct? Is your cashout correct each night? A $100.00 theft takes $ 1000.00 in sales to make up the net profit!

- Stop all marketing that is not directly tracked to increased sales. Get rid of the image ads. Only work on internal marketing. Get the referral program going, get the phone calls going to new customers and customers who have not been back in a while. As the owner call customers who have been coming for a long time and have stopped recently. Find out why!

- Sell gift certificates at a big discount - great cash flow and 25% don=t get redeemed!

- Talk to your 20 best customers. Offer to sell them $ 1500.00 in services for $ 1200.00 up front. This will make you a fast $ 10,000.00 or more!

- Look at your professional fees. Make sure your accountant and attorney aren=t costing you more than 2% of sales. Use them for consulting, not data entry!

- Look at every expense category. Where can you cut? How can you give your customer more value without spending more money?

- Close the salon during slow times and days. Consolidate slow days and save utilities, hourly wages, and effort.

- Find new staff that is willing to come in and help turn the business around. Give them a year end bonus (spelled out in advance) when the turn around happens. Make the same deal with your present staff. They need to know where you are going. Ask them where expenses can be cut.

- Get those old customers back in. Send them a one time irresistible offer. Limit it to the next 30 days only. Don=t do any specials during the holidays. You will be busy anyway.

- Raise your prices NOW. If you raise prices 20% you can lose 20% of your customers, save 20% of your time, and still make as much money!

- Get rid of all magazines in the front waiting area and only have style books. Discontinue any consumer magazine subscriptions.

- Have an empty station? Turn it into a styling station the customers can use for that final touch up they like to do before leaving the salon. Stock it with product and make sure they know the product is available for sale as well.

- Get behind your front desk and see what is going on.

Do you have some Cash Flow Challenges?

It is time to get your INVENTORY organized with MIKAL.

You can reduce carrying costs up to 20% and cut theft to almost zero. Plus do you have any waste?

Salon example:

6 stylist shop has $3000 in professional products

Cut carrying costs frees up 20% or $600 in cash

Station waste and usage averages $300 per station – use our ideas to cut that in half and free up $900

Waste and theft runs 5% of products or $150

So $1650 is freed up.

How about time savings? Save 3 hours a week ordering and stocking and tracking. In a year that is 150 hours or 4 weeks of work.

What could you do with an extra 4 weeks this year?

What should you order:

Puchase orders (and 6.5 for Aveda order feature) $250

Inventory Ranking report $200

Inventory Min/Max $100

Total list price $550

Your cost till 6pm Dec 31, 2009 $300

====

Plus get HP Barcode gun with stand for only $285

And Inventory Cost report ($200) for only $100

Best Deal: $685

Order the gun and ALL the options and get the Physical Count Book FREE

(a $100 value) TOTAL SAVINGS: $450

Call MIKAL 513-528-5100

Spring Money Making Ideas

 

Now that winter is almost over and here in Cincinnati it will be SEVENTY degrees today!  (great isn’t it?)

 

So……..it’s time to get back down to business and get into the business of Spring. Now is the time to crank up the business of beauty.

 

Here are a couple of ideas to get you and your staff back down to business:

 

$ Get a staff meeting together and go over these (and your own) promo ideas. See what ideas generate the most excitement and appoint people and set dates for getting the projects going! Introduce JITA the just in time appointment feature of MIKAL to fill the book. Get EMBA for the staff and they can go CRAZY booking all over town on their smart phones.

 

$ Clean the salon/spa from top to bottom. Paint a few walls and make a few small changes. Move some plants and displays. Decorate for the season!

 

$ Have everyone get dressed up. I don’t mean formal but every winter people get a little casual. It’s time to change our look and the change should be professional and upscale. Have a staff party to get the excitement going!

 

$ Get into the Spring colors. Make sure your make up is right for the season and coordinates with your new look! Get the staff together for a make up session and new fashion review.

 

$ Start your Referral Contest May 1st and end it on August 1st . Pick your prizes, do your precontest mailing/e-mail September 3rd, and get the signs up in the salon/spa. Call us for a free 11 page Referral Contest planning book. How would 50-100 new customers sound in the next 60-90 days?

 

$ Get your front desk staff to commit to cleaning up the customer data base in the next 60 days. All of your regular customers will be in for the season. Run a list on your MIKAL system of all customers with Invalid addresses. The goal is to verify every customer’s address in the next 60 days. Check on the progress by running the Invalid Addresses report for all Last Visits in the last 7 days each week. The report should be blank every week if the front desk staff is cleaning up the list!

 

$ Get your Gift Cards on order NOW! Call Jenny at RACO Card 866-940-4676 for a free sample kit. Order the Gift Card option is MIKAL’s SMS software and ask for our free information pack on promoting gift cards. Gift Cards will make a huge difference in your sales over the old gift certificates. NOTE: beware of companies giving you gift cards for use with their Internet or bank card systems. The costs for the processing of the card every time it is swiped become a huge expense and if a customer loses their card there is no way to cancel that card and charge the balance up on a new card. Call us at MIKAL to make an informed decision. Also revisit a switch in credit card processors. X-Charge our credit card processing partner has a $100 Gift Card waiting for you to switch!

 

$ Increase your Nail service prices now just before the prom and summer seasons. This will give you an additional boost to your income and the customers are coming in for that popular service during the Spring season.

 

$ Sign up for the Autopilot Marketing system from MIKAL. The business can get hectic. Don’t let your marketing Spring by the wayside. Put it on autopilot, and make sure you stay busy when summer months roll around!

 

Fred Dengler                  513-528-5100                        email us at [email protected]       Website: www.mikal-salon-software.com