Ooohhhh…..

I’m writing this post in response to a GREAT question from Audrey (I won’t mention here surname because I wouldn’t want her staff or clients ever finding this).

Bit of a touchy subject.

The unfortunate truth is that EVERYONE is out to ‘get your chips’.

And that does sometimes mean people will steal from you.

The odd bottle of product slipping into a staff members handbag.

A few new products disappearing from your treatment rooms.

It happens in all walks of life. People WILL steal.

And short of locking up all your products, covering your salon/spa in cameras and strip searching clients and staff before they leave — wha can you do to combat it?

Well…

I’ve been fortunate enough to have a fair amount of contact with a chap who specialised in ‘Theft Control’.

And the advice I’m about to dispense is based on over 20 years of his experience in combatting — in particular — retail and service business theft.

Here’s the premise.

Imagine for a moment your 7 years old again.

You’ve been baking some yummy chocolate muffins with grany all morning.

Despite your please she wouldn’t let you taset ‘the mixture’ because it contained raw egg (which might make you ill).

So you have to sit through the temptation of that yummy chocolate bowl of deliciousness and sit through the scrummy chocolately smell as they bake in the oven.

Once done, granny delicately slips the baking tray from the oven, places it on the kitchen table and you both sit there looking at the muffins while they cool.

You can literally taste the soft sponge and warm chocolate and it slips into your mouth.

BUT, granny won’t let you have a muffin until after dinner….

Then granny says “Oh… Just got to nip upstairs and remove the curlers from my hair”.

“Ok granny” you say.

And granny waddles upstairs.

You’re left alone with the tray of warm yummy muffins.

“I mustn’t take one” you think.

“How many are there?”

“Will granny know if I take one?”

“NAH!!! Of course she won’t!!!”

And with that you whip a muffin off the tray, gobble it down and re-arrange the rest of the muffins.

Ha ha!!!

Granny returns none the wiser!!!

You 1 – Granny Nil…

And something quite similar happens to SOME of your staff and clients when they see things they’d like and THINK they can get away with it.

Here’s what granny should have.

BEFORE she left us sat with the muffins she should have said:

“Now Henry – I’ve counted the muffins and there are 12. When I come down from taking my curlers out I expect there to STILL be 12 muffins.”

What has granny accomplished.

Simple – she stopped me stealing a muffin!

And you can use the same simple technique in your salon/spa.

1. Make it KNOWN you KNOW how much of everything you have.

2. Tell people you leave with things how many there are.

3. Make it KNOWN you’ll be counting them again.

Simple but a HUGE deterent.

Hope that helps!

Speak soon,

Henry.

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