Cultivate A Relevant, Competitive, & Profitable Service Menu
By Lori Vargas, MBA, Founder of 360 Wellness Education
Why is it important to manage and cultivate your service menu? The ability to promote your business is critical to success and the service menu is the most powerful sales and marketing tool. A service menu at its most basic lists the services offered with a description, price, and service duration.
Relevant Service Menu
A relevant service menu relies on review, research, and continual evolution. I recommend that the service menu is reviewed every six months. The review process should consider the demand for services at the service level. If a service is not being requested, determine the factors on why it is not selling–pricing, time duration, the treatment itself, staff, delivery, or marketing trends shifted.
The ability to remain relevant is understanding what services are working and which ones are not effective. Once you understand the underlying reason, you can evolve. They could be easy changes to improve sales, maybe the service was priced too high so lowering the price may be the only action. If the delivery was inconsistent, it might be time to do team training. If the trends have shifted, you may need to revise the protocol, retrain, reprice, and remarket the service.
Competitive Service Menu
A competitive service menu relies on competitive analysis, customization, and unique service offerings. It is important to have an understanding on what your competitors are providing, how do they deliver the services, what is the environment, and the talent of their practitioners. This analysis allows you to compare your offerings and understand how you need to position yourself in the market place. The research will include understanding the demand for new services and/or products. The competitive analysis provides a deep understanding of what is available for the clients and where there are gaps. These gaps provide opportunities to cultivate unique services to create a competitive advantage and become more competitive.
The ability to customize a treatment allows a client to create an experience based on their objectives and preferences. The ability to enhance the experience doesn’t mean that each client will get a unique experience, you can establish an enhancement menu that has add-on services that are compatible with a service and allow a client to create a combination specifically for them.
Profitable Service Menu
A profitable service menu provides financial insight into how the business is managed based on sales, pricing, and direct and indirect expenses. I recommend that you calculate the contribution margin for each service to determine its profitability and popularity. The ability to determine the performance of each service allows you to evaluate the service mix and pricing strategy. The insight will allow you to be strategic in steps to influence profitability and popularity. Lastly, the ability to have a strong retail business builds on the business viability. Homecare advising and sell-through retailing are focused retailing methods to provide a client-centric approach.
In summary:
• Remain relevant by managing the service menu.
• Be aware of the competition and evolve to remain competitive.
• Understand revenue and service to be profitable.
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About the Author
Lori Vargas, founder of 360 Wellness Education, has over 20 years in the spa industry as a founder of multiple spas, a massage school, and as a spa consultant. She also has 14 years of experience guiding Fortune 500 Companies with corporate strategies and business development. Lori holds a CPA and MBA from the University of Chicago.
To complement her online 360 Wellness Education courses, Lori has created an educational community focused on connections and growth through 360 Wellness Education CORE Membership. This membership provides easy access to affordable on-demand advanced education, live webinars (sip & learn style), Facebook private group, newsletters, and live events. Follow on Instagram at @360WellnessEducation.
In addition to CORE Membership and her other online courses, Lori offers 360 Business Workshops. This live webinar series focuses on business start-up and development, sharing valuable insight, advice, and templates to jumpstart business growth and maximize success.
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