Dr. Bruce Katz, owner of Juva Medi spa www.juvaskinc.com, offer the following tips on managing a successful medical spa

Marketing:

Branding goes a long way with clients:

- Experience
- Memorable
- Provides knowledge
- Repeat customers
- Get’s your name out there

Monthly lecture series provide education, new treatments for specific conditions.

Create a good relationship with your vendors. If a vendor is willing to come in and provide free services in a treatment room on VIP guests, etc...Take advantage!!! This is a great way to promote your business, and generate retail sales.

E-mail blasts, are a great way to promote new services, perhaps even more than mailings. E-mail samples of your treatments and services.

Staff Training:

Have a training manual, and policy and procedures manual. There has to be a reference tool for all staff to go to, so that each protocol and task is done in the same manner. The client does not want to say, and the spa operator does not want to hear that the client is finding inconsistency in treatments. That goes for being welcomed at the front desk, to treatments with a therapist.

It is a good idea to test your staff on a regular basis, to ensure that spas procedures and protocols are being followed correctly. Have regular staff meetings to ensure this as well, and allow for suggestions, but do not let the control of the daily function of the spa, get to fat out of control of the Spa director, it has to have consistency.

It is very important to take advantage of vendors who are willing to train on a regular basis, create a strong relationship with their sales/education rep. and utilize their willingness to keep your staff apprised of changes in the line, and new ways to promote sales, both retail and services.

This should lead to better staff production, in retail sales, and overall attitude, again this is a place of healing, but it is also a business. A spa needs to make money, so stay on top of your staff to ensue that both are occurring on a daily basis. The old saying “money is not important to her/him, helping others is “is admirable, but not in a business that has to pay the bills.

Dispensing Skin Care Products:

According to Dr. Katz, it is not a bad idea to have a surveillance camera at the front desk over the cash drawer, and in the retail area. A business cannot function without trust, and it is not out of line to verify that trust. If staff members know up front that their transactions with money are being monitored as part of office policy, they will work with you, not against you.

Knowledge of products is important in sales; this is where training and education are critical. If you work with a vendor or for that matter an employee who is not willing to train and educate, they are of no use to you.

Customers want to know:

1. What will it do for me?
2. How do I use?
3. How much do I use?
4. When?
5. How do I use with other products?
6. How does it compare to other lines?
7. How much does it cost?
8. What is in it?

All of your staff has to be able to address these questions. It is a good idea to have the client leave with a skin care sheet that they can track at home.