As a professional, your time is money and when a client doesn’t show,unfortunately that’s time & money out the window! If you been battling with ways to get your clients to value your time and not feel like a human doormat, here are 4 tips on how to deal with these offenders:

• HAVE a lateness and NO SHOW POLICY. Pretty obvious right?  But you’d be amazed how many salons and spas don’t. What the policy shold be depends on your type of salon/spa and clientel.  Something like a minimum of 5 hours notice for cancellation and fine no shows. But this is very difficult to enforce and if you don’t enforce it clients will not respect it and you’ll loose credibility – NOT one of our faves.  For late shows you can ONLY offer them the time left in their appointment window. Say something like “Unfortunately, we only have ___ minutes left to the session. What areas would you like the focus to be on?”

• Take Non-refundable Deposits – Not only do you pretty much ensure your client turns up but if they don’t you still make a little and have the chance to fill the slot. PLUS, taking deposits ‘weeds out’ a HUGE portion of the time-wasters.

• Don’t book appointments until they have a consultation – or, perhaps, join your ‘Health and Beauty Membership Program” (where they pay X amount every month for a certain set of treatments) OR they’ve paid a membership fee to even allow them to become a client of yours. This powerful technique switches the power position from the client to you!

• Call clients with reminders – Call clients 24-48 hours before their appointment. Just making this call will dramatically reduce no shows.

Whatever you do, make sure you display it, explain it, and enforce it!  What tips do you have for dealing with ”problem clients”?