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Hey, everyone. It's Megan Kristel with Style Maker University. And today, we're doing our
first video blog. We get so many great questions from our readers and followers and women in
our mentee program, we thought, why not shoot a few videos? You can get into so much more
detail and content. And we're going to answer one question a week for the next few weeks
and we'll see how it goes.
If you would like to submit a question, anything about business whether you are just starting
out or you've been in your practice for a really long time, we would love to read them
and I would be delighted to answer them and we'll let you know when we will post them
on YouTube and we will send them out in our weekly email. So let's get started.
The first question is from a gal named Andrea who is up in New Jersey. And Andrea joined
us for our Introduction to Personal Styling Workshop in Philadelphia last spring. Her
question is a follow-up to some of the content that we covered there. Andrea's question is,
"I would like to know what to do and how to contact department stores to work out a commission
of some sort? I'm bringing in business. Yet, people that are rigging up my client purchases
are making the commission. I'm not sure how that works but it just doesn't seem fair and
I want to act on this. Any suggestions?"
I have a few suggestions. The first thing that I'd like you to think about is why you
want to take an additional commission from department stores? It's been my business practice
and the principles that we teach at Style Maker University that we are not commission
salespeople and as such, we do not take commission or kickback or any kind of incentive from
department stores or other retail establishments. The reason that we have that philosophy is
because we need to be separate from that. We need to be advocates for our client. We
need to be 110% unbiased at all times.
It's essential in building the client relationship that we establish trust really quickly. And
I found over the last 7 or 8 years that we've been doing this that, clients are so relieved
to hear that we do not get incentives from retails, 100% on their side all the time.
We don't care what they buy. We just want to make sure that they're happy with the process
and the end result.
There are a few questions and challenges that I would have for anybody that is kind of thinking
this because you can make a great living and never take a commission. I have built a fantastic
business, if I do say so myself, and make a great salary, and I've never had to be a
commissioned salesperson and I've never taken any commission from any store ever in the
years that we've been doing this.
The first challenge that I have for you is, are you charging enough? Are you making enough
from the client appointments to be able to build your business and eventually pay yourself
a salary? You should be making a competitive rate based on your market and your geographical
area. If you're in North Jersey, you should be charging at least a $100 an hour if not
more depending on where you are in your practice and your skill set and your level of experience
because you have the New York metro area around you, there are consultants that are charging
up to $300 an hour.
Now, I think that that's outrageous but you can definitely be charging a $100, $125, $150
depending on what your level of experience is and your expertise. Take a look at your
dollars and make sure that you are being compensated for what you're doing. If you're charging
less than a $100 an hour, you will never make a profit because you're not getting paid the
$100, your business is getting the $100. You have to take into consideration your overhead
and all the expenses that go into that.
The second thing that I would challenge you in is what are you doing during the appointment
that is making you frustrated with the sales associate? Be real clear with yourself and
understand right away that this is one of the least glamorous jobs that pretends to
be a glamorous job. There's nothing glamorous or luxurious about what we do. It should be
glamorous and fun for our client. But it certainly isn't for us. You have to run around. Your
feet are going to hurt. You're going to be tired and you maybe frantic for two or three
hours depending on how long these appointments last for you.
Make sure when you do client appointment that you follow a few kind of basic protocols.
The first is, you have to do what we call a pre-shop. A pre-shop is when you go to a
retail establishment before your client arrives and you preselect what you're going to show
them. I go through the whole store. I select everything myself as do the people on my team.
We never have sales associates make the selection. That would be ridiculous.
The sales associate is not the client's partner in this. The sales associate is helping us
through the appointment. But this is our point of view and our expertise that the client
is paying for so you have to do your own pre-shop every time. It's your job not anybody else's
to do that. That pre-shop, you need to charge your hourly rate for because that is typically
why the shopping appointment is so efficient, successful, and probably done a lot quicker
than the client was ever anticipating it to be.
The second thing is make sure that you are having a conversation with the sales associate
or your contact at retail so you can set some level of expectation of how you would like
to work with them. This needs to be a mutually beneficial relationship. If you can work consistently
with the same contact and you start to develop a really strong relationship with that person,
you're going to really love what you do. You're going to love the partnership that you have
with them. You'll invite their point of view in. But you're getting paid an hourly rate
and the sales associate is commissioned because that sales associate is saying no to all the
other work that she could be doing to help you. So keep that in mind.
The third thing that I want to just call out is that the commission that you could possibly
make from retail is so marginal that it's not really going to impact your bottom line.
If you made 2% commission on everything that you brought in and you had a client who spent
a $1000, that's 20 bucks. It's not enough to jeopardize the possible trust lost that
you would have with the client.
Now, nothing is worth jeopardizing the trust with the client but certainly $20, $40, whatever
it might be isn't really worth it. Clients don't want to know that you're getting a commission
from the store and a lot of them will ask you very directly within your very first phone
call if you are taking a commission. So I don't believe in taking a commission. I don't
think that you should take a commission.
Instead, I think you need to look at your business and make sure that you are managing
it in a way that you feel like you might not be taking a salary now but in the future,
you would be able to take a salary that you could make a really nice life with. It's very
possible to do that. I didn't know what I was doing and I did it anyway. And I did it
without having to take a commission from retail.
Now, if you are looking to add additional revenue streams into your business, you could
consider joining businesses and organizations that host trunk shows and do direct sales
where you would get commission from what you sell to your clients. Lots of very, very reputable
image professionals do this and they do it really well and it's respected within the
industry.
There are a lot of great image professionals even up in the North Jersey area who sell
things like Doncaster, Worth, even Stella & Dot. The way that that works is you become
a vendor to Doncaster. And Doncaster sends you samples of clothes. You bring your clients
to a trunk show that's usually host out of your home. And the clients, whatever they
buy, you get a commission from that. That is completely acceptable. Everybody knows
what's going on. It's really transparent.
The key here though is that you do not charge your client the hourly rate because you're
getting the commission off of the clothes. So taking one of those elements out and being
transparent in how you're getting paid is super important in terms of building a relationship
with clients.
If you have questions about how to build relationships with retail, the one tip that I can share
with you today is it is all about consistently going and establishing a relationship with
one or two key people. You want to make sure that you go to the same person all the time;
that establishes a relationship. You want to make sure that you are incredibly courteous,
polite, and as low maintenance as possible.
I'm here to tell you, I know so much dirt on so many people because if you are rude
to a sales associate, they will talk to everybody. And I have heard some stories that just shocked
me with how rude some image professionals can be.
There was a woman once that just left the client 20 minutes in and had a sales associate
take care of everything, which is just so ridiculous. So you're working hard with these
men and women and you can partner with them. But it does take a while to establish a relationship
with them where you can start to get private dressing rooms and extra little amenities
and niceties because again, it's not about you being comfortable. It's about the client
being comfortable and whatever you can do to have that happen.
I worked with Nordstrom for four years before I was able to use the private shopper's dressing
rooms. And now, I have a really, really wonderful girl that I work with and if she wasn't there,
I don't know if I would like what I do as much as I do because I have so much fun with
her. And it's such a team building and I'm so happy that she gets that commission because
I'm being very fairly paid for what I'm doing and we both win in the end.
I hope that that helps and I hope that you understand a little bit more that you have
to have a longer thought about where the business is going to go and just keep building your
relationships. Don't get caught up in the little details of things like commission from
retail because it's not something that I think you want to -- I don't think you want to engage
in it.
If you have any questions, please send them my way. You can just reply directly to this
email or you can send it to Megan@KristelClosets.com.
Just so you know, on August 30th, we are starting our three-month intensive mentorship again.
We have room for five people. If you are interested, drop us an email and we can set up an initial
call to make sure that you meet the criteria for it.
I am so happy that I get to be on this journey with so many of you. I hope that you continue
to push forward in your business. Know that it's a lot of hard work but it absolutely
worth it and you can do it. You just have to stay focused.
Until next week, have a great day. Have a great week. And I will talk to you next week.
Bye.