A consultation is one of the most important elements of your haircut. In this article, I will help you find out what your guests want before starting your haircut by taking into account lifestyle, hair type and more before agreeing on what they will deliver.
MAKE SURE THAT YOU FEEL COMFORTABLE
After a greeting (read last week’s article), sit down with your client, then introduce yourself. Do not immediately put your cloak on them, stand in front of them and talk with them face to face. You don’t need to get into the consultation right away, sometimes you should just talk about a general topic so that your client feels comfortable and feels at home. If you feel that the time has come, ask them: “What can I do for you today?”, and make the conversation talk about the service you are going to perform.
THE LIFESTYLE POINT OF VIEW
It is essential to talk about the guest’s lifestyle. Where do you work? What do you like to do? Find out about your general lifestyle and style choices. And while you are doing this, take the time to look closely at your client face to face without the cape draped over it. Look at their Fashion, how they stand and the like. Chances are, if you are in your hair salon because you like the feel and atmosphere of the store and the appearance of the hairdressers who cut the hair, or they were recommended to the store, but there will be people sitting in your chair who have no interest and just want a decent haircut. So feel them out, it doesn’t have to last forever, but it helps to take a few minutes to judge someone and imagine the type of hair you could cut for them.
ANALYZE THE HAIR
From there, direct the conversation to the hair. Then I would take off the cape and drape my client because now they might want to get into their hair and see what they are working with. Now is a good time to ask them about haircuts that they have had in the past, that they liked, and those that they didn’t like. While you are doing this, take out a comb and analyze the entire hairline from the forehead to the nape of the neck, looking for the disturbances you need to allow the length or remove the length, depending on the style you are aiming for. When setting up your client, be sure to look at their natural hairline and think about what they are leaving behind and what they are going to take with them. Be sure to add the crown to the mixture to see if it has one or two crowns and comb the hair to see where the natural part is. Ask for sideburns, if you want a certain length or a rejuvenation of the temples, ask for the neck, if you want it tapered, square, rounded or one of the other variants, The length of the hair, what should stay and what should go, and always make a show about how much you will lose, your thumb may not be your thumb, your centimeter may not be yours.
ASK FOR YOUR STYLE DIET
Some guys want to spend three seconds with their hair, and some guys can dry their hair better than me (very, very rarely), but this is something you should talk about in detail. What type of product do you use? What brush style do you have? Where do you style it, at home or at the gym? If someone does not want to style their hair, help them choose a style that requires little care. If someone wants to spend time with their hair, choose the appropriate style. During subsequent styling, be sure to explain exactly how to style the hair. This guest is like a walking billboard, if you make him look good and teach him how to style his hair, he will bring you business.
EXPERIENCE PLAYS A ROLE
Now the experience comes into play. The more experience you have, the easier it will be to find out if someone can wear a certain style or not. Some hair types do not allow certain haircuts, and trial and error is the only way to figure this out. A station wagon will not look good on someone with two Cowlicks at the front hairline…most often it depends on the direction of the Cowlicks and the length or hair…but you understand what I mean. If someone shows you or tells you that they want something that you don’t think is a good idea, expose the truth and tell them that, try to convince them to do something else. If they persist…maybe this is not the Haircut for you and you can ask someone else in the store to do it, or refuse the customer directly, which is better than cutting a bad haircut.
REPETITION-REPETITION
Once you have decided on something, repeat step by step what you are going to do so that you both know that you are on the same page.
PROFESSIONAL TRANSLATION
And to complicate things even more, sometimes what a client tells you needs a little professional translation to get him to a correct haircut. I say this because there are many guests who ask for a “2 on the sides and the length of the fingers at the top”. Does this mean that this is the Haircut I’m giving you? No, I think that a haircut very rarely looks good on someone. I will definitely say and explain that I will also take an extra five minutes to rejuvenate the temples and neck, and I could keep the hair at the hairline and crown a little longer, depending on how the cut looks from a profile position. Just because you can do a simple haircut and make money fast doesn’t mean you should. In some circumstances, I would say it depends on how much you charge someone for their haircut. If you work in a hair salon that works in large quantities, you may want to keep the Extras to a minimum or charge extra fees if people want you to, and if you work in a higher place with higher prices, you will probably want to do everything in your way to ensure the best quality that you can provide. This decision belongs to you as a hairdresser. For me, I would prefer to ask for more and provide more because this is the kind of work that interests me. Ultimately, it’s up to you, as a hairdresser, to make these decisions for yourself.
IF IT DOESN’T WORK, REFINE IT
Nevertheless, the Advice may not always work and you may have to refine a haircut to get a good result. I had a guest with long and super thick hair and we had a long advice about what he wants. He had medium-length hair that reached to the ears and reached about two centimeters above the nape of the neck. After talking for a while and following my regular consultation routine, he had concluded that he wanted ¼ inch of what he had. I cut off a ¼ inch of what he had, and we both looked at him and he said, “I think I would like to have another ¼ inch of his hair.”I had already cut his hair as he had asked, and I could see that he was not satisfied, and I was not satisfied. My advice had been complete, he had only insisted that he wanted to maintain the length. He had thick hair and he was squeezing in the wrong places. At this point I told him that I didn’t think the haircut would work and that I didn’t like the way it sat on his head and that we should shorten it, which I had recommended to him before. At this point, he agreed and showed me a photo of Brad Pitt at the action Club that he had stored in his cell phone and that he had obviously brought with him to show me. We cut his hair shorter and he got super excited. It had only taken me twice as long and twice as much effort to get there, but in the end he was happy. Some guests are just not the type to change easily, and we are in customer service, but I’m not used to sending a haircut with my name that I know doesn’t look good, so sometimes you have to refine and spend a little more time making someone happy, it all depends on the Situation.
Appreciation
If you take time for your guests, you will notice and appreciate them for it. I consult thoroughly every time I do a haircut, even with my weekly guests, because it makes my job easier and keeps my customer satisfaction at a very high percentile.