Glow Pros Academy

Mini Module V

The twenty per cent who keep the lights on

The Glow Edit. Business education for the aesthetic and wellness field, written from a working clinic.

Module specification

Framework: The Pareto Principle, Vilfredo Pareto, 1896
Field: Economics
Duration: 10 minutes reading, 20 minutes practical
Prerequisites: None
Strand: Pillar V, Retention
Benchmark: National occupational standards for enterprise

On completion you will be able to

Rank your clients by what they actually contribute
Identify the minority carrying the majority of your income
Choose one retention action aimed at that group specifically

In one line

A small number of your clients are paying for this business. Most practitioners could not name them, and almost none treat them differently.

Section A · The situation

The client you have not seen since March

You know her name the moment you think of it. She came every six weeks for two years, always rebooked at the desk, never quibbled about a price, and sent you two friends.

And then she stopped, and you did not notice for about four months, because the diary stayed full.

That is the thing about retention. It fails silently. A client who leaves does not send a complaint, she simply does not appear, and the gap she leaves gets filled by somebody who books once.

Meanwhile the effort goes into finding new people, which is the most expensive thing a small business can do.

Section B · The theory

The unequal distribution nobody checks

In 1896 the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto observed that land ownership in Italy was not evenly distributed, and that roughly a fifth of the population held roughly four fifths of the property. The pattern turned out to hold in a great many other places.

Applied to a treatment business, the observation is uncomfortable and almost always true. A minority of your clients produce a majority of your income.

This is not a reason to be cynical about the rest. It is a reason to know which is which, because the two groups need entirely different things from you.

Three groups, three jobs

IThe coreThe fifth who produce most of the income. Regular, high value, referring. Your job here is retention and nothing else.

IIThe middleOccasional, price aware, positive. Your job here is to make the next appointment easy rather than optional.

IIIThe tailOne offs, discount seekers, no shows. Your job here is not to chase them. Some of them cost more than they bring.

The tail is where the emotional energy goes. The client who haggled, the one who did not turn up, the one who wanted an unusual time. They occupy far more of your week than their share of the income justifies.

The core, meanwhile, is quietly reliable, and therefore quietly ignored.

Where the income comes from, against where the attention goes

Core, most incomeMiddleTail

Roughly a fifth of clientsSteady but occasionalCosts more than it looks

There is a second finding hiding in the same data. A client who has come three times is dramatically more likely to come a fourth than a client who has come once is to come twice.

Which means the appointment that decides whether someone becomes core is not the first one. It is the second.

Nobody books the second appointment by accident. It is either offered, or it does not happen.

Before you go on

Name your top five clients by value without looking. Then check. Were you right?
What happens, concretely, between a first appointment ending and a second one being booked? Describe the actual mechanism, not the intention.
When did you last do anything at all that was aimed only at people who already come to you?

Section C · Mini audit

Practical

The Client Concentration Audit

Export twelve months of bookings and sort by total spend per client. If your software will not do it, take the last two hundred appointments and work from those. A rough answer here beats a precise one you never produce.

	Line	Figure
	1. Individual clients, twelve monthsIndividual people, not appointments
	2. Total revenue, twelve monthsFrom those clients		£
	3. Your top twenty per cent, in clientsLine 1 divided by five
	4. Revenue from that top groupAdd up their spend		£
	5. Their share of the totalLine 4 divided by line 2, as a percentage		%
	6. Clients who came exactly onceThe ones who never got a second
	Line 6 as a share of line 1		%

Under 50%Unusually even. Often a sign of a one off treatment mix rather than a healthy spread. The question becomes what would make any of these people regular.

50 to 70%Normal, and worth protecting. A meaningful group carries you. Losing three of them would be felt, which is a reason to know who they are.

Over 70%Concentrated, and a genuine risk. Excellent while it holds. If two move away in the same quarter you have a problem that will arrive without warning.

Section D · The reveal

What you have just done

That was a Pareto analysis applied to client concentration, with a retention rate sitting underneath it. You measured distribution rather than volume, which is what turns a client list into information.

It maps to winning and keeping customers for your business, a national occupational standard in its own right, and it is the analysis behind every customer segmentation exercise taught at level four and above.

You did it with a spreadsheet export.

Section E · Your action step

Twenty minutes this fortnight. One thing, aimed only at the top group.

Not a campaign. One thing, for the people who already keep this business alive.

A message that is not an offer. First access to a new date. A written plan for the next six months of their treatment. Something that costs you nothing and would be noticed.

Then fix the second appointment. If it is not offered at the desk, before they leave, it is not a system. It is a hope.

Type it here, or print the page and write it by hand.

Mini Module V at a glance

A minority of clients usually produce a majority of income
Most practitioners cannot name that minority
The tail absorbs attention out of all proportion to what it brings
The second appointment is the one that decides whether someone becomes core
High concentration is efficient and fragile at the same time

From the deck

Pillar VRetention

Card

The Pareto Principle

· · ·

A minority of causes produce a majority of effects. Find out which minority before you spend another pound on new clients.

Winning & Keeping Customers

Every framework in the Glow Mastery Programme has a card. More than a hundred of them, one for each thing you learn.

The reverse carries the origin, the theory and the standards it maps to. That side comes with the deck, which arrives when you enrol.

That is five you have earned.

Reply and tell me what share of your income comes from your top twenty per cent.

I read every reply myself, and it decides what gets taught next.

In two weeks: Mini Module VIWhy you drop your price when they hesitate. What is actually happening in the four seconds between the pause and the discount.

Amelia x

Founder, Glow Pros Academy

The Glow Edit is the fortnightly mini module from Glow Pros Academy, the business education for practitioners across the aesthetic and wellness field. Written from a working clinic, not a coaching desk. This page prints on two sides of A4 if you would rather work on paper.