Blog author Ashley Griffin is a front desk customer service and sales trainer for Crystal Focus Salon coaching.  If you want more information about running a successful front desk meeting, Email Ashely Griffin.

Are your salon meetings zeroed in on the specific needs of your front desk? To have a top-notch front desk, I believe you need a meeting once a month with just the front desk team to discuss sales, growing the salon, building the providers' clientele, and customer service.

Here are a few hot tips for running successful front desk meetings to yield greater sales and customer service results for your salon!

Set a regularly scheduled monthly meeting. Plan on 60 to 90 minutes at the beginning of each month. To eliminate distractions, try for a morning meeting that is held before the salon opens. An inspirational monthly meeting refreshes your front desk team and starts them off in a positive direction for the month.

Plan your meeting and your focus for the month. List the standard items that you need to cover: acknowledgements, monthly specials, monthly focus, training/roleplaying, and team feedback. For your monthly focus, pick a single topic to discuss each month and have your team zero in on it for the whole month. The focus could be pre-booking, retailing/merchandising, gift card sales, or new/featured products.

Start on a positive note. Celebrate individual and team achievements from the previous month. Hand out rewards to encourage repeat performance and motivate others who are falling shy of their goals. Don't forget to acknowledge these achievements in your salon staff meetings. Everyone wants to be acknowledged for a job well done in front of their peers.

Include a training segment at every meeting. Training might include handling salon challenges with professionalism and excellence or role playing new scripts for product promotions and services. Outside consultants bring different perspectives that can help your entire team and business to grow. Did you know that REDKEN salons that participate in the Club 5th Avenue loyalty program can redeem points for REDKEN Business Partner Services?

Open the meeting for feedback. Allow time for the front desk team to ask questions and bring up any concerns that they may have about their job. They might want to discuss a new product or a difficult situation at the salon. Ensure that your team members feel as though their concerns, opinions and feelings matter. Mentor and coach them to achieve the success they want for themselves; this will build their trust in you as their leader!

End on a positive note. Purposefully end on an inspirational note. Try ending with a favorite quote or with some words of wisdom. Here some favorites:

· "Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it." (PETER DRUCKER)

· "Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends." (WALT DISNEY)

· "Here is a simple but powerful rule - always give people more than what they expect to get." (NELSON BOSWELL)

A happy front desk affects the attitude of your entire salon! Giving added attention and focus to your front desk team shows them just how important they are to the success of your salon. You'll be amazed at the difference 60 or 90 minutes can make.

If you liked this article, you might also like, "FRONT DESK GREATNESS … ‘THE BIG WHY.'"

To get your team organized at the Front Desk, check out these two products:

· Do your front desk team members need a tool to help them meet their individual goals? The Front Desk Success Planner is used by individual team members as their own "front desk" journal that can also be paired with the salon's training, coaching and mentoring process.

· Are you looking for ways to track the progress of your front desk? The Front Desk Team Synergy Daily Tracker is a tracking pad that organizes your front desk and tracks individual and team sales performance.