The late, great Gary Halbert is widely considered to be the world’s greatest copywriter ever. If you are of a certain age, you may recall your parents receiving a “Coat-of-Arms” letter in the mail with an offer to receive a drawing of their family crest and a brief history of their last name. This offer was mailed successfully for over 30 years to more than 600 million people!

When Gary conducted seminars on selling and copywriting, he would pose a question to his students to emphasize an important marketing lesson. Let’s see how you answer his question.

“If you and I both owned a hamburger stand, and we were in a contest to see who would sell the most hamburgers, what advantages would you like to have on your side to help you win?”

I’m certain that many answers are popping into your head: the best meat, the freshest buns, the ideal location, a secret sauce, a fancy sign, the lowest price, great advertising, the list goes on. Gary would tell his students that he would give them every single advantage they asked for, and that he would only want one single advantage. If he had it, he would whip the pants off all of them. Can you guess what it is?

The only advantage he wanted was a starving crowd.

I was reminded of this classic lesson when I read an article about a 13-year-old Girl Scout who decided to sell Girl Scout cookies outside a store in San Francisco. It wasn’t a Walmart or Target store. It wasn’t a busy shopping mall or movie theatre. It was outside a Green Cross medical cannabis clinic. It seems that little Danielle Lei took Gary Halbert’s lesson literally and found a starving crowd of her own!

How does this relate to your salon business? When it comes to effective marketing, the most profitable thing you can do is constantly be on the lookout for groups of people who are hungry for your products and services. Now there are lots of ways to find these people, but there is one easy shortcut, one group of people that will be the easiest to sell to and the most responsive.

These are your existing customers.

There are three important factors to keep in mind when selling to them – I call it their RFM. This is their recency, frequency, and monetary value. When I put together a list of customers to mail a special offer, I primarily look at who has most recently been in the store, how often they visit or buy certain items and how much they’ve spent. Customers who rank high in these factors are most likely to give you more money now with the least resistance.

Dig into your customer list, figure out which customers have the highest RFM and get them back into your store. If a 13 year old Girl Scout can find a starving crowd, I know that you can, too.