There’s a power struggle going on in the indoor tanning industry. It’s happening every day in salons across the country. It’s likely that right now, as you read this, a tanning customer and a tanning salon operator somewhere are discussing exposure times and perhaps even haggling over who should control the amount of time the customer spends in the tanning unit. Who wins that power struggle in your salon? You or the customer?

Here’s what the answer should be: As the indoor tanning professional in your salon, you — the salon operator, the professional — are in control of the tanning process. Always. In fact, determining proper exposure schedules for clients is one of the indoor tanning salon operator’s most important responsibilities.

Control Issues

Obviously, some of your customers have control issues. To “control” means to “exercise restraining or directing influence over” someone. In the context of tanning, that someone is your tanning customer. Unfortunately, for many tanning salon clients, the concept of you being in control is an alien one.

Many tanning clients believe they are in control of the amount of time they spend in your tanning equipment. They operate from the belief that your only function is to rent them time in your tanning bed. After all — they think — they’re paying for the service, so they should control it.

Why should it matter who’s in control? Because every time a customer visits your salon for tanning services, he or she is embarking on a process that provides an ultraviolet light treatment affecting the largest organ in the human body — the skin. When that process is done improperly — when the skin is overexposed to ultraviolet light — it can have an adverse effect on the skin — a burn — and put that customer at risk for future problems associated with long-term effects of overexposure. Additionally, overexposure incidents also put your salon at increased risk of long-term liability problems.

On the other hand, when that light treatment is provided properly — when the skin is exposed to moderate dosages of ultraviolet light — risks overall are reduced and your customers get the tan result they want without burning their skin to get it. And after all, isn’t that what they want from you in the first place?

Ideally, proper exposure times result from the input of both you and the customer. Each tanning session in your salon is a team effort, a combination of your expertise and information gathered from the client about his or her tanning goals, skin type, medication use, and medical history.

The key to this concept of control is making sure that you, your staff, and your clients understand and learn to practice this more moderate — SMARTER — way of tanning. When that happens, power struggles are eliminated and risk is reduced for both the salon operator and the tanning client.

It’s up to you to change minds and start setting proper exposure times. You can start by recognizing and eliminating the downward spiral of customer control.

 YOU – The Tanning Expert

In all walks of life, we trust experts to meet our needs. We expect those experts – our hairstylists, our children’s teachers, our appliance repair people, our auto mechanics, our home builders, etc. – to do their jobs with our best interests in mind. Your auto mechanic would be flabbergasted if you tried to tell him or her how to fix the fuel injector on your car. And you wouldn’t think of telling your hairstylist how long to leave the color on your hair. So isn’t it ludicrous that someone in the tanning industry would allow the customer to determine his or her own exposure times?

Just as others are expert in their fields, you’re the expert in yours. You’re trained in the administration of ultraviolet light. You know your equipment. You understand the exposure schedule, so you’re the one who sets exposure times. However, because your customers have, through various avenues, been trained that tanning is an insignificant activity, they don’t understand that proper tanning demands the attention of an expert. So it’s your job to make them understand.

In order to set proper exposure times for your clients, you must make it clear to them that you are a tanning specialist, and that many of their beliefs about tanning are inaccurate. You do that, simply, with education.

Selling Your Stance

To teach your customers that tanning isn’t a simple, risk-free activity and to help them understand the concept of moderation, you must provide them with knowledge. It’s the only way to sell your stance.

Presentation accounts for a lot. Your clients won’t buy into anything you don’t believe in. When you present tanning as a serious endeavor right off the bat, your customers will begin to understand that you are concerned about their well-being. When you provide them with your expertise about the process, they’ll begin to see you as the expert. Knowledge instills confidence. And when they understand that this is a serious process that requires expert advice and smart tanning techniques, they won’t expect to control it.