As you begin to or prepare to reopen your tanning business, many of your most important efforts will revolve around the notion of trust.

Picking up where we left off with last month’s cover feature, extreme cleanliness and other measures to ensure a healthy environment will be the primary focus as salons reopen and try to make up for lost time. But, gaining and maintaining the trust of clients that are now looking at the world through different eyes will require more than that. Your salon’s competence and professionalism will continue to impact perceptions of your quality and safety – and that will now be more impactful than ever.

A lack of attention to detail with cleaning would be devastating to your business moving forward, but visual cues aren’t the only consideration. You can’t see the coronavirus on a surface, thus your clients need to be able to trust you to maintain a clean and safe environment, beyond what they can see. That will largely depend on how you and your staff members interact with them.

Gaining trust of clients has always been important to tanning businesses and will be the No. 1 factor that will help you succeed in a post-pandemic world. But, after months of lost revenue, businesses around the county are in desperate need of a kick-start. Trust isn’t just given – it’s earned – and many clients won’t give you the chance without some encouragement. So, salvaging the rest of the year will also depend on how you communicate with current, former and potential clients, and remind people to stick around or come see what you have to offer.

Finding ways to maintain current members, communicating through marketing with other tanners in your market, and giving everyone reasons to begin to or continue to trust your business will help you come out of these unprecedented times as strong as ever.

Click here to read the entire article in the latest issue of Smart Tan Magazine online.