7 Steps to Create a Successful Salon Hair Stylist Training System

Discover the faster, most cost-effective solution for salon stylist training. Here is the 7-step salon training plan that saves time and money, ensuring confident and skilled salon associates in record time.

  1. Educate
  2. Evaluate
  3. Program
  4. Personalize
  5. Assess
  6. Graduate
  7. Advance

Hiring and training new salon stylists is a significant challenge for salon owners1. Balancing the demands of a fully booked schedule and running the salon while organizing training can be overwhelming. In fact, 32% of salon owners say that they have considered quitting because of the difficulty in finding and training staff. 2

  1. https://salonspaconnection.com/beauty-hair-salon-industry-statistics-in-2023/ ↩︎
  2. https://www.phorest.com/us/blog/set-up-grow-successful-salon/ ↩︎

Training Costs Thousands and Takes Months

On average, a salon will spend over $16,000 and more than 6 months training each new stylist, and this expense is ongoing as salons constantly struggle to hire and train replacement staff. It’s crucial to break free from this cycle if you’re ever going to have space to plan for the future success of your salon.

How did we come up that cost? Minimum wage to the associate for 6 months, plus you personally train them for 2 hours a week, factoring your cost of lost revenue = $16,000+. Wouldn’t it be fantastic to speed up that training time without sacrificing necessary skills training? Imagine the change in revenue.

Try it out for yourself to see how much you spend on training your new hires:

We Need a New Way to Train Salon Associates FASTER

Recognizing that even experienced stylists require additional training to meet your salon standards, it’s essential to find a faster, more cost-effective solution. Traditionally, associate training involves six to twelve months of shadowing a mentor. However, today’s associates are eager to begin working with their own clients, and salon educators are experiencing burnout from training responsibilities on top of covering their own chair.

A Better Approach to Salon Stylist Training

Here is the better, more efficient approach to salon associate training that will save you time, money, and resources while ensuring your associates gain the confidence and skills to become top earners:

1. Educate

Step one is to make sure the salon owner is not the person doing the training. Set up an educator to take charge of training, so the owner can focus on building the business.

2. Evaluate

Conduct a standardized evaluation of each new associate to assess their skill level. Make sure it covers cutting, blow dry skills, and color application. Use a scoring sheet for consistency, and provide timely feedback to the associate.

3. Program

Consistency is vital to ensure all associates receive the same high level of instruction and quality training. Create a standardized training program with a detailed plan.

4. Personalize

The highly detailed plan from Step 3 allows you to dial in the training in the areas your associate needs most. Have them create a list of their “wants” or goals for their career and for their time with you. This lets you capitalize on their strongest skills sooner. Routinely check in with them for progress, encouragement, and maintaining motivation.

5. Assess

Use quizzes to lock in the knowledge after each training session, and use standardized assessments to measure skills progress. It’s immensely important to celebrate successes and to provide constructive feedback for rapid improvement. Regular assessments help associates recognize their strengths and understand where they need to focus on development.

6. Graduate

This is the Really Big Deal: as associates acquire new skills, encourage them to apply those skills on the salon floor. Within two weeks, they should be assisting with tasks such as shampooing, color retouching, and blow-drying.

7. Advance

As they succeed in learning each new skill to your salon standard, and begin using it on the floor, immediately advance your associates to the next skill or technique, ensuring a structured and continuous learning process while they generate revenue.

How Does Your Salon Training Rate?

Ever wonder how your own salon training compares?

Take this quiz to rate your salon associate training:

Don’t Wait – Start Accelerating Your Salon Training Today

With those 7 steps integrated into your salon’s daily routine, your associates will be joining your top revenue producers faster than you dreamed possible. Every day you wait is more lost revenue.

It does take some work, but it is absolutely worth it for a streamlined and supercharged salon training system.

Want It All Done For You?

If you’d like to get started with the benefits right now and save all that work, we have done it all for you with the Salon Associate Accelerator – the turnkey associate training system specifically designed to save you time and money.

Simply add your associates and educators, and you’re ready to transform your salon training experience. Don’t wait any longer – give it a try today!


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