Today was the second day of Operation Get Profitable (OGP) where I visit 10 salons a day for 8 days.

On the first day I only visited one salon, but that salon became a paying customer, and since my conversion rate is lower than 10%, one conversion is better than 10 visits. I would still like to get to 80 if possible, though, and today I very slightly made up for yesterday by visiting 11 salons.

Something very unusual happened on my first visit of the day, or I guess I should say there was an unusual combination of qualities that the first visit had: a) the person I talked to when I walked in happened to be the salon owner, b) she happened to be free, c) her salon didn’t already use software, and d) she seemed previously interested in the idea of switching from “the books” to software. These five things aren’t individually rare but it’s really uncommon for them all to be the case at once. So I was stoked about that. I’m meeting with this woman on October 30th to have a deeper discussion. (Which reminds me: I suppose I won’t necessarily know whether OGP was successful before OGP ends.)

The rest of the day was pretty normal. In addition to the appointment I made for 10/30, I also made another appointment with a stylist for tomorrow afternoon. Who knows what, if anything, will come of it.

One thing I forgot and then remembered today, since it’s been so long since I’ve done canvassing, is that it’s a good idea to kind of plan which part of town I’m going to try to hit, and not just plan the part of town but maybe a handful of specific salons there. Today I somehow managed to hit all the most economically destitute areas of town and I saw about as many out-of-business salons as in-business ones. It was stupid and inefficient, so tomorrow I’ll make an effort to be more efficient.

Just for fun, here are the categories in which I’d but the salons I visited as it pertains to strength of prospect:

• Potentially interested, concrete plans to meet again: 2
• Potentially interested, but wasn’t able to get specific time scheduled yet: 2
• Already using software: 3
• Not interested because some of the stylists are in their MID SEVENTIES: 1
• Not interested because I mistook a nail salon for a hair salon: 1
• Existing Snip customer: 1 (yes, I visited an old customer and I’m counting it, F off)
• Batshit insane: 1 (long story)

So I guess I got 4 good leads out of 11 visits. That doesn’t seem too bad.