As a groomer, your goal is to have customers who understand the benefits of a regular pet hygiene schedule for the comfort and health of the pets. Unfortunately, many of the groomers I work with struggle with the same issues.
The Predictable Revenue Pyramid™ will help you find the “right” type of customers, and deliver an amazing customer and pet experience, all while reducing the paperwork and admin time for you and your staff. That equates to more hands-on grooming which grows revenue for the business and increases commissions and tips for groomers.
Common Challenges Facing Dog Grooming Businesses
Inconsistent Appointments
Even when there is a shortage of groomers across the US, many groomers are struggling to get customers on a grooming schedule that is appropriate for their dogs. Dog groomers understand that a proper schedule will vary based on the breed and lifestyle of the pet, but even labs should be on a health and hygiene schedule. When your grooming team cannot schedule the next sessions, it creates inefficiencies within the groomers’ daily schedule. It equates to less revenue and a reduction in tips and commissions.
Difficult Grooms
We can’t wave a magic wand and make a dog that typically needs to be muzzled when you work on their feet, behave themselves. What we do know is that the longer time between grooms can exponentially increase the difficulty of the groom and the comfort of the dog that is being groomed. The only solution to difficult grooms is to get pet parents to commit to a recurring schedule between 4 and 6 weeks.
Uncomfortable Dogs
More time between grooms for long-hair pups means more brushing, more matting, and more movement on the grooming table. Most pet parents want their pet to be comfortable or as close to comfortable as possible, so this is where education needs to take place to relay the painful reality for their pups when they wait 6 to 8 weeks between grooms for long-hair fur family members.
The Predictable Revenue Pyramid™: Educate, Communicate, Automate
The Predictable Revenue Pyramid™ helps dog grooming businesses solve these challenges by focusing on three core pillars: educate, communicate, and automate. Implementing this framework will help you build stronger relationships with your clients, streamline operations, and grow predictable, recurring revenue.
Educate: Build a Foundation for Long-Term Client Retention
Always start with the “WHY”. Educating clients as to why it’s important for their pet’s health and comfort will change their mindset and help them become better pet parents. Most pet owners need to hear something between 5 and 7 times for them to trust a recommendation even when they experience a problem consistently. Below are 4 driving answers to “WHY” it is important for each dog to stay on a consistent schedule.
- Improves the comfort of your dog during grooming.
- Provides a healthy and shiny coat with less shedding.
- Early detection of skin and health issues.
- Hygiene is critical to the health of each dog and everyone loves to snuggle a great-smelling pup.
For this reason, it is important to create a schedule of education that will help to train customers on the benefits and value to their pet family members to be consistent in regularly scheduled hygiene appointments.
I recommend creating multiple marketing assets that you then share across all lines of communication.
- Text messages to clients
- Email messages to clients
- Physical flyers that are handed out
- Social Media posts
- Infographics
- Links to articles that reinforce your recommendations by a 3rd party expert
Education is also key within your front desk team and groomers. Front desk staff need to understand scheduling limitations. They need to understand what next service to recommend and these types of notes should be included within your grooming software to streamline the knowledge of groomers to improve the customer experience and build more trust with Pet Parents. It’s also helpful if you design solutions for staff and pet parents that are easy to explain and recommend.
Communicate: Strengthen Client Relationships to Retain Customers
I know how busy it can be when you are scheduled to groom 8 dogs in a day, especially if your front desk team didn’t realize they put 3 doodles on your schedule. If your current grooming software isn’t set up to create limits (max of 2 doodle groomers per day or max of 6 full grooms + 2 baths, then you may want to look for a solution that will (this feature exists within the Kennel Connection Cloud product that serves groomers, boarding, daycare, and training service providers).
Communication is about timing and content, so it’s CRITICAL for your front desk team to re-book the next appointment at the time of check-out when they are taking payment for today’s grooming services. If they are finding that a customer is a little hesitant about choosing the day, have your staff recommend a date, add it to your grooming software, and let the client know that they can always move it if needed. The reality is that if the next appointment is not scheduled at check-out, it’s highly unlikely that someone on your team is going to pull a list of dogs who haven’t used grooming in the past 5 weeks and make outbound calls to get those appointments scheduled.
To streamline this process and make it easier for staff, you should create a few different persona-based grooming memberships that can meet the needs of 90% of your customers. Be sure to explain that every appointment starts with the same Pet Health Evaluation to review the pup’s skin, coat, ears, nails and tail. To reinforce and improve the customer adoption of your grooming memberships, you should also create a flyer to send home with each client that includes the Membership options and a QR code that links to your online booking grooming software so customers can request appointments without interrupting your grooming flow.
- Pampered Pooch Grooming Membership: Up to 4 appointments per month for a flat rate. This is typically going to be recommended for long-hair and double-coated dogs who have owners who aren’t great at brushing. It will typically lead to 1 full groom, 1 bath, and 1-2 brush-out sessions.
- Healthy Pet Grooming Membership: This will be the most popular package and can apply to long and short-hair pups. This provides two grooming services per month (Groom + Bath or 2 Baths) and unlimited nail trims.
- Fresh & Clean Membership: This is an ideal package for dogs who are always getting into a mess. Designed for pets who need to get a bath 3x per month and/or pet parents who always want their pup to smell and look their best.
Automate: Streamline Your Grooming Business for Maximum Efficiency
When your business chooses the right grooming software, the out-of-the-box automations can drastically improve the customer experience, grow revenue, streamline communication, and keep staff on track to be and do their best. The best grooming software solutions will allow you to automate the following experiences.
Text & Email Communication
- Text reminders should be two-way so customers can confirm, reschedule, or cancel their appointments.
- Re-booking reminder if a customer doesn’t have an appointment scheduled and it’s been 4+ weeks since their last grooming service.
- Targeted text messages to communicate last-minute openings for dogs who haven’t had a grooming service in the past 4+ weeks.
- Review requests on your preferred platform (Google, Facebook, Yelp, NextDoor) automated as a text request after customers check out.
- Ready for Pickup automated text alerts. When you complete a groom or only have 15 minutes remaining you can have the system automatically send a pre-configured text message to the pet parent letting them know their dog is ready to pick up.
Online Appointment Requests
Providing a self-service option for busy pet parents can be a wonderful thing when you have your grooming software set up properly. Your software should be configured to understand what your ‘ideal schedule’ looks like. Having the ability to preset time slots or drop-off times, configure maximum service quantities, and breed limitations plus breed & size-specific pricing. Leveraging online appointment requests still allows you to control your schedule by choosing what is approved or modifying an appointment date/time before approval and it also allows you to focus on grooming with fewer interruptions throughout the day.
In addition to capturing date and time requests for your grooming, you can integrate custom questions for new and/or existing clients, validate or upload new vaccinations, collect deposits, and have customers digitally sign your grooming waivers including de-matting, senior dog and vet release forms.
Text-to-Pay Links
Most pet parents want to ‘grab and go’ when they are picking up their pet. This is one of the reasons why it can be difficult to re-book them for their next appointment. Leveraging a Text to Pay link can make the check-out faster and give you the extra minute to schedule the next appointment. Within the Kennel Connection platform, you can text an invoice before pick-up that itemizes all the services you provided, you can choose to pass the credit card processing fees to the customer and the system will still prompt the customer to tip the groomer based upon your choice of percentages (I personally like 15%, 20%, and 25%). You will get same-day deposits for transactions that occur before 9pm EST (unless you are having a really bad day, all your dogs should be done before 9pm).
6 Actionable Steps to Implement the Predictable Revenue Pyramid™ in Your Grooming Business
Knowledge is only useful when you combine it with action. Below are the 6 steps you need to take to implement the Predictable Revenue Pyramid™ for your grooming business.
- Create resources that allow all your staff to Educate pet parents.
- Design persona-based grooming memberships that reinforce your commitment to pet health and comfort.
- Be sure to implement a process that re-books 90% of your grooming clients for their next appointment during the pick-up process.
- Leverage text messaging and email marketing tools to streamline communication with customers and automate as much as possible.
- Strongly consider implementing Online Appointment Requests into your website.
- Take 30 minutes out of your day to schedule a demo of Kennel Connection Cloud to see how easy it is to make these important changes to your Grooming business. Take action now and grab 30 minutes on my calendar anytime that works for your schedule. www.calendly.com/garrettadlock/quick-chat
Conclusion
By implementing the Predictable Revenue Pyramid™, which focuses on education, communication, and automation, you can solve common grooming business challenges and grow predictable revenue. Schedule your demo of Kennel Connection Cloud today to streamline your operations and see the results for yourself.