With such a massive base of potential customers, most of whom are willing to spend some serious cash on making sure their pets live their best lives, there’s a big market for companies that can meet and exceed those needs.
If you’re one of the people who sees that opportunity and has a strong work ethic and a passion for pets, you’re already on the right track to start your own dog grooming business. We can help you mold that drive into something that can turn a profit. Here’s your complete guide to running a profitable pet grooming business.
Industry Overview
The pet care industry as a whole is booming. The industry has seen extreme growth over the last three decades. Spending on pets has continued to rise every year since 1994, and worldwide spending is projected to hit $202.6 billion by 2025. What’s more, the pet care industry has shown resilience to economic downturns during both the 2008 financial crisis and through the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2020 pet owners are expected to spend about $99 billion on their furry friends. That’s up from $95.7 billion in 2019. Here’s the breakdown of where those expenditures are expected to be:
*According to the American Pet Products Association
The largest piece of the pet industry pie goes to food and treats. That’s not something that traditionally would be offered by grooming businesses, but with the sheer amount customers are spending, it’s a great way to diversify your income stream. We’ll talk more about that further down the page.
The grooming aspect of pet care falls under the “Other Services” category, so you’re looking at nearly $11 billion spent in that arena, which also includes training, boarding, insurance, pet sitting/walking, and other services outside of veterinary care.
Knowing Your Market
Just because there’s a growing increase in demand for grooming services and pet owners are willing to dish out the cash for excellent service doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed success.
With reportedly more than 103,000 businesses operating as dog groomers in the country, there’s no shortage of competition. Narrowing down exactly who you’re targeting as customers and what they’re looking to get out of your business is a huge part of the battle.
Determining Price Points
One of the first things prospective customers will look at is your pricing structure. Your price point will depend mainly on the demand and competition in your area. You want to set your prices high enough to turn a profit but low enough to encourage customers to use your business over similar businesses in the area.
That might sound relatively simple, but gone are the days where dog lovers only expect a wash and a haircut for their pet at the groomer. You’re looking at things like doggie dental cleaning, dog spa treatments, and even aromatherapy.
Yes, I said aromatherapy. For dogs.
These are things many new school pet owners are looking for in a groomerie. It’s all part of the idea that dogs are part of the family. As the American Pet Products Association President and CEO said, “Today more than ever, pet owners view their pets as irreplaceable members of their families and lives, and it’s thanks to this that we continue to see such incredible growth within the pet care community.”
With that growth in mind, instead of just pricing a simple hair cut and bath, you might offer those additional boutique-type services as add-ons or even hop on board the subscription service trend by giving discounts for regular bath/hair cut/spa day combos.
Again, it’s all based on what your specific market dictates.
Target Market Demographics
Pet ownership is relatively universal. In the grand scheme of things, there aren’t many people who don’t love dogs or cats, as evidenced by the continuous growth of the pet services industry. That makes your potential customer base reasonably large, but you do need to boil it down to which pet owners like to splurge for their four-legged loved ones with a spa treatment.
Millennials are the generation most likely to swipe their cards for boutique pet grooming services. Statistics show 35% of pet owners are in that generation. Your next best bet is Gen X, which makes up 32% of pet owners. The Pew Research Center found that 40% of people aged 30-49 had pets along with the second-highest annual expenditure on pets, just behind those aged 50-60.
Location Is Key
A large factor in the failure or success of any given business is the location. That’s no different for dog grooming. You want to make sure you’re conveniently located for pet owners to drop off and pick up their furbabies. Being along a fairly well-traveled route is more convenient for customers helps draw in new clients by increasing visibility.
Some of the best locations are:
Strip-malls with high visibility and surrounded by many popular stores
Locations that see a lot of foot traffic due to frequently visited businesses nearby
A main street that sees approximately 15,000 vehicles go by every day
An area with at least 15,000 households with a high income
Within a 10 mile radius of 125,000 people or more
A somewhat unique issue when looking for a grooming business location is the amount of space that’s needed. You’ll have to have enough room for a lobby/intake area, bathing area, holding kennels, spa/aromatherapy areas, and spots to put any other services you may want to offer.
Another factor to consider is if there are noise ordinances in the area you’re trying to open up shop. Barking dogs can get loud at times. There could also be other requirements set by the city or county where you’re located.
One of the great benefits of becoming a franchisee with Splash and Dash is the assistance in locating such an area to make sure you’re putting yourself in a great position to succeed. You won’t just have to figure it out on your own and hope you’ve got it right. You’ll be guided by a group of people who have plenty of experience doing what you’re trying to do.
Accounting and Financing as a Small Business Owner
Once you know your target market inside and out, have your location picked out, and have decided on all of the other operational components (such as exactly which services you plan to provide), you have to crunch the numbers.
This will essentially break down into two things:
Coming up with the initial money to get the business running
Ongoing bookkeeping and accounting
Funding Your Business
It’s going to take a lot of money to get everything started. That amount will vary based on your financial situation and vision for your business, but it’s still a large investment. You’ll have to calculate your startup costs to figure out precisely what your target amount will be. Then you can decide the best way to secure that money. You’ve got several options.
The first thought you might have would be what’s known as the bootstrapping method, otherwise known as self-funding.
That’s exactly what it sounds like. You’ll be covering all the costs to set up your business and get it rolling without taking on any type of outside investor. That could be anything from tapping into financial connections you might have with any family and friends or getting into your 401k savings (a high risk, high reward situation—weigh the pros and cons based on your situation).
When you decide to self-fund, you might get the perks of retaining control of your business, but you have to be careful with your spending. Make sure you don’t spend more than you can afford, and if you go the retirement savings route, make sure to know all of the possible penalties you’ll pay for early withdrawals and any other potential fees. Banking on that 401k but not accounting for all those fees could have you starting in a deeper hole than you can get yourself out of.
If self-funding isn’t feasible, which it likely won’t be for a large majority of people, a venture capital investment is another option to consider.
For this method, you will find a venture capitalist who will front the money for your operation, usually in exchange for an ownership stake or active role in the company. This is NOT a loan since the investor is essentially paying for a share in the company, which is a higher risk but offers potentially higher returns. While it can be nice bringing on a person or persons who can bankroll your business, keep in mind you’ll be giving up a lot of control you may have had over the company by self-funding or taking out a traditional loan.
Here are the steps to finding an investor, according to the Small Business Administration:
Find an investor - you’ll want to locate an “angel investor” or venture capital firm that you have researched thoroughly to ensure you’re going into business with someone who is reputable and has experience working with startups.
Pitch your business plan - This is where the investor will dive into your proposed business and decide if they think it’s a good investment for them to get involved with.
Due diligence review - In this phase, your potential investor will make sure you’ve done your homework on the market you’re getting into and have all of your ducks in a row.
Agree to terms - If you’ve made it this far, then you’re on the home stretch. You’ve just got to work on the terms and conditions of the investment.
Investment - Now you’ve got the capital to get that business up and running, and the investor will become actively involved as you move forward.
For a somewhat non-traditional route to getting funded, you could try out crowdfunding your business.
Sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo allow you to collect money from anyone willing to give you money just because they like your product or service. Now, all those people who contribute aren’t considered investors, and this isn’t a loan situation. Usually, for this scenario, those donors will be given a sort of gift from your company with some special perks.
The crowdfunding option is enticing because the business owner doesn’t assume any risk. You’ll get to keep total control of the company, and usually, you aren’t on the hook to repay the crowd funders in the event your business ends up failing.
With crowdfunding, there’s always the chance you just don’t get enough donations. If you’d rather not deal with that uncertainty, you can always go the route of a small business loan.
To get approved for one of these loans, you’ll have to convince the bank they’re not making too much of a risk by giving you their money. How much you get and at what interest rate will be evaluated by how thorough you are in preparing your business plan and expense sheet along with the likelihood your business could see success.
You don’t have to just look at banks for one of those business loans, either. The Small Business Administration offers SBA-guaranteed loans, which help you secure a loan by mitigating the risk the bank would be taking on by lending you that money. You’ll most likely have to jump through a few more hoops to get approved for a loan of this type, but it could benefit you by getting a lower interest rate or acquiring more money to go towards your startup costs.
Keeping the Books Balanced
Even if you’ve gotten this far in the process of starting a business, you will fail in the long run if you don’t keep accurate and thorough financial books.
Bookkeeping, which is the recording and organizing of the business’s finances, will determine your business’s long-term success. The books will give you a snapshot of the business’s profits, expenditures, possible future challenges, and even areas where you could increase profits.
First of all, if you aren’t financially savvy or have the utmost confidence in your ability to handle the bookkeeping and accounting tasks for your business, you should hire a professional accountant.
Now, if this is a task you’re comfortable handling and would bet your livelihood on, here’s where you’ll learn the basics of small business accounting.
Most of the accounts (that’s the actual transactions, not just a single bank account) for your business will fall into one of five basic categories:
Assets - things the business owns
Liabilities - debts that the company is obligated to pay
Revenue - money earned by the business
Expenses - cash leaving the business for services, like payroll and utilities
Equity - the remaining value after liabilities are subtracted from assets
To ensure the proper bookkeeping, you’ll need to set up all of those accounts to record every transaction accurately. To do that, you’ll have to decide how you would like to manage your general ledger (GL). You can do this by using traditional spreadsheet software like Excel or accounting bookkeeping software like QuickBooks. Which one you choose will be based on your preference and, of course, how much you’re willing to spend on the software.
Another thing that will play into that decision is which bookkeeping method you’ll use: single-entry bookkeeping or double-entry accounting.
The single-entry method is suitable for businesses with straightforward transactions and little equipment or inventory. This method probably won’t be best for your pet grooming business.
The most utilized tactic is double-entry bookkeeping. For this process, you will input two entries for each transaction, once as a debit in one column and again as a credit in another column. For example, say you’re running low on shampoo your washers are using so you’re going to buy $100 worth of the product to replenish your stores. You would put a $100 debit in your operating expenses account and a $100 credit in your inventory account. That’s because you now have less money in your operating expenses account but you’ve essentially moved that to your inventory.
As you can see, this is much more complicated than single-entry bookkeeping, but it’s going to ensure that your books stay balanced.
Speaking of staying balanced, you’ve got to make sure every transaction is recorded and in the correct account type. If it’s not, you’ll end up having to go back and find the mistake before you can close your books.
To balance the books, you’ll add up all of your debits and credits for the quarter or the year (depending on how often you do the balancing). If the totals match, then your books are balanced. Take the journal entries from the books and post them to the GL by adjusting the account balances. Once you’ve adjusted the balances, you will have the adjusted trial balance. When you put all of your account types together, those adjusted balances should satisfy this equation:
Liabilities + Equity = Assets
If you don’t have a match, that’s when you’ll have to comb back through your ledger and books until you find and correct the error.
Here’s where we move more from the bookkeeping side to the accounting side. You’re now ready to put together some financial reports, which is where you’ll get a better understanding of your company’s overall financial health.
If you went with superior bookkeeping software, you’d be able to easily create the following reports to assist you in any decisions you’ll have to make to ensure the continued success of your business:
Balance sheet - shows the company’s assets, liabilities, and equity at a given point in time. It also provides a basis for calculating rates of return.
Profit and loss statement - breaks down the business’s revenues, costs, and expenses over a given period to compare sales and expenses. It is useful for forecasting.
Cash flow statement - a measurement of how well the company manages cash for debt payment and other obligations.
This entire process can get confusing, and there are countless places for errors to be made. If all of this, combined with actually running day-to-day operations at your business sounds overwhelming you should seriously consider hiring a professional to handle it. Finances are not an area where you can afford just to wing it and hope everything works out alright. Without a sound financial base, which includes militant oversight of the books and overall financial health alike, your new business will not survive very long.
Marketing Your Business Effectively
No matter how great your service and products are, you’ll never be able to stay in business if nobody knows you exist. Developing a sound, thorough marketing plan can help grow your income stream quickly and efficiently.
Let’s start by painting the big picture of your marketing plan.
The first step is to know who your target audience is (if you already forgot, go back to the top of the page and reread the “Knowing Your Market” section). You might think every person alive is a potential customer, but you have to narrow it down to who is most likely to utilize your services to make your marketing plan effective. That’s how you get your most significant return on investment in this area of business.
Once you know who you’re targeting, you have to know how to tell them what sets you apart from the competition.
Yours isn’t the only dog grooming business in your area. There are more than likely a handful of other companies offering similar products or services, so you have to be able to pinpoint exactly what it is that makes your groomerie better. You also need to be able to tell customers in a clear, concise way what sort of value you offer that other places do not.
After you know who you’re marketing to and what makes you different from competitors, you’ll want to focus on small objectives and keep using what works.
You’ll find that marketing offers countless ways to go about getting your name out there, so your head will be spinning with all the possible approaches. Start by honing in on what practices will make the biggest impact in the shortest time frame. There will be some trial and error involved, but when you find out what works best you can stick to those methods that prove themselves to have the most significant returns.
Digital Marketing Strategies
What’s the first thing you do when you hear about a new business? You Google it, right?
If your business has no online presence, you’re going to have a hard time finding customers. The lack of a website or social media pages is going to give your competition an advantage automatically.
Website Creation
Your website needs to have a URL that’s easy to remember and is consistent with your business’s name, so potential customers are more likely to find you right off the bat. Once they get to your site, it has to appear polished and professional. If not, your visitor could bounce right back off your page and go to the next option in the search results. If you’re able to grab their attention with a well-presented homepage, your next test is how easy those potential customers can find what they’re looking for.
Is your contact information easily found? Can I make an appointment/place an order online? Is it easy to get to pages that show all the services you offer and their prices? These are some of the questions people browsing your site will be asking, and if you don’t pass the test, you may have just lost them for good.
Content Marketing and SEO
If you’ve made a great website that’s sure to attract a good-sized customer base, you’ll certainly want them to be able to find it. That’s where content marketing and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) come into play. This strategy will entail starting a blog section on the site.
Creating written content is one of the best ways to generate organic traffic. Organic traffic is what we call people who come to your website after finding it by typing related keywords into the search bar. You didn’t pay anything to show up near the top of the search results (that would be paid traffic, which we’ll talk about later). You just created a blog article that Google deemed as one of the best pages on the web as it relates to the user’s search terms.
As a part of your content strategy, you’ll need to create a plan for written, video, and pictorial content that portrays your business as an industry leader. Developing that type of authority in your industry with well-written, thorough content will help Google’s algorithm find your site, analyze the contents of its pages, and decide it’s worthy of a top spot in the search engine results page.
You can use SEO to improve your search engine rankings, making it more likely you’ll have one of those top spots, which are much more likely to get clicked on. Think about it, when is the last time you went past the first page of results on a Google search?
So, how do you know what to do to make your pages optimized for search engines? Tools like Moz and SEMRush are some of the most common search engine marketing tools used today. You can perform a thorough review of your website to check search engine visibility, any issues that need correcting, suggestions to make your site more visible, and keyword research tools to help improve your site’s ranking.
To add an extra boost to your SEO efforts, you can consider using pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to work in conjunction with your organic search tactics. You know those ads at the top of the page when you get results on a Google search? Those are PPC ads. Depending on how much you are willing to pay per click compared to how much your competitors are paying, you’ll show up at the very top of the results.
You have to decide how much you’re willing to pay if you’re going to explore this avenue. It’s going to cost you every time someone clicks on that ad, so if that click doesn’t end with a conversion, you’ve just lost those advertising dollars. Because of that, make sure your landing pages are thoroughly optimized before activating your PPC campaign.
You’ll want to make sure all of your content is optimized for mobile devices, too. That’s where most search traffic comes from these days. If customers have a bad experience using your mobile site, odds are they won’t give you another shot. It’s also another thing Google looks at when it comes to deciding where your site ranks.
Blogging isn’t the only way to create a digital outreach.
Email marketing is another crucial aspect. When your website is created, you’ll likely have a spot where people can make an account or sign up for marketing emails. Collecting that data will allow you to target those customers in periodical email blasts.
If you’re a little hesitant about creating email campaigns, listen to this. According to HubSpot, 73% of millennials prefer their communications from businesses to come via email. They also say email generates about $38 for every $1 spent.
You can dip your toes in the water of this strategy using a number of free options that are available. You can try sending out newsletters that advertise your blog content or send out promotional emails that let people know about any discounts or sales you’ve got going on.
And this isn’t all a manual process, but it can get a little bit involved. In case this is all new to you, you’ll want to hire someone familiar with marketing automation. You can schedule emails to go out at certain intervals, have different emails automatically sent based on any number of factors, and keep track of all the data you have collected that allows you to communicate with those customers. It’s a highly useful and effective tool you’ll want to add to your marketing arsenal as soon as you can.
Social Media Marketing
For many industries, an active social media presence provides a significant boost to conversions and can create a good reputation for your company.
There are a few things social media has to offer. It’s another avenue to promote your blog content, which further draws attention to your website and can lead to sales. Being visible on the most popular platforms can help make your brand more well-known. Lastly, it gives you an opportunity to interact with potential customers.
As usual, you HAVE to know who your audience is. You can make and maintain accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, and any other platform you can find, but if you’re targeting, say, the wrong age group, you’re still not going to have any success. Just make sure your messaging and what type of content you’re utilizing lines up with what your target demographic wants to see. That’s how you create engagement, which turns into customers.
Speaking of engagement, don’t just make your hourly/daily/weekly/whatever post and then forget about it. A big part of managing your social media is creating interactions with people who comment on those posts. You can have a little conversation or just drop some kind of a “thank you” comment depending on the situation, and it can help you manufacture repeat customers by making them feel like you care about their needs and are just a nice business to be involved with.
Don’t stop at sharing cute dog pictures (after all, you are opening a grooming business, so you’re going to capitalize on that sweet, sweet dog picture karma, RIGHT?!?!). Use the platform to take care of customer service needs. You’re sure to see some occasional comments on a product or service that, for some reason, the customer wasn’t completely satisfied with or just a question about a service you offer. Take that moment to respond to the comment thoroughly, professionally, and promptly. The benefits here are twofold:
You’re solving a problem one of your customers is having, which can help create new or repeat business.
Everyone on that social media platform can see that you do everything you can to help your customers.
While you’re responding to comments, make sure you’re checking all of your business’s reviews on Google and Yelp. That goes for both the positive and the negative reviews. Handling the negative ones shows your company cares about its customers and gives you more credibility. That’s how you create a good reputation for your business, which can result in new customers.
Incentive Programs
Everybody loves a good deal, so when you’re building out your marketing plan, it’s a good idea to have some type of financial incentive to offer your customers.
You can always use a good old-fashioned coupon. There are plenty of consumers who might not have been inclined to give your products a try, but if you give them a nice little discount code, they’ll give it a shot.
You can get a little more creative than that, though.
One of the popular options is to do a giveaway. It’s a way to get your company’s name out there while throwing your customers a bone at the same time. Since you’re looking at opening up a grooming business, one of your giveaways could be as simple as a dog bone! Here are a few more ideas:
Chew toys
Rolls of poop bags
Pet treats
Pens
Magnets
Small frisbees
Water bottles
Any way you can spread your business’s name and contact information will serve the purpose here, so there’s no real limit to what you could hand out.
Staying in line with the giveaway theme, you could opt for some kind of drawing instead. Offer a nice prize pack of grooming services or pet supplies, and have people sign up to enter the drawing. After a certain amount of time, you can pick a winner for the top prize.
People love free stuff, so giving them a chance to win something of fairly significant value is a great way to get them to your website. Not only does it show them some of the things you have to offer, but you also add their information to your database for future outreach using your digital marketing campaigns, like in an email blast.
Creating a referral program is another way to incentivize your current customer base and grow that base at the same time.
These kinds of programs are great for spreading your brand using old-fashioned word of mouth (and done similarly in the digital age by being active on social media platforms). You can offer some type of free service or gift to a current customer who convinces someone new to come and utilize your services.
Here’s how to create a referral program:
Set goals - As is the case with most initiatives, you’ll never be successful if you don’t set a clear objective from the beginning. You won’t get the results you want. If you’re thinking too broadly, then you’ll miss the mark with the rest of your planning. From the program’s outset, you need to decide if the goal is to grow your customer base, increase revenue, generate more repeat customers, or something else.
List referral sources - Once you know where you want this plan to take you, you can begin identifying exactly who you will have participating in the referral program. It could be open to all of your current customers, or maybe you would rather open it only to your most loyal customers. It could be something you do for previous customers who you’re trying to incentivize to come back and bring a friend with them. This will be based on what quality of referrals you’re trying to generate by offering the program to begin with.
Define the incentives - Here’s where you’ll set in stone what the people who generate referral business are going to get for contributing to your cause. Do they get a free wash, cut, and a spa day for their pet? Are you going to just give them some cash? Store credit? How about some free pet food or toys? You can even decide to offer different, increasingly better rewards based on how many people come in after that particular customer refers them. You’ll also have to decide if you’re providing any incentives for the person who was referred. For example, do they get a 20% off coupon for their first grooming session or a free nail trimming?
Get the word out - Don’t pat yourself on the back just yet. You’ve got a great referral program created, but nobody knows about it! Time to create a marketing campaign for your marketing campaign. Try crafting a newsletter detailing how this program works and sending that out in an email blast. It would be a good idea to write up a blog article on it and then promote that blog post on all of your social media accounts. Make sure you explain in depth how the program works, who qualifies, and exactly what everyone involved is getting into. Ensure all of your employees know about the program, too. They’re the ones meeting with customers every day, so having them mention your new referral program can go a long way.
Track your referrals - You’re going to want to have a way to quantify just how much of an impact your referral program is having on the business. You want to be able to tell which customers came in because of a referral, who referred them, and when they were referred. This information will allow you to follow up with the new customer who came in so you can build that relationship and ideally turn it into a repeat customer (who can then refer more people).
To complement your referral program, you can create a loyalty program, too. Once you’ve gotten a customer in the door to use your services the first time, your next goal is to get them to come back again. You do this by, of course, providing excellent service and making sure they have a great experience. You can sweeten the deal by offering discounts or some type of bonus for coming in a certain amount of times.
Again, people love deals, so saying a customer can get a free haircut for their dog on every seventh visit might be just the push they need to keep on coming to your groomerie.
It works on me. There’s a produce stand not too far from my house. There’s nothing particularly amazing about this stand. It has decent fruits and vegetables, farm-fresh eggs, and a few other nifty little local food items. I could probably get the same things at several other establishments, but I keep going back there because every time I buy $20 worth of produce, I get another stamp in a little business card they give out. Every time I get 8 stamps, I get $20 in free produce.
Now it’s a habit for me to go there every week and get my stamp. I’ve also gotten to know some of the people who work there. They took a simple little business card and created a regular, loyal customer just by giving me $20 in food every time I get the right amount of stamps. The return on investment here is huge, and there’s potential for your business to operate a similar program for little to no cost.
Community Outreach
Some of the best small businesses get such great support because they become a staple in their community. Aside from giving back to the area that supports your business, it’s a good way to generate good word-of-mouth advertising and make your business’s name more widely known.
Try getting involved with local charitable organizations. That can be as simple as partnering with a food pantry and collecting money or other food donations to benefit that organization. You could also team up with the local humane society or other rescue organizations to help raise money or host adoption events where you offer free grooming services to people who adopt a new pet.
Making your business one that’s top of mind when somebody thinks of businesses impacting their community can help bring you a little more staying power and grow the customer base, aside from helping the world be a little better place.
Staffing Your Business
Getting the right people to join your business staff can be one of the most important things to get right. Not only are they the people your customers see every time they come in, but it also gets expensive if you have a lot of turnover and have to keep filling positions over and over again.
A lot goes into this process, from finding qualified people to picking out people who fit the role’s needs and personality through training and evaluating performance.
Recruiting
The first and possibly most difficult step is finding a pool of people with the right qualifications for the position you’re trying to fill.
You’re going to need an organizational chart to get into all of this. It will be your road map for how many people you’re looking for and what roles they will play. Make sure you’ve got spots for all of the key positions you want and plot out who will answer to whom, so there’s never any confusion.
Using that org chart, you can now decide how many new employees you’re recruiting and for what jobs. Write out detailed job descriptions for all of those positions. You’ll use these to show recruits what you’re looking for and help guide those who get hired as they come on board and grow into their new roles.
To get a good sample size of candidates, you’ll need to cast a wide net. Posting on sides like Indeed or other job aggregate boards can be a good starting point. For more specialized positions you can find trade organizations or professional groups on social media like LinkedIn or even Facebook. Use any contacts you’ve made in the industry to spread the word even further.
Make sure you use your newly created job description in your want ads so prospective employees can see exactly what you’re looking for. It’s highly recommended to include the pay you’re offering for these positions even if it’s just a possible range of pay. Job hunters are more likely to take your listing seriously if they know how much money they could be making if and when they are hired. Do your research beforehand so you’re offering fair compensation for the work you need. You don’t want to be the company that’s known for offering low pay for the work provided.
The pay won’t be the only thing recruits are looking at, though. Your company culture and the atmosphere in the workplace are equally as important to many people. That includes offering a good work-life balance. If your area has beaches, mountains, or other outdoor attractions, you can entice recruits with those perks, and they’ll know they’ll have a chance to take advantage of those amenities since they won’t be at work all the time.
To attract more recruits, you may have to get creative with the benefits you’re offering. Larger corporations have more bargaining power to facilitate much better health and wellness benefits packages for their employees. You still have many other things to offer that a bigger business can’t, but things like partnering up with a local gym to get discounted rates for your employees can sweeten the pot and lure some prospective employees away from taking offers at other places.
Interviewing and Hiring
Now that you’ve collected a massive pile of resumes, sifted through them all, and picked out all of the top candidates, you’re going to have to see if they live up to what’s on that fancy resume.
Conducting an interview can be a bit of an art. You have to know what questions to ask and what questions not to ask. It’s where you’ll get to know each candidate’s personality and the extent of their skills.
Before the candidate comes in, you’ll need to make sure you’re fully prepared. Go over each candidate’s resume and cover letter to ensure that person has the skills you’re looking for to fill that role or seems to have the ability to grow into the job.
Once you get into the actual interview with your recruit, kick things off by describing your company, giving an overview of where it started, where it’s going, and the goals and objectives. While the recruit likely did their homework and has a good idea of these things, you’ll be able to reinforce that research and go into more detail so your candidate has no misconceptions about the business. This is their first real chance to see for sure if the position you’re trying to fill would be a good fit for them.
Another good thing to explain upfront is your interview process. Tell the recruit what they can expect during the process, how long it will last, and whether they’ll need to do some type of assessment. Breaking down how their time for the interview will go can remove any anxiety they may have been having about the whole process, so you’re likely to get a better feel for the candidate.
After you’ve laid the groundwork for the outing, it’s a good time to ask your interviewee about their career goals. This way, you’ll be able to understand exactly where they’re at in their professional life, where their interests lie, and why they even applied for the role you’re filling. Understanding where your candidate is at now and where they aspire to be can be an indicator of their work ethic and how they might fit into your organization.
Now is when you can get into the meat and potatoes of the interview. Ask questions specific to the position you’re trying to fill. You’ll want to have come up with these questions beforehand during your interview prep process so you don’t forget to ask something important. Don’t ask things like, “what’s your spirit animal?” Ask relevant questions that allow them to give examples of their past performance or give them a scenario they might face if they get this job. Look for the interviewee to use the STAR method in their answer:
Situation: explain a problem or challenge they have faced before
Task: describe the task and its requirements
Action: walk through the steps taken to solve the problem
Result: what was the outcome of the action?
If the candidate doesn’t use this method when answering, you can use it to come up with follow up questions until they thoroughly answer the question.
When you’re satisfied that you’ve gotten all the information you need and have learned enough about your prospect, give them a chance to ask you some questions. They may want to know more specifics about the role they’ll be filling, pay, benefits, or just general company culture. This is their time to more thoroughly evaluate whether or not the position and your company are a good fit. It’s also your indicator of how interested the interviewee is in actually taking the position and how well they understand your company.
If the recruit doesn’t ask you, make sure you let them know the next steps in the interview and hiring process. They’ll need to know when they should expect to hear back from you or if there are any further interviews or assessments they may need to complete.
Once you have gone through that process with your shortlist of candidates, you can start moving forward with your top picks.
Have your recruit give you the OK to conduct a background check. You’ll be able to see their criminal record, look at employment history, see employment eligibility, and even do credit checks. You may also want to check around on social media to see if there is anything inappropriate or that doesn’t align with the company’s values. If you’re going to require a pre-employment drug screening, this would be the time to do that, too.
With all of that complete, you can now pick your top candidate. Make sure you pick a backup as well, just in case your preferred recruit doesn’t accept the position. You can do a reference check at this point to speak with previous employers to discuss job performance, experience, and how they conduct themselves. See if their former bosses would choose to hire them again.
Assuming all of that checks out, you can now extend an employment offer to your chosen candidate by way of an offer letter. It should include information on salary, benefits, start date, and all other pertinent information that could impact their employment at your company.
Time for Training
Congratulations! You’ve hired your newest employee. Now you’ve got to get him or her up to speed. To set your new addition up with the best chance for success, you’ll need a structured training program. Giving a tour of the office isn’t going to cut it.
You’ll be setting the tone for training with your onboarding method. You should start that process before the employee starts their first shift. That’s something as simple as sending them an email detailing their start time, dress code, schedule for the first day, and maybe even some nearby places they can grab lunch or coffee on the way in.
That welcome email can be part of your new hire checklist. This checklist should function as your manual for employee training and ensure they are taught everything they need to know to perform their tasks every day. If you enticed the new employee with the potential for upward mobility in the business, be sure to lay out a clear path for upward mobility.
One of the best ways you can train someone is to assign them a mentor. This mentor should have a lot of experience doing the job they will now be doing. For the first day or few days your new hire can shadow their mentor. It gives them a chance to see how to properly do the job they’ll be doing and ensures it will be done to your company’s standards.
Set some realistic goals for progress so the new employee can track their progress and see how quickly they’ll be expected to perform certain tasks independently. Giving employees a guide to their progression can help them keep focus and not forget about any of the things they’re going to need to know to become top performers in their job.
One of the hardest parts of being a new employee is not knowing how well you’re doing. Are people going behind you and fixing things? Are you getting bad reviews from co-workers without anyone telling you? That’s why frequent feedback is vital to the growth process.
If there’s an aspect of a task that isn’t being performed to company standards, your new employee must be coached on it. You can’t expect them to just magically improve. Likewise, if they’re doing very well on some fronts, use some positive feedback to keep them encouraged.
Employee Evaluations
That feedback isn’t something that should stop after your employee’s training period is over. You’ll want to evaluate your staff regularly so everyone has a clear view of their strengths, weaknesses, and plan for growth.
To effectively evaluate your employees, you have to take notes on their performance periodically. Record all the times where they are making accomplishments or on issues that repeatedly pop up. These notes will help you structure your evaluation and give you the information needed to develop plans of action to correct the problems or coach them on how to take their success and move it to the next level.
Measurable performance metrics will help you identify where any given employee is excelling or struggling. You should give your staff a thorough explanation of why you measure performance in that way and how you came to that conclusion. Being transparent will go a long way with gaining your employee’s respect and creating a happy workforce.
Here are a few things to stay away from when it comes to doing evaluations:
Don’t compare one employee to another.
If you don’t know how to answer a question during an evaluation, wait until you can get the correct information before answering. Never fake an answer.
Don’t make any promises you can’t keep.
When it comes to evaluation time, reward both individual successes and team successes. If the team does well on those evaluations, rewarding them is a good way to keep morale high and encourage employees to stay with your company instead of moving on.
Technologies for Running a Pet Grooming Business
We talked a little bit about what software you’re going to need to keep your business’s financial affairs in order, but you’ve also got to shop around for something to help you manage the day-to-day operations. This is an area where you can set yourself apart from some of your competitors.
First, you’ll need to sit down and come up with a list of features you want to have available. Are you just looking for something that will allow you to schedule appointments? Do you want to add some bells and whistles like customer history tracking and the option to send out notifications to people who have upcoming appointments? You’ll have to spend some time researching the available options, talking to representatives about what you’ll be getting and how much it will cost you. Then you may have to use a few different software in conjunction to be able to do all the things you’d like to do.
This is something that Splash and Dash Groomerie and Boutique excels in.
Splash and Dash has created a proprietary software suite that’s flexible and integrates better than most other options on the market. It contains everything from appointment history to photo management and tools that help the stores stay organized and efficient.
Here’s some of the information that employees have available when clients come in or try to make a new appointment:
Date of first visit and most recent visit
Total number of visits
Amount the customer has spent
How many cancellations or no-shows for appointments
Upcoming appointments
Services used in the past
Customer purchase history
Having those details readily available during customer interactions can allow employees to recommend other services that could be just what a customer’s pet needs or give opportunities to suggest other products for an upsell. It also makes the scheduling process a little faster since all of the past appointment dates are easily accessible.
The benefits for patrons don’t stop at scheduling, though. Splash and Dash software has a fully customizable pet vaccination alert so dog moms and dads won’t miss those important shots. They can also link each pet to their veterinarian, so in the event of an emergency, you will be able to get ahold of the health information you need in a hurry. There’s also a spot in there to make safety notes so nothing slips through the cracks.
Probably the most valuable and most often used feature for customers is the online appointment booking system. Booking can be made any time of the day on any day of the week, all without calling the store. It updates in real-time so there aren’t any accidental double bookings. For the little cherry on top, there’s a “book now” integration for Facebook so that an appointment can start right from the social media site.
Payments, loyalty balances, messaging, and appointment viewing are all available under the customer’s account. They can check on all of that information at their convenience.
That gives you an idea of some of the things you might want to look for in software for your grooming business. There are many different options out there. You’ll just have to see what features each one offers and how it will integrate with your business model and equipment.
Diversifying Revenue
While bathing, cutting hair, trimming nails, and just generally making people’s pets look prettier will be your business’s focus, you’re going to need some other ways to help increase your revenue.
Remember that little chart we showed you at the top of the page (go ahead and scroll back up there to take another peek)? The grooming business only accounts for a small portion of the pet industry. Since you already have people coming to your store who will also be contributing to the industry in other areas, you might as well tap into that spending while you have the audience.
The pet food and treats piece of that pie brings in more than $30 billion a year, so getting in on some of those profits is a no-brainer.
Consider carrying dog food to give your customers an easy way to pick up a new bag at the same time their pet is getting a fresh cut. I don’t know about you, but I always end up forgetting to pick up a new bag of food when I’m out, so I end up having to make another trip just to get dog food.
You can even offer locally made goodies or a boutique-style product that won’t be found in big box stores, further incentivizing your customers by making it even more convenient than having to wait for an online order.
The same goes for smaller things like treats. Pet moms and dads love to spoil their best friend with a dog biscuit here and there. You’re offering convenience since they’re already coming into your location, and you can entice them even more by offering a more high-quality product than a chain store is likely to carry.
You can also explore stocking collars, leashes, portable food/water bowls, and a variety of toys.
Time to Fetch Success
Now that you’ve read (and probably re-read and maybe even re-re-read) through all of the things it takes to start and operate a pet grooming business, you’re equipped to move forward with laying the foundation for your store. Make sure you’re thorough with every aspect of your business plan. Check and re-check every move you’re going to make. Rushing through any decisions or not thoroughly researching your market could dictate your business’s trajectory before you even open the doors to the first customer.
If all of the things outlined in this article seem overwhelming or just out of the realm of possibility for you to handle on your own, that doesn’t mean you have to give up the dream of owning a groomerie. Instead of creating your concept from scratch, you can go the franchise route and become a new Splash and Dash family member. You’ll have help every step of the way to make sure you’ve got the best chance for success.
The team will help you do everything, including finding a location, helping to market your location, setting up your equipment and computer systems, and even training you on how to make sure your customers are completely satisfied and come back regularly. You’re just a click away from taking the first big step to owning your own business.
