Your Groomer Quitting May Bring Revenue Down by 30%

Working in the grooming and hairdressing industry, you have quite a lot of people coming in to give their pets a makeover. Some people do it for aesthetic purposes, others just want the hair and dirt out of the way – either for the comfort of their pet or to reduce the hair shed. 

Most of the time, pet grooming is quite sought by pet owners. A successful business can get as much as $180 per groomed pet on a house call. These pets are like their children, and so they’d bring them to the groomer just like they’d bring their own kids to get a haircut. The business will likely be successful – but a lot of it hangs onto the shoulders of your groomer.

When that happens, your monthly revenue may decrease by as much as 30%. Yes, one person leaving can cause that much damage – even though you may have other groomers available shortly. With that in mind, certain complications may arise when that one groomer leaves. This article will tell you about the struggles that might occur in this business once the groomer quits. 

Groomers are pretty much their own “breed”. In order to be a groomer, you must know how to handle pets, you need to have good hand-eye coordination, and you require a good hairdressing style. Moreover, since you’ll be handling pets, you also need to be very careful.

After all, people hairdressers aren’t worried that the humans will get scared, turn around and bite them. With dogs, they can easily get scared and injure the groomer. Not to mention that if the pet keeps fussing around every time, the groomer may be at risk of injuring the pet as well. That being said, they take that risk because they love what they do.

The thing with groomers is that the better they get, the more their own worth will start soaring. This is why they go to better-paid places or start up their own grooming business. As a result, the business owners (meaning, you) are left to deal with a big management problem.

Moreover, with pet groomers, the turnover rate can get very high – but at the same time, the customer resources can’t be protected. You have indeed systems such as GroomNow that can help you protect your customer services, make the business more robust and store service records – all without relying on personnel. However, without such systems, things can get rather complicated. 

When your groomer is there, the system is quite set, and everyone knows their role. However, once they leave, an imbalance might occur – one that could throw your business off its trail. This is why you need to be prepared to back up your system so that you do not end up losing revenue.

When you’ve had a groomer for quite some time, you may have a steady flow in management. However, with your groomer gone, things can get a little more complicated. Situations like these can easily make your revenue drop by as much as 30%. 

There may be various reasons why that might happen. First of all, you might not have enough hands to take care of grooming pets at this point. The fewer pets you groom, the less revenue you will get. With your groomer working with you, you’d get more work done. However, now that your groomer’s gone, the workload has been cut by almost a half.

Branding and trust might also cause the revenue to go down. For instance, you may have noticed that even if you hired a new groomer, people are no longer coming in the way that they used to. At this point, it has nothing to do with the absence of the groomer; it has everything to do with the lack of trust in the new groomer. 

With the old groomer, they knew that they would get the result that they wanted on their pet. However, with the new groomer, they might have their precautions – mostly because they might not know what the new groomer can do. There is no marketing that they can rely on, and the new person seems to be using different techniques. This is why pet owners might end up taking their four-legged companions to other grooming salons.

As the owner of a small business specializing in pet grooming, you likely started it due to your own passion for grooming. Eventually, your business may have developed to the point where you could actually allow another groomer to take over the bulk of the job.

You’d still be grooming, but only now and again. The rest of the time, you could take your time to handle the rest of the management issues. You could look after the appointments, collect payments, handle reminders, take care of the marketing, and so on. 

With your groomer gone, not only will you have less of the work done, but the chances are that you’ll have to step in as well. That being said, even if you cover up the work that was normally done by your groomer, it doesn’t mean that your business has suddenly gotten smaller; it’s the same.

However, with you taking care of your groomer’s task, you can no longer handle the other things that matter, such as your marketing or the technical aspects of your business. With these things not as carefully attended to, your presence on the market will slowly but surely decrease – which will cause fewer new clients to be coming your way. 

Moreover, when you are busy grooming pets, you might not have the time necessary to take proper care of the customers. When your business has been going on for a while, you must make sure that you maintain customer profiles and alert your clients when their pets might need some tending to.

With systems such as GroomNow, you will ease your work, as you’ll automatically be alerted when it’s time to contact your customers. It’s a good idea in these circumstances to have a system that will take care of the bookings on your behalf. This way, you won’t be missing any appointments in the confusion after your groomer is gone.

Each business has its own system based on personnel flow. When a groomer leaves, the others will have to cover the workflow. However, the more someone does a job they were not supposed to, the more other areas are left uncovered.

This is why you may want to invest in a system that can take care of technicalities for you. If your groomer quits and you try to do everything by yourself, you might end up with a 30% hole in your budget. However, if you find something that can protect your customer resources, then you might want to take advantage of it. For example, GroomNow soft makes business more stronger. So, you should try it out and take advantage of it if you like its features.