Year-End Review for your 2018 Goals

With 2018 coming to an end it’s time for your dog grooming year-end review! Check out these 3 key strategies to reviewing 2018 and setting up a dog grooming business plan for 2019 to maximize success in the year to come!

1. Identifying and Boosting the Performance of your Staff & Retail Sales

Have you completed your year end review for each of your employees and your retail sales. Do you know which employee or product performed the best? Keep reading to find out the key thing to understand about your top employees and best selling retail products.

Key things to understand about your top performers.

Identify the 5 W’s: Who is the top performing staff member?

1. Who is your top performer?
2. What is unique about their job performance?
3. When do they market their skills?
4. Why are they performing better than others?
5. How do they interact with their team and clients?

These questions are clues as to how you can coach and mentor your dog grooming staff.

• • Use this Q&A to identify key qualities among each staff member.
  • Share examples and create a team environment that allows your lead performers to be mentors.
  • Use these examples when you are coaching your low performing staff and find out where they need coaching and work on those areas.
  • Stay constructive and remember we learn from our mistakes.

Create a mentoring program.

• Pair a struggling employee with a successful one and allow them to shadow for the day.
• Create a part time assistant program that will allow for the struggling employee to gain extra training. They can then practice the skills they have learned by working independently on the opposite days.

Make sure you have a dedicated team of staff. If there is a staff member that is compromising the integrity of your team, you may want to consider cutting ties.

• A team that operates in a positive atmosphere will always outperform.
• You may feel cutting your losses may cut your revenue but if your team performs better in return, you have made again.

Incorporate pricing levels for dog grooming services.

• Start the new or struggling employees out at a lower price level to promote an incentive for growth.
• Set goals within each price level that must be reached and maintained in order to move to the next pricing level. This concept will motivate your employees to meet specific expectations and grow quickly.
• This creates the ability for the stylist to receive a raise as reward for their progress.
• Suggested goals would be- retail per guest, service per guest, guest retention, and re-booking. All of these goals can be monitored within your software program. You may want to consider team goals as well.

Market your dog grooming business and staff through your software.

The opportunities for marketing to your clients are endless.

• Create a loyalty program that will boost referrals.
• Create automated marketing emails thanking customers for visiting your dog grooming business. Within your emails add links to online booking, Instagram pages, facebook pages and anywhere you gain reviews.
• Identify a target group of customers and send a marketing email for a specific promotion.

It is important to consistently monitor your staff performance. With a positive atmosphere and a little constructive criticism, your staff will grow and thrive. Everyone can use a little motivation from time to time.

This same concept can be applied to increasing your retail sales.

What is the top-performing retail product?

• • Who does this product target?
  • What does the product do?
  • When is this product used?
  • Where is this product placed in your retail area?
  • Why is it popular among your customers?
  • How is it promoted and used within the groomers?

Utilize key points about your top sellers.

• Identify how they are being promoted within the groomers.
• What can be done differently to promote the products that are not selling?

Always educate your staff on the products in the retail area.

• Schedule workshops and invite your distributor reps to come in and educate your team about new products or existing products that are not moving off the shelf.
• Make sure the staff has access to each item in the back bar area to utilize on their clients.
• Set goals and incentives for your team or individual staff on retail sales. Offer prizes to the top sellers. “There is nothing wrong with a little friendly competition.”

Create a customer experience that your whole team offers their guest.

• Have your team talk about the products they are using during the dog grooming service.
• Hand the product to the guest and explain how it is used.
• Write down the products used or walk the customer to the retail area and guide them to the products on the shelf.
• Keep a record of the products in the client notes section of your software. That way if they choose to buy it later there is a reference. Your program will also store the purchase history of your customers. Therefore, allowing you to suggest products at their next service or identifying a product a customer wants to repurchase.

Feature a product of the month within the dog groomers.

• Place the featured item in a visible area of the groomers.
• Use the marketing feature within your software program to educate your clients on the item.
• You may even offer a promotion such as, if the customer books a specific service, they will receive a discount on the item of the month.
• Select a target market of customers that frequent a specific service and send marketing campaigns for products that coincide. Such as targeting your highlight customers with a nail clipping.

Create loyalty points for dollars spent on your dog grooming retail products.

• Track the points within your software program. This will give your customers an incentive to purchase retail within your dog grooming business.

There are many ways to get creative with promoting retail. Make sure you have goals in place for your staff. You can easily track retail sales and set commission calculations in the software program. Once you have implemented these concepts, share the reports with your staff. This will keep the momentum going and add a visual dimension to their progress. Make it fun and keep it simple. Everyone wins!

See below on how to set up the Employee Performance Report & Product Sales Statistics

Employee Performance Report

1. Sign into Online.123petsoftware.com
2. Select More and then Reports.
3. Scroll down to the Employees section within All Reports
4. Select Employee Performance Report.
5. Select the desired date range.
6. Select the employee you wish to run the report for from the drop-down menu.
7. Press Run Report.

Information that is displayed:

• Hours Booked
• Percent Booked
• Average Ticket price
• $ amount of product sold
• Top Service Rendered name
• Top Service Count
• # of Retail Tickets
• # of non Retail tickets
• Total # of tickets
• % of Tickets with Retail
• Total Clients
• # of clients retained
• % of Clients Retained

*NOT recommended running on the mobile apps since not all the same information is displayed.

Product Sales Statistics

1. Sign into Online.123petsoftware.com
2. Select More and then Reports.
3. Scroll down to the Products section within All Reports
4. Select Product Sales Statistics.
5. Select the desired date range.
6. Press Run Report

Information that is displayed:

All products are listed individually with the following information.

• Product ID
• Description
• Quantity Sold
• Wholesale cost per item
• Total Wholesale cost
• Gross profit
• Net Profit

There is then a Grand total line for all products

Start running these reports before the end of 2018 and really understand who and what is performing best. Figure out why these are performing well and incorporate a plan for even greater success in 2019!

2. 2018 Marketing Campaigns Review & Plan for 2019

In order to strategize your 2019 marketing campaigns we first must take a look at how 2018’s marketing performed. It’s easy to get caught up in the frey of managing dog grooming staff scheduling, product inventories, bills, and push out a marketing campaign as you come up for air; all while having a life.

Having creative ideas for content to win new customers is a never ending process. But how often are we cranking out our creative content on social media and then moving onto the next? It’s time to start tracking the effectiveness of your social media campaigns as 2019 is all about quality content.

In order to strategize your 2019 marketing campaigns we first must take a look at how 2018’s marketing performed. Here are some tips on performing a 2018 marketing post-campaign analysis.

• As good practice, keep records of your digital footprint. Do a monthly crawl of your social channels and record your followers/likes. By keeping up with these stats you will be able to check how your campaigns affect your social channels
• Record engagement, see how many re-shares and comments a campaign has on your social channels.
• Check your open rates associated with email campaigns, cross reference your bookings and sales during that campaign period.
• Themes – Review your campaigns strategy and objectives
• Were your efforts centered around brand awareness, targeting existing customers, targeting new customers or selling a new offering?
• Organize your campaigns by themes: were your efforts centered around:

1. Brand awareness

2. Targeting new customers

3. Customer retention

4. Selling a new offering

• Review your web traffic, your digital footprint should reflect your business in its entirety. Any efforts you place into campaigns will likely be reflected in your web traffic
• Total Traffic – macro goals of getting eyes on your website is a good measure of effective campaigns
• Traffic by channel
• Location of customers – look into where visits to your site derive, you may be surprised!

In 2019 make retaining your existing customers a priority as it is 5x cheaper to hold on to your existing clients than to find new ones.

See here for our step by step video on how to set up marketing campaigns in Daysmart Pet and make your marketing strategy even more automated!

3. Benefits of Integrated Credit Card Processing in 2019

3. Benefits of Integrated Credit Card Processing in 2019

Integrating your credit card processing with your software program can offer many benefits to your business in 2019. Not only do you have access to great credit card processing rates, but you will also find that you will save time and gain ways to make more money.

Less mistakes and saves time

Takes the guesswork out of consolidating your daily revenue.

• How much time do you spend comparing your totals report in your software to the totals report from your card processor?
• How often are there mistakes in the manual entry of what a customer paid vs. what was really charged?

With Integrated credit card processing you will avoid these mistakes and your reports will match. Simply swipe the card for payment and the amount is automatically recorded in the program. The system will even suggest a tip amount without you having to ask!

Integrating Credit Card Processing with Daysmart Pet Software gives you access to more features:

Store cards on file

• Charge in advance for services or deposits
• Allow customers to pay for products over the phone and pick up later
• Charge for no show appointments
• Take a payment even when your customer forgets their credit card
• Take online booking deposits

Membership Billing

• Manage your memberships and take payments right through your program.
• You no longer need to have a separate system to bill for your memberships.
• Consolidate your routine for membership management all in one place.

Customer Facing Portal

• Invite all or select customers to create an account online
• Allow clients to book new or manage existing appointments right from the portal
• Let clients update their contact information and manage their loyalty points

All-In-One POS System

Have you checked out our latest advance? Our new all-in-one system is the perfect front desk solution and has all the functions a modern groomers including an integrated payment processing so you can process all of your transactions (at great rates!) in a single system. Find out more about our new All-In-One solution here!

It’s easy to see that integrating your pet software and processing services can save you time, make you money, and allow you to bring exciting new products to your customers, which can strengthen those relationships and secure your revenue streams with new, profitable services in 2019.

Integrated payment processing services not only eases reconciliation and reporting, but if you can reduce your rates or get out from under “per transaction” fees, you can save hundreds (even thousands) of dollars each year – money you can use to grow your dog grooming business! There’s no reason to hand over your hard earned profit. Just because you got this equipment from your bank, doesn’t mean they have your best interests at heart. You owe it to yourself to check your rates, and if your credit card processor has been increasing them, providing less than stellar customer service, or making you wait for your money, it might be time for a change.

Contact us at [email protected] and we will get you started on your journey to offering customers new processing services and making more money!

Want to learn more? Check out this short, informative webinar we produced with our credit card processing services partner, CardConnect.

Not already using a pet software and looking for ways to improve your 2019 dog grooming business plan? Get started with Daysmart Pet here! Download a free 14 day trial that fits your specific business needs.