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How to Run a Successful Mobile Grooming Business
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Reprinted with permission from Pet Age-November 2005
How to Run a Successful Mobile Grooming Business From dealing with traffic and tires to poodles and pugs, managing a mobile grooming business can be quite a trick. Here’s how to pull it off with panache. By Daryl Conner There is more to running a mobile grooming business than zipping merrily from house to house, leaving clean pets in your wake. Mobile stylists deal with some specific business challenges that are unique to this branch of the grooming industry. From juggling routing and scheduling to dealing with directionally challenged clients and expensive van repairs, mobile groomers have their hands full with more than just a steering wheel. But it can all work out with planning and creativity. Here are some tips on managing your mobile business to prevent it from managing you. Advertise With Your Van Let’s start at the beginning—attracting the customers needed to keep your grooming rig on the road. As with every service industry, customers are the lifeblood of the mobile groomer’s business. Fortunately, a mobile van, by its very design, is a rolling billboard, drawing attention wherever you go. “Get a great logo,” said Dina Perry, founder of Wag’n Tails Mobile Conversions (Granger, Ind.). “Make people know immediately what your business is when they see your van. Get a good phone number, too, one that is easy to remember or spells out a catchy word.” A bright, eye-grabbing paint job on your rig will attract customers by the droves. Drive your van to the mall, the grocery store, everywhere you can when you start out your business. Some enterprising groomers have magnetic business cards printed and stick them to their van. Potential customers simply help themselves to a magnet. Your artwork will get you business, and word-of-mouth from happy customers will do the rest. This “billboard” method of attracting business has proven so successful that most groomers do not need any other form of traditional advertising. In fact, some mobile groomers travel incognito and remove the artwork from their vehicles once their business is established to cut down on calls from customers they are too busy to service. Don’t spend money on a large Yellow Pages advertisement, said Perry and other successful mobile groomers. Instead, choose either a less expensive small advertisement or just go with the free listing that comes with most business phone lines. “By the time the Yellow Pages come out,” said Perry, “most new mobile groomers have all the business they can handle already and they are left paying for expensive advertising they no longer need.” Choose Between a Land Line or Cell Phone This brings us to the question of which is better—a traditional land-line phone or a cellular phone? At first glance, the answer seems obvious: Cell phones seem to be made to order for a groomer on the go. However, experienced mobile groomers say that the tried-and-true land line has benefits that may not be readily apparent to those starting out a new business. “I first started with only a cell line,” said Lisa Correia, owner of Bark n’ Purr (Toms River, N.J.). “That is the number that I have printed on my van. I quickly figured out that having the cell phone only was not good business sense. Firstly, potential clients could not find me in the Yellow Pages or with information (411), because cell lines are not listed that way. Also, being mobile allows you freedom from interruptions,” she continued. “With my cell number printed on the side of my van, I was getting calls while I was grooming or driving. This doesn't allow for your full attention to either the phone call or your client. I signed up for a regular business line within three months of operation, and hardly ever answer my cell line during the day now.” Most mobile groomers interviewed agree. They have a traditional business phone, and take advantage of the coverage that gives them in their local phone directory. If they carry a cell phone, they do not use it to field customer calls. An answering machine records business calls while they work, which they return when they are off the road. Learn to Find Your Customers Easily Once your customers have found you, it is important that you can find them. Many people are directionally challenged, and it is wise not to rely solely on the instructions they give you to find their homes. Invest in a good map of your area. You can find spiral-bound book-type maps for many areas; these are durable and travel well. Folding paper maps are best left to those who practice the art of origami—they are a pain to fold, are easily misplaced under a seat, and have a maddening habit of tearing. Take directions downloaded from the Internet with a grain of salt. You may find yourself directed down dark alleys and barely navigable back roads, all in the name of “the most direct route.” On the plus side, you can print out disposable maps of new areas you are traveling to right off your computer. If you are technologically oriented, you might consider purchasing a Global Positioning System to guide you. When looking to purchase a GPS, keep in mind that the lower-priced models will only show you latitude and longitude. The more expensive systems will show detailed maps. Dash-mounted systems are best for mobile groomers. Handheld models that come with a dash cradle also are available. Look for features such as long battery life, waterproof case and enough memory to store your entire service area in the system. One more note for GPS users: As you drive, watch the road, not the GPS. They can be mesmerizing! Keep Track of Your Customers Next, you will need a system to keep track of your customers. Successful mobilers use a variety of methods: · 5-inch-by-8-inch index cards or Klip Kards from Barkleigh Productions Inc. (Mechanicsburg, Pa.). File them neatly in an organizer. Then each day pull the cards you need and tuck them into your appointment book. These lightweight cards are simple to use and leave room for pertinent notes. The downside: They can be easily lost. · DayRunner-type organizers. These organizers come in a variety of sizes and styles and can be found at any office supply store. They not only contain room for customer information, but also offer a choice of calendars, including day, week or month-at-a-glance. They offer ample room to store checks and cash as you are paid during the day. You can purchase insets to hold receipts, pages to keep track of mileage and maintenance, and more. · Electronic organizers such as Palm Pilots. These beauties offer portability and practicality, and many mobile groomers swear by their ease of use and high functionality. However, those who use electronic organizers warn that it is important to back up your information regularly so that if you have a system failure you can still access your client list. Define Your Service Area Perhaps the biggest challenge for groomers on the go is working out a schedule that prevents them from driving all over town. “The biggest mistake most new mobile groomers make is that they travel too far,” Perry said. · Concentrate on one small area, she said. “Choose a population of 10,000 to 20,000 people. Your target customers are 35 to 55 years old, from busy dual-income families.” · Groomers who live in suburban or urban regions can use one of several popular methods to narrow down their service area: · Choose one or more areas by ZIP code. Service only one ZIP code, or travel to different ZIP codes on different days of the week. · Find your home base on a map, and draw a circle of a 5- to 15-mile radius around your home. Divide the circle up into pie-like slices, and travel to one “slice” per day. · Choose how many miles you are willing to drive per day, and do not go further than your chosen limit. · Choose how many minutes you are willing to drive from home, and limit your travels by time. Groomers who live in rural areas may have to drive some distance to reach their clients. Once in that area, they try to spend the entire day. One creative groomer I spoke to parks her van in store parking lots and meets clients there. She grooms while they shop. Most groomers schedule the first appointment of the day at the farthest point from home and work back in as the day progresses. “Many mobile groomers are women,” said Laurie Bartlett, owner of Pet Stuff Express (Jackson, N.J.). “It makes sense for us to work back towards home if we have kids who may need us to pick them up, and it’s nice to work close to home in case of equipment breakdowns.” Urban or rural, once you have chosen a specific service area, stick to it. Every mobile groomer I spoke to resoundingly agreed that this was imperative. To recap, there are three helpful rules: 1. Define your maximum commute. 2. Obey rule No. 1. 3. If tempted to break rule No. 1, check the price of gas. Plan Your Schedule Well Ahead Once your service area is firmly defined, you are left with the task of scheduling appointments. Mobile groomers quickly learn to train their customers to book appointments ahead. In fact, most mobile stylists plan their schedules a year in advance. The average mobile groomer normally can handle a client list of 120 to 180 regular customers, so a customer list will fill up fast. “Always keep track of how many clients you have,” said Jodi Murphy, owner of The Puppy Spa Mobile Grooming (Great Meadows, N.J.). “Don’t squeeze out your regulars by taking on too many new customers. Learn how and when to say no. This is a very difficult aspect of our job.” It is imperative that mutually understood ground rules be established early on, said Jay Scruggs, owner of Here Comes the Groom (Germantown, Tenn.). “The first visit with a new customer sets the tone. Lay your groundwork for the business relationship then. Don’t let people take advantage of you. Tell them, ‘I am running a business. Here are your options.’ ” The rules that help you run your business probably will not work for every customer, Scruggs said. You will not be able to accommodate every client’s needs, and it is important for your sanity that you realize that not every person you come in contact with will fit into the way you run your business. But you’ll still have plenty of clients. “For every person who cannot cooperate with your schedule, there will be 10 more who can,” Scruggs said. As you get out your calendar and plan the year ahead, make sure to plan for your life, and not just your work. Plan ahead for vacations, birthdays, doctor’s appointments and even an occasional “fun” day. In general, mobile customers have their dogs groomed every two, four, six or eight weeks. By planning your year in advance, you can schedule your customers in a way that makes sense to both frequency and travel area. Of course, the best-laid plans often go awry. A customer has to change a date, you get the flu or your van needs an unexpected repair. Some groomers leave a little “wiggle room” in their calendars to help offset emergency changes. Others deal with such issues by working an extra hour or so per day for a week to catch up on a missed day. Being flexible is a crucial personality trait for mobile groomers, because there are so many variables built into this type of grooming. Maintain Your Van Religiously When planning your yearly schedule, don’t forget to include regular vehicle maintenance. Put it down in black-and-white. Rely on the maintenance schedule that came with your vehicle and stick to it. Remember that your vehicle and generator are the heart of your work life, and take care of them. Brenda Knoll, owner of Housecall Grooming (Clear Lake, Texas), tells a horror story: “My van was running rough, but I for some odd reason more or less ignored it. That's not like me, but with the pressures of staying on schedule and not disappointing any clients, I kept running. “Mistake! Apparently my radiator was dead dry, and had been running very hot. It was so dry that the thermometer for overheated water was above the water line so there was no indicator to me of what was happening. The water pump had given out and I was slowly dripping radiator water while I drove, and I never noticed. The end result was a $2,300 repair. New radiator, water pump, fried spark plug hoses, fried this and fried that. “Preventable? Yes! My advice to other mobile groomers is to have the engine on your source of income checked every couple of months by a real live shop—not an oil change place, not a tire place, but a real shop with well-trained mechanics. My mechanic told me after this was all over (since I think I just bought him a small boat) to bring my truck in regularly and if there was nothing wrong, I could leave. ‘Come in at 7 a.m.,’ he said. ‘If it checks out OK, you'll be on the road with a cup of java by 8.’ What do you have to lose? $2,300 that's what!’ ” The moral of the story, according to Knoll: “Think of equipment maintenance as dog hair—a small matter, really, but what havoc it can cause if not cared for!” pa Daryl Conner is certified by the International Society of Canine Cosmetologists as a Dermatech Petcare Specialist and as a Master Pet Stylist Meritus. Happily employed at Yankee Clipper Pet Grooming in Rockport, Maine, she has loved styling cats and dogs for more than 20 years. KEEP CUSTOMER KEYS SAFE
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