Streamlining new client inquiries

And being mobbed by new people as two groomer shop in town are closing this month. I did callbacks about 10 messages this afternoon,

looking for a quick fix on stream. So Brittany, are you doing a intake form? You know, and again, are, you know, are you taking new clients? Are you going to be doing a price increase? Are you going to be streamlining things like, this is where a lot of times this is a great opportunity, especially this time of year.

September is the perfect, I like to see you guys do price increases in September and in March, either one or both, either way. So this is a great opportunity to consider, do you wanna do membership grooming, right? And have everyone commit to a four week schedule. And so there's lots of different ways. So you can either hire a VA and a VA can literally do all of that for you.

You can have a intake form, right? And when you're doing the intake form, if you do it a Google doc, you can have certain things that if they click something, so Brittany's saying of a drop in price versus a monthly price. Well, and that's the thing, right, is the monthly price should be your, your standard pricing, right?

So whatever you want to make, if it was an eight, you know, if you're not following Savvy Groomer, depends on how long you guys have been following Savvy Groomer. So let's say your goal is a hundred dollars a dog at four weeks, it should be a hundred dollars a dog, and then six and eight weeks. There should be an additional cost for that.

And so I'm assuming you say drop in, I'm assuming you're saying like a member and a non-member kind of price. So if that's the case, then you know, again, it might be getting rid of anyone who's not going to commit to a four week schedule. If you've had two groomer shops in town close this month, you're, again, if every groomer is grooming an average of a hundred to 160 dogs,

you're gonna have 200 calls easily. So it is deciding, okay, am I, how am I going to create stability in my business as these new people flood in, they're gonna be price shopping and, and couch hopping and all that stuff. Not couch hopping. How do I say couch hopping? Yeah, I just pictured like, you know, bouncing around right shop hopping,

which sounds like a weird thing to say shop hop. But again, it's one of those things where we have to make that decision of it. How are we going to make it worth our time? And you can also do things like, ha you know, I'm, I'm assuming by the way too, when they're doing their intake form, right? When they're,

'cause I don't, I also would not, I, I wish you guys would not put your phone number on your website or on your vehicles. Don't put it on, don't put it on your signage, don't put it on your, you know, website. Get your phone off, get your phone gone, gone, gone, gone, gone, gone.

Because again, it takes so much more time and money to do phone calls if you hire a VA to go through intake forms and have them like organize them for you and to like, yes, no maybes, they can send out Harvard letters or Harvard texts. Thank you so much for inquiring at this time. We're not gonna be offering you a consultation groom,

dah, dah dah, dah. They can bang out all of those things very quickly. Phone calls take forever. The Harvard letter style phone call takes at least 10 minutes. Even if you try to make it five, it's gonna make it 10. You know, if you have to reply 10, that's over an hour. And so for someone like Brittany who,

you know, again, she got 10 messages this afternoon, I would figure out where your phone number is and figure out if you can get it off the internet and have them go to a website. Any new client should go to an intake form where you get all the, what information do you want them to know, right? And they put all of that,

whether it's through your, some softwares have intake forms built in, or even just a Google Doc where they have to fill in that information or on your website, have that information filled in and then, you know, you let them know you're going to email them back if you're going to entertain them or not, right? A yes or a no. And that would re greatly reduce it.

'cause if you had an intake form and you let people know, pick a day, let's say Monday, I'm really into Mondays right now, you know, if you had everyone fill out those forms and then on Monday you go through the forms, right? And again, you can have Google Docs, you can have things be flagged if it's like a,

you know, for instance, let's say are you willing to commit to a four week schedule and they click no, you could have Google Docs like flag those so you automatically know that person is going to get a Harvard letter versus when I say Harvard letter I, I jokingly call that like the denial letter. Like I feel like Harvard has like some of the best,

like many people apply, thank you so much for your application, right? But yeah, it's one of those things that you can really streamline that down instead of spending, you know, a couple of hours every single night, right? You could instead just spend probably two or three hours once a week, right? And it, and it is also like,

again, do you want to start renegotiating what you have currently with your clients, right? Do you have all the monthly reoccurring clients you want? Do you wanna move into a membership and have a contract with these people? You're gonna have more leverage. There's so many different options to do that. I will say with phone calls it's the least eff efficient.

So I would highly suggest getting an intake form. Mogo has them, groomer io has them, groom more has them, most of the grooming software have them, you know, get your, you know, you know, thing off your phone, number off. So you're not trying to answer these questions. Another thing you can do too is send them a text afterwards.

Yeah. Tell people to come in and send me an email, but then at least they fill it in and if they call you, you can just text 'em and be like, Hey, thank you so much for the voicemail. You can have it on your voicemail. We return all new client inquiries during our office hours, which is Monday between three and seven,

right? And from there, right, you can, you know, we do not return phone calls one, that's another option. You know, if you're a new client, please fill the intake form. Our intake form is on our website and you can even just copy paste, right? You know, thank you so much for your inquiry. Any new clients that were required to fill out this form,

any clients who are over X amount of weeks need to fill out this form. And then you've got everyone, right? And you can do all of that and that will really, really reduce your time. But yeah, now is the time to either is to really streamline. 'cause again, if you're having 200 new people, then it's like, okay,

is the clientele I have the right clientele? Are they the perfect, are they all my soulmate clients? And what is my soulmate client? Right? If you're like, my soulmate client is a hundred people who get this haircut and they're come every four weeks and they pre-book for the year, okay, well then let's start making that a requirement of anyone new who's coming in and anyone who wants to make an appointment,

right? I mean, two, at least 200 people. And that's on the low end, right? And when I sold my shop and we, like I said, we had five employees. I think we had a clientele of like 1200 people. So this is where too, you guys may or may not, you know, have an opportunity here,

right? And again, you can always be like, listen, we're gonna be interviewing a lot of people. We're not gonna be doing any appointments over X amount of time. And you can really leverage this. And not in a negative way, right? Because again, you are, you are not any marriage. So what, unless if you have a membership,

a membership is like marriage with your clients. And that's why I really love it because you are mutually committed and they are mutually committed. You are promising them a spot in your schedule and they're promising to pay you whether or not they show up. If they're not in a marriage, you always have the option to replace 'em. And that's where I like memberships personally.