Grooming Through The Ages Groomer and trainer, Sally Hart of Tailwaggers, continues her series with a look at how groomers can provide age-appropriate care for clients:
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ell, it’s Crufts already! A perfect opportunity to look for great specials on equipment and tools that may help with the topics and ideas from the previous two parts of Grooming Through the Ages. In the meantime, let’s have a look at the third and final part – pet owners.
on these platforms will help build up your clients.
Time
This is possibly the most overlooked and, perhaps, rarely thought of aspect of our clients, but their age still plays a tremendous part in our business. Or perhaps, more accurately, by giving our owners age-appropriate customer care, we can help our businesses flourish by catering to a much wider market. Now, please don’t get me wrong, this is in no way an ageist view, but one of respecting our clients and ensuring we treat them considerately. It is not so straightforward or easy to categorise clients into young, middleaged or elderly, so these groupings will overlap each other.
These clients are mostly able to set time aside for themselves, and generally don’t have huge commitments, allowing them the ability to spend time home grooming (having this time does not always mean it will be used this way!). But remember, they may not be as established in their jobs, and so perhaps have less freedom on when they can bring their pets in for grooming. Booking a few ahead may help keep these pets on schedule.
Confidence of Youth
Attitude
The benefit of being young is that feeling of having the world at your feet and the conviction to aim for what you want. It is more enthusiasm and vision, rather than long term experience that influence our younger clientele.
Our own way of behaving is caused by our opinions and feelings. It is our viewpoint. And we are all entitled to our own. For the younger, possibly 1st time, owners, their pets are their ‘kids’. Sometimes the expectations are not completely realistic. As groomers we see the impact this has on the pets behaviour, in the salon and with their owners. And it definitely can influence style choices.
Part 3 Owners
Things to remember . . . Social Media This is part of everyday life, and the biggest go to when looking for services, information, retail, etc. Promoting well 34 | Total Grooming Magazine
Communication How we speak to and engage with our clients has a huge impact on our business. Politeness and clarity goes a long way to establishing a great client rapport. We may have more experience and knowledge in grooming dogs, but it rarely helps to be perceived as condescending, and the younger clients will not take too kindly to being ‘spoken down to.’
Happy Families A time in our lives when we are not only busy, but also have had to learn the art of juggling. Often juggling
