Melissa Verplank has an interactive video this week — bring a pen and paper! Find out how to calculate exactly how many clients you need, and when you need to see them. The answer may surprise you!
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What I want you to do is I want you to write these numbers down as I’m talking about them. And keep in mind, this is just a really general formula and you can plug in whatever numbers you really want, but this is just an everyday, average kind of formula to give you an idea of how many customers you need to stay active all year round for one stylist.
The first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to look at the number of dogs that you do on average. Let’s say you’re doing on average six dogs every single day, and you’re grooming five days a week. Okay, that gives you about 30 appointments every single week that you need to fill.
And now the next thing we’re going to do is take a look at how many weeks you’re going to work per year. Most folks are going to take hopefully a two-week vacation for themselves, at least a two-week vacation. What you’re going to do is take that 30 number, those are the appointments that you’re going to have every single week, and you’re going to times that by 50. And what that’s going to do is it’s going to give you 1500, all right? That is the number of annual appointments you need every single year to be busy.
All right, that’s a solid number. Now we’re going to take that 1500 number and we’re going to divide it by nine. Why nine? Because hopefully with any luck, you have been successful in educating your customers of the importance of regular grooming for their pet and you’re going to be seeing those clients every six weeks, at least every six weeks. And so that’s how we come up with nine.
If you take a six-week, rescheduled dog, you’re going to see it about… It’s actually 8.6, I think, but we’re going to round it up because most of the time you can push an extra holiday appointment in there. You’re going to be seeing those dogs nine times a year. If we are taking that 1500 and dividing it by nine, you end up with 167. That’s all. 167 appointments, or clients, not appointments, clients is what you need every single year to keep your book filled.
And that’s again, that’s just an average. Let me roll through these numbers for you one more time really quickly. Say you’re doing six dogs a day, you’re working five days a week, that’s going to give you three appointments every week you need to fill your book. You are going to take that 30 appointments and times it by 50 weeks a year that you’re going to be working. That’s going to give you 1500 appointments annually you need to keep your appointment book filled. Now you’re going to divide that by nine and that is a finding out how many six-week clients you have on your roster. That’s how many times you’re going to see that client each year. You’re going to take that 1500 and divide it by nine and that’s going to give you 167 clients that you need to keep your appointment book filled every single year.
Now, why is this information important? Well, it’s more important so you can project out what your growth rate is, whether you want to add maybe another stylist to your team. Or if you’re a solo stylist, how long is it going to take you before you are filled so that you can either start raising your prices or closing your book to new customers. It’s really important for planning to know, to have an idea, to have a roadmap of what it’s going to take, what do you need to keep your book filled all year round?
That’s all it is, 167 clients. That’s what you need. Not such a hard target to shoot for, is it? Just make sure that you’re educating your customers on the importance of rebooking on a regular basis, at least every six weeks.