The Extras You Forget to Sell (and How to Stop Forgetting)

You are mid-groom. The phone goes. It is a regular wanting a slot next Tuesday. You find one, read it back, hang up, and get back to the dog on the table. Nobody mentioned the teeth clean. Nobody mentioned the nail trim. The customer would probably have said yes to both.

That is how most extras go unsold in a grooming business. Not because customers say no, but because they are never asked.

What the numbers say

We looked at three months of bookings across GroomSlot businesses that have extras set up. When customers book themselves online, where the extras are listed with prices as they book, about one in five adds one. When the groomer books the same customers in over the phone or at the desk, it drops to under one in ten.

Same customers, same extras, same prices. The only difference is whether anyone asked. And most bookings are made by the groomer: roughly seven in ten across the businesses we looked at.

The average extra is worth about £19. For a salon that adds 25 bookings a week by hand, getting to the online rate is two or three more extras a week. That is around £45 a week, or a little over £2,000 a year, from customers you already have, on appointments already in the diary.

Three fixes that need no software

• Put the extras on the price list, with prices, right under the groom they go with. A customer who can see "Teeth clean £10" next to "Full groom £45" will often add it without being asked.
• Ask at drop-off, not on the phone. You have the dog in front of you and can point at the nails. "Shall I do the nails while she's here?" gets a yes far more often than a list read out over the phone.
• Keep the list short. Three or four extras that most dogs need beat a menu of twelve. If everything is an extra, nothing is.

These all work. They all also depend on you remembering, on a day when you are already doing three things at once.

The fix that does it for you

GroomSlot now asks the customer for you. When you add a booking yourself and leave the extras off, the confirmation email includes a "Want to add anything?" box: up to three of your extras, with prices, and a button. The customer taps it, ticks what they want, and it goes straight onto the booking. The price goes up, the finish time moves if the extra needs time, and you get a notification.

It only offers what actually fits. If the next appointment starts straight after, or you close, or it is your break, the customer is not offered anything that would need time you do not have. If a deposit has been paid, the page tells them what is left to pay on the day. Nothing is charged online.

If your customers live on WhatsApp, the same offer can go out as a short WhatsApp message straight after the confirmation, in whichever of three wordings suits how you talk to people. That one is optional and uses a message from your allowance, so it is off until you switch it on.

Knowing who to ask

The confirmation catches new bookings. For the appointments already in your diary, there is an Opportunities tab in Fill My Diary. It looks at the next two weeks, works out how much time is free after each appointment, and suggests the extra that customer is most likely to say yes to: they have had it before, you booked them in with no extras, most of your customers on that service add it, or it has been a long time since their last groom.

Each one is a card with the extras ticked, the reasons in plain words, and two buttons: offer by WhatsApp, or offer by email. You can do a whole day in one go. Once an offer has gone, the card says so, and it will not send twice.

What not to do

• Do not offer an extra that does not fit the slot. Nothing sours a customer faster than saying yes to something and then being told there was no time for it.
• Do not ask customers who booked online. They saw the extras and made their choice. Asking again is nagging.
• Do not send three messages about one appointment. One offer, then let it go. The confirmation email plus one nudge is plenty.

Already on for GroomSlot businesses

If you use GroomSlot and have extras in your add-on library, the confirmation email box is already on. The Opportunities tab is in Fill My Diary, and every setting for the feature is in there too. If you are not on GroomSlot yet, the free trial includes all of it, no card needed.