Retail Pet Training: 7 Business Best Practices

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Do you offer pet training at your small pet store?

If not, you’re missing out on a lucrative opportunity. Pet owners are looking for a place where they can find everything they need to take care of their pet. To be this one-stop shop, your pet store needs more than just food, toys, and accessories — it needs to offer services like retail pet training.

Offering retail pet training services to customers builds brand loyalty for your pet store. If they have a good experience with a trainer and see results in their pet, they’ll return for multiple training sessions and become store regulars — helping you to build a reliable customer base.

Offering pet training can open up new opportunities and increase profits at your pet store, but to achieve your store’s goals, it’s important to set up these offerings in the right way. This includes hiring experienced trainers and marketing these services properly. This blog compiles best practices so you can make the most of pet training at your small pet store.

1. Know Your Market

Before launching pet training services at your store, do your research to determine how much local demand there is for pet training. If your pet store is generally succeeding, you know there are enough pet owners in the area to support it.

But how many of these are new pet owners whose animals aren’t trained? How many people in your area are buying pets? Is this number increasing or declining? This information helps you determine how successful pet training might be at your store.

It’s also important to be aware of competitors. Are any other pet stores in your area offering training? What about freelancers or businesses that exclusively offer training? If there’s competition close by, what skills are they teaching and how are their reviews? The answers to these questions will inform your decision to offer training and the skills you’ll include in your curriculum.

You should also do research to see what local customers are looking for in a training service. These are some of the most common skills dogs are trained for:

Basic commands: sit, stay, settle, come, leave it, lay down
House training
Quieting down
Interacting with strangers
Moving through a crowd

Learning these skills helps prepare pets for a variety of situations and makes both the pet and owner’s lives easier. Determine which skills you’d like to teach and find the right trainers to teach these skills.

2. Find the Right Trainers

Take the time to hire great pet trainers — not just the first people to apply. Consider their experience and qualifications and make sure they have a good track record of successfully training animals. To get a better sense of this, see if they have client reviews from previous jobs. Positive reviews provide evidence that they’re good at what they do.

More than just work experience, you also want to hire trainers that fit the culture of your pet store, who interact positively with customers, and who you want to work with. As part of the interview process, put these trainers to the test to see how they work with animals and with people. In the end, choose who you think is best for the store, for your customers, and for their pets.

3. Set Up the Pet Training Space

Dedicate a specific area of your pet store to training sessions, away from other customers and products. An isolated area for training is a better working environment for trainers and helps calm down the animals, leading to better results.

Make sure the space you set up is safe and secure — close it off from the rest of the pet store with a door or gate so animals don’t get out and run around the store. Don’t forget to make the training area comfortable and accessible for customers. Set up seating so multiple customers can comfortably watch or participate in the training.

4. Establish Pricing and Packages

As part of the research you do in preparation to open your pet store, investigate prices your competitors are charging for products and services — including for training. Try to set lower prices than your competitors, but if your services are truly superior to your competitors, you may still be able to generate business with slightly higher prices than theirs.

Offering training packages — multiple related sessions purchased at once — is more convenient for the customer and reduces confusion about which sessions to sign up for. You might organize your training packages by beginner, intermediate, or advanced skills for clarity. Signing up for a multi-session training package creates a greater commitment in the customer and keeps them returning to your pet store, which may lead to more purchases.

It may be helpful to offer both group classes and one-on-one sessions, depending on the preference of the customer and their pet.

5. Market Your Pet Training Services

Don’t expect customers to just stumble into your store and ask about pet training — you need to actively generate awareness and interest in your store’s training services. Using a variety of marketing channels helps you reach a wide audience. Explore digital marketing, print materials, in-person promotion, and partnerships.

Promote your training services on your website and on social media sites like Instagram and Facebook. Use printed ads to promote your training services in your pet store and create flyers to post around the community.

Promote your training services in person by attending community events. Talk to members of your community about what sets your pet store apart from the competition and how your training services benefit your pet. Partnerships with local veterinary clinics or pet shelters can also help you promote your store and your training services.

Related Read: 7 Marketing Ideas for Pet Stores

6. Seek Customer Feedback

To keep customers coming back, you need more than just quality products. Customers need to have a good experience and trust in your brand. Seeking feedback from customers both in person and digitally helps you gauge if your products and services are resonating with customers and their pets and where you can improve.

When you interact with customers in your pet store, ask them which products their pets like and whether their training sessions have been effective. Listen to their responses and consider their advice. If you keep getting the same suggestions for a new product or service or an adjustment you could make, it may be a good idea to implement it.

Send customers emails and text messages with links to leave Google reviews, or send out surveys to collect data. Look through this data and find insights that can help you refine your business strategy.

7. Leverage Technology

Developments in technology have opened up business opportunities that didn’t exist previously. Utilizing technology allows you to serve more customers and better organize your business’ data.

The best way to put technology to work for your business is to implement a point of sale (POS) system. Cloud-based POS systems offer a variety of features, including payment processing, inventory management, marketing tools, e-commerce, and more.

A solid POS system also has features for memberships and subscription services. Use these features to record customer data, so you can keep track of who has signed up for training programs and when. This prevents mistakes and confusion and creates a seamless experience for the customer.

You could also use digital meeting programs to hold virtual training sessions for a customer and their pet. If a customer lives far away or can’t make it to an in-person meeting, a digital meeting allows their pet to stay on track with its training.

Implement Retail Pet Training With eTailPet

Offering retail pet training opens new doors for your business. It creates a new stream of revenue and builds customer loyalty. By doing your research, creating a quality training experience for customers, and effectively publicizing these services, you can grow your customer base and increase profits at your pet store.

To help you manage pet training and the many other aspects of your small business, you need a POS system. eTailPet is specifically designed for pet stores with all the features you need to best serve your customers. This all-in-one system automates tasks you would otherwise do by hand, empowering you to take your small business to the next level. Contact us today to schedule a demo!