How to Make Consistent Sales With Your Dog Walking Business

The most common question is from many, many of you who are wondering how they can make consistent sales with their pet sitting or dog walking business.

Always Be Marketing.

My answer is always to be marketing so you always have clients. ABM. What does this mean? This means that you need to market your business to attract ideal clients to your company consistently. Most pet sitters I speak to aren’t marketing at all, and if they are marketing, they’ll do some things here or there.

They may lose a bunch of customers and then run out and do some drive-by marketing where they’re going to run out and do some stuff. And then the marketing stops.

Create a marketing plan, then add it to your marketing calendar.

As the business owner, petpreneur, visionary, and CEO of your company, it’s your responsibility to create a marketing plan and then add it to your marketing calendar. You are implementing a marketing strategy every Monday through Friday for your business.

We call this the Marketing Power wheel in my Multiply Mastermind program and my Launch and Grow program. I have all my students print it off and tape it up where they can see it. These are the marketing activities that they are told to do on a regular and consistent basis.

If they do that, they will regularly and consistently attract clients to their business.

Always be marketing, so you always have clients. It is a weekly task in your business. It’s not something you do here or there. Now, if you are stuck trading hours for dollars working in your business, you still need to build your team, and you don’t have any clients, or you don’t have any time to attract new clients, that’s an issue in itself.

That means you’re now the bottleneck in the business, and major business activities that need to be happening aren’t happening, and then your business is suffering, and it doesn’t grow.

Step into the petpreneurial role.

Understand that your job is to market on a consistent basis. Always be marketing, so you always have clients. It’s as simple as that.

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Implement Two Follow-up Systems in Your Pet Sitting Business

One of the greatest opportunities overlooked by pet sitters or service-based business owners is the fortune in the follow-up. My suggestion for you is to create two follow-up systems.

For Prospective Customers

One for prospective customers, so people that have expressed interest in working with you, whether they emailed you, called you, filled out a form, reached out on Facebook, they have somehow said, “Ooh, this sounds good. Let me learn more.” Those are your prospective customers.

For Existing Customers

People who have used you in the past have already raised their hand and said, “Yes, I want to work with you.”

If you have a system in place following up with them regularly, giving them advice about pet care, putting in reminders to book service or incentives to book service, you’re just consistently keeping in touch and following up with these people; you are drastically going to increase the rate that your existing customers book from you.

So two systems. One for prospective customers, people that have said, “Yes, I’m interested.” And, of course, the people who have already said yes need to be reminded. You will get many more bookings if you send out these reminders and touchpoints.

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4 Strategies to Increase the Average Transaction Value

Today, our business growth video is four strategies to increase the average transaction value. You may be wondering what that means. The goal is simple, to get customers to spend more with your pet sitting business on every transaction.

The simplest way to do this is to raise your rates.

You can also offer them products and services that will truly serve them and give them fantastic value when they’re using your service. So strategy number one is the obvious one, you can raise your rates.

Create add-on services.

Think about what your customers need while they’re at work or traveling apart from the pet sitting. Think about different things they can add to their pet sitting invoice. Think supply pick up or a pet taxi service, or a pooper scooper service or a vacuuming service, or if you’re a dog trainer, offering those services in addition to the pet sitting, same with grooming.

Sell products that would benefit their pets.

If you love a line of pet products like holistic pet care products, you can add this revenue stream to your business. Or maybe there are tools that you love, like a gentle harness that you couldn’t live without or poop bags. You can then sell those products to your customers, which would increase the transaction value.

Offer packages and discounted packages.

You might be thinking, “Well, that’s going to be less money,” but no, not actually. If you package your services and give your clients discounts when they buy in bulk like that, they will be incentivized to book more.

They may only book three visits a day, but if you have a four visit package where all the visits are discounted, they will go with the four visit package, which results in more money and a higher transaction value for your business.

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Set Your Dog Walking Business Apart From Your Competition

In the Launch & Grow Program, I talk about the importance of purple cowing your dog walking business. What I mean by that is making yourself stand so far apart from your competition that you’re the only logical choice in your market.

Think of an amazing offer that’s different from others.

Now, purple cow, I did not come up with that statement that Seth Godin coined. He has a concise book; if you’re interested in reading it, you can check that out. But think about what would be amazing that you could offer that’s just different from “Hi, I’m going to come to your house and walk your dog for 30 minutes.” Think about what you could package. Think about what you could include. Think about things you could do to make your customers go; “wow, this business is awesome, and they are who I want to hire.”

Survey your audience.

After putting all of your unique ideas down on paper, you can survey your audience. You can use a tool like SurveyMonkey, or a free one is Google Forms. Shoot that out to your current customers and say, what would it include if I could wave a magic wand to do the perfect business for you? Or what would it look like?

List Unique Selling Propositions.

The best ideas come from the customers that you already service. Then I want you to organize everything that makes you special, everything that makes you unique, into a list. We call these your unique selling propositions, and it’s just a list of what makes your business special.

I put a lot of time and effort into my list, create your own, organize them into a list, and include that on your marketing materials. If you visit my website at pet-nanny.net and see what sets us apart, you can check out my USPs. Do not copy them, please.

People want to know why they should hire you. In my programs, I teach my students to create a premium service that attracts premium clients who will pay the premium pricing, which is a crucial step.

So, how do you purple cow your dog walking business? Survey your audience, ask for ideas, organize your unique selling propositions into a checklist and put those on your website and marketing materials.

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Create a Meet Your Pet Sitter Automation

One of the first things that I teach my students in my Launch and Grow program is the importance of creating the know, like, and trust factor with your pet sitter prospects and your customers.

People like doing business with people. In the in-home, pet sitting industry, you are going into clients’ homes, or your team of pet sitters are going into clients’ homes. These people need to fully trust you and your team before they’re going to raise their hand and say, “Yes, let’s do this.”

I have each pet sitter record a video introducing themselves.

One of the easiest ways I’ve done this when I grew my team is I have my pet sitters record a video of themselves, introducing themselves. They share why they join the Pet Nanny Team and explain what their pet care values are.

When I assign the pet sitter to a client, they receive an email with the video and a full writeup before their registration meeting. So that will immediately create the know, like, and trust factor with their assigned sitter and break the ice before the sitter even rings the doorbell for the meeting.

Sign up for an automation tool.

You want to sign up for an automation tool like Active Campaign or MailChimp or Infusionsoft/Keap which I use. There are lots of different options out there for creating automations. We go deep into that in my multiply mastermind program. I give six of my most used automations, three of my best marketing, three of my best hiring automations in the program.

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Amazing Pet Sitting Customer Experiences

Please think about your pet sitting customer journey from start to finish. And I want you to think about it from the moment that the customer makes contact with you. It could be the moment they land on your website, or this could be when they call the office.

Create the know, like, trust factor through video on your homepage.

First, let’s talk about the website. Are you creating the know, like, and trust factor through video on your homepage so that if a prospect hits your website and they say, “Oh, let me click play. Oh, wow. This is great.” And you talk about your services; you talk about the value you provide, talk about the benefits, talk about how you are the solution to their problems.

That right away is going to give you a step up above the pet sitting competition. Is your messaging clear? Do your contact forms work? Is your number clickable? Everybody’s on mobile these days. They need to go boop and touch the phone number and have the phone call.

I know that seems so simple, but how many times have you been to a website, and you’re like, “I can’t call the person.” Very simple. Make sure the phone number is clickable.

Load your pet sitting website with social proof from happy customers.

Social proof is free, and it, again, creates that know, like, and trust factor, and it’s going to portray to your prospect that you are the person they want to do business with.

Make sure every website link is going to the right place.

If I sign up for your free offer on your website, is the email being sent? I can’t tell you how many companies I’ve worked with that have that opt-in offer on their website, but then nothing happens on the back end. That’s not a good first impression, especially when they leave you in the trust with their animals and their homes.

Make sure someone answers the phone.

That is a big one, and I have a manager, my client happiness manager, and she is supposed to answer the phone, and if she doesn’t answer the phone, she’s to call back within five minutes. That’s the deal.

If you’re not answering the phone, if you’re the admin and you’re out walking dogs, how long is it taking you to get back to your customer prospects? This is part of the journey. Every five minutes that you let lapse before calling a new customer prospect back, your chances of signing them on as a client drops significantly, so keep that in mind.

Be friendly on the phone.

I had a student once, and we were doing a coaching call, and she just sounded miserable. And people would call her office, and she wasn’t signing clients. I said, “Is this the tone of voice that you’re using when you’re speaking with your clients?” She said, “Yeah. What’s wrong with my tone of voice?”

I’m like, “Well, it’s not very welcoming or friendly.” I was scared to death. It was just a cold feeling. Remember, they are trusting us with their homes and their pets. They want to feel that you are warm, and friendly, and approachable and that they can trust you.

Listen and take good notes.

We all know that everybody loves to talk about their pets. It would be best if you sat back, listen to your customers, write down notes so that you have a clear understanding of precisely what they’re looking for. And say it back to them. Let them know that, “Yes, I am listening to you. I hear what you are saying.” That’s going to go a long way.

Have an easy system or process for customers to get started.

They say, “Okay. This is great. How do I get started?” Is it easy? Always want to make it easy for them to buy from you.

Set clear expectations of what is to happen next.

“Okay, we have you all signed up. This is what’s going to happen next. Your assigned pet care professional will be reaching out to you within” enter the time period.

“You’re also going to be receiving an email that’s going to tell you all about them. X, Y, and Z. You’re also going to receive a welcome packet in your inbox. There are two sets in that welcome packet. Number one. Please fill out the forms. Number two. Update your billing information.” So on and so forth.

They know exactly what their responsibility is and what they can expect on your side.

Reach out to your customers before they depart.

If you are reaching out, how is that? Is it an automated process through an email autoresponder? Are you picking up the phone or calling them?

Regardless, you do want to make that touchpoint. This is going to give them peace of mind, “Okay, this company is on it.”

Do you have prepared information on how they can prepare for their pet sitting, dog walker, or house sitter? With a simple checklist PDF that they can go, “Oh, this is great information.” They can put it on the counter and make sure they have everything ready.

You’re taking the pressure off of them because you’re giving them exactly what they need to do to prepare for their sitter.

Keep in touch with your customers while they’re away.

If so, how? Do they request how? Did you ask how they want to be kept in touch with? Do they want text messages? Do they want videos? Do they want emails? Do they want phone calls?

You need to set that expectation that you need to ask them first and then follow through with how they want to be communicated with. We had a client once who the sitter was texting every visit with cute pictures, and he was like, “Stop texting me. I am on the beach trying to relax. I do not need to be texted.”

Right there, I went to their onboarding form, and I said, “How do you like to be kept in touch with?” I give them the options. I don’t want to bother my customers who don’t want to be bothered, but if they do want to be bothered, I want to be sending those messages. Make sense?

When a client returns, make sure they were happy with the service.

When they return, what is left for them at the final visit? What are they walking into? Do you reach out or send a survey to make sure they were pleased?

Every time a client ends service with me, they are receiving a survey because I want to make sure they were happy with their pet sitter. And if anything was out of the ordinary or anything went wrong, I want to know so that I can make it better.

What are you doing to Wow them?

Are you sending them a card? Is the sitter leaving a handwritten thank you note for allowing him or her to take care of their pets? Are they leaving a little bag of homemade biscuits? There are a million different things that you can do to really wow your customers.

Stay in touch when they are not actively using your service.

Are you keeping in touch with them? Are you providing value to them with interesting or helpful content? Are you checking in with their furry pals? Are you making quick phone calls, or sending short text messages, or sending a send-out card, “Hey, it’s Colleen from Pet Nanny. I haven’t heard from you guys in a while. I just wanted to see how doctor Watson’s doing. We miss him so much. Let us know if you need anything; we’re always here to help. With warm wags, Colleen.” Something like that. You can do that so easily through sendoutcards.com.

Are you reminding them about upcoming holidays when they may need service?

This is the whole journey. From the time they hit the website, they call the office, how they sign up, is it easy to buy from you? Before they depart, while they’re away, when they return, and while they’re not actively using your service.

I tell you, if you do improve it, this is where you are going to set yourself apart from the rest. I see in so many pet sitting groups there are so many pet sitters, “How am I going to make a living doing this?” This is how.

You’re going to attract amazing customers; you’re going to provide genuinely stellar service; they are going to use you over and over again. They’re going to refer you all over town, and this is when business becomes easy.

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4 Ways to Increase Sales in Your Pet Sitting Business

I get a million questions about marketing and how do I make more money? We tend to over-complicate things. It’s pretty simple.

1. Increase the number of new customers you bring to your business.

This is where you want to have a sales system where you are getting your pet sitting business, messaging, and offers out in front of new people and adding new people to your customer list.

2. Increase customer frequency.

It means getting your current customers to book from you more frequently. Again, you need to have a sales system to incentivize and remind your existing customer list to book service from you.

It’s also the most forgotten practice in business. You have a customer list. These are the people that are willing and ready to buy from you.

3. Increase average transaction value.

Having your customers spend more money each time they book from you. Well, how do you do this?

Don’t just offer the basic 30-minute visit. Go to my website at petnannymainline.com, and you go to the services page, you will see that I offer a wide array of services, from 15, 30, 45 minutes, 60-minute, two-hour visits.

Plus, we have an entire menu of add-on services, or we call them concierge services. So when our customers are traveling, we will not only do the pet-sitting, dog-walking, and house sitting, but we will take care of an array of things that they need to be done in their home to keep things running smoothly for them. This will increase the average customer transaction.

4. Lastly, increase profit margin.

Increase your profit margins, meaning you need to make more with each visit booked. How do you do this? You can streamline and lower your expenses, or you can raise your rates.

Think about your compensation schedule for your sitters, as well. That’s another way to increase your profit margins.

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9 Steps to Professionally Handle Negative Feedback or Reviews About Your Pet Sitting Business

Our brain is wired to protect and keep us safe. When confronted with any type of criticism or negative feedback, we go into fight, flight, or freeze mode. Our mental barriers go up, and we feel it in our bodies. We feel anxious, angry, and we feel threatened. These are all normal.

Below are nine tips on how you can professionally handle negative feedback due to your pet sitting business’s online reviews.

#1 Take a breath. Don’t immediately react.

Take a breath and don’t react. My manager, Michael, gave me a rule to not respond to an email that made me angry for 24 hours. Once the 24-hours lapse, I have a different outlook on how I am going to respond.

#2 Reread the review or email at least three times.

You probably don’t want to but take the time to read it through, make sure you understand it, and let it sink in.

#3 Think of the feedback as a learning tool.

Remember, your most unhappy customers are your most significant source of learning.

Ask yourself, “What did this customer expect? Why did they expect it? Where was the misunderstanding? Why did it occur? What changes can I make to ensure that this never happens again?”

Try to put yourself into your customer’s shoes and viewpoint. It is going to help you immensely.

#4 Compose a professional and polite online response.

Also, include thanks and appreciation in your response for bringing the matter to your attention.

I had a negative Yelp review years ago from a guy who was actually in the wrong. I rose above the situation and wrote an extremely professional response. So many customers called the office and said, “Oh, I saw your response on Yelp. You seem like a wonderful person and I want to work with you.”

#5 Respond offline with a phone call to ask questions and discuss the issues.

Call your customer to have a heart to heart talk and discuss the issues. Once you have resolved the problems, you can post again online and comment on how you agreed to the outcome with your customer.

#6 Request that fake or misleading reviews be removed.

If you believe a review is from a past employee, who is angry with you for some reason, you can request to Facebook, Google, Yelp, or any other review site that it be removed.

I once discharged a woman who was in my Pet Nanny Coach Community Facebook page. She created a fake profile and posted an outrageous review on my page. I contacted Facebook, and they immediately took the review down.

#7 Go the extra mile by sending a care package to the pets.

You may also want to offer a 100% refund. If my company or sitter is in the wrong, I will always give a 100% refund. We also follow up with a care package to the pets.

In my opinion, even if we believe that we were in the right, I still think that having the last touchpoint with the customer be positive.

There will be customers that are just pains in the you know what, and you don’t want to send them anything. That’s understandable. I have not sent the care package as well in other situations.

But in some cases, you might find that it’s warranted and may make you feel better about the situation. It might land better with the customer that’s unhappy so that they’re not spreading negative feedback to other people about your business — something to think about.

You can use a company like sendoutcards.com, where you can easily send a greeting card attached to a care package. Etsy.com is another good way too.

#8 Encourage your happy customers to write reviews.

Create a system out of this. We send out a survey after every single pet sitting service, asking for feedback.

If the feedback’s positive, you can ask then politely, “Hey, would you mind sharing this on Yelp? Or would you mind sharing this on Google? I want to spread the word about my company, and I want to attract amazing customers like you.”

We also have a system where my manager regularly sends a personalized email to two customers once a week. It’s a great way to build up your reviews.

#9 Separate criticism from judgment.

Try not to take it personally. It can be tough since we are animal people. We have a lot of love in us, so when people come at us, we feel hurt, and it’s easy to take it personally.

Do your best to try to remedy the situation. If you are not wrong, know it’s about them, not about you, and just try to separate that. It’ll just be easier on your mind and your soul.