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11 Ways To Generate Trust With Your Pet Sitting Customers and Prospects

The best piece of advice I can give you for owning a pet sitting business is to create a reputation for yourself and for your business as being “trustworthy.” In this industry, our customers are in essence, giving the keys to their homes to complete strangers. They’re basically saying, “Come on in (while I’m not here) and take care of my precious pals and worldly treasures.” If you think of it from this perspective, you can see how hiring a pet sitting service is a very scary thing for our customers. It is your job to show your pet sitting customers and customer prospects that you and your business can be trusted implicitly. So, how do you create trust with your pet sitting customers and prospects? Here are 11 ways…

#1. Owning a pet sitting business requires a professional website

  • You literally have 3 seconds to make an impression on your website visitors. If you have a poorly designed and unprofessional looking site, it’s going to be a serious detriment to your credibility and will most likely result in lost opportunities.

#2. Include your business phone number at the top of every page on your website

  • Phone numbers that are front and center invoke trust.
  • Answer the phone when it rings! People will feel immediately comfortable if they know they can get a live person on the phone when they call.

#3. Post your credentials on your website by including the logos to associations for which you are affiliated

#4. Crush them with social proof!

  • Showcase the positive experiences of others who have used your pet sitting service. The more the better! If you only have a few, don’t let that stop you. You have to start somewhere.
  • Dedicate an entire page for your positive reviews. Here is an article on how to use social proof when owning a pet sitting business.

#5. Make it personal

  • People trust people. Showcase who you are on your About Us page. Tell your story on this page and be sure to include a picture or a video, so people can connect with you.

owning a pet sitting business

#6. Have a Meet Our Team Page

  • Your prospects will feel more at ease if they can visually see who will be coming into their homes. I suggest using video, but at the very least, include a picture and write-up of each team member.

#7. Have a blog on your website

  • Fresh and relevant content, for which your prospects will find valuable, is not only good for search engine optimization, but it also shows that your business is alive and kicking, which breeds trust.

#8. Include a Privacy Policy

  • Be clear about what you will and will not do with any personal data you collect. Make it easy to read.
  • You can have one generated for you by Ibuenda.

#9. Clearly communicate what your customers can expect from your services

Be crystal clear on exactly what your customers can expect from using your service. Click To Tweet

This is the knowledge-bomb!

  • Don’t ever promise anything that you can’t deliver on. It is better to under-promise and over-deliver.
  • Lay out your Polices and Procedures and be sure they understand all of them.
  • Let them know exactly when they will hear from their sitter to schedule their registration meeting.
  • Let them know exactly how they will hear from their sitter when they are gone.
  • Let them know how you will communicate with them.
  • Let them know exactly what will happen at each and every visit or house sitting stay.
  • Let them know how you will follow-up with them.
  • Let them know how they can schedule and how long they can expect for a service order to be processed.
  • MANAGE THEIR EXPECTATIONS! If you deliver on what you promised, they will trust you and they in turn will spread the word.

#10. Offer a Guarantee

  • Offering a guarantee will alleviate your customer’s sense of risk.
  • Pet Nanny offers a 100% money-back guarantee. I know that we offer superior service, so I’m not worried about people cashing in on this offer, and if a sitter does mess-up, I want to give my customer’s their money back. Why should they pay for a service they didn’t receive?
  • You may from time to time come across an unscrupulous individual, who is purposely trying to take advantage. When you do come head to head with this person, give them the refund and chalk it up as the cost of doing business (I’ll tell you a good story about this at a later time.)

#11. Keep in touch on a regular and consistent basis

  • Creating a “Stay-In-Touch Marketing Plan” will help to keep you top-of-mind with your customers and customer prospects, but it also essential for owning a pet sitting business. When your customers can rely on the fact that they will hear from you on a consistent basis, they also know they can rely on you to take care of their most prized possessions.

 Your Homework Assignment:

  1. Go to your website as if you were a first time visitor and ask yourself, “would I trust me based on this website?” If the answer is no, it’s time to revamp your site.
  2. Start to implement some or all of these 11 ways to generate trust with your pet sitting customers.

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3 Low Cost Marketing Strategies For Professional Pet Sitters

First, I need you to understand that you must think of spending money as professional pet sitters as an investment. For example, say you spent $50 in a month on Google AdWords and those ads brought you in only 1 new client and the lifetime value of a new client is $1,000. You can easily see how that $50 is money well spent. You paid Google to bring you that new client, which you may not have gotten without them and you can expect that on average, that client will spend $1000 with you over their lifetime of using your service. Make sense? Investing in your business is a good thing. That being said…

There are some very effective low cost marketing strategies for professional pet sitters.

professional pet sitters

 #1. Get a website

Nowadays you can create a website for free and pay less than $1 per month for hosting, so there is no excuse why in the digital age we live in, you should not have a business website!

For FREE websites try, Tumblr, DoddleKit or WordPress.

Here is a video on how to easily create a free Tumblr blog site.

Here is a video on how to create a website using WordPress.

For inexpensive hosting, here is a list of the cheapest hosting companies.

 #2. Crush them with social proof.

Testimonials are one of my favorite low cost marketing tools, because they cost you nothing and they do all the selling for you.

Create a page on your website dedicated solely to rave reviews and direct your client prospects there. You can also create your own PDF handout with your very best testimonials. If you want to get fancy, go to www.fiverr.com and have someone create an attractive PDF for you. $5 is serious low-cost!

 #3. Send out a Warm Letter

A Warm Letter is a personal letter written by you to everyone in your address book. Your letter should be “warm” and it should tell your peeps all that’s going on with your business and the best way for them to refer you.

Make sure that the letter is written to the person (don’t make it general) and sign the letter. You can use a Word Doc Mail Merge to personalize the letters. Again, if you don’t know how to do a mail merge, go to www.fiverr.com, search for “mail merge” and hire someone to do it for $5. When choosing who to hire to do your work, make your choice based on their user rating. They can also create your mailing labels template from your list of contacts. Fiverr gives you the ability to have tasks like this completed for next to nothing, so there is no reason you should waste an entire day trying to figure out how to do it on your own.

Your Homework Assignment:

  1. If you don’t have a website, go get one. A website is an absolute business must-have!
  2. Start collecting testimonials from your clients and post them on your website and package them in an attractive PDF handout.
  3. Write a warm letter and mail it to your contacts.

Howdy, Pet Lover! Are you struggling with attracting new clients to your pet sitting business? Would you like to have a consistent pipeline of new clients coming to your business? Well, wait no longer, my friend. Grab my FREE report, 125 Ways To Get More Pet Sitting Clients. This resource is 100% FREE and is my gift to you. Enjoy!
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Think BIG & Dream BIGGER

You must set high goals for yourself to achieve great things in life

When I speak to a client about how much money they want to make in their pet sitting business, I am shocked at the answers that I receive.  The responses usually range anywhere from $30,000 to $75,000.  That’s an average of $52,500 per year for what these businesses hope and wish they could make. I find this not only shocking but also sad. You see, you must set high goals for yourself to achieve great things in life, and with all of these pet sitting business owners setting the bar so low for themselves, it’s no wonder there are so few profitable pet sitting businesses out there.

I‘m here to tell you that you CAN make so much more in your business and that you don’t have to play small. You can create a greatly prosperous and professionally fulfilling pet sitting business. I know that it may not seem possible, but I can tell you from experience that it is! By creating systems and leverage techniques you can ignite your pet sitting business into a moneymaking machine. First, you must change your mindset: 

You must think BIGGER, dream BIGGER and BELIEVE that you can do it. Then you have to do the work.

My personal business coach, Fabienne Fredrickson, shared with me a paragraph from Louise Hay’s book “You Can Heal Your Life.” This excerpt has resonated with me and hopefully it will do the same for you.

“I love the visualization of standing at the seashore looking out at the vast ocean and knowing that this ocean is the abundance that is available to me. Look down at your hands and see what sort of container you are holding. Is it a teaspoon, a thimble with a hole in it, a paper cup, a glass, a tumbler, a pitcher, a bucket, a washtub, or perhaps you have a pipeline connected to this ocean of abundance? Look around you and notice that no matter how many people there are and no matter what kind of container they have, there is plenty for everyone. You cannot rob another, and they cannot rob you. And in no way can you drain the ocean dry. Your container is your consciousness, and it can always be exchanged for a larger container.”

Think BIG & Dream BIGGER quote

After I read this I looked at myself and realized that I was carrying only a small pitcher. I wanted to make money, but I was content with “just enough.” That was the thought that I constantly told myself. (You have to start becoming keen to the sabotaging thoughts that go through your mind.) It wasn’t until I shifted my mindset and asked the universe to triple my income that the right opportunities started to present themselves. It’s strange how the universe works. “Ask and you shall receive.” It’s so true.

Your Homework Assignment:

Picture yourself on the shoreline, feet in the sand, looking out at our vast ocean of abundance. What’s in your hands? Now, change that mental picture to that large pipeline. Next start writing the goals down as if you have already received them and are so grateful. Remember, you can’t ask for too much because you can never exhaust the supply of abundance that is available to you.

  1. I’m so happy and grateful that I received 5 new clients this week. I’m so grateful! Thank you universe!
  2. I’m so happy and grateful that I hired 2 new fabulous, responsible pet sitters this week. I’m so happy and grateful. Thank you universe!
  3. I’m so happy and grateful that I made an additional $50,000 in revenue this year.

You get the picture. Be specific as possible and always be grateful for it. Without that element you won’t get very far. Remember, you are the only person that can set the limits. Think BIG, dream BIG and BELIEVE you can do it. I believe in you.

Here is one of my actual goal cards

Hey there, Newbie Pet Sitter! Are you feeling stuck or overwhelmed with starting your pet sitting business? Fret no longer, my friend. I’ve got ya covered!

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The Struggle of Hiring Pet Sitters

Why is hiring pet sitters a problem for some business owners?

One of the most common problems discussed by my students or in my Facebook group is the struggle of hiring pet sitters to grow their business. Sometimes even the thought of hiring a team is too scary and so they decide to stay small, stay working for themselves, being a sole proprietorship.

Then some people take the leap and try to find good people, but they run into issues getting reliable sitters which leads them to give up and go back to running a one-person show.

As we know, there are only so many hours for dollars that you can trade in a single day. So, you’re automatically putting a ceiling over your head with how much revenue you can build in your pet sitting business.

To make a substantial income in this industry, you need to leverage yourself through a team of heart-centered pet care professionals that are going to take stellar care of your client’s pets.

Hiring Pet Sitters

Now, hiring is difficult. It is hard. I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that something’s easy when it’s not.

Finding good people is something that we work on daily at Pet Nanny-Pet Sitters of The Main Line. We have a system for hiring and we’ve used it consistently to grow the team and the business.

There are two steps I want you to take if you want to get serious and grow an amazing team of pet care professionals.

1. Create an attraction system

First,  you need to create a system where you are continuously attracting potential sitters so that you can pick the best candidates for your business.

Your time is precious which means you want to make sure you weed out the applicants who will not work before you even have your first initial interview with them.

2. Test potential sitters at the interview stage

Then you need to have a second system for the interview process to see how your new sitter would perform in different situations.

Their work is going to be a direct reflection on your pet sitting business, therefore, you need to be happy with how they work before you hire them for your company.

Also, this needs to be part of your regular daily business practices. You can’t say, “Okay, I really need sitters,” and then just hope and pray that a resume lands in your inbox.

You need to constantly have a system on autopilot where you are getting the message out that you’re hiring and you’re looking for great people. This leads to interviewing on a weekly basis and putting people through your systems on a weekly basis. That is how you build an amazing team. Yes, it is challenging, but don’t let that stop you from growing.

Currently, we have 40 pet sitters at Pet Nanny-Pet Sitters of The Main Line and we still have weekly meetings discussing where we’re going to find people. In this way, we have grown the most amazing team and the most amazing business.

So, if this is what you want to do, don’t let fear hold you back from hiring pet sitters. Create the attraction system, create the hiring system, make it part of your daily business practices, and you will be able to do it.

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Stay-In-Touch With Your Pet Sitting Customers

If you want repeat business from your pet sitting customers, you MUST stay-in-touch with them

Before my business coach taught me this concept, it really never occurred to me. In my naive mind I only thought about marketing as a way to bring in new business. I certainly didn’t think about marketing as a way to create repeat business. This was not smart thinking!

Stay Top of Mind With Stay-in-Touch Marketing

The idea behind stay-in-touch marketing is to always be “top of mind” with your ideal pet sitting customers. Meaning, you want to be the very first person they think of when they’re in need of pet care or they hear of someone else who is in need of pet care. Most pet sitting business owners take this for granted and just assume that their past clients will call them. This is not always the case. By keeping in touch with your customers you can count on the fact that they will think of you when the need arises.

Stay-In-Touch Marketing Builds “The Know, Like and Trust Factor” With Your Pet Sitting Customers

There’s that “know, like and trust” thing again that I’m always harping about. If you stay-in-touch with your pet sitting customers, over time you will build a relationship with them. During your communications with them, they are learning more about you and will ultimately come to trust you and your pet sitting business implicitly. If you continue to build these solid relationships with your pet sitting customers, you will never have to worry again about the phone ringing. I can promise you this!

Stay-in-Touch Marketing Increases Your Pet Sitting Customers Lifetime Value (LTV)

What is the lifetime value of a customer? In short, it is the projected revenue that a customer will spend during their time with your business.

An easy math equation that you can use to figure this out is to divide your lifetime gross revenue by the # of lifetime revenue-generating customers.

LTV= Lifetime gross revenue ÷ # of lifetime generating clients.

By simply staying-in-touch with your customers, you will drastically increase the LTV of your pet sitting customers.

Here are some ways for you to stay-in-touch:

  • Ezine
  • Direct mail campaign: birthday cards, pet birthday cards, warm letter etc.
  • Handwritten notes: congratulations, sympathies etc.
  • Gifts: birthday, pet birthday, baby etc.

Remember, you don’t have to touch base with your pet sitting customers for a specific reason. You can always reach out to them just to let them know you’re thinking about them and their pets.

 Stay in Touch With Your Pet Sitting Customers

Your Homework Assignment: Create a system for staying-in-touch with your pet sitting customers. Who are you going to reach out to this week? Write their names down and get moving! If you are always consistent with this marketing strategy, you will always have clients.

Howdy, Pet Lover! Are you struggling with attracting new clients to your pet sitting business? Would you like to have a consistent pipeline of new clients coming to your business? Well, wait no longer, my friend. Grab my FREE report, 125 Ways To Get More Pet Sitting Clients. This resource is 100% FREE and is my gift to you. Enjoy!
  •  

YES! Send Me The Complete Checklist of 125 ways to get more PET SITTING CLIENTS!

 

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How To Track Your Pet Sitting Business Growth

“If you want to make more in your pet sitting business it is crucial that you track and record your income.” 

This was a concept I learned a few years back and I have found it to most certainly be true. In my experience what you track closely and consistently will continuously grow month to month in your pet sitting business. This is such a simple concept, but I promise you, if you implement this tip, I bet you will see the same result.

What you track closely and consistently will continuously grow month to month. Click To Tweet

There are things that you should be tracking each and every month in your pet sitting business, in order to bring more to you. If you’re unsure of what exactly you should be tracking, my advice to you is track everything you want to see GROW, starting with your income.

As the owner of your business it is important that at the end of each and every month you track and record certain numbers and stats and compare them to your past months and past years numbers.

This will give you an unbelievable sense of accomplishment. Sometimes, I’m astounded at the massive growth we experience in a certain month and it feels good to give my team and myself a well-deserved pat on the back.

Other times, I may notice a slump in sales in a certain area of my business, but this gives me notice to ramp up my marketing in that area.

Ok, so what is it you should be tracking each month? Here are 3 basic areas you can start tracking immediately to get the ball rolling.

#1. Total New Clients

Then break that number into categories.

  • New Mid Day Clients
  • New Pet Sitting Clients
  • New House Sitting Clients

#2. Total Monthly Revenue

Then break that number into categories.

  • Mid Day Walking Revenue
  • Pet Sitting Revenue
  • House Sitting Revenue

#3. Total Web Form Submissions

These are the forms that you should have on your website, that gives your visitors/prospects an easy way to contact you and take the next step.

  • Become a Client Submissions
  • Request a Quote Submissions
  • Lead Magnet/Opt-in Offer Submissions

How to Track Your Pet Sitting Business Growth

Here’s an image of my basic spreadsheet, which helps me track my pet sitting business growth.

pet sitting business

Your Homework Assignment: Create an Excel, Numbers or Google Worksheet, broken down into the categories I have listed for you and track these numbers every single month. If you don’t have web forms on your web site, get web forms on your web site. Finally, celebrate your growth!

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Use a Facebook Group to Manage Your Team of Pet Sitters

Improve communication across the team with this useful tool

If like me, you have a large number of people on your pet sitting team, sometimes you feel out of touch with them. This is especially true if you have a manager in between you and the rest of the team.

At Pet Nanny of the Main Line we have a large team of 40 sitters, they are out working every day and I have very little communication with them on a day-to-day basis.

But it’s important that we keep a connection with our staff so that everyone is working from the same page and understands the company’s expectations. Even our best sitters sometimes make mistakes and need a gentle reminder of our specific policies for providing exceptional service to our clients.

One way we improved communication across the whole team was to create a private Facebook group just for our pet sitters. If you are looking for tools to manage your team of pet sitters, I recommend this free option.

Use a Facebook Group to Manage Your Team of Pet Sitters

If you are a member of my free Facebook group Pet Nanny Coach Community, you’ll see that I post a tip of the day.

It’s popular with the members and I decided to set up a similar resource for my pets sitters.

It’s a series of gentle little reminders about what to do when working for our clients.

Such as, don’t forget to check the key when you are at a registration meeting. Make sure that your first contact with a client is always via phone, not text messaging.

Check that all the doors are locked when you leave the house. Make sure that you rinse the dog bowls or cat bowls on your final visit. Don’t forget to wipe the counters.

Celebrate the small and big wins together

Another function of the Facebook group is to create a community and try to bring us all together.

When we work remotely rather than in a regular office, this virtual space is where we get to know each other and share common issues, as well as celebrate successes.

We have theme days such as “Favorite Pet Friday and we also have team meetings within the group using Facebook lives and chat.

When we want to praise a sitter who has gone above and beyond for our clients we celebrate them as “Sitter of the Month, and it inspires and encourages everyone.

It’s also a great way to quickly reach a group of pet sitters in one go. At times when we’ve needed an urgent pet visit and putting a message in the group helped identify a sitter who could respond immediately.

So, my tip for you today is Facebook groups is a great tool to manage your team of pet sitters. They’re free, you can set reminders, run meetings and communicate face-to-face using lives and group chat.

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It’s Ok to Have a Successful Pet Sitting Business

 

Success in Your Pet Sitting Business

Today, our topic is SUCCESS, which is usually a taboo topic that people don’t like to talk about. Why? I’m not quite sure, but I definitely used to be one of those people. Well today, I’m going to talk about it, because there’s nothing to be ashamed of about being successful with your pet sitting business.

Having a successful and happy life is something that I am super proud of, and part of that success comes from my amazing pet sitting business. It has brought me so many blessings both financially and emotionally. It has taught me countless things about animals, people, life and business.

Let The Haters Hate and Keep Being Awesome

I’m here to tell you today that there’s nothing wrong with you achieving success through your pet sitting businesses, and don’t you dare let the haters dim your light and your dream. You know who I mean. Those solo pet sitting business owners who don’t want to grow a team and scale their businesses (totally fine, by the way!) Some of these haters will go around saying, “Oh, she’s just in it for the money,” or “They don’t care about the animals,” or “They must provide awful service.” This is backward thinking, and negative statements made by people with limiting beliefs, and I have no time for it anymore!

Today I’m telling those people that they couldn’t be more incorrect! I can tell you from personal experience that nobody loves pets more than I do, but there came a time where I was unable to continue working the number of hours that I was working. Seven days a week, 365 days a year wasn’t a lifestyle that I wanted to lead. I was unhappy and exhausted, and by the end, I wasn’t giving the best pet care, because I was utterly burned out.

Focus on the Growth of Your Pet Sitting Business

Since I started focusing on the growth of my business and hiring heart-centered pet care professionals to join my dream team, my company has grown exponentially because they are out there providing amazing pet care and our customers rave about us and refer us all over town. I’m now also able to service many more pet owners in my community due to the excellent pet sitters on my staff.

There is no shame in my game. I am proud of my pet sitting business. It affords me the time to be able to do the things that I love like paddle and tennis. It has also given me the opportunity to be a stay at home mom with my three children, Lucy, James, and Connor. It has given me the financial freedom to own a beautiful home and take vacations. My business has been a blessing!

pet sitting business

The Equation for How to Make it Happen

If this is something that you want, I challenge you to go for it! But you have to go and get it. It’s not just going to come and fall in your lap. It takes hard work and focus. You need to learn, and you need to implement, and you need to go grab your dream.

I used to walk dogs and daydream. I would think “I would really love to have a big business. Maybe one day it’ll just happen.” That’s not the way it works! It starts in your mind, but here’s the formula:

Thoughts equal feelings which inspire your actions, which create your results.

So my advice here for you today is to take massive action in your business. Get out there, start learning. Go for it. Grow it, if that’s what you want to do. There is no shame in it.

And if you’re already out there killing it, don’t hang your head, don’t be embarrassed, and don’t let the haters out there make you feel poorly because you’ve created an awesome pet sitting business doing what you love and serving your community through your incredible business with an inspiring mission. Be proud, my friends.

10K Month Pet Sitting Blueprint Strategy Session

If you want to have a one-on-one personalized 10K Month Pet Sitting Blueprint Strategy Session with me, go to www.MeetWithColleen.com to apply. You will walk away with a personalized step-by-step framework anf action plan that I will email to you after our call.

10K Month Pet Sitting Blueprint