162: Client Education
Brought to you by Pet Sitters Associates
Summary
Did you know you’re an educator? As a pet care professional, you’re perfectly positioned to educate your community on being awesome pet parents. We’re also able to educate our clients on the range of pet care service options and the problems they solve. We discuss the importance of first educating ourselves and how to be supporting and loving to the clients we may disagree with. Natasha O’Banion answers, “How do I sell myself better?”
Topics on this episode:
Seeing ourselves as educators
Be a resource
Overcoming the ‘default’
Ask a Pet Biz Coach with Natasha O’Banion
Main takeaway: Being a resource to your clients and community means being an educator and advocating for the pets.
Links:
Pet Sitters Associates: use ‘Confessional’ at checkout
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
pet, clients, dog, pet sitter, pet owners, educating, talking, people, services, business, boarding, potential clients, problem, post, separation anxiety, solve, resource, care, owners, associates
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin, Natasha
Meghan 00:17
Hi, I'm Meghan.
00:18
I'm Collin. And this is pet sitter confessional,
Meghan 00:21
and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Hi, welcome to Episode 162.
00:32
Hello,
Meghan 00:33
thank you to our sponsors, pet sitters associates, and our amazing Patreon members like Jennifer and Sherry, thank you guys every month for supporting us financially, it really helps us out and helps us to create more shows.
Collin 00:49
We also want to take a moment and give a very, very special thank you to Jade Lovelace, who posted a video montage of her listening through our entire back catalogue, which is a truly monumental feat at this point with 161 episodes. The video showed her taking notes, and then talked about the show and the impact that it had on her life and how she was running her business. And I'm just, we were blown away blown away. I mean, we both had chills, and happy tears while we watch this, and we're just left utterly speechless by this wonderful thing that she had created.
Meghan 01:30
So thank you so much Jade, we appreciate it.
Collin 01:33
You're really why this show exists. If you missed last week's interview, it was with carbon Chavez to hasee about building a legacy business with her daughter. And then we dove into the particulars of starting and operating a franchise. This
Meghan 01:45
week, we are going to be talking about client education and the role we play. And this really has two main components that we're going to talk about. The first one is educating clients or potential clients on proper pet care and pet ownership. And the other one is educating on the need for pet services, pet sitting and dog walking, house sitting and all that we talk a lot about the importance of being a resource for our clients. And we should be all things pet care, we are educators for them. So on our branding, and our social media, and in your newsletters, if you have them, you need to be offering pet care tips, and how they can be better pet parents. It's one thing to provide information, but it's another to teach them to equip them to be better pet moms and pet dads. And as a pet sitter, you have the time and the knowledge and the community and the connections to do the groundwork and research that for most pet owners because they are busy, they don't have the time to do that. They would like that information most would most want to be better pet parents, and so they don't always have the time to sit down and research how to best provide for their pet. So we
Collin 02:56
should be taking a few minutes every week to sit down and read through pet news, pet magazines, blog articles, that specific information to stay up to date as we can on health in the best practices and new information out there.
Meghan 03:11
And pets plus magazine is really good for this as well. They have a huge Facebook group, and a lot of resources there.
Collin 03:19
So this information it might not directly relate to you and what you need to know. However, it's information your clients need. So we can take in this information we can synthesize it, we can write notes, we can document it, we can store it, and then keep it there for when we get a question from a client or when we need to write a blog article, or when we just want to start sharing this information broadly. So pet owners are asking a lot of different kinds of questions these days. Many pet owners are asking about training tips, especially potty training and chewing
Meghan 03:54
all those pandemic puppies.
Collin 03:55
We keep bringing that up. But it's gonna be a common theme over the next like year or two. Because how those puppies were brought into families, then how many felonies were completely unprepared, that's going to keep having major impacts on the industry and pet care moving forward.
Meghan 04:10
And then another huge one separation anxiety. Oh man we are dealing with as hardcore in our business right now.
Collin 04:16
Yeah, even dogs that we saw just you know, six months ago, seven months ago separations, it has even gotten worse in dogs that we knew previously. Because again, they were with their owner, so many pet owners are asking questions, how do I deal with separation anxiety? How exactly Can I start working with them so that it's not as bad
Meghan 04:34
or you know, what if you are seeing these behaviors in your pet in the clients, pets, and they the owners don't recognize that you can start talking about that on your social media. So they can say, Oh, my dog has this and I have a resource to go to for When I need help in this area. right because you don't know what you don't know and a lot of pet owners think that bad behaviors are okay yeah.
Collin 05:00
That or that it's just quote how their dog is or how the dog has always been, they don't see that it is a potential problem,
Meghan 05:06
right? jumpers, burgers, separation anxiety, some owners just don't see those behaviors as bad. And so it's really like this whole episode is going to talk about client education
Collin 05:17
owners are also asking a lot of questions around diet, there are major changes going on, as far as all natural, organic, raw, what are the off the shelf options? What can they get down at the store versus being able to purchase online? If you've taken care of more than one dog, you've probably seen that some pet owners do not have a very good diet on their dog, whether it's hot dogs and cheese or something that, you know, he would never feed your own dog in a million years. Many times we get caught up in how can we start addressing these concerns? How can we start getting client behavior to change? Well, education and outreach through our social media, just as you talked about making a blog post that you're putting out there Facebook Lives, just start putting that information out there and getting it in front of your clients, not maybe directly to them, but just start talking about it more, and you can start seeing some changes.
Meghan 06:11
And we are not saying that we have all this figured out that we have every single pet care hack and pet care tip for our pet owners at all. Oh, heavens, no. But if you don't know something, you can do the research for the pet owner if you see a major problem among your clients like separation anxiety, you can go out and and read the books and read the blogs and read from the experts on this particular topic. Because again, the pet parent may not have the time
Collin 06:35
well in two big ones that we have been seeing an awful lot of discussions about CBD and what kind of pets they're good for. What kind of anxieties what kind of behaviors CBD may or may not be good for useful for for pets?
Meghan 06:49
And does it even work,
Collin 06:50
right. And we've also seen a lot of questions around good lead or harness combinations for their particular dog and issues that they're dealing with. Again, getting back to that lease training that is so big, and you talk about behaviors that clients don't even notice. Many clients have no idea what a properly behaved dog is supposed to look like on a leash. We as the pet sitters are, are really a great resource to not point or call or shame people for how they're walking their dog. But just start putting out good information, getting good information in front of our clients, and start promoting better techniques and better ways of doing things.
Meghan 07:32
Many questions and concerns that you may encounter are more medically bent. And while most of us aren't vets or vet techs, though, many of you guys are and that's amazing. Yeah. But as pet sitters we can be the go between for our clients, we can help find that information and translate it into something that they'll understand. And we can also point pet owners to a good veterinarians to help with more specific concerns. As educators we should be reading and listening broadly, meaning that we take in a lot of information across a spectrum of viewpoints. So for dog training, so many different opinions, so many different ways to do it. You may agree with some you may not agree with others. But it's always good, just as in politics as well to get information from all sides so that you know how to defend your point and you know how the other side defends them as well.
Collin 08:22
All right, it's good to do this because sooner or later, you're going to come across a client that may have a different opinion than you hold and to work with them to properly work with them and understand we need to have an understanding of where they're coming from and their background. So you mentioned training a huge example here would be working with a client that believes prawn collars and dominance are the only way to train a puppy. And they ask you to walk with him and stay consistent now. All my previous words are now probably making our trainers finance, ears bleed, so sorry. But if you have never read into dominance theory, or how to properly or improperly use prawn collars, or why people would be interested in those at all, anything that you try and tell that client and talk to them will fall on deaf ears. So we come from a position of strength and knowledge when we can take all sides of the spectrum the entire spectrum, when we can help our clients understand and see a different viewpoint see a different angle and have a much healthier conversation with them at the end.
Meghan 09:26
Have you ever had a client and you can tell that they were way in over their head with their pet, we have an awesome opportunity to without judgment is to start sending them articles and resources that you find. So we're in this world of pet care. So sometimes it kind of breaks our brains a little bit when someone doesn't know how to leash train or potty train a dog because we're surrounded by pets all the time. So of course everyone should have this knowledge of especially if they have a dog they should know how to care for the dog. If they have a cat. They should know how to care for the cat. But those two things seem to really fluster pet parents of leash training and potty training. Some, especially if they haven't had this is their first dog that they haven't had in a while, or their first pet ever. We've had that as well. And so they're really looking to you, the pet sitter as a resource for them,
Collin 10:18
it's really easy in these kinds of situations to become frustrated with the client to just not understand them at all, and to see them sometimes as bad pet parents. However, as pet care professionals, it's our responsibility to partner with the owner, to help them to get them the resources that they need to be successful, because we want to see pets in their forever homes, and happy and healthy with a with a strong bond with their owner. So in the situations where you see a client, and you see them with their pet, and you can tell, they have no idea what they're doing, they don't see the bad behaviors, they don't care. Or maybe you just see them struggling in their their way in over their head, send them resources, talk with them openly about that, have honest conversations about that struggle about that it is hard, and then start that education process.
Meghan 11:06
When obviously being kind if you see a bad pet parent, you don't call them out and say, hey, you're not, you're not the best pet parents I've ever seen.
Collin 11:13
You do this in love. And you do it in a supportive manner? Absolutely.
Meghan 11:16
Because you want the best for the pet. So we pitch our services as making life easier for the pet owner. A huge factor in that is knowledge. So how do we do that? social media posts, that's huge. You can get in front of a large group of people pretty quickly. Obviously, the algorithms are always stacked against us. But that is a great way to broadcast that you are the expert in pet care to a lot of people. So if you enjoy going live if you enjoy putting your face out there Instagram and Facebook Lives every week talking about a new pet tip. It's also part of the like no trust factor, your potential clients are more likely to book with you if they see your face on a regular basis if they know who is behind the brand. And then another one is starting to podcast. To share your knowledge about pet care. We're starting to see a lot of pet care based podcast pop up and that is so great. It is such an awesome way to have your potential clients and your community at large to know that you are the face of pet care that you are the expert. We also include a pet tip section in our weekly newsletter to our clients. So March is pet poison Prevention Month. So each week we're talking about dangers of common household items, signs of poisoning treatments, those type of things, and now's a great time to tell you about this week's sponsor pet sitters associates.
Collin 12:43
As pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members, pet sitters associates is here to help. For over 20 years, pet sitters associates has provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. If you work in the pet care industry, which you do because you're listening to this podcast, or you want to make your passion for pets into a profession, you can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom in running your business. Learn why pet sitters associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote today at pet sit llc.com. You can get a discount when joining by clicking membership petsitter confessional and use the discount code confessional at checkout to get $10 off today. Again, check out the benefits of membership and insurance at pet sit llc.com.
Meghan 13:32
The second thing we wanted to talk about in terms of educating our clients is on the need for our services. If you are a pet sitter, dog, Walker, groomer daycare provider, pet taxi, whatever you do, you want to educate your clients. Most people would probably call this marketing and advertising and they're right as well. So broadly, this is educating potential clients to convince them that they need our services. It's a 2021. And you'd be shocked how many people have never used a pet sitter or dog walker before or even know that it's a thing. Even the single largest platform rover has only 3 million pet owners in the United States, which is really a drop in the bucket of total pet ownership right?
Collin 14:17
When you think globally and you when you think of just how many pets are out there. It really is shocking. So there's a saying and I don't know how people know this or heard of this, but the saying of everyday someone is born who's never seen the Flintstones. So never stop talking about the Flintstones.
Meghan 14:33
Okay, expand on that.
Collin 14:35
That means that there's always going to be somebody new that has never heard of the information that you are trying to share. Every single day somebody is born who has never had or used a pet sitter or a dog walker. So if something is important to us, we should never stop talking about it. That's part of marketing. That's part of educating because there will always be somebody else who needs to be told about the services that we are offering and why they need it.
Meghan 15:00
Well, that makes sense, because I feel like sometimes at least for me, posting on social media about things can get a little redundant. of Okay, every month, I am putting out a post about dog walks of what exactly they are, and why somebody should use them. Right? To me, that feels redundant. But I guess not everybody sees every post all the time. And there's always new people coming to our page. So that makes sense,
Collin 15:23
right? Or somebody just got a dog and they didn't know they didn't pay attention to your posts last month, it does. It can be pretty defeating. When you're like on talking about pet sitting again, I'm talking about dog walks again. But I did that last month, can I just post one and done? And the answer is no. Because not everybody needs it at that time. Not everybody is in a certain life situation where it is relevant to them. So that's one reason why it's very important to stay on top of this, and not feel self conscious. When we start thinking, I always put out the same information. That's good. Make sure it's good, solid information and keep talking about it. Keep putting it out there.
Meghan 15:58
We are currently doing a big push to gain more midday dog walks and dropping clients. And it really feels like we are pulling teeth here. It is so hard.
Collin 16:10
That's the whole impetus for this. This episode, really we have been going through this process and talking about, okay, we are actually in the trenches of educating people in our community about these services.
Meghan 16:23
Well, and it's really because the default mode in our area, so we live in a small town, but the default is boarding. So everybody has always taken their dog or cat to the vet, that has been the easiest option for them. And nobody's ever really thought to hire someone to come in to their home to check on their dog or to stay in their home. So a lot of people in our area are used to kennel boarding. So when they find out that we offer kennel free, small group boarding in our home, our clients get very, very excited. They don't want their dog cooped up in a kennel all day or at the vet's office where they only get taken out a few times a day, they want their dogs around our family and other dogs and out just running around free throughout the day.
Collin 17:07
So the only thing that they know or have been previously exposed to is Kindle style boarding. So part of our process now is educating people that other services do exist and they are beneficial. The
Meghan 17:20
other part is educating people about the problems those services solve that they didn't think of. So for example, sure, boarding is fine, and your pet will receive amazing personalized care with us. However, who is watching your house, who is bringing in your mail, who is making sure that everything is still standing and Okay, when you get back, drop it and solve that or how sitting solves that. And your pet feels more comfortable in their own home anyway, especially if they're older or have a lot of medications or specialized needs.
Collin 17:51
Right? Many clients only know one, maybe two things about pet care, and they've never bothered looking into any other solution to solve their problem. Why would they, they thought their problem was solved. They've always just taken their dogs to be boarded at the vet. Nothing really went wrong with them. But because they think that their problem has been solved, they've never looked for anything else. I mean, how many of us have gained a client because their first option was full or not available? Right?
Meghan 18:20
Probably alive. We have
Collin 18:22
Yeah, tons. And that never feels good. But the client found us because their problem actually wasn't solved. People only change their habits and start thinking differently when one they need to or two, if they know something different is out there. We get clients all the time that have never booked a pet sitter before because a family member always took care of it. But that family member is older now moved away or sick, or just can't do it. we capitalize on those scenarios to educate them on what a professional pet care provider brings to the table. We can be more proactive by not just advertising that we have services, but also talking about what those services are, and specifically what problems they solve.
Meghan 19:06
We recently blogged about the ins and outs of a drop in visit and then have some social media posts to go along with that pointing out all of the unique solutions and benefits that the drop in tracks would solve. So in the social media post, and in the blog, we weren't really talking about us specifically, but rather just an educational post about what the service is and who would help. Obviously, our clients would know that we would be providing those that just wasn't necessarily the point of it.
Collin 19:35
And lo and behold, we actually got a few people who had never used a pet sitter before reach out and go, Hey, I think I think I need one of those drop in
Meghan 19:44
or even some of our existing clients who were interested in possibly doing drop in checks instead of boarding. So we capitalize on those conversations and do more one on one education with them when they reach out and see how it would solve their needs. This whole drop in As an example is specific to our business right now, but your business is different. And it may be educating clients in a different way, you may be switching from dog walks and drop ins to boarding and daycare, or you may have no more midday dog walks, and you're trying to figure out some other way to market to your clients. It's all about education and solving problems that the client knows they have, but also ones that the client doesn't know they have.
Collin 20:31
I'll say a big one over the years has been clients with very elderly, pets, or maybe terminally ill pets, and they don't think they can travel and they don't think they can go places. And they don't think they can go do things, being able to come in and educate on your services, how you handle that. your background, your training, your expertise, allows them to go and travel and salt and you have solved that problem for them. But again, if they have just always thought, well, this is just a problem, this is just a burden that I have to bear, they have no need to reach out, they have no need to go and seek a pet sitter because they don't think that's possible. So through our our communicating, and our social media posts, and our blogs, and our Facebook Lives, how we share things, what we're sharing, getting in front of people that is part of this marketing and advertising, we are really educating people, we were originally really educating our clients on exactly how we can help them,
Meghan 21:29
it also goes back to the bad behaviors that some pet parents may not see. So with all the pandemic puppies with the tons of separation anxiety, if you have a puppy package, if you are a dog trainer or have some kind of training that you provide, along with your services, now is the time to capitalize on that. Because your clients may not see the terrible separation anxiety that their dog has,
Collin 21:54
or they may see it and not know that there's a solution out there. They might not know they may think, Oh, well, I've got to hire a trainer for this. I don't have time for that. Or I've got to go through all these major steps. And they don't think, well maybe I can hire somebody to come in and do a midday dogwalk many people will not think that that is a solution to that particular problem. Many people will not get there. So our job as Yes, business owners, but also pet care professionals here is connecting dots for people through information and through showing them a process that can help them as much as possible. That's really what we're coming in here. We're trying to connect dots and help people see a bigger picture, and how our services fit in with that.
Meghan 22:34
Yeah, the thing about education though, is that it takes consistency and repetition. So you can post all day on social media, and it may never worked for you or it may we just got our first Instagram lead a few days ago, and we've been posting for a while now. So it does take time with the algorithms being against us continuously. But be in it for the long haul. Education really is about putting in the hard work every day, and knowing that there will be a pay off eventually. Whether we're educated on the need for our services or how to be awesome pet parents, we need to have patience and continue to show up for our clients every day. We would love to know the ways that you have gone about educating your clients and your potential clients. You can give us a call at 636-364-8260 or if you are not up for leaving us a voicemail. You can connect with us on Instagram and Facebook at pet sitter confessions.
Collin 23:31
This week on our Ask a pet biz coach segment we asked Natasha How do I sell myself better? Yeah, I
Natasha 23:37
would say the first thing is changing your mind. So what sales actually means like sales is a great thing. I sell my toddler to go to bed every single night, right?
23:47
My husband,
23:49
amen.
Natasha 23:52
I sold my husband to marry me. I'm selling my friends to stay being my friends. You know, I sell the podcast provider to you know, continue to do business with us. We're natural relationship builders. Sales is just a human element of creating relationships or getting someone to understand that your problems can be solved with the solutions that sales literally like sales. I think people are used to like the icky, geeky bugging me stuff that they're like, oh god is salesperson annoying. But if you change your mindset on sales and understand that sales is education, one more time sales is education. If you literally stick to the script, say okay, I'm introverted, my hands get sweaty, I get nervous. I go into almost a panic attack to talk to someone. Write out your business as if you're baking a cake. This is my little trick that I've done for many, many years. All you're doing is going on Pinterest my hot spot and you're going to bake a cake. Okay, you're going to write your business out from A to Z the recipe the ingredients you need to bake a cake I need a Daily dog walker, that's a problem. This is a customer who works a lot, they can't get home to take their dog out, and they need a daily dog walker. So these are all your problems, and I have solutions. I am now a salesperson, because I am now going to provide the client education on how I can solve her problems. If she can agree with me that what her problems are that I can solve them, we have now made a sale. It's as simple as that. So just write your business out a to z form. And this is a thing about oh guy, let's go let's go at it again. Right. This is the thing I hate about meeting greets. I am like listen, you can automate the meet and greet bars, your paperwork, your contracts, all that can be automated your pre questionnaire asking those fact finding questions, maybe 10. of things that clients need to know. So where's your key located? Do you use a lockbox? Do you have a concierge? What are some things your dogs like? What do they dislike? You know, what days of the week? Do you need our services? Does our time window work for you? These are all things that clients are literally bubbling like you're in the sixth grade, and bubbling, you know what I want? Let them go ahead and bubble all this stuff before you get to their house. Because then you're not winging it. I have so many owners who say no, Natasha, like when I do a meet and greet, I see where the conversation goes. And I let it flow. And we naturally just, you know, connect. And I'm like, what, you don't have a big you don't bake the cake. Right? You don't have a recipe of delivering your business or like now, I go in there. We let it flow. You know, I have my pen and paper I write down notes. I don't think my staff could do what I do. You know, it's like I have this secret sauce that I'm doing when I go with the flow. And my setup just couldn't duplicate that. And I say yeah, because you do not have a recipe. How many famous you know, bakers do we follow online or cooking recipes we follow online. They're the genius but they have set out a recipe for us to follow with ingredients and measurements. And if we just follow those same ingredients and measurements, we can get the same outcome as they did. So that's what I mean about making sure your business is flowing to a point where you can automate and duplicate.
Meghan 27:17
Natasha not only runs her own a dog walking business very successful, but she is a pet business coach as well. And if you would like to partner with her on her coaching, you can go to start scale sale calm and use the code PSC 20 for 15% off her coaching
Collin 27:31
coming up later this week we have an interview with the manager and underwriter of pet sitters associates Colleen Giles Harris, about the importance of insurance in our businesses. And on Friday, we will have a special episode talking with Kristin Morrison about her new book on recovering from burnout.
Meghan 27:46
Let us know if there are any specific topics or people you would like us to interview. We would like to thank you for listening to the show today and for any and all episodes that you have ever listened to. It's a lot of fun producing these and we hope to continue doing it for years and years to come. Thank you also to pet sitters associates and our awesome Patreon members. If you would like to learn more about financially supporting us, you can go to pet sitter conventional comm slash support.
Collin 28:13
Have a awesome week and we'll be back again soon. Thank you
