280: Changing a Client’s Perspective
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Summary:
Do you have potential clients contact you for services you don’t offer or advertise? How do you convert a potential client from one service to another? It’s all in how you communicate with them! First, you have to make sure you are both using the same terminology. We break out 5 steps in communicating that can help you when faced with converting a client to a service you actually offer. Plus, Natasha O’Banion answers, “When is the right time to market?”
Main topics:
Using the right terms
Lead with the benefits
Keep it short
Focus on the unique
Main takeaway: If you don’t know what the other side could be hearing during conversation, not a lot of communicating actually takes place.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
pet, client, service, benefits, convert, potential clients, offer, overnight, pet sitters, sitter, dog, people, confessional, marketing, talking, associates, frequent visits, drop, stay, business
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Natasha, Collin
Meghan 00:10
Hello, I'm Meghan. I'm Collin. And this is Pet Sitter confessional and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Hello, welcome to episode 280. Hello, if this is your first time joining us, thank you for listening. And if this is your 200 and 80th episode with us,
Collin Funkhouser 00:28
whew, that's a lot. You've listened to almost 200 hours of audio content up until this point, and we are so thankful that you have been along this journey with us. Yes,
Meghan 00:36
welcome back. Thank you also to pet sitters associates and our wonderful Patreon members who support us every month. And if you would like to learn more about what that looks like, or help us to really keep going, you can do so at Pet Sitter confessional.com/support.
Collin Funkhouser 00:51
And coming up in August, Megan and I are hosting a weekend getaway weekend, mastermind weekend meet up retreat retreat is another good word in Kansas City. The entire purpose of this is to bring together like minded pet business professionals to talk about to learn about and to grow their selves and their businesses and to put to use and to start implementing some of the tools and some of the knowledge that we pick up from here and there and from the past year or so to start looking at what we've learned. Now, what do we do with that? And more importantly, how can we help somebody else and continue to foster that community,
Meghan 01:31
the deadline for that is May 31. So the end of this month, so if you are interested in that you can go to pet sitter confessional.com/retreat. And you'll get signed up for emails and we'll be able to communicate with you back and forth about what's going on when and where
Collin Funkhouser 01:44
yep, there is limited space for the hotel and everything. So the sooner you get signed up, the more likely you'll be able to be there.
Meghan 01:51
So when you hear the phrase pet sitting, what does that mean? I think more importantly, what do potential clients hear when they hear that phrase, because that is important. terminology is critical in effective communication. And if you don't know what the other side could be hearing during a conversation, or you don't think about what they could be thinking about, not a lot of communicating actually takes place. We know what we're saying. That's pretty easy. But is it mud to the other person? Do they not understand? We don't always know what the other person is receiving? And is that our faults? Well, no, not necessarily. Not really. But it is our problem when we're cross talking with someone. And that definitely comes into play with when you're in business and you're trying to communicate effectively to your potential client. So we say petsitting, the client says petsitting what we mean is the service where we come over to the client's home three to four times a day to feed, give medication and take on a short walk, cuddle play, etc. But the client means when they say pet sitting they mean someone who stays at their house for hours at a time or all day and or all night, sometimes even 24 hour service.
Collin Funkhouser 03:01
Yikes. That is a big difference in what people mean when they are talking about their terms. And that is a big deal. And that's something that we've actually been encountering this this particular mismatch, and a lot in our new service area. See, what we have to remember is that potential clients bring past experiences and expectations. To us. They're really used to basically two services boarding and pet sitting. They have either taken their dog somewhere or had a neighbor kid or a friend come stay at their house. They bring those terms to us when the previous options aren't available anymore for whatever reason. That is, so there's a potential client asking for a service that you may not offer. housesitting, overnights there are a lot of work. And there are a lot of missed opportunities and they eat up into our time. Now obviously, if you enjoy them, more power to you, that can be fun. But we found them to be exhausting to go from place to place and never be in your bed.
Meghan 03:56
Well, it was fun several years ago when we didn't have kids and our own home and we could be separated a lot actually. Yeah,
Collin Funkhouser 04:05
life's changed, people find the doing different things. So again, if you offer them and you love them, keep it up. Just make sure that you're making enough money and you're charging for your time. We actually do still offer them to some extent for some clients, but we just make sure that we make minimum wage for the duration of the stay well, especially with staff that is super important. Yeah, we've decided that if someone really wants or needs them, we're going to make it worth our time. And this is the entire point of this particular episode. How do we take a client who contacts us for one thing using one set of terminology? And how do we take that person and direct them to what we actually offer and help educate them about the terms that we use in our business.
Meghan 04:48
And so because we have kids now, and we have staff that we would have to pay at least minimum wage, we are trying to actively get away from doing house sitting and overnights and I feel like that's probably the vast majority of pet sitters out there as well, that may even be you. People aren't really interested in doing houses anymore. Overnight, they want to be in the comfort of their own home in their own bed with their own pets, and around their own things at night versus in a stranger's home where you're probably not getting a very good night's sleep, and the pets may be keeping you up at night as well. So we are trying to actively get away from them. And instead, our company goal is to convert these clients who want this service from house sitting or overnight request into drop in visits. And this can really be applied to whatever you want to convert to, maybe you want to convert more dropins to walks because they fit your schedule better, or you make more money from them. But for the example of going from overnights to drop ins, we set the tone for who they're for. So we always ask when they call us or send us an email or text. Is there a medical need for overnight care? 99% of the time, the answer is, oh, well, no, we just don't want them left alone. And so that's really the crux of the issue here the client wants versus the pets needs, the client wants someone there overnight, or 24 hours a day. But the dog doesn't need that. Now, if the pet actually needs it, it's you know, the dog is recovering from surgery, or they're monitoring for changing health conditions. That's a whole different discussion. But the majority of the time, it's because the client feels better when there is somebody there at night with their pet. We also use pricing to message who the services for so someone who contacts us and ask for a pet sitter to stay overnight, because they really just wanted has a lot of thinking to do when we tell them our price of $200 a night. That price though communicates to the client that this is a service that probably isn't for them. If they still want to pay for it. That's great, that's fine. At least we're making it worth our time or our staffs time. And so when we tell them our price, and they go, Whoa, that's a lot. It sets up a great contrast for the drop in rates and that type of service. We take that opportunity to immediately talk about the droppin service benefits and how we could do maybe a late night talkin and an early morning wake up. But it can be hard though, because you sometimes as a senator, you feel like you're offering them a second rate service even if you aren't, but it feels like it's, you know, the alternative, the lesser option. It's like someone calling you for a chocolate cake and you go well, the best I can do is Cocoa Puffs, which is obviously not the same thing at all. But it's why our language is why our language is so important.
Collin 07:37
So instead of saying, Well, what we could offer are these things called Drop ins. Start off by saying, well, for the vast majority of dogs, having someone around 24/7 isn't really needed. If you find there are behavioral concerns with separation anxiety, we can actually work on that as we build up to your trip. So Fido is better adjusted and more emotionally mature to deal with that. Our dropins provided both physical and mental stimulation and blah, blah, blah, you can basically go on from there. But
Meghan 08:05
but it really is important though to lead with the benefit, right? Don't even go comparing, you'll get this with this or this with this because the owner is ultimately they're worried their pet is going to be lonely. That is the big deal here. Which brings me to a point that kind of annoys me. So the dog is fine alone during the day, but must have someone there at night. So I go Why is the pet if the pet is fine alone during the day, why not at night, what's special about the nighttime? Is it because the owner is there at night. But the logic there doesn't quite follow and maybe it has to do with the pet having the same routine. You know, the person has gone during the day, but there's there overnight. However, the dog is probably going to miss the owner just as much during the day as the overnight it's you know, it's more for the comfort of the owner than for the comfort of the Dog in most cases.
Collin Funkhouser 08:58
So what we're doing is we are cutting directly to the fear that that client has their fear of their dog being alone and trying to jump way past that and do a lot of education along the way.
Meghan 09:10
But before we talk about that education, 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 they have provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. Since you work in the pet care industry. 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 pets@llc.com. You can get a discount when joining by clicking membership Pet Sitter confessional and using the discount code confessional at checkout to get $10 off. Check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again at pets@llc.com.
Collin Funkhouser 09:51
So obviously if they have communicated that there have fears or there are medical reasons, you can address those along with away, but the most common concern is that their pet will be lonely. So we have to talk about ways to make their pet not lonely and ultimately better adjusted. And this is really knowing the difference between a benefit and a feature of your service. A feature is something that a product or service is, or it does. A benefit is something that the product or service means to the customer or that it gives to them. So for example, the wrong way to phrase something would be dropins provide a lot of mental and physical stimulation, that's a feature. That's what that's actually what it does. That's nuts and bolts of what a drop in is. But the right way to address the fears of a client is to say something like frequent visits, make sure your pet never feels alone.
Meghan 10:43
And that's getting directly to the point of solving the client's problem. Their problem is they feel that their pet is going to be lonely. But if you offer frequent visits, four times a day, five times a day, whatever, like whatever it is, then the problem is all you gave them a solution of hey, your pet is not going to be alone for very long.
Collin Funkhouser 11:03
But how else can we persuade potential clients and people who are contacting us? How else can we persuade them to go with something that they weren't looking for, maybe they didn't even know existed, because that's honestly what this process is. Clients don't know about a service. Otherwise, they'd be asking for it. Or maybe they don't fully understand it. So we have to take that opportunity to educate them on who we are, and what our services are speaking again, to those benefits of our services. Not necessarily the features are the nuts and bolts of how they operate.
Meghan 11:34
And that starts with using the vivid language, the plain language that they're going to understand. Customers are going to remember a benefit longer and more easily if it's expressed using very simple strong words that evoke emotion. For example, you may say, droppings are where we come over several times a day. But a much better way to say that is with dropins, Fido gets the care he needs while he stays on his schedule. Because we also need to remember that we need to keep the list of benefits short, it can be really hard, because we know how awesome we are in our we're very awesome. And we know how awesome our services are very awesome. We love talking about them. But most people can really only hold two or three thoughts at a time and they're short memory. And so they're not going to remember this big long list of why this service is more applicable and better for them
Collin Funkhouser 12:25
well, and they're also probably in a hurry, or most of the time they come to us stressed and neither of those helps this process either.
Meghan 12:31
So instead of saying here are the 20 benefits to using dropins, you could say in our experience, we have found that there are really two major benefits to using dropins. It's also important to emphasize what is unique to you and the way that you do things because as we've said before, you are what makes your business special, nobody runs a pet business the way that you do. So why is the service that you are trying to convert them to so cool,
Collin Funkhouser 12:59
because just talking about generic benefits of your business, your company or your services that will convince somebody to buy it, but not necessarily from you. Right, just talking about the benefits of getting a car doesn't mean that that that person is going to go out and just go specifically buy a Toyota just means that they're going to go out and go look at the car market. Same thing with us. Talking about the benefits of a generic walk doesn't convince anybody to buy from you, it just means that they're going to start looking around to see what else is out there.
Collin 13:29
So focus on benefits that differentiate you from others. Instead of saying, We will feed and give any needed medications during a drop in. Well, that's true. It's also a bit boring and generic. Say something like our desires to make each visit a positive enriching and rewarding time by providing puzzles, new toys, and making sure their needs are met. Or however you want to spice that up. Again, we keep talking about droppings in this particular case, but this is something that we've been encountering a lot converting clients who want overnight care or full time petsitting and converting those people in to drop in. So a lot of these applications most of these applications you can use to convert people from one service into another. As long as it's still meeting their needs,
Meghan 14:13
the more concrete you can make the benefits of your service, the better because clients sometimes ignore benefits that are too abstract or vague or too wordy. They appreciate and enjoy more specific things that are more convincing and really stick in their mind. So instead of saying something like it'd be the best time ever, when your dog goes on an adventure walk, you can say our visits or adventure walks reduce stress and anxiety for both you and your pet. And throughout this episode. We're not saying that these are surefire ways to convert a client to a new service that it's going to get you 100% of people converted over but these are tactics that you can start implementing to try to see if you can bring them over. But it is tough. When you To offer a new service or a different service, and you don't offer something anymore, or just trying to convert them. So take a holistic approach from your pricing your messaging, the language that you use on your social media, your blogs, your website, paint that picture for them, and always point them back to the problem that they have and how your services can solve it. Because there are
Collin Funkhouser 15:23
multiple ways to solve the problem that the client has of I'm leaving town and need to do something with my pet. It's up to you to help the client understand why your solution is what helps them be the hero of that struggle. So how do you do it? Are you finding converting clients to a new service easy or difficult? Or maybe you're converting clients from an existing service to a different way of offering that to them, we'd love to hear from you about how that process is working for you. On this week's pet this code segment, the Tasha answers the question, when is the best time to market
Natasha 15:58
you mark it all the time. You mark it when you're a fast you mark it when you're slow. I saw this in the sitter confessional Facebook or about someone asking about, like different ideas, they should mark it, I believe that you should turn every stone in marketing, someone's like, oh, I only do SEO or only do ads. There's no only in marketing, my relationship building old school shoes handshake has been my most valuable marketing play. Not talking about online assets. But why would I only use online when I also can talk and build relationships and have that be 20% of my revenue to like all those little things add up. So create yourself a marketing process that you do it two days a week, at least. So Tuesday and Thursday is going to be my marketing or either go out or I create pins on Pinterest or I add more money to my ad spend or I ask customers for more reviews. Or I go into more platforms and start leveraging what our business does never stop marketing. This is how it works, guys, when you can keep the marketing flowing, and you can count how much business is coming in every single month, then you can keep the hiring flowing. It is literally a pendulum that has to flow equally. Your market your market your market, you bring in clients lead gen lead gen then you hire you hire and train, hire and train keep the Circle of Life continuing to flow. When you only market when you're slow. All you're doing is putting in seeds in the ground. Okay, so think of this as plant base, you're only putting seeds in in the spring. And then you're reaping the benefits in the fall. But guess what, you're already busy. You want to keep it going keep playing to concede so they can sprout throughout the entire year. Different seeds that you put in are gonna sprout at different times different demand. I also don't like to say only Facebook ads are great. And the next thing you know Facebook skyrockets their ads, and they're not working or only next door is working. And then that platform goes down for SEO is my only option. But then when I go to events, I don't even talk and all these people at these events are right in my neighborhood that I could just talk to them book that. And then those people are referrals. Those people also have a lifetime as customers. So where one person only came in well now they want pet sitting and other one dog walking and now they want products from me. Now they want online training courses from me. Do not underestimate the value of one client. One client is so powerful because remember, that's where we all started with one person. So market everywhere. Turn every single stone and do not turn the marketing machine off.
Meghan 18:41
Even if you would like to join Natasha's monthly membership group, you can do so at automated ceo.com and use the code P SC 20 for 15% off. Thank you very much for listening to this and any of the other 279 episodes. We are so appreciative of you taking your time. We also want to thank pet sitters associates and our amazing Patreon members for producing these shows. Thank you Bye
