413: Navigating CRMs with Dom Hodgson
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What is a CRM and how can it help your business? As the marketer of your business, you’re in charge of finding ways of getting your business in front of more people and connecting them to the right services. A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) allows you to supercharge how you interact with your existing and potential client. Dom Hodgson, The Pet Biz Wiz, joins the show to break down how to make the most of a CRM and find the hidden money in your business. Dom explains what a quality CRM can actually do, how to communicate with your clients, and help you understand your clients better.
Main topcs
What is a CRM
How do I make the most of it?
What are my options?
How does it foster client relationships?
Main takeaway: You are the marketer of the business, so make the most of it with a CRM!
About our guest:
Dom Hodgson was born in Sunderland , in the North East of England in January 1978. He left school at 16 and began a career as a singer and dance teacher before getting a 'proper job' as sales rep for a tobacco company. 10 years later he fancied a change and launched a dog adventure business called Pack Leader Dog Adventures.
From there he got into dog training which eventually led to his online and offline dog training program and the launch of his Amazon bestselling, highly acclaimed book 'How to Be Your Dogs Superhero'. The year after Dom penned Walk Yourself Wealthy, which shows pet business owners how to turn their passion for pooches intoa profitable business. In 2018 Dom wrote his third book 'Worry Free Walks: How to transform your dangerous, difficult and devilish dog into a problem free pooch that your proud to take to the park.
The latest book 'Worry Free Walks' is the first in a 5 book series that aims to fill the knowledge gap for dog owners who love their dogs dearly, but have no control over them. He lives in Sunderland with his wife Beth, two sons, Alex and Toby, and Barry (the Dogue de Bordeaux) and Sidney (the Cocker Spaniel). In no particular order he loves red wine, ballet, HBO television shows, cheese, baking bread and chillaxing at the park with his dogs and a Jack Reacher book.
Links:
https://petbizsuite.net
Free Copy of Walk Yourself Wealthy
Dom was also on episode 151, episode 112, & episode 259
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
pet, clients, business, crm, services, website, people, system, dog, funnel, email, working, wedding, put, mailchimp, crm system, talk, contact details, follow, colin
SPEAKERS
Dominic, Collin
Collin 00:02
Welcome to pet sitter confessional. Today, we're brought to you by time to pet and the National Association of Professional pet sitters. Today, we're tackling a topic that comes up in business when we look to grow, expand or just get better at business practices CRMs. What are they? And how do they work? And to answer those questions plus a lot more is Dom Hodgson. He's been on the show I five times now, Dom, so welcome back. But for those new listeners who haven't been able to listen to those, or for those who haven't listened and listened in a while, could you please give us a little bit update on on who you are, and all that you do?
Dominic 00:36
Yeah, absolutely. Colin, thanks so much for inviting me onto the show. Again, it's always a pleasure. I always learn a lot from listening to you guys and talking to you guys. Yeah, so if anybody hasn't heard of me, my name is Dom Hodgson. I'm known as the pet biz Wiz. And I am primarily a coach and consultant for service based pet business owners. I've been doing that since about 2017. And yeah, my mission really now is to help empower passionate pet professionals, so they can change the world with their innovative, impactful premium priced, you knew I was gonna get that one in there, didn't you call it? pet businesses? Yeah, this is what I'm all about was helping people to find the hidden money in their business. So they can make it easy to scale and, you know, affect real change. Because I know, because I've been one myself, and or pet business owners. That's what they're into, you know, they're integral in their business, they're into making money, but deep down, that they're super passionate.
Collin 01:36
And you said a phrase there, find the hidden money in businesses. And I think that's so key, because our businesses are a lot more valuable than a lot of us even think of, because we're so focused on the passion for pets, that the business aspect kind of comes later or not at all, for a lot of us.
Dominic 01:52
Absolutely, absolutely. And, you know, I talk about I talk about in business about there being like two engines in your business. So engine number one is all about getting eyes on the business, you know, like, what can you do to get that attention to get those first clients in the door. And there's a number of different things that we can do. And the CRM that we're going to talk about probably ties into that as well. But engine number two is really where all the easy money is in the business, you know, engine number two kicks in once you've got a customer. So how can you sell them more stuff? How can you upsell them to higher priced products? How can you move them from, you know, being a one service buyer to being a multiple service buyer? Or inter continuity? How can you get referrals? How can you get testimonials? I mean, and all of these things, we get in this mindset of like, I need more clients, I need more clients, when really that like I said, The Hidden easier money is to be made from your from your existing client pool.
Collin 02:42
Yeah, cuz they're already they're bought into your company, they're just kind of sitting there waiting. And so asking that question of okay, in what other ways can I serve them? With with services that I that would connect with me,
Dominic 02:54
you hit the nail on the head? Yeah, we assume that everybody is already buying everything that they want from us. And if they wanted more, they would ask, and the fact is, they don't. And we have to as marketers of the business, you know, and that's what you are, you are the marketer of your business, always, there's lots of things you should outsource. And there may even be some aspects of the market and that you, you might outsource, but really, if you know, if you want to be in control of where your business goes, how successful you are, how much money you earn, you've got to really be in control of the market in and, and yeah, and that's how that's how we that's how we do it.
Collin 03:29
Well, so you said we've said this word a couple of times now CRM is well not word as a couple of letters. So what the heck is a CRM? What does that stand for?
Dominic 03:40
Okay, so let me let me backtrack a little bit here. Okay, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to paint the kind of a picture of where most pet business owners sit I think anywhere and from I primarily had a dog walking business a dog adventure business and did bought into so I was very much kind of in your world, you know, where a lot of your listeners are right now. And I think how I'm going to describe is I'm going to use a dog analogy, Colin Okay, so I'm gonna ask, you know, do you have a show dog type website? Or do you have a service dog type website and when it comes to pet business websites, it's not uncommon to see a lot of websites that are just like a collection of you know, pretty pictures and pixels that have lovely pictures of dogs and they make our our man smile or our relatives smile when they see the website. But what they fail to do they fail to do the crucial job of of generating sales generating results generating leads for the business, okay? And that's where if you have a like a fully optimized direct response, lead type website, that's when you can have more of a service dog for the website, you know, something that is working for you You know, you don't like around the clock, really, you know, all the time, even when you're in bed asleep, or you're on holiday? Or you're taking time off, or whatever it is, your website is working for you, you know, it is. It's yeah, it's working for you. It's It's warming people opposites attract and the right kind of people, it's hopefully collecting their, their contact details. And it's, it's doing more than just being like a pretty placeholder for your websites, you know, for your business, I should say, does that make sense?
Collin 05:32
It does, because I think that that's this difference a lot of people have have, do I have a presence? Or is the presence actually doing something for me is it because that you mentioned a lot of stuff that, that websites and this this, this presence can have of it can attract people, it can guide them through a process, it can collect information, maybe they can book, there's a lot of stuff that it can do, versus something that we think well, here's a website, it's got my name on it, and it says my prices, so I'm done. Great. Let's go on to the next thing.
Dominic 06:01
Precisely. And you know, a bunch of pet business owners, and I've been there myself back in the day, and when I didn't know, you know, about more sophisticated ways of marketing your business there, they might have a website, and then after maybe two or three years, they get bored of the website. So then they get like a new version. And really the change in the order of the pictures, you know, they change, and maybe it's the brand and the change in the logo. But there's regards effectiveness of actually gathering leads the other stuff we talked about before nothing's really changed. And unless you're working with some kind of a website designer, who really understands all this stuff in the stock market in the understand how important lead capture is, they're not going to be able to provide that for you. So there's a lot of like I said, there's a lot of pretty pixel websites out there, which they might look great, you know, that you might think they look great from a man in the street point of view, you know, but as regards to as, you know, how effective is it at bringing in clients, capturing the details, funneling them essentially, you know, we hear a lot of talk about funnels these days, don't we, you know, funneling funneling them to make a decision to book an appointment to book a meet and greet, you know, how effective is it at doing that? And, yeah, that's kind of so that's kind of the background to where the sort of the CRM kind of comes in. So what getting
Collin 07:20
what's the what is the what are the what is the three letters actually mean there.
Dominic 07:24
So it's customer relationship management, really, and that kind of, it's a bit of a mouthful, but it's, if you, let's, let's give another quick example, people understand a lot better. So most people, when they talk about when they think about their communications that they're doing from their website, in their online space, they'd probably have, like a MailChimp or maybe is an AWeber account or something like that, you know, some kind of basic standard email collection, system, you know, and, and those systems aren't that great for when you're just starting out, if all you're doing is collecting some email addresses, you know, and I had, I used AWeber, for many, many years, I think it was slightly more expensive than MailChimp at the time. But that, but that did me for like a very, very, very long time. However, when I started to add more services, when I started to add more, like avenues in the business, you know, more profit arms of the business, then that one email collection service didn't cut it anymore, you know, and needed something that enabled me to, like, store the data of the clients. So I could see what they were interested in, what they were buying what their challenges were. And I needed a way to be able to communicate with them in a segmented way, you know, because you shouldn't really be talking to somebody who's just discovered you and landed on your website, you shouldn't be talking to that person the same way as you talk to a client who's been on the books for five years. And you shouldn't be talking to that person the same way as you talk to maybe it's a lapsed client, you know, so we need to have it and this obviously, this expands when you start levees if you start adding on, you start selling products, or maybe if you start adding on a grooming service are a walk in service on to your business or a daycare or whatever, you know, all of this stuff can get really, really complicated if you don't have a this customer relationship management system. We recently
09:24
added wedding pet attendant services to our company. And this has made me think a lot about that world of weddings because weddings are wild and they're weird and kind of price and expectations just kind of go they just disappear. You know, there's not a lot of there's a lot of expectations that go into offering a wedding service and and you're right now all of a sudden we're going oh, right, like I need to talk to these people actually talk to them differently, then approach them in a different avenue, then my dog walking clients then my pet saying clients then my cat sitting clients, and I think that's as a business owner, but that It's really hard to all of a sudden go, okay, oh, no, like I have to now like, I have to think of these segments in my business. And then I have to do something with those segments. And I guess that's really where this the CRM is coming in this, managing those individual buckets of relationships that we have.
Dominic 10:15
Absolutely, absolutely hit the nail on it. Great example with the with the weapons, what you just said that. So. And I think I think the example you're making is like, if you know, if if someone's, if someone is looking for a wedding chaperone for their dog, then then they're like you said, they're in wedding mode, you know, they're in wedding mode. And like the, that's the most important thing to them, you know, and then they're sort of therefore they will, they will likely choose someone to help them who is at least presenting themselves as being, you know, experienced in this area. And they've just got resources and testimonials and all this kind of thing as well, you know, and that's really that's true for weddings, that's probably true for everything, you know, as someone who wants cat seven wants to know, that they're buying into someone who, you know, is knowledgeable, and experienced when it comes to Cat sin, and all these other different kinds of services as well. And when you what are the sort of key one of the key attributes of having like a CRM system is you're able to set up, like, almost like an onboarding sequence for each of these different segments, services that you offer, you know, so let's say you have like a, let's say, you have like a wedding page, hopefully, on your website, and also you have your wedding services page, and you've got your, your big pain point at the top, you know, pay your work, are you getting married, do you want your dog there, or you're worried about XYZ, you know, check our services, and you've got testimonials and all this kind of thing on there, then you might have, then you might have like a, either maybe it's a free guide column, that might be a good idea, you know, the five things that you that you must do to ensure that you have a stress free deer, with your dog at your own wedding, you know, some something a little bit catchy in that, but I'm just pulling this, I'm just putting this out there for now. Yeah, so you might have a lead magnet on there, or you also might just have a contact form to, you know, and either way, once once someone's filled in those details, you want to be able to reply to them. And and hopefully take them some through some kind of know, like trust warm up sequence that demonstrates your expertise that lets them know that they're in good hands, so that they then invest in your services, you know, now, imagine if you had that for each of the different services that you're offering. And obviously, you saw it, when someone lands on your cap page, they land on that they read the stuff, they're interested in putting their details, then you go through some kind of a cat onboarding sequence, you know, same for your dog walking simply your board and same for your wedding sample, whatever it is that you have to offer. Now you can see how kind of powerful it is to have this. It's almost like having a virtual assistant, isn't it? You know, because the emails are going out regularly, consistently, you know, at the right time and intervals that you require. And yeah, you're able to kind of drip feed information to the prospect or to the client over over a certain period of time.
Collin 13:11
Are there are there we mentioned a couple of email things with MailChimp and Aweber What are some common or popular options or services that are available for this these days?
Dominic 13:21
There's a there's a bunch of different ones HubSpot. This mailer light, I think there's Infusionsoft I've used for a lot of years. There are a bunch of them the crop cropping up now there are a bunch of kindness pet specific ones, too, you know, so they're, they're leaning a bit more into the, into the pet niche, as you would imagine. I think they, they vary in their kind of complexity, you know, and, like, it's a big, it's a big step. You know, it's a fairly biggest step to go from what I was on Aweber once upon a time, like I said, it's very similar to MailChimp. Move into Infusionsoft. It was like a big step. And it was a big step in in price as well. You know, I was going from spending like, I don't know, 30 $40 a monster spending, you know, two 300 You know, but my business was at the stage, like I said, where it was kind of it was a false economy for me to not do it, you know, because I was like, I was spinning all these plates. And I'm trying to get this system to kind of do more than its than it's actually required then it's built to do you know, mean, so, so yeah, there's there's a bunch of different options out there. I just want people to understand how much of a help this can be to your business, you know, to your set, and you're free and all depends on kind of where your business's act to because you know, you can I think you can probably get No, don't, these figures aren't kind of set in stone, you know, this is just like My experience in my own business and hearing people talk, but you know, you can to me, you can build up to a fairly decent amount of income, you know, 6070, maybe even pushing like 100k a year, like by yourself or with it and assistant maybe or, you know, one or two part time assistants or something like that. And like, if you premium price and you're doing all these other things right in your market in that they always talk about, you know, but there's a stage in your business where a new guys will have experienced this want you in the last kind of couple of years, you know, where it's like, it's going beyond that, you know, and if you try and do everything yourself, you can maybe push it a bit further. You might even be able to push it like another 100k Further, I don't know, but you'll be dying, you'll be you will, you'll be absolutely dead on your feet, you know, trying to keep all these different communications going and you'll be dropping balls. So I think anybody kind of you know, who has? Is it six figures? Or they have six figures in their sights? Are they are they pushed beyond that? And they're, you know, you you've got momentum, and you're aggressively growing? To me, this is like a no brainer, you know? Well, and
Collin 16:13
I think that aspect of, you know, how do you want to spend your time? And then of going, Okay, do I want to sit here and breakout because you can break out different mailing lists and move people there manually on your own and try and shuffle them around and set up these things. Or having it done for you. I, I do think that is really important. And then there's the other aspect of because as a business owner, we think about this to have going, Okay, I've got all these people who use me, I've got 700 clients, maybe I've got 1000 People who use me throughout the year. But why do they use me? Where do they actually like my business? Or am I just the only option that they found? Are they hesitant to use? How can I build or can I find a way to foster a better relationship with them. And I think that's really what this gets down to of going, I want to be better connected with my clients, whether that's showcasing my expertise, whether that's talking about things that are going on in the company, so they feel more connected, but I have to target these little subgroups, instead of just sending out these big one off blasts. Because I know we've done that before. And then it feels like well, I talked about cats last week. So I guess this we could need to talk about dogs so that the dog people don't feel left out and then but it's like, what if I could do all that at the same time?
Dominic 17:23
And it gets kind of messy doesn't it? Then you know, you're not like you just said you're not making best use of the Yeah, your relationship with your clients, you know, you're not and there are going to be you know, if you look at your customer data, there are going to be like, you know, you might you might do you know, you might do 60% of your income is from sitting or, or MIT or you know, are compared to last year, you might look at it and you might say goodness, like X has gone from like 10% to like 40% of our income. Now, you know, well guess what? Like that needs more attention, you know, mean that that's something that you can push a lot harder. And you can create these communication channels inside inside the CRM system.
Collin 18:05
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18:11
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Collin 18:35
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Dominic 18:46
Can I kind of quickly go through a go through another couple of like identifiers for when you might feel like it's the right time for you to move on to this? Yeah, absolutely.
Collin 18:56
Because again, the CRM thing is it's new for a lot of people and we think of it Oh, that's a big business. That's big company thing. So it's just me what how do I know if it's a good fit? Or what are some signs that I need to be looking for? Absolutely.
Dominic 19:10
Perfect. Perfect. Cool. So so these are in no particular order. Okay, but you've touched upon it already. And it's a great point. So we'll start with that one is like increasing complexity. Okay, so as the business expands, and it's offering a wider range of services, or products as well, because I know some people add products into the mix too. It gets more complex, you know, the complexity of managing the customer relationships, sales pipelines and coordinating all your marketing efforts and stuff. It's it's just it's feel like it's getting too complex. This it's probably time for you to think about this. The other one is you growing customer base you mentioned like having 700 clients on the books, you know, if it's experiencing steady growth, and if you guys follow the kind of stuff that I teach in my books and the kind of stuff that Collin and Meghan share on this podcast certainly get the experts into, to share their wisdom as well. If you implement this stuff, you're going to start to see real real growth in your business. And you if you want that to continue, you'll probably at some point, you're going to find it really challenging to keep track of everything, you know, appointments and interactions. And, you know, trying to use like a manual method and spreadsheets and everything else. I'm a huge fan of paper and ink, and I have not scrawled all of my notice boards at the moment. But like, if I had to run my entire business like that, to get it, you know, it just it wouldn't, it wouldn't exist, it wouldn't be here. So the CRM kind of helps you to, to centralize and streamline all of your different processes. You know, we, and you guys have had people on, you've talked about this, and you've had guests on as well, you know, talking about creating processes and systems column for, like, your staffing and stuff, you know, like, it's crucial, isn't it? Yeah, for boss safety, and to make sure everyone knows what they're doing, and to ensure that you are providing a consistent high level of service, you know, to enable you to kind of clone yourself, we have all these processes and systems for the staff, well, shouldn't we have it for the market and to, you know, of course, we should, you know, like, you should, when people come into your world, and they leave their contact details, they should, they should receive the perfect message from you, you know, that you've pawned and crafted over the years, and they should get it at the right time and everything. So yeah, so that's another thing is find yourself running out of time. If you spend a lot of time on linoleic administrative tasks, and I would add to that, as well, if you spend a lot of money on an admin, either a VA, or, or whoever else to do a lot of administrative tasks that are repetitive, you should be automating those tasks, you know, I mean, by all means, get them off your plate, and give them to a VA. But it make a lot more sense to automate a lot of these things. And then you can still have a VA, but they can be doing follow up calls or sales calls are helping you, you know, put together stuff on Canva, or whatever the hell else it is that you that you need to do in your business, you know. So, yeah, I think, I think to talk about staffing for a second as well, you know, once you because another thing that the CRM does, or another thing that you should consider, one of the reasons you should consider investing in a CRM is to help you with the marketing side of things, which is something that people struggle with massively, you know, when you talk about gathering leads, and making sales, and what's your conversions, and all these different kinds of things you can create within a CRM, a really good CRM, you can create, like a sales pipeline, you know, like a proper funnel, and it can be dead easy, you know, and you can do this for all of your different services as well, and have it automated, oh, don't let me forget talk about AI in a minute, Colin, as long as I know, you guys have been hot on this topic, and there's a couple of things I want to share, that will help with that as well. But from a staffing point of view, when it's just you in the business, you know, if you, let's say you, you have a quiet month, you know, you have a really busy month, and then you have a quiet month, and you earn you know, $1,000 less than you did last month, okay? When you're on your own, it's like, it's not the end of the world, you know, because, you know, probably things are going to pick up again next month. And if they don't, the stuff that you can do to do that, but it's only it only affects you, which is still bad enough, but it only affects you. Once you start staffing and scaling your business, then you well as soon as you start staffing your business, then you're in the staffing game, like for life and you weren't you are aren't you? You know, people leave you know, some people don't work out you know, some people want to go part time, all this different kinds of things, you know, and like so once you start staffing like you're in the staffing game, then you're almost having to do roll in recruitment all of the time. Well, when because you're responsible, you're responsible for paying the staffs wages and for or fulfilling all the services that you've agreed to do, you know, so when you've crossed sort of crossed that Rubicon and and you're in that you're in that game now, like it's a big deal if you earn, you know, 1000 or $2,000 Less one month than you did last month, you know, and so you can't afford for that to happen. So once you start scaling, you really need to have like an efficient effective sales process like a proper funnel that's attracting your ideal clients warming them up bringing them in you know, and and making them book appointments with you so that you can you can have this like steady pipeline of clients all the time. Does that make sense?
Collin 24:50
It does it references back to that other other engine use one of those two engines that you had. This helps drive that in an automated way if you're not having to sit there and it really helps boost your Your efficiency and your productivity in that have gone instead of you sitting down, figuring out the five emails you need to send, or how you're going to connect with these people, you can set that up into a system. So that you know, as you get click clicks, as people sign up for, for emails, you know, things are going to go out. And as you mentioned earlier to like, because it's happening in the system in the background, the email is always going to be spelled perfectly, because it was already written, right? Like, that's a big thing. I know, if you're like me, where you send an email, then you look at the email, and you go, wow, I didn't even spell my name, right? That's amazing.
Dominic 25:30
I know you're on my email list. You know, I my spelling is terrible for my daily.
25:36
It's, it's looking, okay, how do I manage my time? And how do I keep this engine running so that I can help my business continue to grow or maintain at the level because we know we're going to have attrition of clients, they're going to move away, they're going to pass away, finances are going to change. But we need to keep bringing them in into this. And so for for the for the CRM is this, is this something that you mentioned website? Does it I'm assuming it takes information from you know, email signups from website? Does it kind of also? Or should they also be able to connect to if we have a software that we use to run our company? Is there any interplay between their CRM and our Booking and Scheduling Software?
Dominic 26:12
Yeah, they're, I believe, a couple of people I've spoken to have said that time to petrol have some kind of an API, I think that that connects with other software's and stuff. So I think it's gonna, this is going to differ across the, across the sort of spectrum you know, so but yeah, but what I will say is, the if what you want to think about it, see there's not an obscene time to pay an action, I was over the client in Texas in genuine, he used it as well, fabulous bit of kit, as our you know, lots of other things are out there as well. But it and you can do a lot of communication and something like time to pet just to see him as you can do a lot of communication in something like QuickBooks, you know, but just because you can do that communication, there doesn't mean to say that's necessarily the best way to do it, you know, especially for the front end of the business, Colin so like, for the this is the big thing, you know, is is creating this kind of this funnel this pipeline, so that when someone lands on your website, which is you know, the online portal into your business, isn't it, you know, it's like the online real estate, if your business your office, if you're like, you know, your digital office, someone is turning up, and actually walking through the front door as they would, if they were coming into, you know, a static building that you would have, you know, well, if someone came, if someone came into a building, someone came into my, you know, my doggy daycare, or my groomers or my dog walk in office, you know, what, I just sit behind the desk, and let them wander around and look at the pictures on the wall and let them walk out again? No, I wouldn't as the answer, I would get up and help them, you know, I would get up and help them and introduce them. And I would get their contact details of a coach, you know, I would say like, Hey, you know, if you want to know more about what we do here, do you mind Give me your mailing address? And I'll send you a prospectus and the post? Or would you mind giving me your email address, and I'll send you some testimonials and a virtual tour of what we do when our dog walks or whatever you mean, like that. That's what I would do. Anyway, a lot of businesses out there would let the client walk back out. But I certainly wouldn't. Well, if you think about your website like that, the front end of the website, that's what it's doing, isn't it, you know, that's what it should be doing anyway, it should be fully optimized so that it leads the website visitor to hopefully get in contact with us, or if not that, then at the very least give us their contact details so that we can follow up with them. position ourselves and expert, one number of all these other things that stay top of mind, so that when they are ready to buy, then, you know, we're the ones that that are there with the message with the solution for them,
Collin 28:48
allowing that conversation to continue, right, because one of the worst things that we can have happen is somebody show up on our website, and then disappear. And we'd need to find ways to continue having touchpoints with them. So we're going to try and grab that email for the CRM, is it going to collect any other kind of data? Or do we need to give it any other data about our clients? You know, other than an email or things like that? No, well, yeah, so let's,
Dominic 29:16
let's let's back up a little bit, then because there are now there are systems out there that and I was one of them, that enable you to gather the details and funnel people in not just from the website, but also from your Facebook page. From your Instagram page. We have this facility is like an all in one inbox, almost, you know where everything, all of these things, the client application forms and everything, texts, the chatbot that they talk to on the homepage of the website, you know, all these things feed into like a central inbox, which then funnel them into hopefully taking some kind of an action booking an appointment, you know, or filling in a contact form or something like that. So yeah, to answer your question To question about the data, you know, it can be collected data all along the way, you know, it can ask them for their name, they can give their name, now we've got the name, it can ask them for their dog's name, they fill in the dog's name. Now we've got the dog's name, you know, well, with all of this information, you know, when your dog's birthday, all these different things that you should, you shouldn't require all of that information at the start, there's a certain amount of information that you need in order to move the client along the customer journey. But then once they've actually paid you money, and they want to use your services, then we can ask them for a whole ton more information that we can use to, you know, to help better structure that the services that we that we're going to tell them about.
Collin 30:40
Now, you said that phrase of Oh, okay. Well, don't ask for all this stuff up front. How do we make sure that we are using a CRM? Well, what would a well structured CRM process look like for our businesses?
Dominic 30:54
Well, quite simply, it should, it should, as it should be, it should be fully optimized, you know, so the especially the homepage, you know, but on all of your pages, really, they should be fully optimized to either a make a sale, or, you know, get an appointment built to meet and greets, whatever you want to call it a consultation. And if you can't do that, then it should get their contact details, you know, so that you can then follow up with them. So that's that that's like, it sounds very simple. But in a nutshell, that's like, that's really it, you know, that to me, that is what a a working a working dog, a service dog website should be doing for you, it should be doing those two things. And I'll just before we get into that, we assume a lot as business owners, we assume a lot that isn't true. So we assume that people land on our website, they look around, they make a note of you know, our contact details, and then they'll they'll come back and look at the website a number of times, and then they'll get in contact with us. In reality, that doesn't really happen. You know, the inquiries that you get for your services today, or tomorrow, or the next day, they come from the tiny percentage of people who visit your website who need your services right now, you know, they've made that decision, or something bad's happen, they've had a change in circumstances at work. You know, their kids going off to college, you can't walk the dog anymore. They they've got an emergency holiday plan, something I need help, where can I go, I've heard about these guys, I'm getting in touch, right. But that's a tiny percentage of the amount of people who, who stumble across your website through the content that you're putting out there, blogs, articles, whatever it is videos, you know, that's driving people to your website, most people will come to your website come to the website, they might look around and think, Oh, this looks interesting. And then they get a Facebook notification, or they get an email, or the dog sick in the corner of the room or their kid calls for them or their phone rings. And then they shut it down. And they never come back again. Yeah. So wouldn't it be amazing if you had a website that was optimized to start a conversation and get those people's contact details almost as soon as they were there? Well, and what's really important
Collin 33:11
now I know a lot of change a client behavior with uncertainty in the economy, and people being more conservative about their finances, the length of time from discovery of solution to actually implementing a solution going with companies is slowly increasing, right? And so so we need to find ways to keep top of mind that's a word that we hear a lot of Oh, market, so you can be top of mind. Well, if people found you once, kind of by happenstance, or via referral, they're gonna have busy lives. So if we can find a way I love that, have that conversation, continue going continue to show up, continue to say hi. It's, it's because it's hard to running a service based business, I look at people who run brick and mortar stores, and I'm like, oh, there's a there's a physical reminder of that store in the community. People drive by it every day, they see the signs, they see billboards, they, they see what's going on there. And we kind of live in obscurity, because we don't have that physical reminder. So finding ways to do that is really super critical for us and the kind of businesses that we run.
Dominic 34:11
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And if you don't do that, see, and if you're getting enough business from having the kind of website you've got now, great, you know, this isn't, you might not want to consider this even, you know, but if you if you kind of bought into and that's why I kind of rather than go into the mega technical aspects of a CRM, I'm trying to give people you know, the bigger picture reasons why you should not just rethink having a CRM, you should probably rethink how you can structure your whole online presence, you know, because it will be way more effective, and you will be able to grow a lot faster and you'd have a much healthier pipeline. If you had all these kinds of things, you know, in place in your business.
Collin 34:52
Well, it's going to help you understand if you ask for things like something we do is when people reach out to us they ask okay, like How did you we ask, how did you find us? Where did you come from. But that sounds like having a system where we're putting people into different buckets, okay, the cat people are over here and the wedding services are here, then you can see these little siloed sections and go, okay, all the cat, people are finding me from this one rescue in the area, okay, I need to go, I need to talk to those people. And the wedding people, if there's one wedding planner or two wedding planners, I need to go talk to those people, it helps you see, break out that data, so it's not as confusing as well, where you can go, Okay, I have a much better handle on how my business is operating out in the community, so that I can invest in those a little bit more as well.
Dominic 35:35
For sure. And you can do it in real time as well. So rather than, you know, just looking at your profit and loss account at the end of the quarter, or maybe at the end of the year, you know, and seeing like, hey, you know, we actually we sold our CAD stuff this year, you know, like, we might want to do something about that, maybe, and then you forget about it. So you know, instead of instead of it being that kind of decision. Instead, it's like, you know, you can see trends, you know, you can see things happening as they happen with and then take actions to capitalize on the growth that you're having.
Collin 36:08
Yeah, it really does. It really does help us in understanding our our clients better as a whole. But you know, it's, it's it helps us it sounds like CRM can help us understand both existing and potential clients as well.
Dominic 36:22
One of the things that kind of when you do direct response marketing and the kind of marketing that I practice, and a lot of my clients practice as well is you when you put a really clearly targeted, sometimes polarizing message out there. And so are you this kind of person suffering from this kind of problem? And do you want to fix it in this amount of time, then this article is for you or this, then you've come to the right place? You know, and some people don't like that some people they find it a bit too salesy, you know, they find what, what you really do, is you just speeding things up. Because when you put a message like that out there, someone who does that on your website, who is suffering from that kind of problem, who is desperate for a solution, and wants it fixed quickly, they're like, Yeah, tell me more, you know, whereas people who land on the website, and they're like, you know, I'm not really sure about this, you know, why are they asking me all this information, whatever, and they go, Well, that's great, because they will probably walk, they will probably gonna go anywhere, you know, what, you've just kind of speed things up. So, yeah, and with all of the kind of, really in depth features that a good CRM has, you're able to continue the conversation, you said it before, you know what, to continue that conversation and get people into a conversation much quicker, you know, we know that I can't remember the exact stats for it. But we know that the, you know, when someone if you have a missed call from someone, or if someone leaves a message on your website, or whatever, you know, if you can get on the phone with them, like really quickly. After that point, the chances of you convert them to a client, they increase massively, you know, when you can't do that with if you don't have this kind of CRM system like this plugged into your business?
Collin 38:01
Well, it's that's a little bit about the content. I feel like that's kind of talking about the content that we pour into the system, because it sounds like we could have the world's best funnel and the world's best steps. But if the language and the content that we're putting in there is garbage, we're not actually going to see a result from this.
Dominic 38:15
For sure, yeah, for sure. And it's all kind of it's all it's all interlinked. You know, so the, if we talked about the two different kinds of examples at the start about the different kinds of websites that you can have, you know, a pretty picture pixel website, that is a bit of a placeholder. And that's it, that's all it really does. You know, it, there's no, there's no kind of system involved in the design of the website to help you to get more clients. It's just like, if someone feels like buy in, then they'll buy from, you know, so it's a bit of a wishy washy website, really, you know, well, if you if you have a if you have a wishy washy website, you've probably been a little bit wishy washy with other aspects of your marketing as well. Maybe not through choice, maybe is it through, you know, a lack of education and knowledge and stuff and skills? Yeah. And we've all been there, you know, I didn't, I didn't come out of the womb, knowing how to write, copy and do emails and write newsletters as long as different kinds of thing. I've had to learn how we're doing.
Collin 39:13
I thought that was everybody I
Dominic 39:20
know, it's Avon. It's true color. No, it's not true. Yeah, so so if you see a point about you know, the message and stuff and the content that we'll put on there 100% You know, like, you could and you know, you would you would make you would make a regular website better. You know, even if you didn't have a CRM system, you won't collect an email addresses, you would make a regular website much better. If you followed like a Dan Kennedy calls P s formula, you know, pain, agitate solution, you know, so we addressing people's pain points at the top, we're agitating them with some copy. We're presenting our service as a solution and then we're given testimonials and stuff underneath to give us credibility, you know, you would change, you would increase conversions on a regular website, just by doing that without adding emails or anything else, I think I believe however, if you do that, and you have the CRM and you have the follow up and stuff, you can see how we can exponentially kind of increase results.
40:18
Because it's that follow up, that's really important. It's the it's the going, okay, I can do, I can only do so much on a static webpage. Once I walk them through that PHS system and down the bottom, they click sign up or get in contact, then I can take that email, I can put them into a series of, of other emails, they're going to send out over a period of time to they're going to show that showcase more information, talk about the business so they can talk about things are because cat, people are going to want to hear about cat things, right, they're not going to really want to care about how to detect heat stress in a dog on a walk. They may like if they're care about animals, they may want to do that. But it's not relevant to them. And so showering them with irrelevant information is not going to make them go, Wow, this, this person's amazing, because they're gonna go all the way or like wedding people. Again, I keep coming back to that, like they don't they don't really examples. Yeah, they don't want to know about the intricacies of scooping cat litter, because they want their dog to show up at the wedding. So we need to be talking to them in that way, specifically, and kind of segmenting them out. So that we can make sure that they understand how we can help them.
Dominic 41:19
I agree, and I take it a step further, actually, I think it will actually pay them off, you know, and then frustrate them, you know that you are not talking to them about something that they're that they clearly need help with, you know. So yeah, it's a bit like, it's like, it's interesting, but this interview is a good, pretty good example of that, you know, like, we were trying to stick to the topic of CRMs, you know, and then other things are coming in, like, as we're talking about will naturally jump in just because it does you know, and so we've talked about copy, and we talked about how a website should be structured and all these different things, but like, we're trying to stick to the topic of the CRM, but these are the things that they are involved in this instance. But usually with the example that you give, those are the things you're talking about the the cat client or the wedding client, they couldn't care less, you know, they don't care where the five best dog walks are in where you live, they don't care about you know, dogs eating chocolate at Christmas, they don't care about any of that stuff. They just want to know about what can you do? How can how can you help me with this problem that I've got? Right?
Collin 42:21
Well, I think that gets to a really tough problem in businesses where we want to, because something if you can, maybe you can walk me through this, but we want to make sure people have a magical experience in our businesses. Right. I know you wrote a book about diversifying your business and that's about this magical thing coming in. And and sometimes that means that we need to surprise and delight them, which can be we feel like okay, well I want to tell them everything about my business upfront, which means there's nothing left for them to experience so how do we how do we use the CRM into this process in this funnel to to tell people about our business with while still making it kind of drool worthy and this have an anticipation about working
Dominic 43:06
with us? Well, you you essentially drip feed them, you know, I mean, it ties in with the ties in with the follow up point you make before I'm very quickly, Colin, I very quickly tell my follow up story. And you might have heard this but I'll quickly tell my follow up story. When Beth and I wife Operations Manager, we started working at the Empire theater at the same time I was 18 I think she was 20 and we were selling ice creams. And we both watched started working in exactly the same time we got put on the opera circle together to work shift together. I thought she was hot stuff. Okay, so I was I was banging into her I was laying on the dorm charm. I was telling jokes I was you know showing off and by the end of the shift I thought you know what, like, this is going fantastically well. Little did I know she thought I was a complete insert swear word here she was and she did you know she thought that for quite a quite a while as well. So how if that was the case out like 20 odd years later, why are we still why are we together? We've got two kids 10 chickens which I know you'd love to hear about I do two dogs How has this happened? Well it happened because that wasn't the only interaction that we had we worked together for weeks months years after that you know and we gradually you know gradually wore her down gradually gradually found Wanda wander off yeah, so that's what I meant to say. Yeah, but no but seriously you know like it's just it's follow up you know it's all these these follow ups and when you when you have a system and I guess this probably is probably more true for dog trainers really dog trainers are the world's worst the most guilty ones for like overloading their clients with information like their like they want to share like everything that the client needs to know like right now but I get See appointment for, I guess, all of us probably do to some degree, and we want them to know about all these different things, and they need to fill in all these different things. And then it's overwhelming for a client, you know. So yeah, so that definitely this having this facility to like drip drip drip information to give it in a steady way. And, and not it's not even really about the information that you gave, although that is important, it's more about the continued touch points that you have with these people, because you to the top of mind point you made earlier, you don't know when the person is ready to buy weed or not, if we knew that, it will be brilliant, you loan the people who are ready to buy now because they contact you. Okay? Everybody else, you don't know that you don't know that it's that one day when the like I said, the job changes, or the dog runs away in the park, or he bites the postman or, you know, or they adopt a cat. And then they realize they haven't got anybody to look after the cat or, or the husband says will you marry me and in the future wife says yes, these are the times when they need the decisions when they're starting to make the decisions. And if you are, if you are showing up regularly, if you have a system, if you have like a pre written system, or you have communications that you're sending out to all these different buckets in your business, then you're going to be the one you're going to be the one that's top of mind. Otherwise, they'll just they'll just go on Google and they'll land on anybody's website, you know, and they'll say, Oh, this looks pretty much similar to the one I saw before. It must be there. You know, and this happens all the time, especially with I mean, your business is quite distinctive, Funky Bunch, my pack leader Dog Adventures that's quite distinctive. A lot of people have business names that are very similar to other business names in their town. And, and so you know, they don't know like Louise Petcare from Susie's pet care from Jenny's pet care, they don't know that. They don't know the difference, they don't remember the difference, you know, they just, they just wants a pet care. But they will know, if you're showing up in their inbox, or via texts, or via some offline marketing, like a newsletter, or a postcard, or a phone call, even you know, if you're showing up with what you can do, once, once you gather all these details.
47:11
Yeah, realizing that I don't have just this one chance to talk to them. And when I get that, when they're in the system, whenever I get them to that point, again, with the with the front, getting them funneled into getting their contact information, now I can really talk to them and realizing I this is a true relationship. And I can tell them a little bit more and then a little bit more and a little bit that because we feel like oh, I've got to make this this one social media post, I got to make sure that it has all the details and all the information that it has to stand alone. But raking that out and going no, it doesn't. Right, you can have a month long interaction with a potential client or even an existing client and nurture and foster that relationship and build that. So they continue to see more about your company.
Dominic 47:55
Sure, yeah, it's it, you hit the nail on the head that definitely yeah, it's the it's the multiple follow opportunities. And that's like, that's the game changer, you know, because if you aren't, if you don't have any of this kind of thing plugged into your business, then you're you're really practicing, like hitting hot market. And really, you're just you're kind of hoping that someone lands, and they're in a place of sufficient pain, that they're going to phone you up, or fill in those contact details, request an appointment, whatever, you know, if you if you have a direct response system, where you're putting them into some kind of a funnel, then like you said, you have multiple follow opportunities. And I can't remember the exact stats off the top of my head, Colin, but like, we were taught this back in the day with Imperial Tobacco, you know, so I used to be a sales rep for Imperial Tobacco. And we used to have, like, I used to have like maybe 200 stores that we used to visit in a month. So I used to do like 10 a day or whatever it was to over the course of the month. And when we had a new brand, when we had a brand new brand that we were going to bring that we brought out, I used to go to the My P ita clients my pain in the butt clients, who I knew were going to be really difficult sell, I used to go to them straight away, you know, and I used to wait until the end of the sales cycle, because I knew I was going to have to go back three, four or five, six times in order to get the brand in, you know, the easy ones, I'm going to get no problem. And this is this is what this is true for everything. You know, like, I think it's something like you know, one or 2% of sales are made on the first contact. And like, you know, five or 6% of sales are made after that, you know, it's something like 80% of sales are made after the fifth contact or something you know, so they're unlikely and that's an that's an inaccurate we'll just have to take it at face value because I've got the exact stats in front of me. That's an inaccurate but that's an all stat as well. So like you said earlier now with all the different media that people are being bombarded with, you know and the level of trust that they have to build up before they invest in some On, especially for what we're selling, which is pet safety, you know, or it involves pet safety that prized furry friend. The need for this follow up is is even more crucial.
Collin 50:13
Did you know that the National Association of Professional pet sitters or naps is the only national nonprofit professional pet sitting association dedicated to raising and abiding by industry standards, naps provides pet sitters with the tools and resources to own and operate successful pet sitting businesses. And one aspect of that is their annual conference, march 1 through third and 2024. They will be having their bloom and grow your business conference in Savannah, Georgia. Their goal is to bring together industry leaders with session topics that are idea focused and on a wide range of subjects to foster learning inspiration and provoke conversations that matter. Did you attend the 2023 conference, if so into a discounted rate through August 31 2023 of $170. Again, that's only good through August 31. They do have an early bird registration through September 30 of 2023, which is $195. And the general registration is October 1 through February 19. of 2024. And that is $225. Visit the NAPS website at Pet sitters.org. For information regarding the naps, membership certification and the complete conference details. You've talked to mentioned a couple of times coming up but you've been working on something I gather. That's pretty exciting.
Dominic 51:35
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. So I'll give you I'll give you a little bit of background actually, as well. So obviously, I've been I've been coaching and consulting since about 2017. Like I said, I ended up doing that, because I hooked all this stuff into my own business, you know, so I had email sequences, I had lead magnets, I had a field online store, which we've talked about in the past as well. I wrote books, you know, I did, I did all these different things, I was doing podcasts, I was doing online and offline media and pay printing all these different things. And it helped my business to grow hugely, you know, and it was a really successful business. And then I ended up, like I said, I had the blip with the store, and then had a really successful training business and an online training business and everything else. And people were coming to me and saying, you know, how are you doing all this? While you're writing books? You know, how do you do emails and stuff like that. So that was kind of what led me to start teaching others about how to do this in their business and position me as like the go to guy for all this kind of thing. One of the big one of the big missing pieces of the puzzle, really, what the last kind of five years has been people come into my world, I tell them what's wrong with the business, I tell them, you know, well, the hidden money is and then I tell them how to fix it. And then I kind of say, Okay, now you need to go away and figure out how to do all the technical stuff, you know, figure out the email provider and plug it into your business. And because I don't, I've never really had a preferred, like website, supplier, you know, I've never really had a preferred CRM system, even though I've used certain ones for a long time. I haven't been like blown away with their, their their success, their capability, you know, that I felt like referring them, particularly to others, you know, and I could have had affiliate links for all kinds of things over the years, you know, and I just haven't because I only really believe you know, how it works. You know, if you want to one on we'll touch upon that, then you know, you genuine are your guides to the same I know you are you pushed off you you use you know, are you pushed off you believe in or you push stuff that, you know, people other people use, you know, you've seen tangible results, it's important to you, isn't it?
Collin 53:44
Yeah, it is because that helps helps you be able to talk from a place of competence and security and knowing look at if I you know, people can pay you to say a lot of things, but they can't say that you love and use it right. So it's definitely a difference.
Dominic 53:56
For sure. Yeah. And and like I said, I could have done the same thing. I could have pushed a lot of stuff through affiliates. And that an add on this side of things, but I haven't. I haven't felt. Yeah, I haven't felt confident enough to do it in the product, really. So there's been a missing piece of the puzzle for me is this I know all about email and all about lead magnets all about copy and audit funnel looks like and all what your website should do. But I haven't had this kind of technical thing however, until now. So I've I've over the last kind of six months connected with a guy who has built all this stuff in his business. We've been plugging it into my business over the last kind of three months. And it's working like a charm. And now we've got our own version of this to roll out to the pet business community essentially Yeah, it's our own like CRM and also Website Builder. The funnels the all in one inbox. Everything really Yeah, it's when we've I've called it peppers sweet. So now I'm able to help people with like The strategy, you know, this is what you should be doing? Or the you know, what are your goals? Where do you want to go? Okay, this is what you should be doing. Where's all the hidden money? And if you want more help with this, like we actually have our own system as well, that you can take that you can plug all of this into your business. And you know it would you buy and speed when you when you have the right tools, you know, you're just able to get the job done a lot faster. So yeah, so that's so that's what we've got.
Collin 55:28
Well, that's really so includes the website builder, and everything's plugged in through the back end with with the pre built funnels and stuff. Yeah,
Dominic 55:35
pre built funnels, sales templates, all pet business specific as well. So what the what the kind of the magic of this is, and like I said, there's there's a few other systems and stuff floating out about there as well. What the what I think the beauty of this system is, is that obviously, it's got my fingerprints all over it, like my knowledge of copy, and like what a sales funnel should look like and what kind of follow up you should have. So yeah, it's got all the templates and everything. It's all been, like specified for walkers, or sitters or groomers, or trainers or doggy daycares. And and yeah, we're really excited about it. We've got a very quickly Kahneman tell you about the AI capabilities. And I said you wanted to? Yeah, just very, very quickly. Obviously, AI is like, it's on fire, isn't it? And you guys have talked about various different ways you can plug it into your business and stuff. And it's been fantastic help. And no doubt you'll be doing an episode like that every two months? Because?
Collin 56:34
Yes, yeah.
Dominic 56:35
Sure, you know, but that's safe to say there's a lot of ways you can leverage leverage this in your business, and the system that that we've got peppers suite, which is built on high level that has loads of AI capabilities already built into it. So with like an AI powered chatbot, on the homepage, you know that we'll have a conversation with a website visitor, find out what their problems are, point them in the right to get their contact details, point them in the right direction, book, an appointment, all this kind of thing. Also, with content creation, it's got this stuff built in there as well to help with social media to help with blogging, or the articles and stuff that you want to write. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, I'm really excited about this. This is, it's kind of the most excited, I've been about my business since maybe 2017, when I thought sort of fully transitioned from, you know, training and walking business adventure business, to becoming a coach, and it was like a big transition for me, this is another one. And yeah, I think it's gonna, it's going to help people unleash their potential a lot more in the business and make scaling and a whole lot easier.
Collin 57:42
But that's very interesting about the AI feature. Because when you think when people are listening to us talk about CRMs the importance of having high quality content, importance of having things to produce and send out to people, we've got it now it turns into a content machine. Now I've got to be pumping these things out, well, if we have something, you've got a little robot over here, that's going to be making things for you that you take and tweak and adapt to yourself like that, that's important aspect of this is still tweaking and adapting it. But now, the burden that many people may feel like, Oh, I've got to come up with how much in a funnel, I got to how much would this like, oh my gosh, like I get that all pretty much goes away with a clicker to have a button. And some light editing, you have some content to push out and to make for people that is targeted at these specific groups really does help you be a lot more productive productive in your business. And especially now you've got this whole system, you can see how you can go okay, there was a lot on my plate before most of that's been taking off now I still have work to do I still have to put stuff into this and get set up and manage it but I'm gonna get a big payoff at
Dominic 58:41
the end from it. Yeah, absolutely. Without a doubt, there's there's there's a bit of work to do before you know I mean, in this instance, like like when I when I first had my when I first signed up to my first CRM system, like there was nothing in there like everything and by the time it came to leave it was like unbelievable the amount of stuff that we had in there but with this Yeah, we got a lot of stuff is now like templated you know, so it's just literally fill in the blank stuff. And yeah, the prompts and everything are all there for the for the AI generated stuff. So yeah, so like personalization you know, automated really, like just take it taking the stress off the of all these repetitive tasks that will need to happen in the business for a growing business I will say Colin like I said at the start being truth truthfully honest, you know a lot of people this is won't be right for you yet you know you don't need anything like this just yet you know, you'll be just fine doing what you're doing with your with your MailChimp but you know if you're if you're pushing over six figures, six figures is on the rise and are you well beyond that. You have you know, ambitions to go bigger as well. Then you don't have anything like this plugged into your system, then you you know, it's a real false economy.
Collin 59:57
Yeah, it really is when you start seeing those pain points that we talks about we start going okay, now I need to go find, find solutions for this. And so this sounds this sounds really fantastic, Tom, I'm really excited to hear about this because it's something that a lot of people don't think is either attainable or necessary to their businesses. Because again, it's this big scary what does it mean? How does it How does it work? What can it do for me kind of thing. So having something that's, that's built in, and you've been working on this for a while, sounds like making sure that it's nailed down. Really? Just sounds really fantastic.
Dominic 1:00:28
Yeah, yeah. Well, like I said, we're super excited, you know, it's been a ton of work. It's gonna be a ton of work as well, for like the next, you know, three, four months until we, we, you know, we do like our first kind of roll out, you know, the first major roll out, we're already rolling out the first kind of major rollout. Yeah. And then actually, I forgot to mention to this is why it's like, it's why I'm, um, another reason I'm really excited about it is, is the ongoing stuff, too. So you, you'll be you're familiar with, did we send you a copy of my calendar that I produced a Christmas? Did you get a copy of that? Yes, yeah, we did get your calendar, my promotional calendar. Yeah. So that's something that I produced for my, for my clients. And it's like a bunch of promotional ideas in, you know, every month to promotions and stuff to sell your services and upsells. And all this kind of thing, you know? Well, we're using like that as like a baseline sort of template, really, I'm able to produce and put into the system, emails, social media posts, and stuff like that. So it's already in there. So this stuff lands in there, you know, like every month, every other month, on an ongoing basis. So you don't just have a system for dealing with the influx of clients you've got now, you know, you've got like, a continuous pipeline of content, and promotions and offers and stuff to put out there. That's relevant to the client. Interesting. Yeah. Just taps into all these sort of follow up pain points we talked about,
Collin 1:01:55
yeah, again, how do i It's the Okay, I need to do something with the new people coming into my company, but I also have to have this conversation with existing clients, and I have to continue to give them stuff and have an interaction with them. So that kind of extra content really goes a long way.
Dominic 1:02:08
Absolutely. And this is something that, you know, you guys do a lot of content. It I do a lot, a lot of people struggle with content, you know, they struggle with it, you know, they struggle, what do I say? And someone just asked in your group today about, about pricing? And what do I say everyone's real price increase, and you help them out dead? Easy answer are like, ongoing from that, like, what do I talk about this week? What am I talking about next week, you know, and because, like, I'm like, a content machine, you know, I didn't feel like a problem to me, but I know, it's a massive problem. But people, you know, because they just, they don't know how to do it. They don't know how to get the ideas, or they haven't got time, or they maybe they don't even have any interest in it, you know, and that's totally fine, too. We all know, this, their interests are in, you know, growing the team and nurturing the team and, you know, all the all these other different things, you know, we all can't be good at everything. This is why I have my operations managers, my wife who's good at all the things that I'm not very good at, because my business won't work otherwise, right?
Collin 1:03:06
Yeah, and recognizing going okay, I might not like this. But that doesn't mean it's not important to a healthy company to help a healthy running business, that that's really important. And we as the business owners have to decide, okay, this is not my interest. It's not me wheelhouse. These are pain points. And I'm having what's my solution? Right, because it is important to continue
Dominic 1:03:23
to do. Yeah, yeah, it's hugely important. It's usually about like I said, especially if, like the guys listening who are in like, growing mode, you know, you're in growth mode, right, that first stage where like, you know, you've got that momentum, you know, you've sorted out your message, you've got a brand identity, you've got a reputation, you've got systems and stuff in place for your staffing. Now, it's probably really just a question of, like, how big do I want to grow? You know, and that's an important question you need to ask as well, because the bigger you grow, you know, the bigger responsibilities and stuff like that. But if you're in a position where you are, you know, the business is rocking and rolling, and you're like, okay, like, let's just like put our foot to the floor here and like see what the hell we can achieve because like we're having a lot of fun and we're impacting our lives at the same time. If you're at that stage then this becomes like like I said, it's like it's almost like an engine column so the the other name that we had for it was pet biz engine but I went with pet this week is gonna be like a suite of products, you know, some offline stuff to newsletter templates, postcards, all these different things, but it's really like sales engine for your business that's going to drive your business forward.
Collin 1:04:32
Now you have any thinking about what's what you're going to come out with and call it sales pitches engine I'm I'm curious what the what the next release is going to be.
Dominic 1:04:42
No, no, it's all it's we went over this. It's sweet.
Collin 1:04:45
TM, TM, TM TM right. Let's steal it. Dom thank you so much for coming on the show today and breaking down how we can foster these relationships with our clients and with potential clients. So we stay top of Mine, we find that hidden money in our companies through this kind of content and your exciting announcement about pet biz sweet. If people want to learn more about this, pick your brain and dive deep into pet biz sweet and everything that it has to offer. How can people do that?
Dominic 1:05:15
Yeah, they can go to pet biz sweet.net By now, so P E T vizsuite.net, they can sign up for a 14 day free trial of the software. So you can see exactly how it works. And there's a lot in there. But what we've done is we kind of chunked it down. So you can quickly you know, create a landing page and you can quickly create a home page, you can quickly get some of these automations plugged in and see how effective it can be. Even just in 14 days, there's also be a there's also a webinar on there as well, where you can kind of see a bit more about exactly what it is and behind the scenes and the kinds of key areas that can help you within your business. Yeah, if anybody wants to know more about the coaching, they can go to pet business marketing.com. But yeah, all of the peppers, sweet details, the free trial webinar, and all the other stuff that we have on there to go to pet biz sweet.net.
Collin 1:06:12
Awesome. Well, I will have those links in the show notes DOM and along with everything else that we've discussed here. It's always a pleasure. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing. And I'm always excited to see everything that you have going on.
Dominic 1:06:24
Yeah, and thanks again for inviting me on call. It's always an absolute pleasure to talk to you. I'm hoping, hoping that we can hook up sometime next year, if I'm on one of my trips to the state side. So yeah, let's let's try and make that happen.
Collin 1:06:38
We will and that'll be a lot of fun. I'm looking looking forward to that. Thank you. Take care. My biggest takeaway from my conversation with Don was whether you decide to use a formal CRM program or not, as business owners, we should be finding ways to better foster relationships with existing clients. Because it's true. Servicing an existing clients is way more cost effective than going out and trying to find a brand new client to take their place. Additionally, as Don talked about, you have clients who would be willing to give you more money to spend more with you, if only they knew of those options. At the foundation of everything that we do in the pet service industry is in our relationships. We are a people focused passionate pet people. We want to be able to serve people with excellence well by taking care of their pets in the best way possible. Find ways to get connected with your clients in a more deeper and more meaningful way. And that system, whatever that is, through email, through text through postcard through phone conversations, get connected with your clients so you can understand exactly what they are looking for and how you can serve them better. We want to thank today's sponsors time to pet and the National Association of Professional pet sitters. Don't forget about that early bird registration. And if you attended last year's conference, you get a discount to but it's only good to the August 31. Thank you so much for listening. We can't tell you how much we appreciate you and your time and attention that you give us. We hope you have a wonderful rest of your week and we'll be back again soon.
