Focus On Your Clients

Sarah Burns in wedding dress with her dog

Here’s Why It’s A Blessing to Be A Professional Pet Sitter Today

Sarah Burns opens up and shares one powerful story about how it’s an absolute blessing to be a professional pet sitter today.  You’ll never look at your relationships with the pets in your care the same way.

Here is the story in Sarah’s words:

Anyone who knows me well knows that there is a large part of my heart dedicated to my Chocolate Lab, Casey. While we all bond with the dogs we share our lives with, sometimes we get the great honor to experience a relationship with an animal that goes much deeper.

I truly believe, and always will believe, that Casey was my guardian angel. For 15 years she was my faithful companion. Always only having loyalty to me.

She would swim out to me if I was in the lake and circle me until I grabbed her collar so she could pull me back to safety. She never allowed anyone to give me a hug and would try and get in between us. She would sit with me as I cried in some of the darkest days of my life and she always seemed to understand things more than the average dog.

She passed away in February of 2016 and I don’t know that my heart will every completely heal from such a loss.

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Complaints from Pet Sitting Clients: Finding the Good

As human beings, our gut reaction to a client complaint is usually defense. We initially feel a bruised ego and quickly look to justify it by placing the “real cause of the problem” on the side of the client.

It takes maturity and professionalism to listen and understand with an open mind what caused this complaint in the first place.

Was it a lack of (or mis-) communication? Was there a gap in expectation?

Regardless of the reason, a client complaint can often turn into a massive win for you both.

It’s all about perspective.

Our friend and colleague, Sarah Burns (Menly’s Pet Care in Michigan) shares a wonderful lesson learned in this regard:

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How To Land Your Ideal Client Every Time (or at least 90% of the time)

your ideal client as a cupcake

Preface by Joshua Cary:

No matter what you find yourself doing in life, it will most likely be met with one of these three emotions:

  1. You get really excited and look forward to it.
  2. You have neutral feelings about the event or activity and understand it’s something that simply must get done.
  3. You cringe at the thought of it and can not wait for it to be over.

This could be anything in life from doing the dishes, packing for vacation, joining your spouse for a work event, or walking your new client’s pooch.

Let’s face it: Not all pet sitting clients are created equally.

Some we take on with a smile and would do so for zero dollars. While others we wish we didn’t take on for all the money in the world.

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Workshop Training: How To Fill Your Pet Business with Your Ideal Clients Every Time

heart as a flame

What if you could easily give your potential clients exactly what they were hoping to discover on your website even before they arrived?

Here’s what I mean… I love magic. I’m a big fan of all kinds of card tricks.

You know those card tricks where you “pick a card, pick any card” and after a bit of story from the magician, your card amazingly appears in the most least expected of places?

Obviously, we are not dealing with any supernatural work at play. We are dealing with a person (the magician) who used years of practice and technique to give you the exact end result you were looking for (your card appearing).

It was rehearsed and deliberate.

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Hiring Staff for Your Pet Sitting Business? Why Background Checks Are a Must. [Video]

Law Books
If you hire pet sitters for your team, background checks are a must. See why and how it all works.

When you reach a certain point in your pet sitting business, you may find that bringing on pet sitters to join your team is a logical next move.

With that wonderful decision comes plenty of more wonderful responsibilities – all resting on your shoulders as business owner.

The very last thing you need happening is hiring the wrong person.

Aside from wasting your valuable time that you can’t afford to lose in the first place, hiring the wrong pet sitter for your team can get you in all sorts of legal battles.

This is one small reason it’s vital you do your due diligence at the start by legally performing a background check on all of your applicants.

You’ll sleep soundly at night, and your clients (and potential clients) will love you for it.

Thankfully we have Jason Waggoner on our side.

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How to Create the Perfect About Us Page to Gain More Happy Clients [Audio Broadcast]

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Discover exactly why your About Us page is one of the most important pages on your website.

You already know how important your entire website is in regards to your overall marketing efforts, right?

You also know I spend plenty of time teaching you about blog posts, articles, landing in Google, optimizing your web pages and more.

But how often do we speak about the importance of your About Us page? (Listen to the complete audio broadcast on this page.)

Did you realize that your About Us page is in fact one of the most important pages on your entire website?

Why is that? It’s one of the few places your website users can connect with and learn about YOU!

(You know, the person they will hire.)

This word is worth repeating: Connection. As with most anything we do in life, we are drawn to the people most like ourselves.

Whether it’s in a business partnership, friendship, or romantic relationship, we seek others similar to ourselves.

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How to Make Certain What’s Obvious to you is also Obvious to your Website Visitors.

silica gel packet says do not eatMy wife brought home from the supermarket one of those raw crunchy kale snacks (I’m starting to love kale).

And surprisingly, inside I saw one of those silica gel packs apparently there to keep it fresh.

You may have typically seen these gel packs in things like beef jerkey, vitamin bottles, and boxes of new shoes.

And no matter where you find them including this kale treat, it has the words printed on the gel pack: Do Not Eat.

Each time I see those words I chuckle as I think who in the world would eat this? Isn’t it obvious…?

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Would You Honor The Same Rate As The Prior Pet Sitter?

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Price shoppers. We all deal with them on a more regular basis than we’d prefer.

They come in all shapes and sizes, and they all approach the subject differently.

Sometimes their price shopping tendencies show up early in the chat (which is great for us so we waste as little time as possible), while other times you’ll spend 30 minutes on the phone detailing every aspect of what you do and how you do it still only to met with resistance to your very reasonable rate.

My pet sitting business received the below service request recently and I think it’s a good one to discuss.

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Is GPS Tracking a Smart Idea for Pet Sitters to Use?

GPS trackingAs you know, pet owners have many options when choosing a pet sitter in their area to serve them.

Our job then becomes to create a professional first impression through our website and hope that they make contact.

From there, you will have to continue to dialogue and differentiate yourself to become the clear and only choice.

Some pet sitters like to offer GPS tracking to their mix to give the pet parents an extra sense of security and control.

However, at times the concept is not all its cracked up to be.

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