Pet sitting is a trust based business, there’s no way around it. Your clients are letting you freely and alone into the most valuable thing they own, their home, to watch the things that are most dear to them, their pets. Either one of these in themselves would be a huge leap of faith and until they’ve really gotten to know you, a leap of blind faith.
This trust factor is further complicated by the fact that in many cases you, as the business owner, are doing the initial meet and greets with new clients and then you’re sending sitters, that the client may not have met personally, into homes. This means you need to be able to give that potential new client a feeling of confidence that they are in good hands with you and your people. This trust building starts before you even meet your clients for the first time in the ways you deliver your marketing messages and then kicks into high gear as soon as you have that first conversation with a potential client. That initial conversation, typically by phone, is critical to setting the groundwork for a great relationship. It’s important to form a connection as soon as possible and luckily, pets are the perfect topic to get people talking. A great pet sitter asks questions about the pets. Not just the standard how many pets and what kind are they questions but more personal questions about how they came to have the pets, what their names are and what their personalities are like. This will set a warm tone for the meet and greet to come.
At the meet and greet you’re there to accomplish a goal; get the pet’s care information, meet the pets and determine the pet sitting need. As importantly, though, you’re there to continue to build that level of trust. You of course want to provide information regarding the safety precautions you take as a business such as insurance and employee vetting and training but the conversation needs to go beyond this. Clients need to feel comfortable that their pets will be in the best possible hands and that they’ll be loved and cared for by the sitter like they would themselves. Clients often have some level of guilt that they have to leave their pets in the care of a sitter and they want to feel, not just that the basic care tasks are being done, but that their pets are happy and that you as a sitter enjoy spending time with their pets.
Once you’ve completed the meet and greet and successfully signed the client up you will continue to form that trusting relationships through your regular visit updates. With well written and thoughtful updates and pictures you have the ability to form a long term trust filled relationship with your client that will be a benefit to all!
5 Pet Business Trends to Watch For in 2021
The old year is over and the new year has begun, thank goodness! As we start to dig into 2021, we’re still faced with a lot of uncertainty. The pandemic numbers are looking worse than ever and while the vaccine train has left the station, it’s got a lot of stops to...
Do you Need a Career Change?
The average person changes careers 5-7 times during their working life (https://bit.ly/37P4XVc). Those aren’t just job changes; they are full blown career changes. That number seems high on the surface until you consider the ever-increasing variety of career choices...
What’s stopping you?
As we near the end of 2020 I can’t help but think of two things. The first is a huge sigh of relief at the thought that it’s finally over! I imagine there will probably be a lot of good riddance to 2020 parties thrown to usher this year out the door as soon as...
Networking PRE Side Hustle, Why It’s Important!
I love networking! Okay, I like networking or at least tolerate it as a necessary evil. You might be one of those people, a natural extrovert that draws energy from being around others and as such you probably do love networking. I, on the other hand, am a ‘practiced’...
The 5 Questions Every Entrepreneur Should Ask
I talked about the 5 Stages of Entrepreneurship which were discontentment, realization, hope, grind and balance. No matter what stage you’re in it’s helpful to know what’s coming and what you can do to proactively prepare for it. In this post I’d like to talk through...
What Stage Entrepreneur Are You?
I was listening to a podcast the other day and a woman was describing her entrepreneurial journey. She was dissatisfied with her day job so she started a weight loss coaching business and had built it to the point where she had so many clients she was getting burnt...
We’re turning 3!
My own pet business, Preferred Pet Partners is turning 3! I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. As I write this, we’re still in the throes of the coronavirus pandemic. There are so many reasons to feel down. When people stopped traveling and started working from...
The Crisis and The Birthday
As I sit down to write this the date is April 6, 2020. Spring started more than a week ago and no one noticed. Why? As you know if you’re anywhere in the world we’re in the middle of a global pandemic. Coronavirus, COVID-19 more specifically, has hit with a vengeance....
Managing Through a Crisis and Living to Tell About It
I know at a time like this it’s easy to feel like your business has lost ground or momentum. I wanted to share what I see happening and what I believe is coming. In a crisis situation people go through stages, much like the stages of grief. Right now, people are in...
Should you start a Pet Business?
So, you’re at a crossroads in your life or your career (or both). Or maybe you simply know that you’re unhappy doing what you’re doing and you feel you need to make a change. You’ve been exploring entrepreneurship and you’ve read a bunch of, okay maybe just one or...
