Selling Your Service

Hi all,

Anyone in the dog walking business? Thought this email I received from Heather Barron was interesting. Bottom line: How you can sell your service when there are cheaper options available to your clients.

Enjoy!

Hi Ben,

Thought you'd be interested in taking a look at what I did to convince a client that my 1 hour walks are better than somebody else's 4 hour hikes for the same price. It worked!

Well she's definitely cheaper! We tend to go for quality over quantity so she would either be walked by herself or with 1 or maybe 2 other dogs at the most, and the duration is one hour. When you take out a huge pack of dogs and one of them gets hurt it doesn't leave you with many options so it isn't the safest arrangement unless there are multiple people walking the group of dogs. Since we're trainers (not just dog walkers) we make sure our clients dogs are behaving appropriately and following their leash etiquette rules while getting socialization and exercise. Our leash policy is that the dogs are either on leash the entire time, in a completely fenced in environment or they are allowed off leash if they have done advanced off leash obedience training through us in the recent past....so she would be on leash or in a 100% contained area.
Here's a quick little list of a few things that may be noteworthy for your situation:

-if a dog is used to having a certain amount of exercise and all of a sudden it doubles or triples overnight you run the risk of injury to the joints, pads of the feet and muscles
-we don't leave dogs together unattended for any period of time, not even in the vehicle
-we have emergency prevention and preparedness policies and procedures in place
-we are certified, licensed and insured
-all my staff is formally trained in canine body language and certified in DogSafe canine first aid

I'm sure this other person that does the 4 hour hikes is great, hopefully this gives you a couple of questions to ask her about that you may not have thought of yet. Alternatively, we have a 4-hour daycare option and an 8-hour daycare option ...both include outdoor exercise and socialization, there's more info on the website if you have time to read up on it.

Keep us posted about what you think is going to be best for you and your dog!