Dogs Love Running! - the blog for pet owners and pet professionals
The Advantage Your Dog Walking Service Has Over Others.
What does your dog walking service do that's different from others? What advantage is there for a customer in using you over someone else? To be fancy about it, what is your unique selling proposition?
If you don't have an answer to this, you should probably stop and think of an answer before you talk to a single new prospective customer. If you don't, you might be losing that new customer needlessly.
The spark for this article was a conversation I had with a company yesterday (not related to the pet industry). Keep in mind that this is a company that I'm contacting about being a customer of for many years to come with potentially tens of thousands of dollars that I'd be spending with them (if not a whole lot more). After getting a few basic details from them, I asked a pretty common question: "Why should I buy from you instead of someone else?"
The answer was:
"Well there's really no reason to go with us over the big guys".
I literally laughed out loud and asked the guy if that was really his final answer. He replied with "well, we're quite a bit smaller than those other guys so I guess you'll maybe get more personalized service from us."
OK, now we're at least getting somewhere.
Needless to say, this guy was not selling up a storm with me (or probably with anyone else). It was a shame, too, because the more I talked with him, the less interested I became.
All because he failed business 101: being able to tell the customer why they should buy from you.
In your dog walking or pet sitting business, why should customers buy from you? Is it price? Quality? Convenience? Availability? Or something else? We'd love to know what you think it is and why customers love you.