Episode 355: Why You Need Systemized Pet Sitter Training…and How To Leverage It!

Topics & Key Points

• The Power of Standardized Training
• Catering to Different Learning Styles
• Promoting Your Training System
• Peace of mind, trust, and security are the key factors that clients are looking for
• A Special Offer from Pet Care Team Training
• A heartwarming testimonial from Tiffany

Timetamps

[00:03:03] What it means to be standardized 

[00:04:02] The benefits of showcasing employees on social media 

[00:08:09] Promoting  standardized training system on website, social media, and other platforms 

[00:11:26] Promotion of a free license offer for Pet Care Team Training program 

[00:12:36] Benefits of using the Pet Care Team Training program

Notable Quotes

[00:04:33] “When you start hearing things like, X, Y, Z company down the street is $3 less or Oh, you kind of seem a little expensive. That tells me that your messaging and marketing and social media have not done a good enough job of changing the barometer.”

[00:05:11] “ To be standardized, it means that I can follow along your workflow, your script on it, or you could hand it off to Tom, Dick or Harry.”

[00:09:15] “Showing and telling and bragging about how great your standardized system is can help you tremendously. But I don’t see anyone do it.” 

[00:14:57] “Wherever or whatever standardized program you get for training you need it for many different reasons. You need to make sure that everyone gets the same experience, the training. You need to let your clients know that everyone is trained the same way. You need to let the employees know that everyone is trained the same way.”

Resources

• Podcast: Bella in Your Business: Pet Industry Business Podcast
• Join Mastermind
• Pet Care Team Training
• Email Bella: bella@jumpconsulting.net
• Sign up for a 20 mins call 
• Episode 341: Learn How To Never Lose An Employee With Joey Coleman
• Episode 348: 10 Steps To Hiring The Right Pet Sitting or Dog Walking Employee that Most Forget About

Connect with Bella

• Website
• Facebook
• YouTube

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Transcript

Welcome, welcome to another episode of Bella in Your Business. Today I have a really fun topic for you. I’m excited to kind of blast your brain about this today, I
Think Have you ever had a client who just did not want anyone else on the team to service them? Did you ever have clients that were hemming and hawing over your rates? Because that was the only thing that they were comparing between you and another company? Well, today, I have something that’s going to make you think for a minute and be like, Oh my gosh, yeah, why aren’t I doing this? And don’t worry, I got you, girl. But first, before we get started, I want to say thank you to the two people who last week after hearing the podcast signed up for those 20 Minute Calls, you know exactly who you are, it was great getting to know you and I got so energized learning about both of your businesses. If you want to join a 20-minute call, I can you can pick my brain, we could talk about anything you want, and I can help you solve one problem, All you have to do is jumpconsulting.net/20. And anything else that you need, or if you find these episodes, interesting, I would love it if you would share it. Like it, leave a comment five star it whatever it is, on whatever platform do it all.

Alright, so let’s get into today because I’ve heard this throughout so many of the years. And it’s things like oh, well, Bella, you don’t understand, I can’t change theatres on them or my clients don’t like the team approach, I have to send them the themes that are all the time or they freak out. And the thing is, is, you know, this comes a lot down to your training process. And it also comes down to your marketing efforts. And I’m going to show you why. I’ve started to see a lot of you and I’m so excited. Finally, it’s catching like wildfire. And it’s usually what happens I don’t want this to sound egotistical. But most of the time I start these little ideas and in the industry that no one’s doing and the jumpers start doing them and then everyone else follows. And so I’m finally happy to see that so many more of you guys are talking about your employees on your social, you are celebrating their birthdays, you’re celebrating their anniversaries, you’re celebrating, just getting new ones sometimes, but you’re also letting them on camera to create a lot of your content as well. And I love that because all of that helps make the faces of your company, it helps add to people who are searching for you’re looking you out to feel like they know the company. And it’s not just, you know, a logo talking at them, it adds some familiarity. Although there’s still more that we could be doing, and I want you to do it. And I did talk about that whole onboarding my 10 steps for training, hiring, and onboarding. We talked all about that in Episode 348, the 10 steps to hiring the right sitting or dog-walking employee that most forget about. And another episode, if you’re going to love what we’re going to talk about today, you might want to check out episode 341. It was with Joey Coleman, it was amazing. I’ve had people already put the stuff that he talked about into action and have amazing results. It was called Episode 341, How to Never Lose an Employee Again. It’s about the eight phases of the employee journey and emphasizes the importance of each phase. So it was interesting because both of those are going to be very good to listen to if you haven’t already, along with this episode. So I’m going to preface this talk by reminding you all that when people are looking for a pet sitter, and arguably even after they hire you and maybe have used you the first time and determining if they want to use you again, they are evaluating three things, three things. That’s it. If you’ve been with me a long time, you already know what I’m going to say. But it’s peace of mind. They want to make sure that you are taking away their problem, you are giving them peace of mind that their pet is loved. The second thing is trust that they can trust that you’re going to show up. Trust that you’re going to send your care notes and answer the phone when they have questions that they can truly trust you that you’re not going to leave their house unlocked or put them in a precarious situation. And the last one is security. They want to know that their pet is safe in your care and that their home is safe in your care. That is truly what people are looking for. So when you start hearing things like oh well, XYZ company down the street is $3 less, or Oh you kind of just seem a little expensive. That tells me that your messaging marketing and social have not done a good enough job of changing the barometer. And this is what I’m this is what I’m talking about today. This is so pivotal on so many different layers, you guys.

So how do you train your staff? Let’s start there. How do you train them? Is it a standardized system? It should be. And I have a podcast on standardized systems training systems as well.
But what it means to be standardized, it means that I can follow along your workflow your script on it, or you can hand it off to Tom, Dick, or Harry. That’s what that means. It means that once it’s standardized, it’s going to be the same for everyone. Think about back when you were in school, we had those standardized tests, Hey, those are exactly alike. That’s what I’m talking about. Did everybody get the same thing? It was the same experience for everyone. Okay. And so your training system has to be that. Now I know that when we start, you know, we’re doing the best we can. And you also have to understand that this is always an evolving thing. Okay. So where are you in the evolution of your training systems? And what can we do to make them better? I just heard a girl, posting in one of the free groups yesterday. And she goes, Well, I don’t have team meetings often because I can’t get someone to stay more than 30 days, ouch, ouch, that’s not good, you guys, most of that probably means that they’re either hiring the wrong person, or they’re not onboarding and training them in a way that gets them excited and ready to like work and ready to like, you know, gung ho. So what does your standard training training system look like? I think it’s really important to remember that people learn in different ways. They learn through reading, writing, and quizzes. And, and the way that you also can do is you can do certifications, you can do demonstrating. But what I hope you don’t do is what one of my colleagues did about six months ago, before we started working together. And that was a seven-day shadow. That’s all they did. They let them shadow him for seven days. How overwhelming could that be on the employee, they didn’t have a handbook didn’t have a manual, it was literally like a firehose of information every single day. That sounds stressful to me, I don’t know about you. But to not give people bite sizes, and also be excited about it, and to standardize it. So everyone gets the same thing, and anyone can administer it is a severe disservice to your company. So think about it. And think about all the things that go into it, you need to write it down. You need to let them write it down, maybe through quizzes or something, you need to let them be able to recall it quickly and easily. Some people are visual learners. So video, some people like to read it a lot. A lot of people are visual learners, quite honestly. That’s why like in my Handbook of manual that I sell, we put pictures of different collars and leashes, and all kinds of things. But think about it, I mean, this is a lot to build out. It’s a lot to build out. Now, the other part of this that I want to ask you about is let’s just assume that you have a standard training system. How often are you talking about that online? Where on your website, does it tell me about that? I have yet to see one About Us page that not only tells me about us with everyone’s biographies, but also maybe a nice little quick overview at the very top about all of our staff is certified or all our staff has passed rigorous testing, or all of our staff have had, however many hours on the job training or whatever, what is it? What is the standard system, that you can still stake a claim, post your flag up, and say, Yes, every single person has done X, Y, and Z in our company. And that’s what makes us different. And we’re putting it right out there for you. What about a highlight reel on Instagram about your training? And you do behind-the-scenes training with people? What about social media posts or stories or reels about your training system, all you got to do is talk about it. If you’re not doing this, clients are missing out on one of the touch points that they’re looking for peace of mind trust, and security. Showing and telling and bragging about how great your standardized system is, can help you tremendously, but I don’t see anyone do it. So who’s gonna be the first who’s gonna be the first the tag me?

Now, there are many different training systems out there and many different options that you can do. You could do fetch find, I think that’s probably probably the cheapest one. Because I think it’s like a certain dollar amount for the whole year. And you can let as many people in there as you want. However, there are a lot of videos in there. They’re not all congruent. They’re not all made for wanting one another and another it’s a library. So okay, you can go tell people to go watch certain videos in the library that’s fine, but They’re not really that exciting. They’re not peppy, they’re not personalized to you. And I’ll leave it at that. All right, then you’ve got your naps and your psi certifications that you could get. And that’s all fine and dandy, but those are very long. Those are very big. Those are not those, those are meant for the solo petsitter, the person who is just operating solo, Then, with all you know, you know, transparency, there’s the company that I co-founded pet care team training, You need to think about where you are and how you’re going to standardize your training, not only just so that your employees love it, and feel supported and great, but not just so that you can also have bragging rights on social media. But also so that you can tell your clients exactly how your people are trained, and instill confidence in them so that you don’t have to deal with the problems of I don’t want another pet that needs the same one.

Pet Care team training was created uniquely to solve all those problems. And I’m telling you right now, if you’re not using it, you need to be I’m also going to tell you right now, my VA doesn’t even know this because it just came into my head and I said, hey, why not? If you mentioned this podcast email us at hello@petcareteamtraining.com By Sunday night. All right. This podcast is coming out on August 31. If you you email Hello epic, your team training by August 3 on that Sunday night, and you have never used our program before we will send you one free license. That’s how bomb.com I believe in this program. I believe that the minute that you see this, you’re gonna be like, Oh my god, this is the answer to all my standardized problems. Not only does the program let you get through one certification in under two hours, which you want to multiply by however many hours you train someone, or you pay them, let’s say $15 an hour, that that’ll cost you $30 in labor, okay, with the other systems out there, it could cost you 1015 20 hours and labor because there are so many freakin videos. All right time is money. So it might be a lower entry-level cost, but how much are you paying per person to go in there and watch all those videos? For the second training for the second certification that you can get, because the first one is for dog walker petsitter.

The second one is for pet First Aid CPR. And that’s through pro pet hero. We just like, we don’t even mark that up, we just have to pay their cost. So two certifications and under four hours, then we have this thing called paw prints. So while they’re watching these videos, which by the way, are not talking head videos, they’re it’s like Coco melon for pet sitters. Do you guys know what Coco melon is? It’s kind of like crack for kids. It’s this. It’s this cartoon show. And then the videos are always changing very quickly. And that’s what we did. I told our editor, I wanted something popping up on the screen or a different angle every five seconds. So these videos are really fun. And there’s music in the background. And there’s there are quizzes, and it is exciting like your people will be excited to go and work for you. That’s what that’s the feedback we’ve gotten from these people. This is a really good time for me to say, don’t trust me. Listen right now to what Tiffany has to say Tiffany has one of the largest pet sitting and dog walking companies and boarding in the country here. I’ll let her talk.

Yeah, so she’s got about 60 employees, she’s been using us for three years. It is the backbone of her company. It is one of the reasons why she can hire onboard and train people so fast. Because she can get them right out there and have them confident and excited about the work. Now, on the backside, you get bonuses, you get bonuses, like one month, every month, you get a new training topic so that you can take that and email it to all of your people. So it looks like you’re still pouring into them, except we did all the heavy lifting and the thinking for you. The other thing we do is we give you four blueprints that you can use each quarter for a whole year for your team meetings, Because you should be having team meetings, I would encourage you at least once a quarter at minimum. I mean, I guess you can do them twice a year, but you need to get your team together. And what this does is it helps you and there are so many other bonuses. There’s an emblem you could put on your website, you can say things like you’re double certified, you can take what is written in our program and be like this is what we train our people on. If you have your own, you should be saying this is what we train our people on wherever or whatever standardized program time that you get for training you need for so many different reasons, you need to make sure that everyone gets the same experience with training, you need to let your clients know that everyone is trained the same way, you need to let the employees know that everyone is trained the same way. And that this is what you have created for them to help support their job with you because you want them to be successful. I cannot tell you how important standardized training is. And I cannot stress enough how important it is to shout it from the rooftops. So jumpers, this is a little bit of a kick in your ass. And there’s also a little bit of motivation and a little bit of action. So the action I want you to take, if this was a coaching call right now, I would tell you, how are you going to start talking about your standardized training program? And I want to see it, tag me. Now, if we have to go back to the point of I don’t have a standardized program, or I’m not confident about my program, then you need to talk about how you need to go take a look at the Pet Care team training, I’m telling you, it is not going to cost you a lot of money at all. And we just launched subscriptions. So if you hire a couple of people, every whatever, you could do like a 123, you know, license subscription every month that you haven’t banked, and then that they’re always there for you. So you can just go to pet care team training.com Look at that more. But guys, don’t miss out on this. Because a standardized training system is imperative to your growth and success. Without it you’re going to be solving the same problem of I need to train this person and I need to talk you know, I have to take time off my schedule to go show them or I have to go pay someone to show them and hope that they’re having a good day and hope that they didn’t just break up with their boyfriend is boohoo in their head and not listening or you know what I mean? You have to have a standardized system.

So I’m sure I ruffled a lot of feathers there towards the end. You know that this all comes with love. And I want you to remember that when life gets you down, to always keep jumping by now