Recently a young trainer posed this question to me: Are there common practices among trainers whose businesses are currently thriving versus those who are struggling to keep along?
He asked this because I am in a unique position as a coach and consultant who specializes in working with dog trainers. My clients know that our success together requires that I get to know the ins-and-outs of their businesses, and thus I am given the opportunity to peek behind the curtains of dozens of training businesses yearly from across the country and beyond. I see the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Unsurprisingly, patterns do emerge.
Here is the bottom line: Trainers whose businesses are thriving have an intentional strategy in two core areas: Marketing, particularly their activity on social media, and sales.
Below, and in my next post, I will examine and explain my response, and I will suggest some simple, yet effective practices that can help your business perform like those at the top.
I will start with marketing/social media, because your sales strategy doesn’t matter until you get people to notice you and reach out for help. That’s what marketing is all about. I’m focusing on social media here because most of the struggling trainers I speak to cannot afford much of a budget for marketing, if any at all, and social media is not only free, but for those who use it well, it is often one of their top sources of potential customers.
Trainers I speak to are mixed in their feelings about using social media. Some happily embrace it, while others would prefer to avoid it. Whether you embrace it or not, it is essential to be smart about the content you share. Whether you are posting every day or would prefer to post only once or twice a week, if you are posting the wrong content, you are wasting your time.
When I sign on a new trainer in my coaching program, I ask them to send me links to their social media accounts. It is an immediate red flag if I open their Instagram and all I see are pictures of dogs in stationary positions such as sit or down. Nobody cares. I do not mean to be harsh. It is the truth and it is reflected in the engagement stats of those posts. Most of the posts have fewer than 10 likes and they are almost always from the dog’s owner or the trainer’s close friends and family.
Being intentional about your social media strategy simply means giving thought to who you hope to view your content, and consideration into what that person might find interesting, useful, or entertaining. Make content for them. Putting content out into the world for your business is similar to giving a gift. Being a good gift giver means thinking about the person whom you are giving to, and either purchasing or making something that demonstrates your thoughtfulness towards them. Posting on social media without an intentional strategy is akin to giving a bad gift. You are putting something out there that nobody really wants. It only demonstrates carelessness.
Here is an easy habit to breathe life into your marketing:
When I was scaling up my dog training center, some of the easiest yet most effective content I used was “before-and-after” footage. One of the great things about making before-and-after videos if you are somebody who does not have a lot of time or technological know-how is that they don’t require much planning or editing. In fact, when before-and-after videos are a bit rough and ready, it often makes them come across as more authentic, which can be favorable among potential clients.
The biggest problem that trainers have with creating before-and-after videos, is that by the time they realize a particular dog would have been a good candidate for the video, it is too late to get the “before” footage. Here is the solution: build into your workflow that you always get at least 30 seconds of footage of every new dog. Find where it fits best into your process. It may be during an initial consultation, a first lesson, or a first day of board and train. You will not use 90% of the videos. However, occasionally you will get a really good clip of a dog showing its true colors before training starts. Now make a note that once you’ve made a decent bit of progress, you try to capture 30 seconds of the dog in a similar context, but behaving nicely. This might be at the end of the same session, in the next session, or several sessionals later. Put those two clips together, and you are done. If you get one or two good before-and-after clips each month, you can eat well off of it. You will be building a cumulative library of proof of your expertise, and as this library grows, people will become more and more compelled to reach out to you for help. The simple habit of getting even just a little footage of every dog on day one is the lynchpin that makes the whole thing work with ease. Build it into your workflow and consider your job incomplete if you have not captured the footage.
In the next article I will explore the sales piece of this puzzle. I will share a common red flag among those who are struggling, as well as how you can begin to build the habits that lead to more clients saying “Yes,” without sacrificing your integrity or sense of self.
And if you are interested in taking your own training and business growth to the next level, click the link below to set up a free discovery call to learn how coaching can work for you.
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