Sunday, July 22, 2007

Lessons from The Dog Sitter

Occasionally we all have those "Maybe I'm in the wrong business" moments. Here's one for you.

Best Friends Pet Care is a dog sitter. Not a kennel. They'll house your pampered pooch for $22 per night. Fine. So what. But there's a menu of extras you can throw in:

- Playtime. $6 per ten minutes
- Cuddle Time. $6 per ten minutes
- Fitness Session. $8 per 15 minutes
- Play group. $12 per 45 minutes
- Bedtime Story. $6 per day
- Doggie Dessert (pig's ear). $2 each
- Goodie Bag. $3
- Ice Cream Break. $5
- Chew toy with treats. $5
- Bottled water instead of tap water. $5/day
- Deluxe Bed (elevated cot). $3/day
- Premium Bed (elevated cot with orthopedic mattress). $5/day
- Shopping Spree. "During playtime, your dog can shop from our boutique." You set the limit.
- Oh, and you can get your dog washed, shampooed,

Of course bundled packages are available so you can save even more!

So . . . Pooch needs to spend the night. If I really love the dog, it would be no problem spending $100 for a one-night stay. Meanwhile, I'm paying $89 for my hotel room -- with none of these extras.

Well?

Are you in the wrong business? Do you hand your clients a list of clever and fun options and have them pick what they want?

Remember: Everybody loves to buy, but no one wants to be sold.

What can you offer your clients so they can pick through the list and choose to buy additional services from you?

Is your list of services short, boring, and basically useless?

Labor $150 / hour. Take it or leave it.

Or do you offer some goodies for your clients?

- Remote Server Monitoring. $125/month
- Network, printer, and ISP management. $250/month
- Server remote maintenance and patch management. $350/month
- Desktop remote maintenance and patch management. $60/month
- 24 hour help desk. $250/month
- Annual machine tune-up. $25 per PC.
- Disaster Recovery Plan. $1,000 for up to two servers
- Server imaging. One time. $250
- Desktop imaging. One time. $60
- Customized Tech Policies handbook. $500
- Email Spam Filtering $4/mailbox/month
- Desktop with MS Office - HaaS. $149/month
- Laptop rental. $100/day
- Projector rental. $100/day

Your services and prices will vary, of course.

But the point is: are you just selling labor (and they'll call you when they need you), or are you selling services? If your clients know you, love you, and trust you, then they'll want to buy from you. They'll want to shop!

Consider how you present your services to your clients. Do they feel like there's an opportunity to buy, or do they feel like they're being sold?

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Unlimited Bottled Water - $5 per day!

1 comment:

  1. The clients that would pay for some of the things on the list are probably the same ones that will sue when the dog drops dead from a heart attack. (Ice cream break?? God God that's horrible for a dog...)
    Point very well taken on an add-on services menu though. :-)

    ReplyDelete

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