Veronica Boutelle

TRAIN SMARTER, NOT HARDER

Dog trainers face two central challenges: Making ends meet, and resisting burnout from poor client compliance and disappointing case outcomes.

Solutions to these challenges require us to train smarter, not harder.

Solution #1: Offer Pre-Set Training Packages

Pre-set packages are:

  • Easier to sell
  • Better for clients and dogs
  • Better for trainer peace of mind
  • Set the trainer, client, and dog up for success

Solution #2: Do The Training Yourself

Day training holds many advantages over the old coaching model, which we’ll touch on here and explore in detail in the Dog Trainers: It’s Time to Train Dogs! talk.

Solution #3: Switch to Open Enrollment Classes

Open enrollment classes are:

  • Easier to fill and keep full
  • More convenient and effective for students

To be effective, however, open enrollment classes must use self-contained lesson planning. Teaching traditional sequential-style lessons in an open enrollment structure results in a lack of classroom cohesion, with harried instructors forced to provide individual mini-lessons to students.

Solution #4: Create Buy-In

  • Create private training results clients are eager to protect
  • Build classes around real-life contexts and challenges, rather than teaching dog behaviors
  • Teach clients and students, not the dogs

This is a common refrain in the industry, but a goal that is rarely achieved. What does it really mean, and how do you do it? We’ll touch on this here, and then focus on the answer in the Coaching for Real-Life Success talk.

Veronica Boutelle

DOG TRAINERS: IT’S TIME TO TRAIN DOGS!

The dog training industry labors under a misguided business model that does a disservice to clients, dogs, trainers, and the industry as a whole. It’s time to replace the notion of teaching people how to train their dogs with a model that calls on dog trainers to use their expertise and skill sets to deliver training results.

Doing so is far better for trainers’ businesses. But more importantly, training dogs for clients, instead of insisting they learn to do so themselves, has a far greater impact on the client-dog bond—the ultimate goal of R+ training.

Day Training Service Model

  • Advantages for clients, dogs, trainers and their businesses, and the dog training industry
  • Day training model structure

Day Training Tips: Training the Dog

  • Less is more
  • Frontload foundations
  • Proof it!
  • Fade it!

Day Training Tips: Transferring Training Results

  • Transfer only proofed behaviors
  • Use life rewards
  • Teach clients real-life skills for handling real-life situations

Day Training Tips: Managing Client Expectations

  • The trainer’s role
  • The client’s role
  • The role of transfer sessions
  • Putting it all in context
  • Letting go trainer performance fear

Day Training Tips: The Business Side

  • Pricing day training
  • Day training policies to protect success
  • Day training marketing message

Veronica Boutelle

BEATING THE BIG BOYS

Small R+ dog training businesses often struggle to compete with larger training companies, including traditional-based franchises and big box retail stores offering training services. There are few things more frustrating and discouraging than working with clients to undo the damage caused by a client’s first choice of trainer. Why do so many clients choose punishment-based training first? Or take classes at large stores instead of from more qualified independent trainers? We’ll explore why, as well as how to effectively compete despite far smaller staff size and marketing budgets.

Getting Your Marketing Message Right

  • Avoiding common message mistakes
  • Focusing on benefits to your clients

Pricing Yourself Competitively

  • Avoiding common pricing mistakes
  • Aiming high to compete
  • Fighting the guilt and fear

Professionalizing Your Image

  • Playing the perception game
  • Going pro

Helping Clients Find You First

  • The importance of marketing
  • Using your expertise to out-market the big boys
  • Making your website do the work

Offering an Easy Button

  • Day training and Board & Train
  • Easy access classes

Confronting Guarantees

  • Competing ethically
  • Guarantees you can feel good about

Providing Better Customer Service

  • Simple ways to outshine the big boys with your small staff of one

Veronica Boutelle

NEWSLETTERS: HELP DOGS WHILE GROWING YOUR BUSINESS

R+ dog trainers tend to be more altruistic than entrepreneurial. But to help more dogs you have to get more clients. Newsletter marketing—both print and email—is a great way to do both. Done right, your newsletter can be a powerful marketing tool and a powerful way to educate your community about dogs, dog behavior, and ethical training approaches. And if, like most R+ trainers, you tend to be shy about marketing, this is a perfect project for you!

Email Newsletters

  • Email newsletter goals: repeat business, brand loyalty, brand sharing
  • Email newsletter structure
  • How to gain readers for your email newsletter

Print Newsletters

  • Print newsletter goals: new clients, brand recognition, build referral sources
  • Print newsletter structure
  • How to gain readers for your print newsletter
  • How to use your print newsletter to build referral relationships

Newsletter Content

  • The 85-15 rule
  • Content do’s and don’ts
  • Calls to action—what do you want to have happen?

Newsletter Examples

  • Strong email examples
  • Strong print examples

Getting It Done

  • Getting the right help
  • Using an editorial calendar
  • Sourcing content
  • Recycling content

Enjoying the Results

  • Helping your business
  • Helping dogs

Veronica Boutelle

COACHING FOR REAL-LIFE SUCCESS

What does real-life training success look like for our clients and students? Rather than focusing on a dog who can perform behaviors X, Y, and Z, our services should be aimed at bigger-picture goals. For example, harmonious human-dog households in which dogs are included in family activities and owners have the skills and buy-in to use positive strategies to address problems.

It’s common to feel discouraged about cases we think could have gone better. Who among us hasn’t been disappointed about clients not choosing to train longer or take another class? Who among us hasn’t worried whether we created enough change to keep a dog in her home, or at the center of the family? Who among us hasn’t complained about low compliance either due to clients with poor skills, busy schedules, or a lack of will?

The trick to better success with clients and students is focusing on helping people not become junior dog trainers, but better dog handlers and guardians. These two goals are not the same.

Step 1: Stop Focusing on Teaching Dog Behaviors

  • Private training: train the dog yourself
  • Classes: let behaviors come along as a natural side-effect of teaching what really matters
  • Teach clients and students real-life concepts and skills: What do people need to know and be able to do to live harmoniously with their dogs?
  • Life rewards
  • Situational awareness
  • Working at their dog’s level
  • Problem solving

Step 2: Coaching for Independence

  • Proofing dog owners for real life
  • Don’t teach learned helplessness
  • The 4-step coaching model
  • How to teach clients to handle real-life distraction
  • Building classes that teach real-life success

Coaching for Real-Life Results for Clients, Dogs, and Trainers

  • Clients: better behaved dogs, harmonious households, great canine companionship
  • Dogs: included in family activities, less conflict with their people
  • Trainers: increased personal satisfaction, reduced burnout risk, more business success