Holes in your sales funnel let customers out.
I want to adopt a Golden Retriever.
By all accounts, I’m a fantastically qualified candidate. I have extensive dog ownership experience, have trained several dogs (including greyhounds straight off the racetrack, who had never even seen a house before), and have volunteered for years at various breed rescues. I work from home all day, and I’d very much like to adopt a senior dog (a dog over 7 years old) – which are usually the most difficult dogs to place.
I’ve been working with a breed rescue for three weeks, and I haven’t even gotten a home visit yet.
What went wrong?
Customer Acquisition
There are three Golden Retriever breed rescues that place dogs in my area.
One of these is headquartered in Albany, a 3-hour drive away. I’d have to drive there to pick up the dog. I don’t have a car, and because I’m (barely) under 25 renting a car costs approximately Eleventy Million Dollars. Cross them off the list.
One of these has no website. I’d have to call a random stranger on the phone to see if they have any senior dogs, then wait for an application in the mail. Calling random strangers makes me nervous, and I don’t even know if it’s worth it or if they’re a bunch of nutters because they have no website. Cross them off the list.
The third rescue has a website, but it’s out of date. They have an application, but you can only return it via US Mail. They have no phone number or email listed. Can you believe this was the best option?
It was. I walked to Kinko’s and paid the $4 to print out the application.
Is your customer acquisition process this hard? Do you make it difficult for the customer to contact you in the way he/she prefers? If you don’t have a phone number on your site, list one. If you don’t have an email address on your site, list one. Also – don’t make people return stuff via US Mail. Get yourself the Contact Form 7 plugin and make that thing a web form!
Fact Finding/Initial Contact
I popped the application in the postbox and waited a week. Nobody contacted me, though I had put two phone numbers and an email address on the application.
Rooting around the internet, I found an email address for the rescue (no name given) and shot off an email asking about my application and volunteering (yes, for free) to redo the rescue’s website and make their adoption application a web form.
Five minutes later, I got a phone call.
Yes, said the bored and faintly offended voice (who didn’t tell me her name) on the other side – they had gotten my application three days ago. What kind of dog did I want? Who am I living with? City or country? Owned a dog before? Oh, that’s fine. Someone will contact you about a home visit.
All of this information was on the application.
No mention, of course, of my offer to help them improve their website.
Are you making your customers fill out long forms for no reason? Collect the minimum amount of information necessary for you to offer them a solution. Then don’t ask them those questions again – unless you need clarification on something – or they’ll wonder what the hell they filled that long form out for. And for Zod’s sake don’t be rude the first time you get them on the phone.
Also, telling someone your name is considered classy.
Propose Solution
8 days later I still hadn’t heard back about a home visit. So I emailed the anonymous account.
I got a one-sentence reply from no-name saying that the person who normally does their home visits broke her leg, and they’d work on finding someone else.
After the spike of frustration died off, I sent back an email thanking them – and offering to volunteer to conduct home visits in NYC for them when their regular person is unavailable.
Are you keeping your customers up-to-date on where they stand? Sometimes delays are unavoidable – but not telling your customers that you’re held up (and why you’re held up) is a terrible way to do business.
Solution Evaluation
By this point I was wondering what I’d gotten myself into with these people, and I started looking elsewhere for adoptable dogs of any breed. I put a “wanted” ad on Craigslist giving my desires and credentials as a dog owner.
And got an email from a random woman (who did sign her name) praising the rescue I’d been trying to work with.
Sigh.
I replied saying thanks – and I’d love to adopt a dog from this rescue – but it had been 3 weeks and the level of disorganization is pretty bad.
Are your testimonials real? If you have glowing testimonials but your sales process is shot to hell, potential customers are either going to think you’re lying or that they’re the only one who is being treated badly. Either way, it’s a disaster.
Negotiation
Apparently, this woman forwarded my short reply to HQ.
The next morning, I received the following charming email from no-name:
from [redacted]
to Charlotte Bowen
date Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 9:17 AM
subject Re: Adoption ApplicationDid you get my e mail last nigh? After searching I was able to find someone to do your home visit. I saw an e mail you sent last night stating that we were very disorganized. That is simply not so. We have volunteers everywhere when one of them breaks her leg causing a delay that does not constitute disorganization. I am sure the person I contacted will be in touch with you shortly if you are still interested in working with us.Please let me know if you would prefer not to work with us and I will not have him call you . I value the time of my volunteers and do not send them to do home visits if the adopters are not really interested in working with us.
Really?
Really, no-name?
I sent a short note back saying that the only reason I’d been pinging her every Monday for 3 weeks was because I was interested.
(Yes, I was a little pissed off by this point.)
Are you invested in bringing value to your customer? Do you realize that your customer doesn’t necessarily understand your delays and frustrations, and that this understanding is not their fault? Business is about mutually beneficial transactions – and if one person (either you or your customer) is doing all the heavy lifting, something is seriously wrong.
Purchase Order
I just (as I was writing this) got a call from a very bored and condescending-sounding man about scheduling a home visit. Even though he lives 10 blocks away, he says, there’s no reason for him to do a home visit for me until they have a dog ready to place with me.
But… you… have… 10… dogs… listed… on… your… website?
It boggles the mind.
If you don’t have something worthwhile for your customers to buy, get out of business. Or you’ll be put out of business fast. Also, humility is the first virtue for entrepreneurs. If your attitude is that you’re doing your customers a favor by doing business with them, your attitude stinks.
Why on earth is it so difficult for a good home to acquire a dog?
I’ll spare you the ex-rescue volunteer’s account of puppy mills and back yard breeders. Suffice it to say that I think the only legitimate and humane way to acquire a purebred dog as a pet is to go through a breed rescue. Even I – staunch spaying and neutering advocate that I am – was reduced to looking at the websites of reputable Golden Retriever breeders last night.
Dog rescues – no matter what breed they work with – would place more (and save more) dogs if they ran their organizations like a business.
You would get more business if your sales funnel didn’t have holes in it.
99.99% of people in the world are indifferent to your business and what you do. Why let any of that .01% who are interested slip away?
What actions can you take today to make your sales sieve into a sales funnel?
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow! I’ve been wanting to adopt a dog for a few months, or at least considering the option since I just moved. I didn’t know how much of a weird organization this might turn out to be. A friend of mine had troubles with dog adoption / fostering places as well here in Canada… so maybe it’s the industry or the volunteer thing that doesn’t seem to work well?
I loved your take away points. You definitely zeroed in on changes that would make this whole thing so much better!
Nathalie Lussier´s last blog ..What Eating Raw Food Has to Do with Tree Planting
I love working with nonprofits and organizations with a mission… but one thing I’ve learned is that ofttimes some people within them have, shall we say, a martyr complex. Which makes it hard to step back and look with an objective eye at one’s own shortcomings…
William @ DIY Video Marketing´s last blog ..YouTube Gets One Quindozillion Views a Second
Charlotte,
I have to say that this post really made me think. It made me think about ALL of my consumer experiences. About buying the vegetarian turkey for thanksgiving…and not getting a reply to the email I sent. etc….
It also made me think about my own biz. Am I adding value…Do I have a strong sales process…Do I respond to customer inquiry, and I think most frightening, do I even have a product to sell!
My main take away: put on my customer’s hat and see what they experience.
Thanks for sharing this anecdote.
@ Nathalie – Definitely don’t give up on rescue organizations just because of a couple of bad experiences. I used to volunteer as a foster family/home visitor at a wonderful Golden rescue when I lived in TX. You’re right that because the organization is made up of volunteers it can be a little hit or miss sometimes – especially when the rescue works with popular breeds, because in this economy so many people are abandoning their dogs and everyone is overworked – but on the whole, a good rescue will work closely with you to find you a dog which matches your personality and lifestyle. If you’re not set on a particular breed you can also work with all-breed rescues, which are often quicker about placing dogs.
@ William – That’s a very good way to look at it. Seeing it from the rescue’s perspective, I’m sure they don’t know how their “sales” process looks to potential adopters, or presumably they’d change what they do.
@ Joshua – Vegetarian turkey? Is that kind of like the “mock duck” that comes in cans? Glad you found the post useful.
Charlotte, your experience reminded me of thoughts I have had lately about leadership. It sounds like many if not all of the groups that you contacted were lacking in strong leadership. I’d be willing to bet that if you engaged any one of those volunteers under neutral circumstances, they would admit that their organization could stand some improvements, but they are all waiting for somebody else to step up.
I’ve come to realize that any self-doubt that I have about leadership abilities is just that, no more. I’ll bet you could start your own group and run rings around all of those outfits.
Mike Stankavich´s last blog ..Home Networking Versus Voluntary Simplicity