As a facility based in a densely populated suburb, finding a balance between accessibility to the public, allowing for marketability, without feeling like you’re running 100mph on a hamster wheel not actually getting anywhere, is a true challenge. What I mean by that is, determining what I should be offering to the community so they know we exist and what we have to offer (and of course, how absolutely magical the world of horses and ponies is), and when you’re just giving away free services with little return to the business, can be nearly impossible to pin down.
If you own a horse, I am sure you have even been asked by friends, family, maybe even the bold acquaintance, if they can come ride your horse. It’s a really annoying question as the person who pays the shoe bill, vet bill, board bill, and also feels a lot like you’re being asked if they can take your highly-cherished mint-condition Sports Car out for a joyride when they likely don’t even have their learner’s permit. As a farm owner, we are expected to allow our horses to teach others, and often own horses or ponies that are suitable for beginners for program use. In 99% of cases those programs would be charged for, unless running a non-profit or offering some sort of sponsorship program. So, when someone calls up the business line (you know, the number that popped up on Google when they typed in your business name or even “horse riding near me”, or after driving by your business’s sign, or hearing by word of mouth about your existence from another paying customer), and they ask if they can come take a tour of your facility, see/pet/interact with the horses, what is the correct response?
As a younger professional I was sassy and blunt. Honestly I firmly believe this is why I have survived thus far without crumbling in this industry and still have a little self worth remaining. I still find the younger version of me chewing a hole in my lip when people call and ask me for this innocent sounding “tour”. Years back, as a freshly opened business to the area, with an equally open calendar and a lot less to fit into my day, and with staff available that wasn’t already doing plenty with their hours and found themselves with downtime, it was easy to just slap those tours on the Google Calendar and cross our fingers it led to business. Those tours would often go quite interesting and we learned a lot in the process.
There still were, are, and will continue to be, tours that weren’t a waste of time. Great lesson customers, boarders, lease clients, summer camp students, have come from tours. But the reality is you’re rolling the dice and the busier I get, the less I enjoy gambling with the little time and resources that myself and my staff find ourselves with. The frustrating tours, the ones you wish you left off the Google Calendar, typically go like this…
You set a tour appointment over the phone with someone for 11am on a Saturday. This is after you offered them 9am, but that was too early because they would like to go out to breakfast or hit snooze a few times. You then offered them 3pm, but it’s too close to nap time or soccer practice or maybe their return to the city for evening plans. So you say “uncle” after trying your best to let your day remain productive and you put their tour smack dab in the middle of the day, hoping you can will the scheduling gods to let it all gel together.
At 11am you wait, eyes glued to the parking lot, and with every minute that passes you start to get a bit itchy. Maybe these people forgot, maybe they are somehow lost (we get that one a lot despite being well marked on all GPS apps and very visible from the road with a large, clear sign), maybe you should text them so you can stop twiddling your thumbs? If you finally succumb to your anxiety and text them checking in, they often promptly text back that they are closeby and will be there soon. Soon is relative, these types off tours almost never fail to show up 15 minutes late, with coffee in hand and a smile on their face.
Once they have arrived, you greet them in the parking lot and silently promise yourself this will be a very expedited tour and they can decide to sign up and tell you later by text and you can get back to the many things you didn’t realize you had hanging over your head to do still before the day’s end. Except it doesn’t work that way, these people want small talk, they want to walk slowly and see each horse, they want to interrupt your every sentence about the actual programming you have to offer with goofy questions about the horses, like what they eat, how much it costs to buy one, did this (warmblood) run fast and win a lot of races, do you own any horses that were in the Kentucky Derby, etc. etc.
With every question it becomes harder not to scream, and feels as if you already are (internally, at the top of your lungs) and also becomes painfully apparent they aren’t remotely interested in lessons, simply looking for a daytime activity between breakfast and lunch “with a country feel”. You have to remind yourself that being rude to this person will surely prompt them to tell others, maybe post about it on social media, or even worse the dreaded Google review that will impact your overall rating, your side will never be heard and… your efforts to grow your business one tour at a time will surely have backfired.
Although it seems this moment will have never come, the tour reaches its end. You sheepishly ask them to be in touch if they are interested in scheduling a lesson or signing up for a program, and they speed off to their lunch date with friends to talk all about how they got to pet some horses. You shuffle back into the barn, defeated, with about a thousand things left on the “to do” list for the day. It’s no surprise they never reach out for lessons, you never see or hear from them again, and the only time you think of them is the next time someone calls to ask for the ever-innocent-sounding barn tour.
After a few times through this cycle, I have developed ways to vet out potential customer tours over the phone and also make tours less accessible in order to deter time wasters. It isn’t a perfect system and sometimes I feel guilty about it, but I try to tell myself that if they do end up riding here they will have to work within our regular scheduling constraints and if they can’t do that for a tour, it won’t work out long term anyways. I try not to offer tours on the weekends or during the busy weekdays after school unless it’s a weekender who isn’t in town during the week. Sometimes I get lucky with an Election Day or a holiday that we are available and I can accomodate a quick tour. Sometimes when I put up schedule hurdles, I am told the person is too busy and “can (we) just stop by to take a look around?” when it works for them. This answer has gotten quite easy, I tell them it’s not safe for them to wander the barns and be around the horses without staff and that we are strictly by appointment only. Sometimes this is enough to make non-serious parties disappear and go type “petting zoo near me” into Google instead.
Other times, people do get real when setting up a tour and actually find a window of time where we can briefly show them the barn and chat. These tours aren’t petting horses, except in the case of maybe determining if a young child will be comfortable enough around horses for lessons to be a wise investment on the parent’s part. I always make it known that whoever is giving the tour has a lesson to teach 30 minutes after the tour starts, so it is important they are on time, to let me know if something comes up and they can’t make it, and to understand we will have to stay within that time window. These little roadblocks help us sort out the serious from those that just want an afternoon seeing the pretty horses, while also enforcing expectations that are similar to those we enforce to our regular customers.
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love sharing my horses with people and igniting the passion for riding and just being around these awesome animals in people of all ages. Anyone who knows my business model and my many community programs knows this to be true. I offer affordable opportunities for people to experience horses year round, and do everything I can to make that make sense in both my business plan and for the general public.
I just think after answering 100+ phone calls a year from an (obviously very inexperienced) inquirer about whether they can just rent one of the horses and “gallop” the trails for a few hours, we can stifle a laugh and say “thanks but no thanks” and also think we can spare ourselves a few barn tours. The seemingly harmless “Can I come see your horses?” Or “Can I just ride for free while my daughter takes a lesson? I rode in college…” etc. etc. never gets easier to respond to without sounding rude, but neither does paying the bills for all the horses we have to protect from extra wear and tear, ulcers, and paying our staff properly for their expertise and not wasting their time. Just make sure you install your filter and your sense of humor before answering your “business phone number”, where the customers call you. 😉
Stable Attitude, Zero Bucks Given 