It happens. A litter is born, whether the market is a little wonky, you haven’t quite gotten your name out there like you wanted, or life happened and you plum forgot to really get out there with your advertising…and here you are, puppies are 6, 8, or maybe 10 or 12 weeks old, and you have some left to sell.
I could preach about how you need to build a waitlist, be diligent about social media, or work on your website, but the truth is, these things happen. Sometimes you have leftover puppies.
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Buyers would sometimes ask me what I would do with leftover puppies. I think for most of them it was curiosity, just wondering, I think some were looking to get a deal on a second, but it’s a good question nonetheless. I used to tell these buyers that I had a good recipe for puppy stew…try it out sometime, it’s hilarious the facial expressions you’ll get.
Okay, so maybe that’s a little crude, I think it’s funny, I’ve been in a Halloween mood recently. The kids are pretty excited.
Really though, what do you do with puppies that haven’t sold? Well, it’s tough, but there isn’t a drop dead date you have to have them sold by, you just have to keep working on selling until they’re gone. I know there’s that feeling in the pit of your stomach the day they turn eight weeks and you still have puppies without a home, but just take a deep breath, it’s not too bad, we can get through this.
Should you reduce price?
When puppies haven’t sold, most people’s first inclination is to reduce the puppies’ price. In some instances this will work. Usually the price isn’t the problem, though, it’s more often you haven’t gotten in front of enough people, in essence, you don’t have a price problem, you have a marketing problem.
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Before reducing price, see if you can get in front of more eyes. This helps if you have a social media account going, but that doesn’t always work, sometimes you have to go to them, instead of them coming to you.
So how do we find them? We look at our ideal puppy buyer, the person who would succeed with one of our puppies. I hope this point gets embedded in your brain where you get irritated when I say it because you’ve heard it so much. It really is the key to everything with your breeding program and the success of your puppies and their families.
Okay, so we have our ideal puppy buyer, now we need to look at where they’ll be looking for their puppy. This comes down to demographics a lot, for example if they’re on Facebook more, which is common for people around 45 and older, while you’ll see younger buyers on Instagram, and younger still in places like TikTok and Snapchat. Yet, again, these marketing locations are better for long-term waitlist building, as in building your waitlist all year round. One thing you should absolutely do when trying to sell older puppies, make sure that when they first click on your kennel name that you have a note that you have available puppies. On Instagram for example, write in your bio that you have available puppies or something like that and have the link in the bio lead right to the page with the adoptable dogs on your website.
When you have puppies that you need to move now, it’s best to opt for broker sites, places that let you list individual puppies, like Gooddog, AKC Marketplace, or specific sites for certain breeds. When I first started breeding, I built a lot of awareness around my dogs through a broker site, gundogbreeders.com, I was able to pay to put a listing either for a litter or individual dogs. I was also able to list my kennel as a breeder in Arizona, and in the blurb about my kennel I wrote that we had puppies and to contact for more information.
Another controversial suggestion, but that has been very successful, is to use Facebook Groups. Despite the fact that it’s against Facebook’s policies, there are many puppy searching groups. I have found that the ones that are large and not breed specific are generally a waste of time, the buyers on those haven’t been my favorite, often looking for a deal, not the right dog, BUT the groups that are specific to the breed are generally pretty good. I recommend that you are EXTREMELY careful about reading the group rules and following them, erring on the side of caution.
Another side note, these groups are often for an entire country, because they cover so much area they have a lot of buyers, BUT they won’t always be in a position to drive to you, it helps to have some plans for either delivery, flying, or hiring a nanny to get your dogs to other locations, as these questions will arise quickly once you have started communicating with someone from a Facebook group. The best thing is to encourage the conversation to move to Facebook messenger, as you can openly talk there, especially because often the comment chain will flag the post on Facebook.
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Why Facebook, amongst many other companies, has decided to turn away all breeders because there are some bad apples, is a story for another day. I will say that since starting this podcast—not because of me, but the culture change I’ve seen—is that there are many more people open to dog breeders and they really do want dogs from honest dog breeders.
Oh, and another thing, understand that all the wonderful branding, marketing, and personality you’ve put into your breeding program may be lost on a broker page or Facebook. You may get people price shopping and not understanding the quality they’re getting. Try not to beat yourself up about this and try to stay calm, I know my blood pressure has gone up many times when the conversation started with “How much are your puppies?” However, this is the nature of these sort of sites and the buyers that are on them. It doesn’t make them bad people, nor bad dog owners, they just aren’t educated yet, but that gives you a great opportunity to show them how wonderful your dogs really are, they can turn into some of your best buyers.
On these sites you can sometimes see where your price aligns against others. It’s not a bad idea to be a little cheaper than the others. This will invariably bring you a few more buyers inquiring. If nothing else, it’ll give you a little practice talking with them. I wouldn’t say you want to be drastically lower in price, but about 10-20% cheaper depending on the price, so if the dogs are generally $2000, then list yours at $1700-$1800 on the site. If the general price is $1000, be $800, if the general price is $4000, be $3600.
When you drop price, please never use any of the real estate or retail marketing phrases like “priced to move” these are live animals and that will come across like they’re not worth caring about. You want to give them every bit as much value and care as you did for the puppies that are already sold. The mindset is that you haven’t found the right fit yet, not that something is wrong with the dog.
Occasionally you get buyers that you really like, but your price is just out of their budget, but you know they’d take excellent care of the dog. I used to keep a list of these buyers. With these buyers you can reach out and say something along the lines of, “we have this puppy and the buyers backed out, they forfeited their deposit, so I can sell the puppy at a lower price, would you like him?”
You may notice that this is a bit of a white lie, technically there was no deposit on this puppy, so why Julie, the so-called Honest Dog Breeder, might we use such a tactic? Because it retains the value of the puppy in their eyes. If you sell a dog for cheaper and you wouldn’t sell it at that price before, you have to explain why that was okay this time. Most people will assume something is wrong with the dog, so we have to explain that the dog is fine, and this tactic does that.
I have also been super honest with people and told them I simply failed to market them and so that’s why I have them. That the leftover puppies are totally my fault as I got wrapped up in managing my life.
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