How to Create a 5-Minute Booking Process Inside Your Client Experience [Client Experience Series Pt 4]

But a well structured proposal? That's what takes the lead from just browsing to officially booked in minutes. And yes, I'm not kidding. This process should take five minutes.

Okay, so first let's talk about why you need a five minute booking process. Every single CRM, no matter if you are using my two favorites, Dubsado or HoneyBook, or Studio Ninja or Tave or Sprout Studio, or some of the other CRMs that I don't talk about very often for good reason. All of them have some version of a proposal or a quote that display your offers and services so that your clients can either choose the services or you have clearly laid them out for them.

It connects a contract and an invoice. So that you have one click signing and payment, no more chasing people down to sign the contract and then pay your invoice. They can trigger the onboarding process, because no one wants to watch their phone like a hawk in order to see if someone books, so that then you can manually trigger a booking confirmation email and whatever comes next in your onboarding process.

And then my absolute favorite thing of like quotes and proposals in general is that you can set an expiration date. I personally expire my proposals after only 72 hours. I never want to take the risk that I get overbooked or double booked, but I do want to make sure that you guys have an expiration date because it does create urgency, which gives people a deadline in order to say yes and book your services.

Now, if your CRM lets you automate the entire booking process in one step, there's no reason to be stuck in an endless email chain where you send the offer, they reply and say, okay, that's good. Then you send the contract. They send you back a signed scanned PDF, which no one should be doing that in 2025 and beyond. If you're waiting to get that ding after you've sent the invoice. Now, all of the CRMs do that.

But what I want to talk about for the remainder of this podcast episode is how Dobsado and HoneyBook are different and they take your booking proposal to the next level. So let's what separates a basic proposal, which is what I just talked about, from a highly converting proposal is that it is very

on brand. Both of them allow you to add your own brand colors, your own brand fonts, if they're available. Add pictures, videos, and specifically these things. So first we've got a strong header section. Your proposal needs to hook them immediately, just like your website does. If you've ever heard of the term above the fold, the same thing is true with your booking proposal.

The image that you have at the top, should immediately draw your lead into like, Oh my gosh, yes. I want that for myself. You want to add a short message reinforcing why they need this experience now. For those of us that are family photographers, there is absolutely no urgency in what we do.

Um, newborn photographers, wedding photographers, I mean, even brand photographers, if people are trying to get new images for their website where they've hired a designer and they have to get it to them by a deadline, all of them have urgency. Family photography is that thing that you can put off. Oh, well, I'll do it I'll do it next month. Oh, we'll do it next year. Oh, and then all of a sudden, it's been two to three years, and they don't have any professional family photos.

And again, this needs to create some urgency because clients tend to procrastinate on when they book their family photography when they don't do it for other genres.

Okay, the second section that your proposal should have is an about you section. Yes, they may have already talked to you on the phone. Yes, you may have an about you section on your website, but you still want to remind them of who you are when you send the proposal. You still want to remind them of your approach and why your sessions are unique. And then you want to highlight how your service is designed to be easy, stress-free, and tailored to their needs. Now, stress-free is my thing.

Like I have all over my website, all over my proposal, how stress-free I make family photos because for family photos, that is like the number one thing. Moms stress out about how their partners are going to react, how their kids are going to act. And so I just want to assure them that I can handle anything that they throw my way. Okay, the third section that you can put on one of these highly converting proposals is your process. You simply want to lay it out like a timeline.

What is going to happen from this booking process until delivery? You can tell them how you're

going to prepare them. What's going to happen on the day of the session? What the timeline looks like to get their final photos. All of these things can be laid out in a process section. And again, even if you have it on your website, it's good to remind them of this on your proposal.

Now, if you have, you know, 1500 words on your website about your process, you don't need that in your proposal, but you should give them the highlights and a little bit of information, so that they can remember what your process is before they sign on the dotted line.

And last, but not least, is frequently asked questions. Now, frequently asked questions can remind people of really important things like how you reschedule for weather if you are an outside photographer, or if someone happens to be sick. It can give them additional information on how you choose a location. What is included? Do you opt for styling tips?

All of these kinds of things can be addressed in your frequently asked questions, but you also want to make sure that you are addressing whatever the biggest objections are that your clients have during the process. And if you don't know what they are, I highly recommend that you interview a few of your clients to ask them about the process of hiring you, looking for you, and how they felt throughout the process.

If they felt like something was missing, you can probably write an FAQ to address it for future clients.

Now, when it comes to the offer, which I already mentioned, all of the CRMs give you the opportunity to include your packages, your services, your offers inside of the proposal or the quote. But I want to make absolutely sure that you are keeping this simple. Do not give them a cheesecake factory menu of all of your options. If you offer seven different kinds of sessions, you should not have seven different kinds of sessions on your proposal.

This is when you are trying to get them to make a decision: yes or no, are they going to book you not? Oh my gosh, do we want This kind of session or this kind of session or this kind of session, you should have already narrowed it down based on the information that they gave you in their contact form or if you are someone who does consultation calls, you could have gotten that information there, but keep it simple guys.

Now, I know that I first talked about what a basic proposal could look like, and then I highlighted why I love Dubsado and HoneyBook, but the truth is, even if you're not using Dubsado and HoneyBook, you should still have those things that I just mentioned, inside of your inquiry and booking process, you just can't put them in the proposal. Because Other CRMs don't allow you to do that. So make sure that you are using your website and your emails in order to pre sell the experience.

Make sure that your clients know your process, before you send them the proposal. If you can't include your process in the proposal. Have testimonies inside of some of your emails.

If you can't put them on your proposal and again, FAQ section, maybe you have an email. That gives them the more specific FAQs related to booking instead of your general FAQs that you might have on your website. All right, friends, and that is how you turn a proposal into a highly converting booking machine.

So once again, I want you to keep it easy. I want you to keep it clear. I want you to show your personality if you can. I want you to answer their questions up front and their objections throughout the proposal in the copy as well as the FAQs. And I want you to set a deadline. Now, if you're thinking, uh, Koli, this sounds amazing, but I need an easy button.

Guess what guys? I have one click proposal templates inside of the system shop for both the Psado and HoneyBook. What that means for you is you purchase the proposal. You get an email, you click on it and that proposal or smart file is directly loaded into your Dubsado and HoneyBook account within seconds. Now how long does it actually take to customize one of my proposals?

Well if you already have your copy somewhere in the document or on your website where you're basically going to copy and paste and you've already selected the images that you are going to use and you already have your packages created inside of your CRM, y'all we're talking about less than 30 minutes. It's to customize one of these templates and have it ready to go for your next lead. Okay. So I hope that this episode has helped you get motivated to create your own five minute booking process.

And if you are interested in the booking templates that I mentioned for Dubsado or HoneyBook, go to coliejames.com/booking-templates All right. That's it for this episode and really for the client experience series. I hope it's been helpful. See you next time.