- We shopped 200 companies . You want to hear what we found? Listen to this episode.
Hey, it's Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the "Wedding Business Solutions" podcast. I did a presentation recently at Wedding MBA on secret shopping, and to prepare for it, we actually shopped, secret shopped, mystery shopped, whatever you want to call it, 200-plus companies, and wanted to see how they did. So what did we find? Well, first, let me start with what is secret shopping? So secret shopping simply in this case means we went to their website, we filled out their contact form asking about information and pricing for a wedding, just like so many of the leads that come in, and then we tracked to see what would happen. What we didn't do, we didn't call them, we didn't go to WeddingWire, or The Knot, or places like that to fill out their contact form. The only time we do that is when a client contracts us to secret shop them, and then we'll do it through The Knot, through WeddingWire, so that they can see it, as well as what they do through their website.
But in this case, we went to their own website. I mean, if you're not paying attention to the leads coming in from your own website, we have a big problem, right? That is an easy problem to fix, respond to your inquiries. So what do we do? We fill out the contact form, we put in a wedding date, we put in a guest count, if it asks for it, we try to pick a date that's kind of in season but not one of the most popular so it's probably not booked yet, so we do it far enough out. Depending upon where you are in the country, is when we're going to pick a different month. So we might pick a Friday, and we'll do it in season, but not the heaviest month, something like that. We want to get an idea how people are responding, because as I've said many times here on the podcast, I've said it in my books, and I've said it from stage, the biggest opportunity you have is people that have already reached out to you and they haven't told you no.
So why do I say that? Well, if you've ever done cold calling, where you're, you know, just trying to find people who might be interested in your business, I mean, I did that for 10 years, driving around, knocking on doors like yours, trying to sell wedding advertising and wedding magazines. but if you've ever done that, you're trying to find people who might be interested in what you do. So you do your research and you see if they're already buying from a company like yours, et cetera. That's hard to do for weddings, right? You can't just go knocking on doors for weddings. You might get a list from a wedding expo. It's kind of cold calling, kind of not, because you don't know if they've stopped by your booth, you don't know if they've already picked your service, you don't know if they're further up the food chain, so they're not ready for your service 'cause they haven't booked some of the other things they might do before it. But that's different.
So in this case, by the time they reach out to you, they already need what you do, that's why they're reaching out. They've already looked at all the possible choices, that's what we call the paradox of choice, they want to know they've seen all the choices, but once you've been shown all the choices, it's too many choices. I mean, like, have you been on Amazon for anything? You want to see too many choices, there you go. But we want to know we've seen all the choices, and then we start making our eliminations. It's like the, what was that dating site, Tinder, right? You swipe left for you don't want it, you swipe right if you do, and you swipe up if it's something really good. So I've been told, right? So what do we do? We fill out the contact form and then we see what happens. We mark if someone does an auto-reply, but we don't count that as a real reply, because most auto-replies are just to confirm that you've received it, and they're not giving us any more information. Occasionally, an auto-reply will come in and just dump information on us. We mark it as an auto-reply, we don't mark it as a real reply.
So yes, you replied quickly, but very few, and I mean very, very few that we see of that are really any good, because they're either giving no information or they're giving so much that it's just data dump, that it's almost not useful because it's too much. And again, if you've heard me present on this, or read it in my book, "Why Are They Ghosting Me?" or my new book, "Stop Selling and Help Them Buy Weddings & Events," giving them too much information all at once is also not a good thing. You don't want to distract them. You don't want them to start reading documents that you've sent them or going to your social media, or looking at photos.
Once they reach out to you, all you want to do is continue the conversation that they have started. I was just listening to Phil M. Jones's book, you'll hear him on the podcast later, but Phil M. Jones's book "Exactly How to Sell," and he was saying the same thing there. He used this analogy that I use, which is it's kind of like dating, you know, you'll get a better result if you take it slow. You don't walk into a bar and see someone sitting at the bar, and say, "Oh, they're attractive," and there's an empty bar stool next to them, and you don't walk up and go, "Hey, would you like to get married?" That's a little forward, right? That's jumping too many steps. Well, you're also jumping too many steps when you ask for a call right away, a Zoom right away, a meeting right away, a tour right away, because you're jumping steps with this person that just is in the stages of getting information, and now you're jumping all the way to this very high-commitment thing. And yes, I know that it works some of the time. Almost everything works some of the time. Nothing works all of the time.
So we want to see how quickly do you reply, we mark that down, the fact that you did reply, because not everybody does, I'll get to that in a minute. We track to see, did you have any attachments? I don't want any. Did you have any links? I don't want any. And then how many links were there? How many attachments were there? And again, why not attachments and links? 'Cause you probably haven't looked at your attachments on a phone, and your PDFs shrink down and they're not a good user experience. Links are sending them away from the conversation that you want them to have, and then you wonder why they're not getting back to you, but you gave them things to read, places to go instead of getting back to you now.
So no links, no attachments. Did you end with a question? Actually, Phil said this in his book as well, and I think he said it in his other book, "Exactly What to Say," The questions are a part of the conversation. The fact that you're asking a question means it's a conversation. Virtually, I'm going to say, 80% or more of the ones that I see, you're ending with statements, you're not ending with questions, and if you end with a question, then it's implied that you want a reply. If you end with a statement, they might or might not reply on their terms, but you're not asking for the actual action that you want. Again, you're probably asking them to schedule a call or schedule a meeting, something like that. And then, does it fit on one screen of a phone. You don't want to scroll and see multiple screens when you're reading an email. Your clients and your couples don't either. Then we don't do anything. We want to see if you're going to try again, because just because you replied and just because you replied quickly doesn't mean that they're going to get back to you right away, because people are busy, and if their inbox is like yours, your email now got buried. And if you're using messaging like The Knot, or WeddingWire, or Facebook, or any of the messaging things, every new message pushes the other ones down.
So yes, you might have replied quickly, they might not be able to reply then, and now your message gets buried, so you trying again puts yourself at the top of the inbox, and I would like you to do that the next day. Again, if you've read any of my books, "Why Are They Ghosting Me?" lays out exactly this. And A.J., my friends in Florida, you asked this question. You have the book, I know you do, I signed it for you. Just go in the book, it tells you exactly the cadence of when to send out the messages. Actually, it gives you the wording, too. So do you reply a second time, a third time, a fourth time, a fifth time? We go out to 10 columns, and we have companies that have replied more than that, and we just have to say 10-plus at that point, because they're doing it. Most, if not all of them, are using some sort of an automated system that's dripping out messages, right, and that's fine, because it's better than not doing it. What we found is, first of all, the most, I want to say surprising, but it's not surprising, it's disappointing thing, is that not everybody we reached out to replied at all, at all, didn't even reply at all.
In some cases, some of the groups, we had as much as 18 or 20% didn't reply at all. And it's one of the biggest complaints of couples is that they reach out to wedding professionals and they get no response at all. I've had this with some of the clients where they're hitting their numbers so they get complacent on not following up as much as they should, or at all, because they're hitting their numbers, and it hides that. But then the bosses are looking, going, "Wait a minute, we could be at 120%, not at 100%, if we were actually responding to the people who've already inquired with us." That's the whole key. So the first most disappointing thing is that not everybody replied at all, and in some cases it was, I think it was 12% overall, so 12% of this over 200 companies, that's 24, 25 companies, didn't reply at all. Then we had about 50% tried a second time. Now, that's such low-hanging fruit, it's only a second time. And then it drops down to a third did it three times, then it drops down to, like, 15%, four times, and then it really drops off after that, so those companies who are doing 4, 5, 6, 7 times, whether it's manual or automated, are in a much better position.
Now, some of the companies that responded many, many times I would change what they're doing. We don't count promotional emails that we know are just blasting out to a list, 'cause they're not personal, so if somebody puts us into a drip campaign and they're sending us about their Mother's Day special, or they're just sending out this thing about an open house, that's not personal to this person. Yes, it counts, and yes, it's certainly valid. What we're looking for is, is someone taking a personal interest in us, the couple that's getting married, in this particular case, is someone taking a personal interest, and how are they doing that?
So what are your opportunities here? Your opportunities very simply are follow up one more time than you're doing now. If you're doing one, do two, if you're doing two, do three, if you're doing three, do four, and so forth. I had somebody reach out to me and said, after they went to a workshop that I did, one of my masterminds, they reached out now three and four times using one of the examples that I use in my books and I use in the training, and it's kind of a funny thing to get them to stop what they're doing and say, "Hey, that was creative and it's working." They said it's not working amazingly, but that's not the point. What if they hadn't sent the third or fourth email? Then they wouldn't get any response.
So if it's working at all, why not? What's one more sale worth to you? One more. Isn't that worth trying again for someone who's already reached out for someone who's already said that they're interested in you and what you do? Of course it is, it's the lowest-hanging fruit. You don't need to spend any more money on advertising or marketing to follow up with people that have already inquired. Your marketing and advertising has already worked. You don't want to pull back on it, because you want to get those leads, but you might want to tweak what you're doing on those sites, you might want to tweak the way you're responding so you get better inquiries. Listen to the podcasts I've done about pricing and read my books about that.
Oh, and by the way, any of my books, you want to get free shipping, go to shopalanberg.com, PODCAST is the coupon code to get free shipping on anything that's in there, one book, ten books, whatever you want, shopalanberg.com, coupon code PODCAST. So what have I learned from secret shopping? Your competitors are probably doing a poor job of following up. I'm not saying they don't respond, and they probably respond quickly, so that's good, because the first one that responds very often is the one who can get the sale. However, you have to respond well, not just that you did it, but just because they haven't responded doesn't mean they're not interested, it doesn't mean they're just price shopping. I had somebody say that to me. "Well, if they didn't respond, they're just price shopping." No, people get busy. Haven't you ever ghosted someone? Haven't you ever not responded to someone right away because you were busy and then it gets buried in your inbox? Of course you have. It doesn't mean you weren't interested. It doesn't mean you're not going to come back to that.
So what I've learned from secret shopping is very simply, respond quickly, make it fit on one screen, this is all what I talk about from the stage, in my training, and in the books. make it fit on one screen, end with one low-commitment question, don't jump right to the "Do you want to marry us?" question, right, or the tour, or the phone call, and then keep it conversational, because they have started a conversation when they filled out your contact form. It's no more complicated than that. I'll delve into more of this, I'm sure, on other episodes, if I haven't already, 'cause we have 200 episodes out, but again, if you want more about this, if you didn't come to Wedding MBA, it's in my book, "Why Are They Ghosting Me?" it's in "Stop Selling and Help Them Buy Weddings & Events." There's part of this in "Shut Up and Sell More Weddings & Events." It's all there. Thanks for listening to this. No, I'm not going to tell you if you were shopped. If you didn't contract us to shop you, we're not going to tell you that you were shopped. Assume that you were, because if we didn't do it, your competitors already have, and if they haven't yet, they will. Thanks for listening.
I'm Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you'd like to suggest other topics for "The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast" please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.
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