Have you guys seen this trend on threads where business owners are breaking down their quarter one recap? They're basically going through and telling us how many leads that they took in for the whole quarter, how many of those booked a consultation, and then how many of those turned into bookings. And listen, I'm a data junkie, so I am here for the numbers, okay? But what's so interesting to me is that we're actually missing some really big questions that need to be asked about these numbers.
So in today's episode, I'm going to be giving you all the dish behind the scenes of what I'm looking at when I'm going through these quarter one recaps being dropped on Threads. You ready for the dish? Let's get into it. Okay, CEOs, I think this is so fun. When I started seeing more and more people share their quarter one recaps, I was like, I literally do this every single day with my students. So, it's super fun to get to see the data and the numbers.
or really how they're breaking down their funnel to understand what worked and what didn't work. What I find the most interesting about it is a lot of them don't know what the numbers are telling them. And that's pretty common in our industry, right? That's the whole reason that I became a coach was to help wedding pros to understand the story that their data is telling them. But you have to understand how to read the data. Right?
So if you haven't seen this trend on threads, let me back up for a second. So basically what is happening over on threads, if you're not there, you need to get over there because it's actually a really interesting, fun, almost Twitter esque platform. Like I think of it as Twitter lite because honestly it's, it's kind of like people are a little punchy over there.
Um, there's a lot of like one liners that get dropped or people drop a lot of their like, Literally what's going on in their head at the moment. And so it's a really interesting platform, but you can just like drop anything over there. And so if you're not over there, I think that it's just a really fun place to be. To be honest, a lot of our clients aren't there yet. So it reminds me of the clubhouse days when it was like all vendors. That's what I'm feeling with Threads.
So it's kind of like the old clubhouse days, but it's all text. So you don't. You know, you don't have to be on video and it's not all shiny and pretty over there. So it's just a really interesting platform. All that to say, what's happening is they're dropping these recaps and they're basically saying things like, okay, I got 31 leads for all of first quarter, nine of them booked a consult of those three became bookings, right? Then some of them are breaking that data down on their own.
And some of them are kind of like, I don't really know what happened. Is three a good number to book from 31 leads? All these different questions are coming up, right? And so I have loved it. It's been really, really fun to see what people are thinking about their numbers. But what I wanted to do in this episode was kind of help you break that down for yourself. So if you've not done your own quarter one recap, by now you should be able to go back and look at all of your numbers from quarter 1.
And while you should be doing that with your financials, one of the things I really push into my students to be doing is to be looking at their sales funnel. Because your sales funnel is going to tell you so much about what you need to do to grow your revenue, right? And so that's what we're really, really wanting to focus on in this episode. So let's use this example, which was actually a real example that I saw over on Threads. Which was that they got 31 leads.
9 of them booked a consult and 3 of them turned into bookings, ok?. let's break this down. What are we looking for in these numbers? Okay, so the first thing we want to look at is how many of our leads actually went to consult. So in this example, we had 31 leads and nine of them booked a consult. So there's two things that this can really fall into, and that would be marketing and pricing. And those are going to go together in this example, or it's going to be lack of follow up.
These are the two things that we're going to want to look at in this beginning part of our funnel. So when you're looking at your own numbers, if you did not have 50 percent of your inquiries go to consult, then that's what we're going to really want to look at, is your Marketing and Pricing, and then your follow up. Okay, so what does that mean? When someone inquires, they typically have inquired because they saw your marketing.
Either your Instagram, your Pinterest, your TikTok, your website, whatever they saw, something drew them in. It could have also been, obviously, a referral, but they've likely also then gone to your Instagram just to see what you're into, to see who you are. So either way, we're going to put this on marketing. Now, when they inquire, if you then give them pricing, and that pricing doesn't match your marketing, that's typically a big thing that we see here.
Either your marketing is showcasing you as lower budget than you actually are, Or your marketing is showcasing you as a higher budget than what you actually are. So when your pricing doesn't match your marketing, there's a disconnect there. People get confused and so they bounce, right? So they'll inquire. The pricing doesn't match and so they bounce, right? So that's one reason that somebody could not book a consult. The second reason is going to be lack of follow up.
And I actually think this one is one of the bigger ones in the wedding industry. And this is because you are afraid of sounding like you use car salesman. So you don't want to keep following up, keep following up, keep following up, and you feel like you're getting ghosted. But remember in the wedding industry, So often the planning process is quite long.
And a lot of our couples are actually inquiring before they're even engaged because they're trying to get an idea of what everything is costing. Right? So while we think that we're being a used car salesman, we think we're being annoying, your lack of planning, Follow up could be causing someone else to slip in and get the consult instead of you.
So what I want you to really, really think about, if this is your issue here in your sales funnel, if you're not booking 50 percent of those leads, then I really want you to go back and I want you to look at, does my marketing match my pricing? So that's going to be number one. And then two, how many times are you following up? I want you to be following up for at least 30 days, but to be honest, My motto is kind of follow up until they tell you to stop following up.
You can follow up via text, you can follow up via email, by phone, whatever works for you and the client. But it's really, really important that you stay top of mind. Okay. We have lots of episodes all about how to do these followups and stay top of mind. And so I'm not going to dig into a whole lot here, but this is where I want you to be looking at is those two things. When you're thinking about how can I get more of my leads to convert to a consult.
Okay. The second piece of your funnel is going to be the number of consults that turn into bookings. So here is, I really push for an 80 percent conversion here. So I want 80 percent of your consultations to turn into bookings. Now you guys, Listen, I have an entire free training on this. We're gonna drop the link into the show notes below so that you can come over and join me for this training.
If you're interested in learning a little bit more about how to get more of your consultations to turn into bookings, I actually walk you through my entire sales strategy, my entire sales method of how to close 80 percent of your bookings in this free training. So we'll put the link below in the show notes so that you can jump into that free training. If you'd like to, but really what I want to focus on in this episode is exactly how to know whether this is working or not. Right?
So two things are happening here. If you're not getting at least 80 percent of your consults to turn into bookings. Now, in this example, we said nine consultations and three of them turned into bookings, right? So that's three bookings that she had. When in reality, if Out of nine consults, she would have booked 80%. We would have been having six to seven of those consults turn into bookings. And that's a significant difference.
So this is somewhere I really want you to focus if you're not closing 80 percent of your consults. Okay. There's two things I want you to look at. One is either you're not having a strong and confident closing in your consultation. And number two is going to go back to, again, lack of follow up. Again, we feel like we are going to be sounding like a used car salesman. So we get nervous and we're like, Oh, I don't want to sound like a used car salesman.
If they wanted to book me, they would have by now. That's not true, you guys. Life happens. People get busy. Then all of a sudden they forgot about you and someone else followed up instead. And so they went ahead and booked them. I'm telling you, stay top of mind. Even if it's just sending some updates, if it's sending a little planning tip or a new song that is super popular with weddings now, whatever it is you want to send, stay top of mind. And the other thing is that confident close.
And that's really what I talk so much about in this training is how to really master that consult to be able to double your revenue. And so I'd love for you to jump over into that free training and learn all about my assume method that I teach all of my students, because that is going to help you to really confidently close these consults every single time. Okay, so that's the two parts of the sales funnel that most people are talking about over on Threads.
But there's a couple of things that we are missing in this conversation that we need to have some big conversations about. And those two things are ghosting and turning away bookings because you're already booked. So ghosting happens, right? And I see this in these thread recaps pretty consistently where people are like, Oh, well, you know, 14 of the leads just ghosted me completely. Right? And listen, first of all, ghosting is going to happen. Sometimes people are price shopping. They get busy.
They don't respond. It's rude. Completely. It is what it is. It's not going away. When people ghost you before the consult, it kind of just as part of doing business. When people go ghost you after the consult, I'm not going to lie. I get really, really frustrated when somebody ghosts me after a consult just because I think it's super rude and disrespectful as I think most humans think. It just feels like I wasted my time. So if you're feeling that way, I'm with you.
Like it's life, it's human nature. But it's not going to stop. So let's not spend a whole lot of time on ghosting, but I do want you to think about the fact that if you're getting ghosted a lot, I want you to go back to numbers one and two and think about, is there something that I'm saying in my emails or in my followup, or am I not following up enough that's causing me to feel like I'm getting ghosted? Because remember, ghosting is just a lack of interest or a lack of time to get back to you.
So if you can get them interested, if you can get them excited, you're going to have a much better chance of getting them to respond to you. The other tip that I would give you about ghosting is when you're sending out your correspondence to them, whether that's via text or email or phone, keep it really, really brief. And try to get them to answer one question back to you. Like a really easy question, right? So sometimes it could be something as simple as like, how did you pick your date?
Or how did you pick your venue? Something really, really simple. Even just like how many guests you're going to have. Honestly, the answer doesn't super matter to your process. It's just a matter of, it's an easy, response. Like it's an easy thing for them to say really quickly while they're at a red light or while they're at work on a break, they can respond quickly to that and it gets the conversation started. It at least gets them to answer.
So quick response and make it a really easy question back to you instead of this whole, let's go ahead and book a consult straight from the beginning. Okay? So that's just something that I would keep in mind if you're getting ghosted a lot. And the last one, oh my gosh, you guys, okay, this is the one that I want to answer. All the Threads recaps. It's like making me crazy. And the last one is how many bookings you're turning away because you're already booked.
Like can we just sit on this for a second because this is a massive problem in our industry right now. In this example, this real life example that I'm giving you from Threads, this particular wedding pro said that she had Eight bookings that she had to turn away. So of the 31 inquiries, eight of them she had to turn away because she was already booked. And so she was like, so I don't count those. And I was literally like, no, wait a second. Stop the presses. What do you mean?
We don't count those. And what I want to encourage you, CEO, when you're listening to this right now is I want you to actually Hyper track the number of inquiries that you are turning away because you're already booked. Because this is the story that your data is trying to tell you. If you are turning away more than one or two leads a month because you're already booked, The story your data is telling you is it's time to build a team. Because this is how you scale.
This is how you double your revenue, triple your revenue, 10 times your revenue. Okay? This is how you're going to do it is by building out that team. And it's scary. Don't get me wrong. I totally know that it's scary. That's why I walk hand in hand with my pros who are inside of my programs that are building out their teams, because this is such a massively important piece of the scalability of your business.
It's also how you're going to create an exit plan for your business, how your business is going to be sellable at some point. It's how you are going to start to get your precious time back. So by saying, I'm not going to count those because it's like, Oh, I wasn't available. So they shouldn't count in my numbers. Wrong. You should actually be counting that and tracking that almost as much as you're tracking your sales every single month.
Because this is such important data that you need to be tracking to tell you should I hire? Am I ready to hire? If you're turning away 8 leads in a single quarter because you are already booked, we should definitely start looking at, okay, well, if I actually marketed even more, If I market it even more than I already am, could I start to fill someone else's schedule? Could I bring on an associate? Could I bring on a second planner? Could I bring on a designer?
Whatever that looks like in your business, I am telling you this is how so many of my students go from You know, 60, 000 a year to 300, 000 a year, or 50, 000 a year to 200, 000 a year. It's because they are building out their team, their strategic team to help them to start scaling their business, to take more of the business on.
And as you do that, it's not just, Oh, now we can take on more, but Also, you as the CEO are going to start slowly stepping away from so much of the day to day so that you can start to focus on the bigger picture. Now you've got this incredible team that you're building out, and eventually you'll be able to start focusing on that second revenue stream. What else are you doing to now start to 10 times that revenue.
So this is such an important piece of the puzzle that I think we're missing big time in these Threads Recaps. And y'all, listen, I'm here for it. I'm going to just dive into all the Threads Recaps and start. I keep asking people, so what's stopping you from building a team? I see that you, you know, turned away 8 inquiries. What's stopping you from building a team? Or people will say, this is one I see a lot too. I'm officially completely booked for 2024. Y'all, let me just explain to you.
I, I almost hit the ground when I saw that I was like, it is quarter one and you're telling me that you're officially completely booked for the entire year. Like that's not something that should be celebrated. That should be something that's like, Oh, my data is telling me I need to build a team for the scalability of my business. Right? Oh, I, I, I can't, I can't sit on my hands. I'm so excited to dig into this topic. So much more over on threads and TikTok and Instagram.
I'm going to blast it everywhere. So if you're with me, if you're excited about this topic, I would love to see you jump into some of these conversations with me. And if you're interested in learning more about how you can build your team, if you're like, yes, Brandee, this is actually happening to me, I'm turning away leads constantly. Drop into my DMs. Let's have a conversation about it because I want to help you build out that team. Listen to me. Yes, it's scary. It's not super easy.
If it was easy, everyone would do it. But it is worth it. Every single time you can ask. Any one of my students who's gone through this process with me, they will tell you every single time, it's hard, but it's worth it. Because now they're starting to get their time back. They're going on vacations without their computer. They're able to step away from their business. They're able to have weekends back with their families.
Because they've built out a powerhouse team of killer staff that can go out and execute weddings without them having to be there. And that CEO is how you scale a business. And I'm so excited to walk that journey with you. So I would love to see you in my DMs. If this is something that you're interested in doing in 2024 and you guys, thank you so much for being here every single week. And I will see you next time. If this video was helpful.
Make sure to check out more of the videos that we have over on my channel where I teach you how to build profit, build a strategic team, and increase your revenue.