In today's episode, I'm going to be asking you one simple question. Do you have a leaky sales funnel? Whenever I work one-to-one with people, this is the first question that we have to discover the answer to. So I can work out where the problem is in your business and how we can move your business forward. I'm Becca Pountney, wedding business marketing expert, speaker, and blogger. And you're listening to the wedding pros who are ready to grow.
I'm here to share with you actionable tips, strategies, and real life examples to help you take your wedding business to the next level. If you are an ambitious wedding business owner that wants to take your passion and use it to build a profitable, sustainable business, doing what you love, then you're in the right place. Let's get going with today's episode. As we start today's episode.
I want you to stop for a moment and think right now, where do you think you need the most help in your wedding business? Perhaps you might want to take a moment and pause the podcast so you can have a little think about this question and even write down some notes. Whether it's your initial marketing and inquiries all the way through to your making your sales.
I'm going to be walking you through today, a typical sales funnel journey, and I'm going to be helping you to discover where that leak might be in your sales funnel. And most importantly, what you can do about. If you're currently unfamiliar with the term sales funnel, don't panic, essentially a sales funnel is the journey your potential customer goes on from discovering you exist in the first place, right through to contacting you and hopefully going on to book your services.
The theory is in a sales funnel that you will lose people as they go through it. So you will always have less people coming out of the bottom, then go in at the top. If you want to understand this visually I've put together a resource for you to take a look at, just head to wedpropodcast.com that's wedpropodcast.com to download it now. And you can see all of this visually, or just go to the link in my show notes.
As you go through a sales funnel, you will always lose people, but we want to discover today if there's a gaping hole in your current process. And if there is, we want to identify it so we can stop people leaking out that hole, quite so frequently. So we're going to get started right at the top of the sales funnel. Stage one is people just knowing you exist.
Quite often when I work with people one to one, or when they join my membership, the first thing they say is, I know I'm really good at what I do, but nobody seems to know I exist. If that's you today, then that's a problem with the top of your sales funnel. If people don't know you exist, it means there's a problem with your marketing. Perhaps you're not being visible enough, perhaps you're not getting in front of the right people.
So if you're not being known and no one knows you exist, then the first thing you need to do is think about what action you can take to get yourself in front of the right people. This may mean that you need to show up more on social media. Perhaps you need to make more connections with other people in the wedding industry. Maybe you need to get yourself in front of some venues. So they start promoting you to their couples.
It may be, you just need to get out of your own head and realize you have to be proactive. Action. If people aren't noticing your business is because they don't know you exist. So you need to get yourself out of that hole. Stop waiting for people to come and find you and start going and proactively putting yourself in front of the right people. Perhaps write a blog post for me, for vicinity weddings, perhaps you could try and get shared on some of the bigger Instagram accounts.
There's so many ways you can get yourself in front of the right people, but if people don't know you exist, then you need some help with your marketing. If you're currently getting quite a lot of people finding you, knowing you exist and finding you on your social media, then perhaps this isn't where the hole in your sales funnel comes, perhaps is a little bit later down the process. So what's the next stage? Well, once people find us and know we exist, then the next thing we need them to do.
Actually reach out to us and tell us that they're interested in booking us is all very well having lots and lots of social media followers, or lots of people knowing about our business. But if no one actually inquires, we're never going to make a sale. Now there's a couple of reasons why you might not be getting the inquiries that you deserve. The first reason may be that you need to take a look at your branding or your marketing messaging. Is it clear what you offer? Is it clear what you do?
Can people tell from looking at your social media profile, who you serve and why they should book you? Are you clear on who your ideal client is? Or are you just trying to be a Jack of all trades and service? Everyone, if you don't get your marketing message and your branding, right. It's really hard to convert people to, from knowing that you exist to actually reaching out.
People need to be excited when they see your product, people need to be wanting to reach out to you because they definitely want you to be their wedding photographer, their florist. Perhaps they can see some beautiful images of cakes on your profile, and they want you to make that cake for them. If you're getting people, knowing that you exist, but they're not reaching out and inquiring with you, then maybe you need to take a little bit of a look at your marketing messaging.
Now it's really hard to do this for ourselves because we're always in our business. So we know the business like the back of your hand. However, if you really want to understand how this looks to someone else, you need to get someone else to have a look at your business. Now, sometimes I run marketing mastermind days. Things that we do as part of that day is look at each other's businesses to see what it looks like from an outside perspective.
And to see if we can understand what it is that they do, the kind of price point they are, the kind of customer they're trying to reach. And it's a really interesting exercise because quite often, when someone else looks at your account, they notice things that you may be don't notice. So you need to find someone else, ideally, someone who would fit into your ideal customer bracket and ask them to find out, to research you and to tell you what they think you do.
Ideally a stranger, because if it's a friend, they'll only tell you nice thing. So maybe go into my free Facebook group, wedding pros, we're ready to grow and just ask people, is anyone happy to do an audit of my social media accounts? Is anyone happy to have a look at my website and see if they can work out what I do and who I'm servicing? If you can get your messaging and your branding, right?
You're much more likely to convert someone who's just looking and lurking around your social accounts over to being some kind of inquiry or sending you a direct message. The second reason you might be stuck at this stage, isn't because your marketing or branding are wrong, but because you're forgetting to tell people what to do next, people are quite simple. Most of them will never have planned a wedding before. And it's actually a really complicated thing to do.
Unlike us who are in our businesses all the time and know the wedding industry, like the back of our hand, these people have just got engaged and now have to plan a full scale event. So we need to lead them directly through the process and we need to regularly tell people what to do next. If you have an Instagram account, for example, full of absolutely stunning pictures of your work, but no information about how someone can actually book you, then they might not take that next.
So you need to make sure that you're putting call to actions in your Instagram stories, call to actions in some of your Instagram posts, telling people what to do next, perhaps even put it in your Instagram bio. So things like DM me to find out my date availability, visit the link in my bio to find out my packages. Send me a message. If you're interested in, in booking a call, tell people what to do next. Now that call to action may be different for each and every one of you.
You need to decide for yourselves what your personal sales journey is. Do you want the next step to be that they fill in a form on your website? Do you want the next step to be that they go to a Calendly link and book a direct call with you. You need to make that process as simple as possible for them. Don't give them 10 different options. Don't say, call me, email me. Direct message me. Go to my website, go to my packages because people will be so confused. They just won't do any of it.
So decide what that next step is in your mind that you want them to take and then keep repeating it all the time on social media. Unlike us people don't look at our accounts every single day. So don't be afraid to repeat yourself and to keep saying, if you're interested, do X, Y, Z, drop me a DM fill in a form on our website. Check my calendar for availability book in a discovery call. Check out our packages. You can even say things like send me the word.
Bride, send me the word wedding and I'll send you back a list of our packages, something like that to make it really obvious to people, how they can go ahead and get the next step. You need to be really approachable. You can even be even more proactive than this. Put things in your Instagram stories like polls say, are you interested in talking to me more about your wedding day? Yes. And oh yes. Always keep the answers positive. You don't want everyone clicking?
No. And then anyone that responds to that poll, even if it's just one person, reach out to them with a personal message on direct messenger and find out what they want for their wedding day, you've got to be proactive. So if you feel that your marketing, your branding on point, but you're not getting those inquiries, take a look back through your recent emails, your recent social media posts and ask yourself, am I telling people exactly what they need to do next? And if not, why not?
Perhaps that's what you need to do. Okay. Now we're going to move on to stage three of the sales funnel. So this is for you. If, for example, you're already getting lots of traction. People know you exist and you're getting lots of inquiries, but you're struggling to get those inquiries to do anything more, other than inquire. Perhaps they're ghosting you all the time. Perhaps they are inquiring and then you send them more information and they disappear. What do we need to do in this instance?
Well, again, there's a couple of things for you to think. The first thing is once again, are you making that process as easy as possible for them? If they're inquiring with you about maybe booking a call or booking a meeting, and then you're having multiple messages back and forth, trying to find a date that works for you is really easy for someone to give up and not be bothered. This is why using some kind of tool like Calendly is so effective for your business.
You can already put in the times you're available and then you can just send that one link off to a potential couple and they can book. In their own time. This is really, really effective. It stops you wasting lots of time going back and forth with these people. And it means they've got some autonomy and can choose when to do those meetings. Now do try and make sure you have a range of times available in your diary.
Some people will be working all day in jobs and they won't be able to do meetings during the day. So. Evening's free, maybe some weekend times free so people can make a choice, but make that process as easy as possible for them. I'll link to Calendly in the link below, but there are other diary management apps that you can use to. The next thing to ask yourself is if people are ghosting you, why is that? Take a look at your last few messages?
Are you just sending people loads and loads and loads of information, which is overwhelming for them? Or are you keeping it quite chatty and short. At one of my summits a couple of years ago, Alan Berg did an incredibly great session all about ghosting and how to reply to emails with short, conversational messages so that you don't overwhelm your couple. But so they always have a question to answer to come back. If you're in my members lounge, you can still access that training now.
And if you're not in my members lounge, but you're interested in accessing that training, go to the link in the show notes and use the code podcast to get one month free in the members lounge that ghosting training is really, really helpful. And if this is something you're struggling with, where people are contacting you and the disappearing off the face of the earth, I urge you go and watch that training because it will totally revolutionize the way you contact an email, your.
Make sure you're keeping your emails, light and friendly. Don't just send them loads. And loads of information it's far too overwhelming. Also, you don't really want to give them exact pricing. At this point. You don't want to be wasting your time on people that aren't actually interested. That's why having packages and things like that can be really helpful because it can give them an overview. An idea of your price range, but ideally you want to get them on to that next stage.
You want to get them onto a discovery call. Into a meeting because that is ultimately where you're going to be able to sell to them. The third reason why you might be struggling to move people from this initial inquiry stage over to actually booking an appointment with you or making a booking is because you're attracting the wrong kind of people. If people are often saying to you that your pricing is too high, or once you give them the price, they drop off the face of the earth.
Then again, you need to go back a stage and start looking at your marketing. Are you marketing to the wrong people? Are you marketing people that can't afford you? Are you being quite transparent about your pricing so that they know roughly your pricing and your packages before they even contact you because they can't afford you. They won't waste your time by contacting you in the first place.
If this is you, if you're getting lots of inquiries through, but they're always the wrong kind of people with the wrong kinds of budgets, you've got to go back a stage and start looking at your marketing. Are you marketing at the price that you are selling at? Are you showing people ideas, products, pictures that are inspiring them? Are you showing that you're high-end are you showing that you work in these high end kind of venues?
Are you showing that you are know what you're worth and you're confident in what. If you get that right, then you won't have these people contacting you, who can't actually afford to work with you or who are just time-wasters. So get your marketing, get your messaging and get your branding right. And make sure you're attracting the right kind of people.
Once you're attracting the right kind of people, then make sure you're going back and forth with these chatty short emails as per Alan Berg's training, and then make sure you've got some kind of system in place. Calendly some kind of diary management system. So you can make that process to book a call as simple as possible.
You want to get as many of those inquiries onto a call as quickly as possible because ultimately it's the call and the discovery call where you're going to work out if you're right for them, if they're right for you. And ultimately it will be where you make that. Okay, let's move on to the next part of the funnel. So we've made sure people know we exist. We've marketed to them and given them a call to action to reach out and inquire with us.
We've turned that inquiry into a booking for cool or a meeting. And now it's time for us to actually hold the meeting and make the sale. Now, I know so many people that struggle with this part, they do the call, they get to the end of the call and then they say, get in touch. If you want to book me. And then they say to me, we just don't convert all the calls. You should be converting a high percentage of people that you get in front of.
If you actually get to the point where someone is right in front of you, interested in your products and services interested in you, then you should have a really good conversion. Now the way you're going to get this conversion is by actually selling to them. If you don't pitch and try and close the sale on the call, and you leave it up to them to decide, chances are you're leaving in their hands and they might go elsewhere. So how are we going to deliver this presentation?
How are we going to do that sales call? How are we going to do the meeting to make sure we have the best chance of closing the sale at the. Well, the first thing you want to do is have some kind of presentation or imagery that they can see to get them excited. When they first come onto zoom or into the room with you, they're going to be feeling a bit nervous. So you need to put them at ease. You need to be relaxed with them. You need to chat with them.
You need to ask them as many questions as you can. Now the key to being a great call is by letting them talk more than you talk. It's tempting for us to just dive straight into a sales pitch, stop telling them what you can offer for them. But actually if you want this sales call to be successful, you need to understand them really well.
So instead of diving in and talking about yourself and what you offer, you need to go more in depth and sit back and listen and take notes, either physical notes or just notes in your head to remember what they're saying. Now you have to be an active listener. You need to actually hear what they're saying. Be engaged and listen. So yes, you're going to start with questions. Like when did they get engaged?
How's their wedding planning going, but then you want to get into more nitty gritty questions which are going to be, to do with whatever your product or service is. So for example, if you make cakes, you need to ask them, what's the most important thing for you for your wedding cake? What kind of size wedding cake you looking to have? What worries you the most about the wedding cake? What are you unsure of when it comes to booking your wedding cake?
Is there anything at your wedding, you're a little bit nervous about or worried about what really matters to you when it comes to your wedding cake or your wedding food? If you can ask these kind of probing deep questions and listen to the answers that is going to help you down the line, when you start pitching your products and services. The next part of the meeting, once you've listened and absorbed, you're going to now turn that information around and talk about what you do.
So for example, if someone says the wedding cakes really important to me, I know exactly how I want it to look. I want it to serve loads of people. Then you can start your pitch by. Great. Well, the good news is I specialize in making really big cakes and I can definitely do this design that you want, but we can work together to personalize it to you and make sure you're alleviating all of their fears. If there's something they're worried about, perhaps. It's going to melt in the sun.
Well, you can alleviate that fear straight away in your sales pitch, by explaining how you store your cakes, how you transport your cakes, how you ensure that that doesn't happen, how you recommend to the venue where they keep it or whatever it is that you do. I'm no expert in wedding cakes. But the point is, whilst you're talking about the products and services you offer, you're showing them how you hit all of their criteria. This isn't about pricing.
This is about making sure you're confident, and they're confident that you can deliver all of their criteria. You're showcasing why you're the perfect person to work with them because you can see their needs and you can make sure you answer them. You're a safe option because you're going to look after them and you're going to make sure those bad things that they're worried about. Aren't going to happen. If they like you, they like your product and they have this additional security from you.
They're much more likely to book. Now, the next stage of the meeting is going to be talking about some kind of pricing. Now, again, this is where packages can really help you because you can showcase roughly where things cost with that low, middle and high package that my friend Kelly Mortimer always likes to talk about. If you can showcase that to them, then they can see roughly where that falls and you can then ask them the. Which of these options looks most appealing to you.
You're asking them a question, which isn't are you ready to buy? But you're asking a question to try and get an idea of what is going on in their minds. At this point, you can then alleviate their fears. So they might say, oh, I really like this, but it's a little bit expensive. Is there any way you can take this off? Or what can you change to bring it to this budget? And you can start having a really meaningful conversation about money, finances, and actually getting the.
Now the final part of the call is the part that's going to take the most confidence from you, but it's the bit that people neglect to do. It's attempting to close the sale on the call. So once you know the kind of package they're looking at, and whether they're happy, you need to ask them an open question. Are you ready to go ahead? Are you ready to book? Shall I send the contract over for you so you can get booking. Now they're going to give you one of two answers.
The first answer is going to be yes, which is great. That's exactly what you want to hear. You want to get a yes. If they say yes, you can say great. I will send everything over to you within the next 24 hours. I'll pencil the date in, but you need to get back to me with the deposit within X number of days, you make it really clear. You tell them exactly what the next steps are and you don't leave it in their hands because you're taking the next piece of.
If they say no, ask them, what's holding them back. If they say price will then go back to the discussion and see if you can work out anything that fits with their price. Or if they say they need to have time to think about it, or they need to speak to someone else influential their mum, their dad, their sister, their brother, whoever it is. Or perhaps they've got another call with another cake maker or whoever is that they're looking to book. Well, don't say great.
Well, let me know, give them something specific, say, okay, that's fine. How long do you need to think about. Do you want three days? Shall I contact you again in three days and see how things are looking and you make an agreement with them about when you're going to contact them again, how you're going to contact them again and what that's going to entail. So they know fully, they've got the confidence. You're not going to surprise them unexpectedly, but again, the control is in your hands.
You're not waiting for them to come back to you. You're making a decision of when you're going to go back. They've agreed to it. So that's going to give you the confidence in three days to go back and say, Hey, hope you had a great time. Did you chat to your mom about it? Are you ready for the contract? Now? I'd love to. Most people struggle to end sales calls like this. If you can get this right, you will convert many more of the calls that you are having. If you're ending calls, with that.
Okay. Well just let me know when you want to, and then wondering why no one ever gets back to you. Then this is why you need to change your process. And. Asking questions. I'm not telling you, you need to do sleazy sales or try and trick people into things, but you need to give people the confidence to tell them what the next step is, what you expect from them and lead them, holding their hand through the process.
Like we said before, they haven't done this before, but you have, so you need to show them each step of the way. Exactly what happens next and lead them through that booking. And then onto the wedding day itself. Hopefully you've identified where in that sales funnel, your leak is, is it right at the top? You're just not getting enough people towards the top of the funnel.
And you need to do more with your visibility and marketing, perhaps, you know, it's right down that bottom part where you need to make the sales and you know, you're not confident and you need to practice closing your. Hopefully you've discovered where your leak is, and you've now got some ideas about what to do to fix it. However, making the sale isn't actually the end of the sales funnel. There's one final little part. Now you might be thinking well, how's that? Not the end.
I've made the sale. Surely I've done the job well for a successful sales funnel. There's one final little piece which can make all the difference. And that is getting referrals. So when you actually get a booking, you deliver the wedding, you go above and beyond for the couple, guess what? Then they start telling their friends about you.
And that means that they start going in at the top of the funnel without you making any effort whatsoever you're not having to market to them because they're already getting that word of mouth recommendation. The great thing about the wedding industry is often people getting married have lots and lots of peers who are getting married at similar times. And so they're always talking about weddings and they're always recommending people on.
So if you're not currently getting recommendations from your current couples onto their friends and family, you need to ask yourself. Again, there's a couple of things to look at. First of all, are you going above and beyond for that couple? Are you doing everything in your power to stick to your deadlines? Communicate well, go above and beyond deliver their product or service. However they are expecting it and go above and beyond for them so that they walk away thinking, yes, you are amazing.
And I would definitely recommend you to all my. If you're not doing that, you need to wash yourself. Why is really important? You deliver top quality customer service to every single one of your customers. Just getting money from them. Isn't the end of the process, because if you can get this right, and you can give them a really great experience, be really good at communicating. Be really good at doing whatever it is that you do.
Then I guarantee they will go above and beyond and tell their friends about. Now the other reason they might not be telling their friends about you is because it's just not top of mind. They're so wrapped up in their wedding day that they kind of forget about the person that made the cake or the flowers or, or sold them the dress. So you need to remind them that you exist. Now, there's a couple of ways you can do this.
You can reach out to them and congratulate them maybe a couple of weeks after their wedding day, when they're likely to be back from their honeymoon. You can ask them if they'd be happy to leave you a testimonial, a Google review or Facebook. You can send them some kind of gift. I see some people doing this really successfully where they send out a Christmas gift on the first Christmas to the couple, or they send out something on their first wedding anniversary.
And this really makes you stand out from the crowd is very Instagram-able and it puts you back in the top of their mind. So if one of their friends is about to get married, they can say, oh, you've got to have my florist. She. Beautiful Christmas decoration saying my first Christmas, or she sent me this beautiful bouquet of flowers to congratulate me on my first wedding anniversary.
The final way, you can start trying to get couples recommending you to their friends and family is by incentivizing them to do it. We all know that incentives work and you can do this in your wedding business as well. So for example, you could send them a card again, a couple of weeks after their wedding, or even while they're going through their planning process and say, look, thank you so much for supporting me. Business.
It's been a pleasure to be your photographer, videographer, florist, whatever it is that you're doing. I'd love you to recommend me to your friends. If any of your friends go ahead and book me, then I'm going to send you a bottle of champagne, Prosecco, chocolates, whatever it is to say thanks. They appreciate it and it gives them a nice little surprise too. So make sure you're thinking about whether there's ways you can incentivize people to recommend you onto their friends and family.
They're much more likely to do it. If there's something in it for them. Now, this option isn't for everyone, but I have seen it work really well, where they say, you know, I'll get a bottle of bubbly for you, you and your friends. If they go ahead and book me to say, thank you for supporting my small business. It's about being genuine is not about being sleazy and selling again, it's about showing support and thankfulness to people who kind of return that. Goodness.
That brings us to the end of our sales funnel journey. Hopefully you've now started to identify where the leaks are. If you have don't just leave it there. You've got to take action. You've got to get help. You've got to get more training or you've got to take some proactive actions to start fixing those leaks. A difference. If you can get this sales funnel really, really watertight more people coming in at the top will mean more people make it all the way to the bottom and even better.
They'll start referring their friends and popping them right back into the top. And you will have a really successful. If you need help with this, I'm here to help you every step of the way you can come over and join my wedding. Pro members lounge, where I have training on all these different topics, including that Alan Berg training. I mentioned earlier on in the episode, or perhaps you need more personalized help and want to reach out to me to work.
One-to-one I'm here to help you fix that sales journey funnel. Make sure it's not leaking anymore. If that's you and you want additional help, either follow the links in my show notes, or come over to Instagram and reach out to me. I'd love to chat with you further.
Just write the word help in the DMS, and we can have a chat about what you need help with right now, where the problem is in your sales funnel and what I can do to support you to close up and ultimately help you bring in more sales and make more money in your wedding. Don't forget to go and download that PDF. If you want a visual guide to how this sales funnel journey works, but you can make notes on and you can go ahead and make sure you haven't got holes in your sales journey.
I'll see you next time. Um, one thing I love about the wedding industry is the other amazing people you get to work with. If you want to meet some nice like-minded wedding pros, just like you, then why not join my free Facebook? Wedding pros and we're ready to grow. Come meet some new connections, hang out with me and hopefully learn something too, just search for us on Facebook.