How to convert digital wedding enquiries with Alan Berg

Let's get going with today's episode. I really hope you've been enjoying this August series here on the podcast where I've been taking some of the trainings for my Wedding Pro members and bringing them onto the podcast for you to listen to. So far we've had a wide variety of trainings and today is no different. Today we are joined by one of my most popular guest experts, the wonderful, the one and only Alan Berg. His sessions are always packed full of information.

We actually have two of them inside the Wedding Pro Members Lounge, but I'm only bringing one of them to you to listen to today. Today's session was recorded back in March, 2021 as part of my Wedding Pro Summit that year. And it's all about how to respond to digital inquiries. And he talks a lot about wedding directories as well. Well, there's always so much to learn from Alan and I know you're going to absolutely love this session.

In fact, it's a reminder to me, maybe I need to get him back into the members lounge, if you remember, so that we can get him to do an updated, fresh session on one of his new books as well. I would really love to welcome you inside the Members Lounge if you're not already a member. It really is a very special community to be part of. It's a place where people really do lift each other up, encourage each other on, and we're always trying to strive to better ourselves and our wedding businesses.

I'm always looking to bring the Best experts every single month into the group, and it will help you stay ahead of your game. Cause when something changes, I bring in a brand new expert or an old expert returns to the group to give us the updates. If you want to join this summer, I have a very special offer on for you until the end of August. If you use the coupon code SUMMER at the checkout, you'll get your first month for just that. 10 pounds.

So you can come and check us out, see what we're all about this summer and hopefully join us. Most people join for a month and then stay for years. Enjoy this session with Alan. It really is fabulous. If you want to see the full recording with the slideshow as well, then you're going to have to be a member, go into the members lounge. You will find this session under build and get booked because that's what we all want to be doing.

Okay. We are going to get straight in because I know Alan has got some amazing stuff to share with you guys and I want to give him as much time as possible. possible. So I'm going to bring him up to join us right now. Good morning, Alan. How are you doing?

conveniently there they are over there behind me. And it's just amazing that I get to speak to wedding professionals this way in person one on one consultations to have a better business so you can do more weddings. It's just such an incredible business. So that's the short story.

So, yeah, and they don't think of New Jersey that way. You think of Newark Airport or where the shore or something like that. So it's a, it's a beautiful state and we've been here about, yeah, about 10 years. So it's I grew up in New York, so I didn't go that far.

You know, if they would just ring me up, it would just be so much easier. I could have that conversation, but we know they don't do that. So I want to give you eight tips for converting inquiries into sales. There are four steps to getting more sales. The first step is you get someone's attention, then they make an inquiry, then you get to have a conversation, and then you make the sale. Getting their attention is advertising, marketing, social media, networking, things like that.

Getting the inquiry is being clear about the next step that they're going to do, but then once you get that inquiry, you have to have that good conversation or you don't get onto the next step. So we're going to concentrate on that part and not getting ghosted. Ghosted meaning they make an inquiry. You respond, you don't hear back, right? That's very common. There are some really, really simple reasons why they will go against what you're probably doing now.

But the opportunity is there because they're already making the inquiry. So think about this. If 10 people make inquiries and only 4 or 5 or 6 of them reply back to you. What happened to those others? Those other four, five, six, sometimes seven for some of you. They made the inquiry. Why are they not responding? That's where your opportunity is. And I want to just say this, everything works sometimes, nothing works all the time. The idea is to make it work more of the time.

So why don't people call you? Why don't they just ring you up on the phone? If you have Google analytics on your website, which you should, you'll see the time of the day and the day of the week that people are reaching out to you and those darker spots there. And a lot of it is happening during the week during the day. Well, where are they during the week? During the day. Yes, they're planning their weddings from work now for the last year or so.

They've been planning their weddings from work, which has been home. But in normal times, they're planning their weddings during the work time or very late at night. So they don't ring you up because they can't. They don't ring you up because late at night they don't figure you'll answer and they don't ring you up because they're digital natives. I'm a digital immigrant. That doesn't mean I don't like technology. I have my iphone 11 pro. I have my apple watch. I like my technology.

It just wasn't here when I started in this industry and I had to adapt to it as opposed to the couples getting married today, most of whom grew up with that technology. So think about this by the time you get to have the conversation with them, which could be a conversation through your fingertips. It could be a phone call, a zoom meeting and in person meeting. By the time you get to have this conversation, they've already eliminated most of your competitors.

Because there might be dozens or hundreds of people that they could have reached out to, but they only reached out to a handful. Typically it's three to five, maybe seven. Sometimes they go a little more, but when they start getting all those replies, that's when they start ghosting everybody because they realize they made a mistake in sending out 20 inquiries. So typically it's going to be three to five because they've already eliminated most of your competitors.

So that means that they know at least a little bit about you because you've made it to the next step. They like what they've seen and read and heard and watched, because why would they make the next step? And they've put you on that short list. So most of your competitors don't even know there's a game going on. The coach told you to suit up and get in the game and get on the pitch. But the rest of the people don't even know there's a game going on. So they've started a conversation with you.

This is really critical. You're not trying to start a conversation. You're trying to continue the conversation. They reached out and started the conversation. Yes, even if it only said, how much do you charge? That is the beginning of a conversation. They ask how much you charge because they don't know what else to ask. It's called framing. They don't have anything to frame this decision by because they haven't done it before.

So when you're buying something you've bought before, you know what to ask and you know what to look for. When you've not done that, when you've not hired a venue or not hired a DJ or photographer or a band or a florist or or bought a dress that's that important. You don't know what to ask. So don't lose this opportunity that they are handing to you by reaching out. Continue that conversation that they've already started. So here are the eight tips. Here are the eight tips.

This is right out of my book, eight tips for converting inquiries into sales. The first one is that it's a real conversation. One thing I hear from wedding pros all the time is how do I stand out? How do I look different? Well, the way you do that is by not looking and sounding like everyone else.

And if your voice doesn't come through in the conversation to them digitally in an email through social messaging, through WhatsApp, through text or whatever it is, if they can't hear your voice, kind of like in the movies, when someone's reading a letter. And they hear the person who wrote the letter. They hear that voice. If your voice doesn't come through, you'll sound like everyone else. We do a lot of secret shopping in my consulting.

And what we find is so many wedding professionals think that they're being personal. And when you see yours alone, it's like, well, that looks very nice. But when we see five or six or eight or 10 messages side by side, they kind of look the same. So you need to make it sound the same way as if they rang you up on the phone, that it sounds like your voice. It's a real conversation. Just one more thing on that. What would you say if you were on the phone?

If someone rang you up and said, Oh, we're looking to get married in May of 2022. And you say, what a beautiful time of the year at our venue. It's just, the flowers are in bloom. It's gorgeous. You would say that on the phone. Would you write that if you don't write that? It's not a real conversation. Number two is to reply as quickly as you can. And a survey by WeddingWire here in the states of their couples had shown that about 50 percent said they ended up choosing the first one who replied.

So time is of the essence. Speed is of the essence. I know that That stinks because sometimes you just can't do it. I want you to not only reply as quickly as you can, I want you to be the first one to get a reply back because otherwise it's not a conversation. If they message you, fill out your contact form, whatever, email you, and you send them back, you copy pasted, you attached your brochure, you send that back and you never hear back again, that's not a conversation.

You gave them a license to shop and they didn't reply to you, so you're not having a conversation. Companies that try to contact potential customers within an hour of receiving queries are nearly seven times as likely to have a meaningful conversation with the key decision maker as firms that try to connect contact prospects even an hour later. And this is Harvard Business Review. Yet only 30 percent of companies respond to queries within an hour. So think about this. If someone is.

looking at your website right now, or maybe they're on guides for brides or wedding wire than not, or hitched or easy weddings or some, some site wedding weddings online, right? What if they're one of these sites and they message you and you get back to them two hours later. They're no longer looking at that site. They're no longer on your site or one of those sites or your social page. They're off doing something else.

The quicker you get to them, the more likely they're still in that mode of I want to find out more about you. Number three is to marry their tone, which is the formality. Is it a very formal tone? Is it very casual tone? And number four is to marry their energy. So how much excitement is in there? There's a big difference between hello, I'd like to inquire about engaging their services for impending nuptials. That's very different than OMG, my BFF and I are getting married, right?

They're different, different tone, different energy, formal, casual, how much excitement is there? Even a casual one might not have a lot of excitement in it. It just could sound a little bit more friendly, a little more casual than something that's more formal. You need to mirror because people do business with people that they feel comfortable with People they know, they like, they trust. And you need to make them feel comfortable with you by mirroring.

So you don't get credit for doing it right, but you can lose points for getting it wrong. Contact forms are wonderful. You should have a short contact form. I actually have that form there on the left on every page of my website. You want to have a contact form because more people will fill that out than just send you a direct message. But it removes their tone. It removes their energy. So a lot of times you'll get a query and it'll say, hi, here's our wedding date.

Could you give me more information and price? Right? You get very similar queries like that all the time. So, what you want to do is mirror how much they write and since they fill out a contact form much of the time. You don't know how much they're going to write. So what you want to do is fit your first reply on one screen of their smartphone. Here's the rub. Do you know what fits on one screen?

I'll bet you don't because if you write your messages on a laptop and desktop, or even a tablet, squeeze that down to a phone screen, what does that look like? So one of the things I want you all to do. Is start BCCing yourself blind, copying yourself on the messages you're sending out to your customers, to your prospects.

When you write it on your desktop and then squeeze it down to the phone, you'll see how little actually fits on one screen, and you'll have to start cutting down, cutting down, cutting down if they write you back a very long response. You now have been given permission to write them back longer. You don't have to, but you've been given permission to. If they write you long, they will read long. If they write you short, and you know, sometimes they give you sound bites, not even full sentences.

You ask a question, they give you a word or two words or a phrase or a number, and that's it. They're signaling. Don't write me back a lot. I'm not going to read it and we've all been there where you open up your phone and you see a long message and you start to scroll. You're like I'll get to that later. Ever done that? I'll bet you have and your customers will as well. And sometimes they don't get to it. They just go to the shorter message and respond to them instead.

Number six, very important. This is a rule of sales. Just not just an emailing or messaging with people just in general in sales. Don't answer questions they haven't asked you. And that applies to COVID as well. So if someone reaches out to you and you're having a conversation and they don't ask about your COVID protocols or what you're doing to protect them and their guests and your staff, don't talk about it.

But if they do, they bring it up, your answer should be, Thank you so much for asking. I'm really glad you did because we're very proud of what we're doing to protect you, your guests and our team. But if they don't bring it up, don't talk about it. Think about this as well. How many times does someone make an inquiry and you respond telling them some things that were on the website where they came from? You talk about some of the features of your venue.

You talk about some of the features of your photography, video, flowers, decor, DJ, band. How many times do you respond and just put that information in when it was already there? Now it was there. It doesn't mean they read it, but it was there. So don't just start volunteering information because they want to talk about what they want to talk about, which they think is important to them, not what you think is important.

And you have the curse of knowledge because you know what you do, and you've done it for dozens and hundreds or thousands of people. Don't start volunteering. What you want to do is ask them one question at the end of your message. Two important parts there. One question, not two, not three, not four, not five. And at the end, now why is that? The same thing as if you were in person or on the phone with someone, if you ask the question, would you keep talking? I hope not.

If you want them to answer your question, why would you keep talking? So if you were having a conversation with someone and you asked the question such as, Oh, are you thinking of having both your ceremony and reception at the same location? Or how many guests do you expect? You wouldn't say how many guests are you expecting and then keep talking, you'd let them answer. So when you ask a question, make it its own paragraph at the end of your message.

And then the only thing after that is your sign off your name, not a big sentence. If you want to say regards and your name, that's fine. But don't say, I look forward to hearing back from you. And you'll see why in a minute, because we don't want to create these dead ends here. Creating dead ends is why they don't reply to you. If you end with a statement. Why should they answer? If you end with a question, it's implied that they're supposed to answer. So dead ends are things like this.

Let me know if you have any questions. It's a very polite statement, but it's a dead end because that's if they have any questions now, they respond now. Otherwise maybe later, or please let me know if that works for you. Another dead end or feel free to let me know if you have any questions. These are all actual statements from the secret shopping that we've done that wedding pros have put. We look forward to hearing back from you.

Well, good luck because that's a statement that is not a question. If you want them to respond to you, don't end with, feel free to let me know or I look forward to because they're all going to end with periods or exclamation points. Periods are the end of sentences. End of the statement. Exclamation points are emphatically the end of the statement, so don't do that because those are all dead ends. Do something like this.

Dear Kristen, thanks for reaching out about having your beautiful wedding here. We still have dates open in April 2021. How many guests are you expecting? That's what's called a low commitment question. A low commitment question is one that they can answer without thinking you're prying or they're giving up private information. They don't have to consult with anyone. They don't have to ask anyone. What do you think? What do you think? They know the answer.

Here's a Facebook messenger conversation that came in from one of my clients. He got a message that said, Hi there. My name is Lisa. I'm getting married 25th of September. I'm looking for a DJ was wondering if you could send me some pricing and packages you offer. Also, my fiance is active duty in the military was wondering if you do a military discount. Thanks in advance. My client responds back, Lisa. So glad you reached out. Do you have a few minutes to chat here?

I have a couple of questions. Yes, I know technically he didn't end with the question, but she responded very quickly, sure, with two exclamation points. What is she trying to signal with those two exclamation points? She's excited. She's excited that it responded and responded so quickly. I do have one DJ available. You picked a popular date. He's setting a sense of urgency and a scarcity to that. Where is the wedding being held? They went back and forth on Facebook messenger.

He wrote the sale, took a deposit, never spoke to her on the phone. Didn't have to. They had a conversation. She chose Facebook messenger to reach out. He continued it there. There was no reason to try to move it to the phone when she was answering all of his questions, showing her excitement. Another one. Here's a response. Somebody came in on a contact form. Hi, James. Thanks for reaching out. Great news. We're available on your date. We love working at the San Clemente Casino.

They had indicated their venue. This was for an entertainment company. Are you having both your ceremony and reception here? All of those fit on one screen. They're nice and short. They're friendly. He's showing his excitement here as well. This went back and forth. Same thing again, wrote the sale without a phone call. Number seven. When I first wrote this, when I first started speaking about this, I said, please don't send attachments. They haven't yet asked for it.

And now I just say, don't send attachments that you remember the movie men in black. Everyone remember the movie men in black? They had their little flashy things. Well, I'm going to flashy thing. You there. There you go. I just broke the attachment button on all of your computers. Think about this. If someone rings you on the phone, there are no attachments. You don't give them any links. You just have a conversation. Email is no different. WhatsApp is no different. Texting is no different.

Social messaging is no different. Messaging through a site like WeddingWire, The Knot, Guides for Brides, or Hitched, or Weddings Online. It's the same thing. It's a conversation. So try not to send attachments. But there's a bunch of good reasons. One is, you sent them something to read. They think they're supposed to read it before they get back to you. You're wondering why they're not getting back to you and it's your fault.

The other reason is when you open that attachment up on a desktop, Oh, look at this. That's beautiful. It's a, it's right there on the water. Same thing on a phone. Can't read it. Can't read it, right? These are actual attachments that we got in our secret shopping. You can't read them. I mean, look how big that phone is on that screen. Imagine if it was just really the size of a phone. You can't read that. This is one of the other day.

I was doing a master class on how to reply to inquiries without getting ghosted. And one of the people we saw what she was sending out initially, this brochure was attached. Can't read it. No matter how beautiful the photos are, it's not going to help if they can't read the details on there. So don't send attachments, just have a conversation. Plus, you're giving them a license to shop you against other people when you give them these documents.

So you give them these documents and you're wondering why they're not replying and they're looking at your document comparing it to somebody else's. And you're not getting a chance to have a conversation to ask, ask questions to answer questions to get them excited about having you for their wedding, having their wedding at your venue, having you cater it, having you take the pictures, having you provide the stationary they want.

You need them to get excited about wanting your results and very few of the brochures that I've seen do that. Well, number eight is don't stop the conversation if they haven't. Most of your competitors will give up when we do our secret shopping. What we find is first thing is not everyone that we reach out to gets back to us at all. Sometimes it's technical. Just had this the other day, we sent an inquiry to this venue. We didn't hear back.

We went to them and said, Hey, we didn't hear back and they went and checked and they never received our inquiry. Well, that's not our fault. We filled out the contact form on their website. If they're not getting the inquiry, how many other inquiries did they not get that were real?

I had another client who the inquirers were coming in from their website and from advertising, but they were going to an email address of a former employee and that person wasn't there anymore and no one was checking. So they were missing out on all of these inquiries. So sometimes it's a technical reason. So the first thing is we don't get a reply from everyone.

The second is how long it takes to get a reply varies from auto replies, which I don't count as a real reply because that's not a conversation. That's a computer sent you information. So from auto replies, which are almost instant to minutes, hours, days, sometimes weeks. You have an opportunity because they've reached out to you. Your competitors are giving up way too soon, way too soon.

I did a series of short videos for the not recently, and one of them was about replying and how often should you follow up? And my short answer is if you follow up even just one more time than you are now, you have an opportunity to write some sales that you're not writing now. What I see very often is couples apologizing to the wedding professional for not getting back to them because this thing called life got in the way.

Life gets in the way because you have work and you have school and you have some have kids and you have people getting sick and you have all these changes with the rules that are going on and they just get a little overwhelmed with other things and they put the planning the wedding on the side burner. You get back to them one more time. A lot of these people are still interested. There's three possible responses. When someone reaches out to you, you can get a yes. That's the best one.

You could get a no or you could hear nothing. You could get ghosted. Which of those is the worst? Some people say no because the person said no. To me, no is not the worst. No is a definitive answer. And if you might offer other services, you might be able to get them. For instance, a hotel venue here in New Jersey, I remember speaking with the sales manager and she had someone who said they thought they were going to go with someone else.

I said, well, first they said, they thought they didn't say they did. I said, get them come back in for another appointment. See if there's something you could work out, which they couldn't, but they did get them to have their rehearsal dinner and got a block of rooms, overnight rooms for the guests. So what was going to be a complete no turned into something. Now, not all of you have that. I totally get that. But maybe is the worst that no answer is the worst because some of those are yeses.

And if you give up, somebody else gets the sale. I was, I was telling a story on a podcast one time about how I was working one on one with a, an entertainment company here and happen to be here in Jersey also. And we went in to look at the inquiries he had gotten. So it was on the Knot and it was an inquiry from 30 days ago. He responded quickly. He attached his brochure. He asked for a phone call right away, which is a high commitment. Phone calls and appointments.

If you ask for those right away, those are great reasons for people to stop replying because that's not what they want. They want to find out some more information before committing to that. That's a higher commitment. So I replied to this inquiry that was 30 days old. And I said hi, Jennifer, are you still looking for a fun DJ to make your wedding? Great. Three minutes later, she responded.

Yes, we went back and forth about four times asking her low commitment questions about, had she already booked the venue and how many guests and is she having the ceremony there? And then I said, I'm getting really excited about your wedding. I'd love to find out more about how I can make it amazing for you and your guests. Can I give you a quick call now or would later today be better? She said, can't talk now later. Today's better. I said six o'clock or seven. She said, six is good.

She gave me the phone number. He calls her at six o'clock and made the sale. He hadn't been going back 30 days before he did his one try. And that was it. People heard me on this podcast. And while they were listening, some of them went and responded to some people that hadn't been getting back to them. And one of them said, while I was still talking on the podcast, he got a reply. Try at least one more time, but I want to give you a better plan. I want to give you a five step.

This is what I teach in my master classes. This is what I've written about in my books. So you want to reply as quickly as you can using the method that they chose. If they email, email them back. If they text, text them back. If they WhatsApp, WhatsApp back. If they ring you up, call them back. Unless they say in an email, could you call, which that happens sometimes. And if they email you and say, I'd like to arrange a meeting or a tour, Sure, go for it.

But if they don't do that, don't go right for that. But remember, in emails, not in texts or in WhatsApp, there's a subject line. And people decide what emails to open based upon what the subject line is and who wrote it. So if your subject line is something like these, Which are not very exciting. Like, you know you know, form submission, new form wedding. I mean, the bottom one, my DJ services for Jennifer's wedding. That's not bad, but these, will your wedding dance floor be packed?

Your old cave and wedding begins here. Wedding's done right. Sterling estate. Let's start planning your wedding. Say I do with our newly renovated venue. And my favorite one, actually, this company was on a presentation I did yesterday. I've done private training for them. They have these boats that do weddings and events. on them. They're in the U. S. in various cities. They also have the tours like going around Statue of Liberty and out in California by Alcatraz in San Francisco.

So if you inquire about having your wedding on one of these boats, they respond with, oh ship, you're getting married. Now many of you smiled, I hope. If you get them to stop and smile, they're going to open that to see what's in there. Will your wedding dance floor be packed? If that's something that's important to them, they're going to open that email first. So subject lines are very, very important. Go back and look at your subject lines. That's why I said a BCC yourself.

Is it so long that it gets cut off? Can you put their name in there? You know, and if it's just a boring one about your inquiry, That's not exciting for somebody who's getting married. So the second thing is to reply again the next day. And yes, he said the next day. Not next week, the next day, put yourself back to the top of their inbox. Cause you have to remember who started this. They did.

So when they reach out to you, if you don't hear back the next day around the time that they inquired, because that was obviously a good time for them. So if it was 10 in the morning, 10 in the morning, you don't have to do 11 at night, but around 24 hours later, try again and just simply send the same message again. And at the top of the message, say something like, okay. Hi, Chris. Just making sure that my email made it through to you yesterday.

Very excited to speak to you about, and then it's basically the same message from the day before. Now, if you're emailing them and you email and you don't hear back the first day, you don't hear back after the second day. Maybe your emails aren't making it through. Maybe they're going to spam. Now you need to try something else. Ring them up. Text them. Whatsapp them. Some other method. I have a different email address that I'll use that's on a different server.

So instead of using my allen at allenberg. com, I'll use whatsapp. A gmail address because sometimes gmail goes to spam and the other doesn't sometimes my regular goes to spam and the gmail doesn't. I have this all the time. I'm booked to speak for the Bahamas Ministry of tourism next week and I know the person there, but yet she didn't email me. She went to my site and filled out my short contact form. Great. I responded. Didn't hear back. Okay. She's busy. I responded the next day.

Didn't hear back. Went to my gmail address responded from there and said, hi, Frida. I know that spam filters are getting crazy these days. I just wanted to make sure that my messages came through to you. Very excited to find out more about speaking at the conference. All right, my other message. She responded almost immediately. I thought it was strange that we didn't hear back from you. So my messages weren't making it through.

Well, if you're giving up thinking they're not interested, what if they're not getting them? Try something else. Leave them a short voice message, send them a text, send them a WhatsApp message, do something else. Don't give up that soon. You know how a dog is with a bone. You try to take the bone away from that dog. That's what I want you to be. I want you to be like, don't give up that easy. They were at your website, reached out to you.

They were at your ad online, reached out to you, your social profile reached out to you. Don't give up that easily. You still don't hear back. Wait, maybe just a few days and send one line. Are you still looking for, in this case, a venue or caterer for your event, for your wedding? Just like I did with that, that one, that DJ, it was 30 days later. He hadn't tried within the 30 days. Hi, Jennifer. Are you still looking for a fun DJ to make your wedding great? That's what we sent.

I didn't say you're looking for a DJ, a fun DJ to make your wedding great, right? Are you still looking for a beautiful venue to host your wedding? Are you still looking for a great caterer to make your food look as good as it tastes? Something to get them to come back and say yes or no. If yes, they're still looking, continue the conversation. If no, ask if there's anything else you can help them with. And that's it. Remember, the no answer is the worst answer because they might be interested.

So try that extra time. Now, let's say you still don't hear back. That's four times. You still don't hear back. I will tell you this. Most of your competitors gave up after number one. Fifty percent never try a second time, sometimes more than that, right? And then some of them might try a second time. They're not trying a third. I just did a shopping of nine venues, four of whom I'm training and five of their competitors. And one of their competitors has tried three or four times.

Another one has put them into an automated system. You can tell they're not personal emails. So yes, they're reaching out, but it doesn't feel very personal. And the other three, they give up after one, actually, one of them didn't reply at all. Now. So if you still don't hear back. Try something to break through the clutter of their day, to break through the monotony of their email inbox, and try something funny. So here's a couple of real examples.

This is one that an entertainment company in Maryland, here in the States did. Subject line, Ree, I thought this might be useful. I'm sorry, no, this is somebody in the UK. This is a, a coach in the UK who had reached out to me about selling me her coaching services. Now, I never reached out to her, So she wasn't technically responding to me, but I thought this was cute. So Carrie R said, I thought this might be useful. Hi, Alan, I know you're busy.

So I've prepared three convenient calls to action for you. One, ignore this email and eventually get the picture and write terrible poetry about the deal. We never did most popular to hit reply. And I'll do the same. Recommended three wildcard. Call me on, there's a phone number, interrupt my day. Like I have yours. I deserve it. Limited time offer. Option two is my favorite. Have a great day. Kerry, chief of magicing up a profitable business out of thin air. I thought that was very creative.

I stopped what I was doing to read it because I could use something useful. It was pretty short and it was fun. This is the entertainment company in the states. Where we're going, we don't need roads. Some of you got right away that that was a reference to the movie Back to the Future, right? When they have that DeLorean, they don't need roads. Hi, I hope your wedding plans are coming together. I sent you a few messages and haven't heard back from you.

I figured there were a couple of different reasons why this could be the case. So please reply back with the number of the correct circumstance. One, you're all set with your entertainment and I could stop sending you annoying emails. Two, you've been meaning to get back to me, you've just been really busy. Three, you're interested but just aren't ready to talk entertainment yet and I should follow up in two weeks.

And four, Doc screeched into your driveway in his DeLorean and after some whimsical time traveling adventures you found yourself stuck in 1955 without access to email. He sent this the first three couples he sent this to that had been ghosting him all responded with either number two and number three. They were still interested and either wanted to talk now or talk later. What are you doing to follow up again?

So I did the same thing for people that had reached out to me about having me do sales training for them. Some of them haven't done it in a while. Some of them haven't done it at all, but they reached out to me. So my subject line was R2D2 and C3PO aren't responding. Oh, and by the way, they had already been mailed one of my flashlights. In a white tube and gotten four emails and hadn't responded. So the people that hadn't responded to any of that, I sent this.

Hi, Patrick, I'm sure you're responding to inquiries right away. And like many others, you're frustrated by getting ghosted by your brides, grooms, and others. You've thought about having me come for sales training for your team, but it just hasn't happened yet. I can only imagine that it's one of these reasons. One, your sales team is selling so much and profiting you so much that you could possibly help them sell more. Two, you know it would be valuable and want to find out when I can come.

Three, you know it would be valuable, but it's a little out of your budget and you'd like to find out about small group sales training, share the cost and the experience. And four, imperial forces are storming your outpost and you want me to use the force to hold them off. Please respond with the appropriate number and I'll respond accordingly. Five businesses that hadn't responded to getting a flashlight and a tube mailed to them and four emails responded to this almost immediately.

Try again at least one more time. And then here's one where after a couple had come in for a tour of a venue, the venue tried this. After they had been in and the couple was so excited, it was so excited and then they hadn't been responding. So they sent them this. Did you run off in a lope? That was the subject line. Hi Rebecca, I'm just checking in to see if you're still looking for your wedding venue. Touch base with an update when you have a minute. Cheers, Tracy George.

I probably would have worded it differently. I probably would have said hi Rebecca, you guys were so excited when you came in and I haven't heard back so we can only imagine that you're on a warm sandy beach somewhere with a, with a drink with a little umbrella and you decided to skip the wedding and go right to the honeymoon. If that's not the case, are you still looking for a beautiful venue for your wedding? I probably would have said it that way. However, Tracy sent this and got this back.

Tracy, LOL. Good subject line, but lucky for you, we did not. We've just been spending time looking at other venues and comparing costs, atmosphere, et cetera. I'll tell you this. The Oaks is our number one venue. Look how excited they are. You're a number one venue, but why weren't they responding even with having to move it to Sunday due to budget? They're talking about lowering the guest count. There's still about 3000 over budget, and they were talking about having their dream wedding there.

They're ready to book now. Look at the buying signals here, but they hadn't been responding, and it took Tracy sending. Did you elope? lope to get them to at least come back with an answer? And that gives them the opportunity to have a conversation and see if there is something that they can work out with them. So you want to be conversational, make it sound like you, your voice, you want to respond quickly and mirror their tone and energy.

You want to mirror how much they write and fit it on one screen of a phone. Don't start dumping data on them to have a real conversation. Don't send attachments, continue the conversation and remember type of question at the end. And when you're done, you send that off. Just read what you wrote because auto correct is not your friend. I posted yesterday about getting my second dose of vaccination and somebody wrote back and said they haven't started vacations here yet.

I think she meant vaccinations, but it's a vacation. So I guess she's waiting for vacation. There are four ways that you could talk about price. Becca, maybe we'll do this on another session because this could take an hour or longer by itself. But just real quick, the four ways you could talk about price. If you have all the details and can tell them, tell them and then ask for the sale. If you don't want to tell them yet, don't antagonize them by avoiding the question.

Say to them, thanks so much for reaching out. I would love to give you pricing information. I want to make sure that I don't leave out anything that's important to you. And I certainly don't want you to pay for things you don't need. So let me get some details and I'll be happy to give you a price. And then you ask one of those low commitment questions, ceremony and reception both there or the guest count or verify it. Have you already booked your venue or are you still working?

The third is one I prefer you don't use unless there isn't a big variation on price. So let's say you have two photo booths and there's only a hundred difference between the two photo booths. You could say it starts at. 695, just picking numbers here, right? Is it 695 and 795? You could say starts at 695. That's fine. But for most of us, there's a much, much bigger range. So doing that, if you say starting at, you're saying here's the cheapest thing I have, do you want that?

Because if that's the only number they see. That's the number they're going to expect to pay. So you, I want you to do top down selling, not bottom up like that. So then the way to do it would be with a price range and a price range. Everybody can do just by looking, we'll look at a normal year, not last year or this year, and look at all the weddings that you did, let's say in 2019 or all the ones you have booked for the future and look at the range.

They're going to be small weddings to big weddings and small guest counts to high guest count, but that is a true range. And then you can find that sweet spot where most people end up. But when you're quote, you can quote two different ways. So on a recent masterclass, I had a woman up in Canada and she did design and decor. And she originally was quoting 6, 000 to 10, 000 plus. I said, okay, that's good. But what do most people pay? And she said, eight to 10.

I said, gosh, you're telling them they have to buy at the top of your range. And she often does 20, 000 and up or 30, 000 and up. I said, so why don't you say we go from 6, 000 plus most of our couples ending up 8 to 10. And now it sounds like, Hey, we can do that higher work. Most people don't end up there, but you could.

And that's a better way to do a price range is to show them that and give them what's called framing again, which is not what it costs for everybody in this market to do something like this, but what it costs if you come here. Kind of like if you go to a car dealer, if you go to a Hyundai dealer, the range is different than the range at the Mercedes dealer, right? But they both have ranges, but they're different. And it's supposed to be that way.

They need to know your range to know if they're, they want to continue the conversation, but always acknowledge that they've asked about price. Don't ignore that question. And don't assume because they're asking about price that they can't afford you. Everybody that's ever booked you at high dollars has asked you how much things cost. If you assume that they're looking for cheap things, you're actually losing out on higher sales.

And some people who are looking for something higher are going to say, Oh, well, gee, you're only that much. I'm going to go find somebody who can do the kind of work that I need. So don't assume that they're looking for cheap because they ask about price. Don't assume they want your lowest package. Don't assume they can't afford you. It's their wallet.

It's their budget and all budgets can be changed because all budgets were made up by somebody and according to a survey here in the States, couples go over their budget by 30 to 40%. And if you want to know their budget, don't ask until you've given them some idea because the transparency of you saying, yeah, our prices range from here to here. Most couples are around here. Where are you guys looking to end up?

They'll be more truthful if you've first given them some numbers than if you say, what's your budget without them knowing what you charge, because they'll feel like they need to hold back some, and you're not going to get a truthful answer. And please don't leave with only your lowest price. Don't do that starting at if you have a range, because I want you to do top down selling, not bottom up. And I love talking about price.

I love whenever somebody says to me, Alan, how much is it to have you review my website? How much is it to have you do sales training for me? I love it because you're communicating with buyers. People who are looking to buy things ask how much they cost. So be happy when someone says how much does it cost and just have a conversation with them. But continue the conversation they've started. Using the method they've reached out to you. Now, there's lots of resources on my website.

There's actually a resources page right there at the bottom. You can see allenberg. com slash resources, any upcoming workshops. I have an upcoming masterclass on not getting ghosted and upcoming website review class. There are some webinars there that are coming up or on demand. And there's also a whole bunch of books, not just my books, but books that I've read. I know many of these authors. And there's some great books there.

So just scroll down on that resources page and you'll see the paradox of choice in the bottom left corner. It's a great book on how people make decisions. Never split the difference by Chris Voss about negotiating. It's a great book. There are all of these. I recommend them highly. Again, I know many of these authors there and there's links right to Amazon there as well for them. And then because you've made it this far with me, thank you so much.

We're going to get to your questions in a second, but if you do want any of my books, you can just go to my shop. We ship all over the world, shop allenberg. com and use the code webinar 20 when it asks you for the coupon code or promo code webinar 20 and you'll get 20 percent off anything there. There are already some discounted bundles. You'll still get 20 percent off on top of that.

And my most popular book, which is shut up and sell more weddings and events actually comes in three different versions. The original version, which is good for all wedding and event pros, a version for caterers and venues specifically, and a version for DJs and entertainment companies, photo booths, lighting is another one there. So webinar 20 over there and Becca, let's see if we have any questions here.

Oh, by the way, if you want to get on my email list, so you'll know what upcoming events I have and get my free article every month. Just go to connect with Allenburg. com.