People don't buy. They don't buy logically. They make decisions emotionally and they justify them rationally. I'm Becca Poutney, wedding business marketing expert, speaker and blogger, and you're listening to the Wedding Pros who Are Ready to Grow podcast. 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. Today I'm chatting with Maria Baer, founder of Irresistible Selling, a program to help wedding pros sell more. Selling is something our industry struggles with, but Maria tackles it head on with a combination of mindset and strategy. So strap in.
This conversation may make you feel uncomfortable and push you out of your comfort zone. Maria, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much, Becca. I'm thrilled to be here finally. I am so glad to have you. Just for the listeners, we've tried to do this conversation a number of times over the last month or so and for various reasons we've had to keep changing it.
But today we are here, we are recording and I'm excited for it because it's not often I get to speak to someone who is very confident and passionate about selling because in the wedding industry, as we will get onto later, quite often people are a little bit afraid of it. And I know you're going to try and change our mindset, mine included, probably around selling today.
So before we get there, I always love to just find out a bit more about my guests, about their background, about why they teach, what they teach now and where they've come from. So take us back. How did you end up talking about selling and how did you end up in this wild world of talking to wedding industry pros as well? You know, like most people's stories, it's a very windy road that I never could have predicted in advance. But it all started.
I got my start in finance of all things, because I love numbers and at some point I, it's a longer story, but I, I was working for a family owned business and in their finance department and I wanted to move up and they basically said no, that it was family run and the, the, the men would be running the company and that was my cue to exit stage left and so I just looked for another job and all I knew at that point was I wanted to go into sales because my father was an insurance salesman, very
successful at that. And. And I knew that I didn't want to sell insurance, but I knew that sales was my ticket to. To make more money, right? Because I would get in early, stay late at my job, and I'd make the same raise as everybody else. And I was like, this is not good, right? So I. Long story short, I found a job in software sales, of all things. And at that time, software was just like, becoming hot. I didn't know what it was. I didn't know anything about sales, nothing.
And I was an introvert. So imagine an introvert going into sales. So I guess my desire and drive for more money outweighed my just. I was so scared, you know, to be with a room full of people I didn't know, for example. So I was a true introvert. I still think I'm an introvert, but I just dove into sales and I realized that it was something that I could learn and I didn't have to be a natural born salesperson.
And it was really important for me to learn that, not only to get out of my own shell, because I was so it. Painfully shy and I didn't like that. And it was something that I wanted to kind of work myself out of, but I also wanted to make more money, and sales was sort of my ticket to do that. So, long story short, I started a software job. I floundered a lot and finally got laid off because I didn't sell very much.
And then I said, oh, my gosh, I've got to either go back to my old day job or I have to make this work. So I tried again. I got a software job again. And thank God I found a manager who was a godsend. He was just like a father figure to all of us. We all got hired at the same time. They were starting a new office. It was for McAfee back in the day. So McAfee antivirus. So they hired all these people at one time. So we were all very young and making six figures, right? Six figures in this job.
And it was. It was interesting because he taught me that I could sell in a way that felt really good to me. And I didn't have to sell like everybody else because I kept looking at the guys, right, and how they sold. And I said, I can't do that. Like, I can't sleep at night and sell that way. And he said, you don't have to. Your strength lies in communicating with people, in connecting with people. He's like, keep doing more of that.
And I'll teach you the sales part, but keep connecting, because that's your key. That's how you get in. And I did that. And within a few months, I was the top salesperson in the office. I had won awards. And interestingly enough, when I was in my last job, where they said I couldn't go very far, right, because the men were gonna run the company, I told my boss at the time, when I found my new job in software, I said, I got this new job and I'm gonna make 50% more than I'm making here.
And he said, maria, they're lying to you. That's not possible. Okay, So I was peed off, right? I was very mad. And so I was. I was held bent to prove him wrong. And then I went to that other job and I got laid off. And I was like, oh, my God, he was right. And then I went to job after that, got in my groove, learned how I can sell in a way that felt really good to me. And that's when I not only made 50% more, I tripled my income in less than a year. So I proved him wrong. Amazing story.
I love that. So much girl power in there as well. And you're definitely like me, where when someone tells you it's not possible, that, like, drives you to prove them wrong as well, which is fantastic. So you had this sales job, you realize you were good at sales. So how did you end up then teaching people about sales and. Yeah, being the person that was like your boss but to other people. Yeah, I never envisioned that, really.
It's just that I got burned out in software sales because it's a very high burnout rate. Most people last like four years. I lasted over 10. And so it was one of those things where I was doing really well and making a lot of money. And it was hard for me to leave because I didn't want to start over right. And make nothing. But at some point, I think I just got burned out enough, and I just said, I'm done with it.
And so, thankfully, I'd saved a bunch of money so I could take my time to figure that out. Long story short, I started consulting for people, and I met this woman who asked me to create a sales program for her. And she was an interior designer and had an online business. And at that time, online businesses were starting to take off. And so I said, well, I didn't really have an idea to work with interior designers, but I'm going to.
I'm going to work with you, because this is going to shortcut my path to learning how to work in the online space. And it's going to get out of my head onto paper, what I know how to do intrinsically now, and teach others how to do it. So when I created that course, she launched it and she said it was the biggest launch that she had ever had because everyone needed to learn how to sell. And at that point, I had not thought of prior to that, like, people need to learn how to sell.
Like, the only thing I thought of was I would have to sell someone else's products or services. Right. And I just didn't have it in my head that I could teach people how to do this, that this was a marketable skill. But when I realized that, I realized how much money I was sitting on and how much people needed what I know, especially women, because we don't sell the same way as most men do. It's just. It's a different feeling.
And so that's when I started realizing how much people needed this and how valuable it would be. And then that got me excited because I love to help people see what's possible. I love to help them see that they could take something that they hated and make it something that they love. In fact, I've got a client who. She was a planner turned floral designer. So interesting story. She joined my program back in during COVID and she said. The first thing she said on.
On my discovery call with her was, I hate selling. And I'm like, okay, that's fine. You'll. You'll like it by the time we're done here and within. I don't even remember how long it was, but she posted in the group and she said, is it weird to say that all I want to do now is sell? Because I love it so much. Because it doesn't feel like selling. It's just connecting and having conversations with people. And that to me, was just music to my ears because I don't want it to feel like selling.
Not the traditional way of selling. What people think of as selling, right. Is that used car salesman. So that was. That was a very big moment for me. I don't know if she realizes that, but it really made me feel good that she went from hating it to thinking it didn't even feel like selling. That's all she wanted to do and let her team do the rest. That's amazing.
And I know that there's going to be people listening who are in the first space who are thinking, oh, my goodness me, I'M terrified of selling. I don't even like talking about selling. I don't even like hearing about selling. And they'll also be shouting into their headphones. But Maria, you said you love selling or you wanted to be into sales. But I don't feel that way. I just want to make cakes and I want to make flowers and even I feel it a little bit.
When I used to work at the radio station, which is my background, we had the marketing department and the sales department and I was very much in the marketing department, absolutely loved it. Looked at the people doing the telesales and the radio ad sales and thought that is not me. But ultimately, when we're in our own business, we don't necessarily have the luxury of having a sales department and a marketing department. It's just us.
So the first objections people are going to be saying is I can't do it, I'm not like you, it's sleazy to sell. I don't want to sell, I want to give my couple space. So if you've got any first thoughts, if that's what they're thinking before they tune out. Yeah, that it's a great, it's a great question. Because everyone feels that way, right. There's very few people that come to me and say, oh, I love selling now some do and that's great. But the majority do not.
The majority of people, especially in this industry, are in this industry because they're creative. They're in this industry because they love what they do it because they're artists, not because they're necessarily business people or salespeople. But my, my message to them is you're not a photographer, you're not a planner, you're not a stationer, you're not an officiate, you're not any of those things.
You are a salesperson that happens to sell officiating services, photography services, planning services. That's what you essentially are. You are a for profit business. And I think a lot of times in this industry we forget about the profit part and we focus so much on the art.
But there's so many starving artists out there that the reason why they're starving is because they don't know how to sell themselves, they don't know how to sell their services, they don't know how to value what they do and articulate that to their clients. And if they knew that and how to do it better, especially in a way that doesn't feel like selling, oh, you better believe they do it more often. And you Better believe they love it more.
But I think it takes a shift in your thinking that this is a business that I'm running. I just happen to be selling photography services or planning services or whatever. Whatever it is that you're selling, you are a salesperson. It's just that we've been brought up, so to speak, to believe and to see bad examples of selling. And those examples can work, but they don't feel good to everybody, and they certainly don't feel good to me. And that's not what we teach. And that's.
That's primarily why people are attracted to what I do, is because they don't want to feel salesy or smarmy or, you know, all of those words that come to mind when you think of selling, you know, but it's. It's. If you don't learn it, you will be out of business. You have to learn it. And the people. Think about all the. The people that you admire online or, you know, anywhere, they're really good at sales. It just doesn't seem like it because it's so natural to them.
And when you learn step by step how to articulate your value, it will become natural to you. It's just that you never learned it before, but once you learn that, it's a whole different ballgame. Love all of that. And it definitely starts with mindset. I think that's the biggest thing we have to overcome at the beginning. There's an examp example I often give to my clients when I'm teaching workshops.
If I'm talking about marketing and the difference between marketing and sales, and I say the person holding you back from selling often is you. Because you're so scared of selling, you actually do the opposite. You start pushing people away because you don't want to sell. I said, imagine tonight you're hungry and you need a loaf of bread.
And you go to the shop over the road and you go to the counter with your loaf of bread, take it to the till to buy it, and as you hand it over, they go, do you want to think about that? Do you want to come back tomorrow? Do you want to. Are you sure you want to pay that much for the bread? Do you want to come back next week and tell me whether the bread. We would be going crazy because we have a need and we want the product. Yet on a bigger scale.
That's what we often do as wedding business owners. When we're scared of selling, we actually push people away. Exactly. Because people are afraid to talk about price. They're afraid to ask for what they deserve and what they, you know, their value. And quite honestly, a lot of people, especially in this industry, devalue themselves. They undervalue themselves.
And part of the, the joy that I get when I work with people is really showing them that more is possible, that they are worth more, that they're. They're charging so little that they're not making a living. And it's almost like sometimes I see that relief on their, on their faces, like, oh, my gosh, I'm getting. I'm. I'm being given permission to charge what I think I'm worth.
And when you are with other people that are charging in your mind so much more than what you're charging, the beauty of that is you see what's possible. You see that, oh, my gosh, I've been undercharging for all these years, but it is possible. People are closing, you know, booking clients at these much higher rates. And that's. That makes me feel so good because it, it just expands your awareness and expands what you think is available to you in this life. Okay, so we've changed our mindset.
You've mentioned something else a couple of times that I want to touch on a little bit. And that's how we don't have to sell like a sleazy person. We don't have to do the old school way of selling. We can be more natural and we can talk more about value. So will you talk a little bit more to us about what means in practice? If we're a wedding business owner listening to this and we're thinking, okay, we don't want to do bad selling, we want to do good selling. What does that look like?
Yeah, great question. So good selling to me doesn't sound salesy or pushy and doesn't feel pushy to you. So first thing I tell my clients is from a mindset perspective, you have to look at selling as you are a. You're look at it like you're a consultant, right? They're coming to you because you have something that they need and want, and they don't know how to do it or can't do it or don't want to do it themselves. So they're coming to you with a need.
It's your job to help them understand what you can do for them. It's your job to help understand if you can help them. So that's why, if you look at it from a consulting perspective and that you're not trying to sell everybody, you're Trying to sell people that are a good fit, at least that's my philosophy. I don't want to sell everybody. I don't want people in my program that aren't a good fit, that aren't going to get a good result because that, you know, they're not going to.
Get a good result. And I don't want to take money from people like that. So what I, what I tell people is first you have to. The place that you come from, in here, in your heart will make a difference. That's how you hold yourself, how you carry yourself, how you come across to your clients. And if you remember that you're a consultant and you're not there just to sell them, then it has a different feeling, right? You feel differently, they receive it differently. Right?
So that's the first thing, is to look at it from that perspective. But then in terms of practical things, a few things that I love to have my clients do is one thing is, and you've probably heard some version of this before, but so many people, even seasoned salespeople do this. And it, and it kills me. They focus more on the features of things like the bullet points. Like, we can do this, this, that, and the other thing for you, we can give you 80 million things in this package.
That's great, but you have to remember that that's just a feature. And people don't buy from logical. They don't buy logically. They make decisions emotionally and they justify them rationally. So while bullet points and features connect the dots, help your client spend more time helping your client understand the value of what you offer. So an example could be like, I remember when I was engaged and I was hiring people for my, for my wedding. This was before I was even in the wedding industry.
I wouldn't have known what a second shooter is if I was talking to a photographer or why I needed a second shooter. Right? So explain to them why you have this. Explain to them why a second shooter is needed. Because, oh, by the way, while you're getting ready, your fiance is getting ready too. And you probably want some pictures of him. Plus when you're, you know, going through the ceremony or etc. Etc. You're going to want different angles and different viewpoints.
So it's not just your face that's in the picture, it's both of your faces in the picture. So that's like a practical example of notice how much you're focusing on features and not just in your conversations, but on your website, in your proposals. Right? That's where a lot of people focus on them in your emails. So everything that you do in your social media content, right, focus on the benefits. What is your client, how does your client want to feel? Describe the experience.
Because even though you're a wedding planner, your clients are not going to want the same thing as this other wedding planner's clients. So focus on what your specific clients care about and how they want to feel. If you focus more on that and the benefits, you're going to be light years ahead of most of the people in your industry. So, so true. Now I think the other thing that people struggle with sometimes is this lack mentality.
And so sometimes when people are in a place of desperation, they feel the need to be desperately chasing people or desperately trying to get the sale and they end up chasing people around and feeling like I need to get this. And then they put the pressure on themselves. And that's when some of the sleazy tactics do sometimes come out and they say, if you don't book now, then I'm going to be fully booked. And I don't think that really works.
And I know there's a concept you talk about sometimes where it's like think of it as inviting rather than chasing. Talk to me about that. Yeah, that's really important to me because I don't like the feeling of chasing. Like who wants to chase a client? You know, it just, it doesn't feel good. It has the wrong energy and then you lose your power too. So I want to keep my clients in the driver's seat and to do that you have to be in the place of power. You can't be chasing them.
So the way you invite people is your process. So your sales process makes a big, big difference, meaning from the time they inquire to booking them. So that's in, in, in our, the context of this conversation, that's what I'm talking about. From booking, from inquiry to booking. So the way you take them through your process, for example, do you allow them to email you, text you, DM you and, and sell them that way?
Or do you put them through your funnel and make them go through your contact form and then make them schedule a call with you so that everybody's funneled in the same way? If you think about high end, higher end sales, like if you go to a YSL store or a Chanel store, you're going to make an app to go there, right? You're not just going to walk in and shop off the rack. They're going to be behind the Counter and behind the cases. So there's a process that they make you follow.
And if you are somebody that aspires to or is trying to sell to a higher end client, especially like a luxury level client, you have to have a higher end process which means you have to funnel them through your process and gently guide them through your process as opposed to trying to just sell them over email or just sending pricing. Like I never advocate sending pricing pricing ever. So when people email you and say, hey, what do you charge? I do not. My clients do not send pricing.
They may send a starting point but they do not send a price list. And that's where most people fall down, is they send that and they lose all their power and then they end up chasing and saying, oh, did you see it? Oh, do you want to schedule a call? And they're, you're not making them follow your process. And when you make them follow your process, then you can ask them the right questions.
And my philosophy is your process should help build value, it should help qualify, it should build a sense of urgency from day one and it should, it should get them through your process quickly so that you can book them quickly and they're not forever in your sales funnel. So when you do that, it will, it will bring you better quality clients. They'll be pre sold by the time you get on the phone call with them. And it's not simply the spiel. A lot of people think it's a, it's like a sales spiel.
But what I teach is you will stand out and you will build value. You by the questions you ask, by the process you take people through, by how you gently guide them through your process and don't let them dictate how you're going to sell to them. You do it by setting their expectations at the beginning of the call.
So if you ever have been on a call and you find like your potential client is like leading the conversation and like guiding you through and asking you questions and you're jumping all over the place. Generally speaking, it's because you probably didn't set the expectations of the call and say, hey, this is what we're going to cover today. And at the end of the call this is what we're going to do, et cetera, and get buy in that way.
So all of those factors play into building value and being able to qualify the right clients and get them in or knock them out early so that by the time you get on a phone call with them, they are absolutely qualified. And now it's just a question of connecting and making sure you understand what you can do for them and articulating that to them. I think the power piece is really interesting because I think that's something I see a lot in my clients that they let the power shift too far.
Like straight away, they're being dictated at by the couple, how they want to get in touch with them, how they want to work, how they want to do it. And I think particularly I see this in venues but with other suppliers as well when they're getting to the point of closing the sale. So they maybe have led them through this really great sales process. Maybe they've invited them through an email sequence or whatever they've done.
They've got them down to the venue, they've toured them around the venue and then they say, go in, think about it. And the power then immediately just shifts over to the other side. So do you have any tips around that closing the sale thing? How do you keep the power at that end of the process, even if you've already got it at the beginning? Great question. So part of the way you're not salesy and pushy is that you build that into your process from day one.
And so like an example of that would be instead of saying to somebody, oh, like at the time when you're, you're discussing proposal, right, don't say to them at that point, oh, we don't hold dates or oh, you know, it's not finalized until you, you give us a, you know, retainer and you know, you sign the contract, you say that early in the process us, it's when you spring things on people at the very end. It sounds, it sounds salesy, right? It sounds like a tactic and that doesn't work.
But if you told them from the very beginning, and an easy way to do that is to have it in your, your email signature. To have it in your email response when they inquire to say due to the level, due to the level of inquiries we receive, we do not hold dates until, you know, your date is until a contract is secured, whatever, whatever language you want to use.
But you tell them from the beginning because when you do that, then you're setting the expect and you're also educating them from the beginning. So it doesn't, it's not salesy. You're actually doing your job, right? When I was, I remember when I was engaged and I talked to the leader of a band that I really loved and I knew personally and I came up to her after an event and I Said, oh, I just got engaged and I'd love to have you at our wedding. And she said, great, I would love that. When is it?
And it was about nine months away. And she's like, oh, I'm sorry, we book like a year and a half at Adventure Advance. And I was like, oh, shoot. Like I had no idea. So your clients don't know that you're getting 8,000 inquiries whether you are or not. They don't know that. They don't know your process, they don't know your business. But if you educate them from the beginning, now it's not salesy, now it's just matter of fact, like this is how we do business, right?
If you want to do business with us, this is how we do it. You secure your date by giving us a contract and you know, retainer or whatever your language is. Okay, so we get to the end of the sales call or the sales process and we said to them, are you interested? And they're really keen. And then we don't know what to do next. How do we get them to actually sign on the dotted line and give us some money? Or if they're not ready to, how do we then keep the power in the follow up process?
That's a great question. So there's a lot of pieces there. So one of the things that I love my clients to do is to make sure you don't get a like I want to think about it response. That's usually because they had an objection that you didn't address. So one thing I want to make sure that people ask is what other questions have I not answered for you? When you ask that question, it opens the door to you answering for, for them to like verbalize their questions.
Because there's oftentimes things that they don't want to ask you, maybe they're embarrassed to ask you, they don't want to insult you, whatever. So you want to open that door and give them an opportunity to do that. Um, and one of the languaging examples that I love to share is you can disarm them by saying, you know, whether you choose me or another venue, floral designer, et cetera, fill in the blank. You need to feel comfortable with that person.
You need to feel comfortable with them because, you know, in the example, you know, a venue, it could be, you know, we're going to be working together for the next X months, you know, getting your menu done and designing the room, et cetera, blah blah blah, whether you choose us or somebody else, you need to be Comfortable with them, because this is your big day and you need to be able to have an open line of communication. So that really works to disarm people.
And a lot of what I focus on, honestly, is biopsychology, human nature, how people make decisions. And that's why this works, because we're working with human nature. And human nature tells me that they're. If they're confused, you know, there's a saying, the confused mind says no. If they're confused, they're not going to make a decision. If they've got an objection, they're not going to make a decision or they're going to choose somebody else.
So you want to open the door to them asking those questions so that you have an opportunity to address it. Otherwise you lose them and you may never learn why. And that doesn't feel good to anybody. But the other thing that you can do is with my clients, depending on where they're at. So for example, some of my clients are selling. If they're planner, they might be selling on a percentage basis. So their price is their price. It's a certain percentage or a minimum, whatever.
Um, other people have, like custom pricing, depending on what that person's looking for. So one of the things that I like to do is, with all of my teachings is I know human nature is that we can't predict a hundred percent of the time what they're going to do and how they're going to, how they're going to go. But I know from doing this a long time and 25 million in sales under my belt, that I know if you do a lot of these things, we can stack the odds in your favor of winning that client.
One of those things is offering options and offering proposal options. So not a la carte options. I don't like that because it gives people analysis paralysis and like decision fatigue. But you offer them packages. And the packages. Here's the key. If you offer them packages as opposed to just one proposal, if you offer them one proposal, the problem is it's a yes or no. And if it's a yes, great. But the downsizes sound. The downside is you probably left money on the table.
And if the answer is no, then you lost them, right? And then you have to chase. Then you have to chase and say, oh, but maybe I can do this for you. And then it sounds desperate, right? So if you give them options based on what you discussed in your call, then it's not a question of yes or no, it's a question of which fits Your your needs best.
And usually some of those options include here's one at your budget level and here's the other one that's higher that represents everything that you want.
And I can tell you from doing this for over 10 years, more often than not they go way above their budget and they buy everything because not only have you articulated what the value of what you're offering and you've made it far more understandable than them talking to all the other people that you're competing with, but they realize that they can't get what they want for their budget and you're giving them options as opposed to a yes or no. So that's just one example example of what we do to
help that sale quickly. I love an option. The thing is with an option is it's so much easier for us as the business owner to say which of these options suits you best. Rather than saying how much money have you got to spend? It kind of gives you an easier question or an easier way for you to see where on that spectrum they're going to be.
Especially if you've got that budget option and the massive option you can kind of see roughly and then upsell from there rather than just going how much money do you have? Which is the question that nobody ever wants to answer. And if you think about, about it so many times, people, people don't know what to budget, right? So that's one thing. Like it's great to know what someone's budget is and I always want you to ask that question.
But just know, especially in this industry, they have no idea what things cost. So take that with a grain of salt and you, and you can use this languaging too. This is another sort of catch all phrase that I like my clients to use. You can say I, I don't ever, you know, there's no do overs with your wedding, right? Generally there's no do overs. I don't ever want a client coming back to me. I wish I knew you would have, you could have done this for me.
I wish I knew you could have taken this off my plate or I wish I knew this was available, that we could have had this option, I could have had this upgrade or whatever. So you want to give your clients that option and don't underestimate this because I have clients that say that have come to me and said I got a, you know, this client came to me with a $5,000 budget and I just booked them for 18.
Imagine had you given them a proposal for 5 and what most people would have done is they would have given them a proposal for five with a lot of stuff in it and not made any money whatso however on it. And instead they walked away from potentially selling them for $18,000. That could have been three to four clients to make up for that difference at that price point.
That's the value in knowing how to sell yourself because not only are you going to win more, but you're going to win them at a much higher price point and at your bigger packages. That's how you 2x5x10x your sales. So good, so helpful. And I know already I'm hoping people's cogs are going to be turning and their mindset is going to be shifting. The thing is, in the industry we know that quite often clients will go to different options.
So they may come to my wedding venue and think this wedding venue is amazing, but they've already got two more books. They don't want to commit because they know they're going to go and see two more in those kind of scenarios. Do you have any tips for if they happen to be number one, that is being seen, how to then keep those people interested even though they still want to go and see two and three? Now that's, that's a million dollar question.
Because venues are, they're a little bit different in that everything is a little bit more transparent. Like all that information is available to clients, clients. Whereas with planners or photographers, all that pricing and all that transparency isn't necessarily there just by nature of what they do and the fact that they offer so many different options. That's a really great question. So I would say a couple of things that they can do.
You want to make sure that you first of all are doing your, your competitive homework. It's even more important when you're, when you're talking about a venue to know your competitors, you have to know what do we have that they don't? Who's our ideal compliant compared to them? Right. It's important to know that and that was really important in like in my software life like that you had to know that cold. You had to know every one of your competitors exactly how you were different.
So you need to know that, that information because then you can position yourself differently so that you can attract the people that will be a good fit. And, and a way that you can do that is you can say you. First of all, I would ask them who else are you looking at? Right. What other venues are you going to. And if you are asking the Right.
Questions before that that are, that will help reveal if they're a good fit for, you know, you can say, okay, great, I want you to, to make an informed decision. This is how we're different, right? You had said this was important to you. This is what we really focus on, right? I can't speak for everybody else, but from what we know, like this is what is really important to us and what we focus on here and what our clients have told us they really love.
And that's when you can give them like client stories or testimonials, et cetera. But if you know, that's why sales to me is very strategic. It's, it's understanding who you're competing against, especially if you're a venue, and being able to really understand who you are and what you offer and the differences and being able to ask questions of your potential clients to know, oh, this is an ideal client because what's important to them is what we focus on, right?
Because all venues are different, they offer different things. Like some might be completely diy, you know, where you have to bring in all these vendors. Others might be like a one stop shop, that's a very different buyer. So knowing that you should be asking those questions in advance so you know that about your potential client, okay, you said this was important to you. This is what we focus on.
That's more, you know, the more you know about your client and you're asking the right questions to draw that out. That's, that's, to me, the essence of selling is understanding what are your requirements, what are your challenges, what, what, what's important to you? Let me understand that really well. And then I can specifically speak to that and say, okay, well this, you said this is what you want. We don't do this, but we do all these other things and this is why our clients love us.
Does that make sense? That makes perfect sense. And I think actually everyone should have a really good understanding of their competitors exactly like the venues, because then you can know your point of difference in your local marketplace and therefore you can confidently share your value for them.
I want to talk a little bit about boundaries because I think when you're not this natural salesperson and you're the creative type and you want to be really friendly to everyone, sometimes people can take advantage of that and sometimes boundaries can be difficult. And for me, my word of the year, actually this year is an anything like thrive, accelerate.
My word of the year is boundaries because I also fall into this category where someone says, and they say it to my planners, they say it to me, they say it to everyone. Can I just pick your brains about this? Or they ask, can you just draw me this picture of the cake? And we all know that we end up spending loads of time doing it and then don't make the sale at the end.
So how can we be better at having boundaries earlier and making a sale early or at least a sales proposition earlier, rather than being dragged into this thing where we end up giving away too much? Yeah. Oh, I feel that. I feel that on a personal level. I feel that with my clients. I think we all struggle with that, especially as women. It's sort. I feel like it's in our DNA to some extent. But to do that, I think first. First, it helps to understand human nature. Right.
And if you understand human psychology and how people make decisions and what they're attracted to or not attracted to, think of, like, even children, if you give them an inch, they'll take a foot. It's just. It's just inbred in us. Like, we. That's how. That's how we operate. So if someone is going to be overly generous with their time and give a lot of things to that potential client, they're going to take advantage of that, and so they don't respect it as much.
So there is a delicate balance there. There is. I think there's some strategic reasons why you might want to give a little bit more than somebody else, especially when it comes to design, only because people have a hard time visualizing things. So I think with a lot of today's technology, you can do that much more easily than you could before without taking a lot of your creative time. But I think understanding that if you give people too much, they'll take advantage of it and not appreciate it.
And it. And that by having those boundaries, people respect you more. Right. Just like if you're a parent, if you let your kids just do whatever they want and go to bed whenever they want and eat whatever they want, and you don't have any boundaries. They're not learning anything and they're not respecting you. So you do the same with clients. And I think it helps shift that mindset a little bit when you understand it from that perspective that I get why we're do like.
And I say we because I do the same thing. And I catch myself. I get why we do it because we want to give more and we want to be, you know, valued, but it ends up having the opposite effect. Right. So we have to remember it from that perspective. That people will respect us more if we have boundaries. And that's really important. When people say, I want to pick your brain.
So that's when I love to say, great, either meet me at this event that I'm going to be at and I can chat with you for a couple minutes or here's a link to my calendar and it's a link to pay for a call. Love that, love that. So, so helpful. Okay. Final thing I want to talk about, and you mentioned it very briefly earlier, is about having the confidence to raise our prices or to charge our worth.
And again, quite often this comes from a place of fear where people think, if I raise my prices or charge what I'm worth, no one will pay for it. People can't afford it, I'll have no inquiries, my business will fall apart. And actually they kind of go in this cycle, downward cycle, rather than seeing that it could be a good thing. So talk to us about finding your value, charging your value and not undercharging yourself and why we don't need to be scared of it. Wonderful topic. Love that.
When you, when you think about what, what people complain about, it's, I'm trying to get into that next level market. I'm trying to get to, I'm trying to get clients that value me, right, That I don't have to like, feel like I'm convincing to hire me. What they don't, what they don't understand is that people that pay more will value it more. And so they're afraid to walk away from their existing clientele by raising their rates.
But the key is that's, that's actually the ticket to getting into the next level market is raising your fees. Because great example, in our group a while back, some, one of the photographers asked a very pointed question and said, hey, for the really high end planners in this group, can you take a look at my website and tell me if my pricing is in line? And you know, would you, you know, am I attractive enough to like to work with? Would you recommend me to your, to your clients?
And one of the planners responded back and she said, your work is phenomenal, your work is beautiful, but I could never put you in front of my clients. And she said, what? And, and the planner said, you're priced way too low. If I put them, if I give them a couple of options and these other people are charging 20 and you're charging 8, what are they going to think? And the, and the light bulb went off and she's like, oh my gosh, thank God, thank you for telling me that.
Because what we think is a lot is pocket change to these higher end clients that we're looking for. And so again, you have to understand the buying psychology. What, what's a lot to you is not a lot to them. And you think of the same thing, like for things that you value, the things that you spend more money on than the average, if you saw that product or that service for half that price, what would you think? You'd probably be thinking, there's something wrong with this product.
It's not as good as the others because pricing is a differentiator and perception is reality. And if they look at that higher price point, they're automatically going to put more value on it than somebody at a lower price point. And so the light bulb went off and she's like, fabulous. Just gave her like the green light to raise her fees a lot. And now she's working with higher end planners. So the thing that you're afraid of is exactly what you need to do to get you into that next level market.
Fantastic. So true as well. Because when we look at something and it's so much cheaper, I definitely do. I think, oh, it must be a scam or there must be something wrong with it. They must be new, so they don't know what they're talking about and everyone else is charging more. And so, yeah, I think it's a really interesting thing. So you need to know your market.
You need to know which part of the market you're trying to market to, but then you need to be priced in the right bracket for that particular market. Marie, this has been such a fantastic conversation. I could talk to you about sales for ages because it is really inspiring to hear your mindset shifts that I know will be having an impact on a lot of my listeners. But I always end my podcast with the same question. So I'm going to send that one over to you now, which is this.
What's one thing you wish you'd known sooner in your own business? Oh, that's a juicy one. So many things. How do I distill it down? One of the things that I wish I would have recognized sooner is that time is money and that time is the one very, very limited resource that we all have. And I would have spent less time on trial and error and much more time finding the right people to follow and to work with closely and really to get out of my own head about what I thought was expensive. Right.
Because when we start out, we think, oh, spending a thousand dollars on something is expensive and then you work your way up to like $10,000 and you're like, oh, that's a thousand dollars is nothing compared to that. I wish I had learned that sooner and worked with coaches that I knew would be able to move the needle for me and not have not be so afraid, afraid to invest. I know how scary it is to invest. I know that myself and I know that from my clients.
But once you do that and you see that return, that's when your, your business skyrockets. Because if you, if you work with trial and error, it's going to take you forever. And every day you wait is a day that you're making less money. It's a day that you're leaving opportunities on the table. It's a day that you're leaving money on the table.
So when you invest in yourself and here's the magic that I, I discovered when I invested in my first five figure coach and believe me, it was like I hypervent, ventilated. I was very afraid to do that. But what it taught me was that I was worth so much than what I was what I was charging and it just expanded my belief in what was possible for me. And when I invested in myself, it made it so much easier for me to turn around and ask my clients to pay me more money.
It's when you're in that, in that beginning stages and you're not investing a lot because you don't have a lot of money. I know it's, it's sort of a chicken and egg thing, but there's something, there's something in your mindset, mindset that flips once you start investing in yourself. You know you're worth it and that translates to being, it being easier for you to turn around and say yes, I charge this and say it confidently. Love that. So good. Such a great conversation. Maria.
Thank you so much for your time. If you want to find out more about you, about what you do, what you offer or maybe get some more tips, where's the best places for them to find you? Oh, thank you so much. They can find me@maria bayer.com Sign up for my newsletter. We're going to be having a, a live sales experience in the next week or two. So depending on when this airs, you can join that but you'll get notified of everything if you join that list.
And you can find me on instagram @maria Baer1 and I have a book, a client and five day challenge which we can link in the show notes as well, but feel free to reach out DM me and say hi and tell me you heard me here. Thank you so much for having me. This was great. I could talk to you forever. Well, maybe I'll have to get you back at another point sometime and we'll have a follow up conversation. It's been fantastic.
I'll make sure I put all of your links to everything in the show notes as always. So if you do want to find out more about Maria and what she's offering, go and check out the show notes. Maria, thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much, Becca. What a fantastic conversation. I know it's going to have made some of you feel super uncomfortable, but I want you to sit in that feeling and think about why.
I know that for so many of you it's a mindset thing, it's a confidence thing and actually you are worth it. You are amazing at what you do and you absolutely should value that and realize that people want to pay for yourself services and it's not something that you're having to icky sell to them but actually you can give them that amazing value. I'll see you next time.