Why selling doesn't need to be scary!

Well, today's episode is gonna tackle that subject head on, and I'm gonna be talking about why sales doesn't have to be scary and how you can do it. I'm Becca Pountney, wedding business marketing expert, speaker and blogger, and you are 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. If you're anything like me, as soon as you hear the word sales or selling, you picture someone in a estate agent uniform, taking around a house and telling you why. It's amazing.

Even though you can see the cracks in the ceiling or someone trying to sell you something in the street, you know when one of those people are trying to get you to sign up to a charity. And that's what we think of when it comes to selling. So when we start thinking about selling in our wedding businesses, we are so scared of being like that, that we end up hating.

Now, this afternoon or this morning, whenever you're listening to this podcast, I want you to have a think about selling from a different perspective. I want you to shift your thinking and stop thinking in those negative terms and start realizing selling doesn't have to be as bad as it sounds. Last week I posted on Instagram to say that you just need to remember that selling is simply solving somebody else's problem. It doesn't have to be this big, scary thing.

Selling only becomes problematic in our brains when we feel like we're selling something that somebody else doesn't need. If you start realizing that your service or your product or whatever it is that you're selling is actually just solving someone's problem, the whole selling piece becomes a lot less scary. Just imagine for a moment you're out for the day and you start getting a little bit hungry and you decide, right, I need to go and buy something to eat from the shop.

So you go into the shop, you pick up a sandwich, pick up a drink, pick up a packet of crisps and take it to the. The person behind the till does not feel bad about selling you that. Why? Because you're hungry and you've chosen to buy some food. It's solving a problem. You have another example. Imagine today I go out of the house and I accidentally lock myself out. I've left my keys inside and there's no way I can get back in.

I'm now gonna be outside with two very tired after school children, and my biggest need is to get back in the house. When I ring up a locksmith and ask them to come around my house for an emergency appointment to get me back in my home, they're not gonna turn around and say, I don't wanna sell you that service. That would be crazy. In fact, that would make me more mad in that moment.

I have a problem that needs solving and that's getting into my house, and I'm willing to pay the expert who can solve that problem for. It's exactly the same in your wedding business. Whatever service or product you offer, you are solving somebody's problem. Somebody wants your incredible wedding cake on their wedding day. Somebody wants to have your beautiful flowers in their bouquet. Somebody wants incredible photos taken, and they don't know how they're gonna do it.

Somebody wants a venue to hold this massive party in and so on and so forth. You are solving their problem, and if you can change your mindset and realize that when you are selling your service, you are doing just that, solving a problem that they have and fulfilling a need. It's going to help you feel a whole lot better about the word selling. In fact, start thinking about it this way. If you don't sell them your products or service, you're actually doing them a disservice. Why?

Because you're saying, I know you've got this problem, but I'm not here to help. That would be crazy, wouldn't it? But when we don't sell to people, when we don't tell them how to book with us, when we don't tell them what our prices are, that is essentially what we are doing. So the first thing I wanna tell you in today's episode is to shift your mindset and stop being scared of the idea of selling and start realizing actually, I'm here to help someone and I am gonna solve their problem.

Okay. Now I wanna share with you some steps to make selling feel a little bit less scary, to make it easier for your customers, and to make it easier for you to take people from A to Z or to take people from inquiry right through to actually paying for your services. The first thing is that you need to make sure you've got a really simple step by step process for them to follow. When we're confused as consumers, we are much less likely to spend our money.

Have you ever been in a shop and you go and pick up an item in the shop and you want to buy it, You're pleased with the item. It solves a problem you have, and it's within your price range. Then you decide you need to go and pay for the product, and you can't find the tills. So you start wandering around the shop looking for the tills, or looking for a sign to tell you where to pay for.

You then find a till and there's no one at the till, and you start looking around for someone who might be able to help you. And sometimes we give up. At that point we might be busy, we might be fed up or frustrated, and so we just abandon that item of clothing somewhere else in the shop and walk out. They've lost our business. And they've lost that money now. They haven't lost our business or our money because we don't want to buy the product or service.

They haven't lost it because we don't have a need that needs fulfilling. They've lost it because their processes have been come confusing or frustrating, and we just give up. When it comes to you selling your products or services to a potential bride or groom, it's really important that you have a clear step by step process for them to walk through. If you want to convert more inquiries into sales, they need to know what needs to happen. Each step of the way.

They need to know when they need to pay, what they need to pay, how they need to pay, how they go about booking a consultation, how they book a, uh, book a call with you, whatever it. So you need to make this really clear for them. You don't wanna make this long and confusing. You wanna get people from A to B in very simple steps.

So one exercise I recommend you doing is that you actually just get a notebook out now and write some numbers down, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and write out the simplest possible way the steps that someone needs to take from finding your business right the way through to giving. Their money. Those steps need to be so clear that a child could understand and follow them. If they're not clear, then you need to go back and refine them.

If you are making those steps too complicated or if you don't know what they are yourself, I guarantee you, just like in that shop, there's money being left on the table. The second tip I have for you to make your selling easier is to be really transparent with your pricing.

Over the weekend, I was at the National Wedding Show and I was talking to some brides to be, and one of the things they said they struggled with the most is when they're looking on supplies, websites, or visiting them on their stands at the exhibition, and they have no idea how much it's going to cost to use their services now. Done the work. They've done their wedding budget.

They know roughly how much they're looking to spend on a florist or a photographer or a venue, but they don't wanna embarrass themselves by talking to someone loving their work and then realizing they can't actually afford it. They're looking for transparency. They're looking for pricing. Let's go back to the shop example again. You walk into a shop, you find a piece of clothing you absolutely love, and you look at the label and there's no price on it.

Or perhaps you then look on the shelf to see if the price is on the shelf and there's no price on it. And then you start to look around and you, again, you feel awkward because you don't know if you can afford this. Now you could take it to the till and ask the price, but then you have that embarrassing moment, don't you, where they say, Oh, it's 500 pounds. And you have to say, Oh, too expensive and put it back to the shop. Socially, we just don't like having those kind of exchanges.

And it's the same for your potential couples. They don't wanna embarrass themselves. Coming forward and saying, I like your services and I wanna book you, and then finding out that you are way out of their price budget and they can't afford you. So how can we counteract that? While you can counteract that by having really transparent pricing, have pricing structures available on an obvious part of your website.

Have pricing structures available at a wedding show that people can stop and have a look at. Now, if you offer a bespoke product or service, this is gonna feel hard for you because you will say, Well, I can't give them exact pricing because. Flowers, change price, cakes change value, and I get that. But you can give them average pricing or rough pricing. You can give people a from price or you can even give people a minimum spend price.

If you have a minimum spend on your flowers that you don't go out to a wedding for less than 500 pounds, then state that so that if someone only has 150 pounds to spend, they know not to get in contact with. I know that you might feel like it's better to keep the prices off your website, but actually in this day and age, people wanna see prices or at least rough prices. Just think about your own buying habits.

If you're looking to book a holiday, if you're looking to book any kind of product or service, a training day, a training course, you wanna know roughly how much that's gonna cost because you don't wanna embarrass yourself and find out you can't afford it. So take a look at your website. Is the pricing clear? Are there packages on there. If you haven't ever listened to Kelly Mortimer talking about her pricing packages and her rule of three, then I highly recommend you go and check that out.

She's done an incredible training inside of my Wedding Pro members lounge, so if you're a member of that, you can go listen to it. And if you're not yet a member, reach out to me. Let's get you a free month in the members club, and you can go and listen to that pricing talk because it's phenomenal and incredibly helpful for everyone to get this transparent pricing up on their website.

Okay. My third tip for you to make selling feel a lot less scary is to really connect and look and listen to the person you are talking to in order to sell. Now, by this I mean if you're talking to someone either by a chat or email or in person, you need to try and match their tone. And their body language.

If someone comes over to you at a wedding Fair and they're really chatty and really making jokes and wanna have fun, and you talk back to them really seriously, they're not gonna be that interested in working with you going forward. Whereas if you can match their tone and go with them, you're gonna have a much better rapport. And as you build that report, it's gonna be a lot easier for you to ask them. Do you wanna. Give your email address over. Do you want to book a consultation?

Do you wanna find out if your date's available? Makes it much more simple and standard. The same thing if you're talking to someone online. If someone asks you a really short question, reply to them with a really short email. Don't bombard them with massive amounts of brochures and huge amounts of words. It's just going to totally overwhelm them. You need to try and match their tone and match their body language. This really does help.

If you can build a bit of a relationship or a rapport with someone, then it's gonna feel a lot more natural for you to continue on that conversation rather than feeling stilted and like you need to sell to them and ask them for money. Think of it as if you're building a friendship or building a relationship or finding out whether you could solve their problems or whether you are the perfect fit for them.

Stop having this big pressure and seeing pound signs above their head and actually get to know them and find out, can I help you? Am I available to help you? Am I a good fit? Yes, to all the above. Great, Well, here we go. Here's my contact details here. Here's my payment details. Why wouldn't they want to pay for your product or service?

The next thing that comes to mind when it comes to selling is that you are the business owner and as scared as you might be of the idea of selling, you need to take the lead. I'm gonna say that again. Even though you are scared of the idea of selling, you need to take the lead. A little bit like that. Confusion and people walking around the shop and not knowing where to pay for something.

You need to take the lead when it comes to guiding your clients from making an inquiry through to booking you. Now, so often I see people fall at the hurdle. So the first thing I see is people at wedding shows and they're having a really great conversation. They're talking, they've got that rapport, they're talking about their portfolio. But you see the wedding business. Stutter and stumble because they don't want to ask the next question, which is a sales question.

They don't wanna say, Would you like me to be in touch? Do you wanna book a call? Do you wanna find out more about my pricing? Do you want me to see if your dates available? They panic because they feel like suddenly that's turning into a sale. But you need to guide people because what will happen is they'll be hovering around the stool, chatting to you and making conversation, but then they'll be starting to feel awkward because they don't know what they're expected to do next.

If you don't offer them a choice, then they're just gonna either walk away feeling uncomfortable or they're gonna stand there feeling uncomfortable, and that's not really fair on anybody. So again, change your mindset. Stop feeling like you're about to sell something to them and realize you're actually helping them feel less awkward in a situation and guiding them as to what to do next, even if you have a very simple step by step process at a wedding show to guide people through a conversation.

Would you like to see if your date's still available? Would you like to have a look at my pricing? Would you like to fill in your details so I can send. X, Y, Z. Would you like to book a consultation? Whatever you want to do, be guided by them and their tone. But yes, you need to lead them onto the next thing. Don't leave them stranded. This is exactly what happens at the end of sales calls as well.

When you say to someone, I've told you everything, here's the pricing, go away and think about it. You're leaving all the power in their hands and they're not, You're not guiding them as to what to do next. You need to guide them down the process. You need to ask the question are you ready to book the date? Are you ready to go ahead? Do you have everything you need to go ahead and get that yes or no Answer from them. If it's a yes, then great.

You can send over the paperwork and explain to them how that works. If it's a no ask a follow up question, ask them, Okay, what's holding you back? Is there someone else you need to speak to? You need to guide them through the process. You need to tell them what needs to happen next. Otherwise, they're gonna panic and walk away. If people feel socially awkward, they.

Disappear, and I don't want people to disappear out of your life before they've paid you a deposit and booked you for their wedding day. So as hard as it is, especially when you feel nervous, perhaps you're a little bit introverted or you just don't like the idea of selling, realize you actually have to take the lead and you're gonna make someone feel a lot more comfortable if you confidently guide them through what they need to do next.

And that brings me onto my final point, which is just don't leave people hanging. If people ask a question, try and give them a really simple answer in reply. Don't ignore them. Don't let them feel like they're silly for asking such a basic question. Don't leave them hanging. Don't leave it in the. Air as to what's going to happen next. At the end of a conversation at a wedding fair, make it really clear what the next steps are gonna be, right? Fill out your email address.

I'm gonna be in touch tonight. I'm gonna send you more information and a link so you can book a call with me on that call. We can have any final discussion before you decide if you wanna go ahead and book me. You're not leaving people hanging. They're not walking away from that stall, not knowing what's gonna happen next because you've told them what's gonna happen next. And your process and your journey may not be the same as that, but the point remains the same.

You need to tell people what happens next. If someone books a call with you and you're on the phone, you need to tell them at the end of the call, what is going to happen next, What they can expect from you next. Are you gonna follow up with an email? Are you gonna phone them again in three days? Are you gonna send over a contract again? I don't know what your processes are, you'll. Them down earlier in this episode.

When you write down your step by step, but you need to make it abundantly clear what is going to happen next, so no one leaves a call or leaves a conversation with you or even leaves an email trail not really knowing what's going to happen next. Because what will happen if they don't know what's gonna happen next? They'll circle around your store, put your product or service down, and walk right back out The.

Hopefully that little whistle stops tour through selling has made you feel a little bit more relaxed and a little bit more comfortable in what you're about to achieve. The biggest thing to do with selling is mindset. Realize you're giving someone so much more when you offer them your product or service. For example, if you're a makeup artist, you're not just selling someone.

Makeup and doing their makeup, you're selling them a confidence, a feeling of being the most amazing they can be on their wedding day. They're booking you because they don't feel confident to do that themselves. They don't have the qualifications that you do, and they just wanna feel amazing on their wedding day, and you can make that happen for them if you say, I'm not gonna sell to you. Well, then you're taking that away from them.

So make sure you realize you're so much more than just the product or service that you are offering, and you need to solve people's problems for them. That's all you're trying to do. You're finding out what someone's problem is and seeing if you are the right person for the job.

I would love to know if you put any of these techniques into practice or if you're feeling a lot more confident now about how you can go out and sell your products and services on social media, on email, in person, and on a consultation. Reach out to me on Instagram @Beccapountney and let me know how you're getting on with all of the techniques in this podcast and in previous episodes.

I absolutely love to hear your wins and why not share this episode or one of the previous episodes with an industry friend. It may just help them out this week too. I'll see you next time.