All in Sales

It's a Family Affair: When Your Sales Meeting Becomes a Group Activity

It's a Family Affair: When Your Sales Meeting Becomes a Group Activity

Guest Contributor
Sales

Last month we focused on marketing yourself and your business to bring qualified leads to your door. Hopefully some of the techniques we outlined in Are Your Branding & Marketing Authentic to You, 10 Free Ways to Market Yourself and Your Business, and Making Wedding Shows Work for You helped to increase the number of couples interested in your products and services. Once potential customers contact you, that's when you enter enter the realm of sales and the real work of converting couples into clients begins.

When Does Trying Become Try-Hard?

When Does Trying Become Try-Hard?

Guest Contributor
Sales

Nobody likes a try-hard. Harsh, but true. And by "try-hard," I'm referring to those people who are so eager for connection, for acceptance, that they become off-putting. We all know at least one.

Unfortunately, as wedding business owners, we're all in a position to have to sell our services - in a sense, sell ourselves - and, by its very nature, selling requires trying. We're all out here, putting our best foot forward, asking people to give us their hard-earned money. To a certain degree, we have to be vulnerable, which isn't easy for most of us. It's easy to come across as desperate.

Friday Five: 5 Things to Know Before You Meet With a Client

Friday Five: 5 Things to Know Before You Meet With a Client

Guest Contributor
Clients, Marketing, Sales, Wedding Industry

As wedding professionals, haven't we all been burned by wasting time on meeting the wrong clients? Perhaps they weren't serious about potentially buying from us, or they were woefully unprepared, or we weren't going to be able to serve their needs regardless of how well we did in the meeting. Whatever the reason, none of us has time to spare on client meetings that aren't going anywhere.

So, in today's fun Friday Five post, here are 5 things to know prior to agreeing to meet with a client.

Scoring Sales Without Losing Your Sanity: The "More is More" Trick That May Surprise You

Scoring Sales Without Losing Your Sanity: The "More is More" Trick That May Surprise You

Guest Contributor
Clients, Marketing, Sales, Wedding Industry

The wedding industry is an interesting one in that many business owners came from vastly different fields. I personally know many wedding vendors who previously worked in law, finance, real estate, education, and more. That career diversity, combined with the fact that there aren't a ton of business-focused resources specifically created for the wedding industry (hence my starting WeddingIQ), means that many wedding pros rely on more general business advice - advice which may not be particularly applicable to what we do.

One of the biggest differences between wedding services/products and the services/products in other industries is how we go about effectively selling them. By nature, everything wedding-related is a luxury expense (some more so than others), and the event that's being celebrated is uniquely emotional and incredibly important to our clients, their families and their friends. As such, a lot of traditional "sales" advice just doesn't work.