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Are You Getting Too Many Inquiries - Alan Berg CSP, Wedding Business Solutions PodcastAre You Getting Too Many Inquiries?

Very rarely do I come across businesses who don’t get enough leads. Most wedding and event pros I work with or speak with complain about getting too many inquiries. Which one are you? Do you really want more inquiries, or do you want better ones? Do you have enough time to follow up the way you know you should (or the way I recommend in my books)? Or, do you know that you could follow up better… if you only had more time? If you got fewer leads would you follow up more?

Listen to this new 14-minute episode for perspective on whether more leads is better, or worse.

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Below is a full transcript. If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at [email protected] or contact me via textuse the short form on this page, or call 732.422.6362

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– Are you getting too many inquiries? Is that a bad thing? Listen to this episode and find out. Welcome to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast. I’m Alan Berg, and this is a topic that’s been coming up a lot lately. Are you getting too many inquiries or not enough inquiries? And if you’re getting too many inquiries, is that a bad thing? And the reason this has been coming up is, we always notice some seasonality in terms of inquiries, depending upon your category, is the time of the year you might get more inquiries than others. A lot of wedding and event pros tend to get a lot of inquiries between kind of Christmas and Valentine’s Day thereabouts, because a lot of people are getting engaged. But if you’re further down the line in your service, you might be getting more in February or March or April, here in the Northern hemisphere. And then flip that down to the Southern hemisphere for the times of the year that you might be getting more.

So the question is, is getting too many inquiries a bad thing? Well, the first thing is, if you look at your inventory, and this is what I do with my clients. I’ve done this, gosh, in the last couple of weeks, I’ve done this a whole bunch of times with clients, where we had this discussion. If you look at starting with the number of events that you want to do. So whatever it is that your service is, the number that you want to do, that’s your inventory. And no matter what your business is, I don’t care if you’re a dog walker or a cake maker, you have an inventory because you can only do so many of whatever it is you do. So if you look at that inventory and then you back into that and say, “Okay, how many people do I need to have a really good conversation or a meeting with to close that many sales?” And then you need to back into that and say, “Okay, how many people do I need to inquire to get to that many good conversations and meetings?” So there’s your funnel, if you will. Some people call them funnels.

If you listen to the episode I did with Aleya Harris, we talked about funnels. It’s basically, start from the inquiries. How many of those convert to conversations? How many of those convert to meetings, and how many of those convert to sales? So I had this conversation just two days ago with a client, I was on-site doing sales training. And the sales team, what would happen is, when you were getting more inquiries, you would not follow up quite as much. Some of them you would be like, “All right, you know what, I’m going to leave that one alone.” Whereas if you have less inquiries, you’re going to work that a little bit harder or hopefully a lot harder. Because when you’re busy, and I know, you’re always busy, so… But when you’re busier, those follow ups are one of the first things that just fall by the wayside, which is a shame because that’s what’s feeding your pipeline of business there, are those people.

So remember this. It is so much easier to work a lead that you’ve gotten better than to go find a new lead. I’m going to say that again. It’s so much easier to work the leads that you’ve gotten better than to go find another one. because to find more leads, you have to do more advertising, do more marketing, do more networking, do more things to get more leads. I have rarely, other than than people who are new in business, I have rarely run into someone who says that they’re not getting enough inquiries. It’s almost always the opposite. “I’m drowning in inquiries.” “I’m getting too many inquiries.” So for a lot of my clients, what we do is we’re trying to reduce the number of inquiries that they get. And we do that various ways. One is we can adjust where we’re advertising and marketing. We can adjust our placement. But a lot of the time, it really comes down to being more forthcoming and transparent with price ranges. Not full pricing. I do have some clients that do this, and they do it on purpose intentionally, where they put their full pricing out. And then when someone inquires, price is not going to be an issue. Now, it might be availability or style or something like that. But if you’ve done your marketing well, they can kind of get an idea of your style. If you’ve done your marketing well, they’re going to get “why you?” In your reviews, in your testimonials, in the wording on your website. You’re talking about experiences, not just products and services. And specifically, the kind of results that you can provide.

So they see your great pictures, your aspirational images. They read about what you can do for them. They get excited and they reach out. But if there’s no pricing information, you’re going to be getting tire kickers. You’re going to get people who look at your photos and think they’re gorgeous. And you’re going to get people who read your reviews and think they’re terrific. And you’re going to have people that read the words on your website and go, “Wow, these people sound great. I don’t know if they’re in my budget, so let me reach out and find out.” What you’re going to do by putting a price range on your website, and I’ve spoken about this in my books, and I’ve spoken about this on other episodes. I actually get into this a lot in the books, the four ways to talk about price. But if you at least give them an idea, which, if you think about yourself as a customer, have you ever been to a website, there’s no pricing information and you’re like, “Can you give me an idea?” “Can’t give me exact pricing, but can you give me an idea?” If you put those anchors in and say, “Hey, this is the range that our customers do,” now the people who are way below that range don’t reach out.

And yes, I know you’ve been able to talk some people who thought they had a lower budget up into your range, but you generally talk them into the lower part of your range or the bottom of your range, the cheapest thing you have. I would rather get people who are already in your range, maybe towards the bottom and talk them to the middle because of better results. Or in the middle, towards the top, because, better results. But they already know that they’re there. So if you think about this, I’m just going to pick easy numbers here. Let’s say you were trying to do a hundred weddings a year. I’m just going to use that number, a hundred weddings a year. Or a hundred weddings and events a year. How many inquiries do you need to fill that? If you’re closing 50% of the people you get to meet with, it means you need to have 200 meetings to get a hundred events. So how many people do you need to have a conversation with to have 200 meetings? Is it, you get one out of four, you get half of those, you get three quarters of those? Let’s go back to 50% again. If you get 50% of the people you have a conversation with to have a meeting, then you need 400 conversations. Well, how many inquiries do you need to get 400 conversations? You see, we’re just backing into that. When I did the math with one of my clients, to fill their dates, currently, at their current conversion rate, they needed over 3000 inquiries because they weren’t converting enough of the inquiries. I said, “Right, because some of those shouldn’t just be reaching out at all. They just shouldn’t be reaching out at all.”

So if you could lop off 1000 of those 3000, or 1500 of those 3000, couldn’t you follow up better with the ones that you’re already getting then? The ones that already think that not only are you a good fit, but they’re kind of in the budget for what you want? And don’t we have to not worry about talking to anybody up into your range if we’re going to get enough inquirers for people that are in your range? I can give you even smaller numbers. I was working with a client and they are, by law, by zoning, they can only do 20 or 25 weddings at their venue per year. It’s just something with the zoning where they are. And there’s a lot of venues that have zoning restrictions on that. It’s a very small number. They used to get three to five inquiries a day and it got cut down to three to five a week. They do have pricing on the website. They may not have had it before or maybe it wasn’t as easy to find. And I said, “Well, gosh, you’re only trying to do 25 weddings. Three to five a week is 150 to 250 inquiries a year. And 150 to 250 inquiries to get 25 doesn’t sound like it should be that hard if you’re following up the right way.” And then I looked at how they were following up and I made some really significant suggestions about how they could do differently because they hadn’t read my books, “Why Don’t They Call Me?” and “Why Are They Ghosting Me?” and “Shut Up and Sell More,” where I talk about that more specifically. And I think they could do much better on conversion. So the answer was not “I need more leads.”

The answer was, “I need to work these leads better,” because price was already keeping away the tire kickers. Now I have to get the rest of these people to the point where they have a good conversation. So what about you? Are you getting too many inquiries and you’re just not able to follow up the way that you want? If you get ghosted after you respond to someone, how many times do you follow up? Some of you, never. Some of you, one more time. Some of you, maybe twice more. Some of you, 6, 7, 8 times, I know that. I know some of you doing it really, really well, or at least doing the volume, which is going to put it into your favor. Even if you’re not doing it great, just following up more times is going to get you more information, more conversations, I should say. And I’ve said this time and time again. If you would only follow up one more time than you’re currently doing, whatever the number is, you’re going to get more business. Not from everybody, but from some of them. It’s a lead you already got. They already put you on a short list. You don’t need more inquiries.

The only people I’ve ever met that need more inquiries are people that have changed something significant in their business, like they need to do a significantly higher volume than they’re currently doing. So they’re trying to go… Actually, I had one client who told me that they wanted to do 500, in their entertainment company, they’d want to to do 500 events a year. And that was significantly higher than they were currently doing, which was about 200. I said, “Okay, well you need to advertise more and market more,” because they weren’t getting enough current inquiries that they were turning away that would fill those other dates. And that’s another time where you may not need more inquiries, you just might need more staff. Need more photographers or more florists or more videographers or something like that, where you are turning away so much business that you’re expanding based upon that. And if you listen to any of the episodes I’ve done with people on scaling, you’ll see that a lot of them scaled that way, where the demand was there first and then they say, “Well, I’m turning away this business, I can now pick up more business without getting any more marketing and advertising dollars out there because I’m already getting them.”

But if you’re not, and I’ve had some other people where they had strong relationships with venues, and then during COVID, some of those people don’t work at those venues or hotels anymore or country clubs anymore and they lost that relationship, and now they need to find more leads. Or brand new in business, that’s another way, “I need to find more leads, I need to spend some more money on marketing and advertising, networking and so forth.” But that’s the thing. Rarely do I hear that. What I’m hearing is, “I’m drowning in leads. I want to follow up the way that you say on your podcast and the way you say in your books,” and the way I tell them in private training, whether it’s one person or a whole team, but they just don’t have the time because they’re so busy drowning in new leads, they can’t follow up on the old ones.

So is it better to cut down that number of leads? Yeah, not too thin. You don’t want to be too thin on that. You want to still be turning away some business on the popular dates because your marketing and advertising usually doesn’t turn away someone who can afford you because they already know that you’re not available. I do have some clients that put their availability out there. I don’t recommend it for caterers, I don’t recommend it for venues. If you’re a solopreneur photographer and you want to put your calendar dates on your website, okay, maybe. But occasionally, somebody reaches out before they’ve actually booked their venue and they might move it if they really want you, and I’ve heard people telling me that as well.

So are you getting too many leads? If you are, would it make sense to cut back on the number of leads by tweaking things that you’re doing on your website, in your advertising and marketing, so that you’re telling some people that should never have reached out, “Don’t reach out to me, find somebody else and have a wonderful wedding or event. I’m not the right fit because of this,” whether it’s price or style or whatever. And then you can follow up with the people that you are the right fit. You can follow up better and help more people have amazing events and weddings and mitzvahs and quinces and holiday parties and fundraisers and all the things that you do. I hope this gives you something to think about. If you need any help, you know where to find me.

I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is [email protected]. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

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©2022 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com

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