People like to buy, they don’t like to be sold to!
Are your wedding clients feeling empowered to make their own choices, or are you unknowingly making them feel “sold to”? What friction are you adding that might be keeping them from saying yes? In this episode, I dig into why offering clear choices and real answers can help clients buy with confidence—rather than running the other way.
Listen to this new 10-minute episode for insight on how to remove buying barriers, answer questions, and turn your approach from salesy to supportive.
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 visit my website Podcast.AlanBerg.com
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View the full transcript on Alan’s site: https://alanberg.com/blog/
People like to buy. They don’t like to be sold. Listen to this episode, see where that came from.
Hey, it’s Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast. Just this week, uh, today’s Wednesday. On Monday, I had Beth Fox on, and Beth is a Gen Z bride who said the quiet part out loud. Please listen to that episode.
I actually did an episode before this about saying the quiet part out loud, where she ghosted vendor, and she told us why. She said it on LinkedIn, and I’ve shared that post and more things. But I, I, I wrote this down because one of the last things that she said, I asked her, you have any, any thoughts for the vendors that are listening around the world? And she said, people like to buy, they don’t like to be sold to.
And it’s such an important point because we as consumers, consumers actually love to buy in general. There might be some people that don’t. And maybe you don’t like to buy everything, but there are certain things that you like to buy. You like to be a buyer. There’s actually an endorphin hit with buying and getting something new.
So, but they don’t like to be sold to, and sold to makes it feel like it’s somebody else’s idea of what you’re buying, as opposed to you buying and it’s your decision. This is what I want to buy, therefore it’s my choice.
And it’s, it’s why you’ve heard me say so many times that people like— they need the perception of choice without too many choices, because too many choices actually makes it hard to decide, right? That is the paradox of choice. We like to know we have all the choices that we’re choosing from, but it’s hard to decide the more choices you have.
It’s one of the reasons when I go to trade shows very often now, I’m not putting out all 13 books. If you’re looking here on YouTube, you see my 13 books behind me. I’m only putting out maybe 5 of them, or sometimes different versions of Shut Up and Sell More, so there might be 6 or 7 of them. Not all 13 books because it’s so imposing to see it on the table.
It’s too many choices. And again, you want to give people the impression that they have choice and you wanna help them buy.
That’s why after Shut Up and Sell More, I wrote Stop Selling and Help Them Buy. Whether it’s Stop Selling and Help Them Buy Weddings and Events, or I have Stop Selling and Help Them Buy Just About Anything if you want a version that’s not just for, for weddings and events.
And, and this is the key. By the time somebody reaches out, unless you’re doing cold calling, by the time somebody reaches out to you, they already need what you do. They like what they’ve seen, read, heard, watched, et cetera.
So if you listen to this episode the other day with Beth Fox, she reached out to more venues than typical. She reached out to 10, maybe 20 different venues, but 10 initially. And then when she didn’t get good responses, she reached out to some more. Right? But there were hundreds that she could have chosen. She still cut that down.
But by the time she reached out, the one venue that she posted about, the one that she ghosted. She posted about the fact that they didn’t have price on their website. She normally would have passed them by, but they ticked so many other boxes for her between their photos and reviews and things and the look of their website and the vibe and all that.
By the time she did that, all those things, she said, all right, I’ll bypass the fact there’s no pricing. I’ll ask for price.
But she completely ignored other venues that didn’t tick enough boxes and they didn’t have pricing, right? If they had pricing and didn’t tick enough boxes, she still might have reached out. But the fact that they had no pricing, she bypassed so many.
And the thing is, you’ll never know that. You’ll never know that whether you’re the band or the flowers or the DJ or the planner or the transportation or the invitations. It doesn’t matter.
No pricing is adding friction, and people are bypassing you every day because of the lack of price.
Some people are reaching out only to find out they can’t afford you, right? Because there’s not that.
And that— this is what Beth said she was looking for as a Gen Z bride. She’s looking for the ones that are below her budget, the ones that are within her budget, and the ones that are above her budget. And she was eliminating the ones below because she didn’t feel it would give her the results that she wanted.
And her budget is, you know, flexible. She set a budget. I said I’m going to bring her back on later this year or after the wedding and find out how she actually went through, if she kept to the budget. We’ll see.
And then the people that are way above, she didn’t want to waste their time and waste her time on that, you know, because she didn’t want to fall in love with the results and then not be able to afford it.
So people don’t— they like to buy, they don’t like to be sold to.
So what is it that you’re doing that’s making them feel sold to?
In Beth’s case, the whole point of her post was that she reached out to get pricing information from this venue, and all they said was, do you want to come in tonight or tomorrow night for a tour? They didn’t answer any of her questions.
Whereas vendors that are still on her list, there are 2 vendors on her list, 2 venues, I should say, on her list from her original 10. They had pricing information. They are answering her questions. They are following up.
Right? It’s not aggressive to follow up when someone has inquired with you.
They already showed the interest. They are a buyer. That’s why you don’t need to sell them and make them feel sold to. You need to help them buy results that are gonna give them the kind of results that they want for their wedding or event.
And if your results are not what they’re looking for, then you’re not the right fit and you should pass them on to somebody else. And if they are, then you should work hard for the privilege of doing that event.
And I’ve, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, I’ll keep saying it.
When they say yes to you, they’ve said no to everybody else.
And that is a privilege, whether it’s a wedding or a corporate event or a fundraiser or a mitzvah or a quinceañera or a communion or a school dance or doesn’t matter.
When they say yes to you, they’ve said no to everybody else.
And that’s a privilege ’cause that event will never ever happen again. Yes, they could throw another holiday party, and yes, they might have another kid that needs a mitzvah or a quinceañera or a communion, but this one is never gonna happen again.
And that’s why it’s a privilege every time they say yes to you because they’ve said no to everybody else.
So you don’t have to sell them. You don’t, and certainly don’t make them feel sold to.
Beth talked about the aggressive sales tactics. This is old school stuff that might’ve worked with Gen X, might have worked with the older millennials, isn’t working with the mid-millennials and the younger millennials, and certainly isn’t working with Gen Z.
Them feeling like they’re being sold to as opposed to helping them buy.
They’re used to people being their advisor, helping them, not forcing ideas on them.
You’re just gonna— they’re gonna put up the wall, or in the case of that, they’re gonna ghost you.
So one of the best tips from that podcast just the other day was if you wouldn’t say it in person to someone, don’t write it. And if that— your answer wouldn’t be this, don’t write it.
So in the case of this venue, you know, her asking for information and for pricing, just an idea of pricing, if they were face to face, they wouldn’t say— or on the phone— oh, so do you want to come in tonight or tomorrow? Without answering any of her questions, right? You wouldn’t do that.
So don’t do that in an email. Don’t do that in a DM. Don’t do that in a text or in a WhatsApp.
You wouldn’t do it on the phone. You wouldn’t do it in person. Don’t do it on those because it is still the same communication there.
So what are you doing or possibly doing to make people feel like they’re being sold to as opposed to helping them buy?
You need to be giving them the why, not the what of your things, because your what looks like everybody else’s.
What an officiant does, what a planner does, what a destination wedding or honeymoon travel advisor does looks pretty much the same with every one of you.
Why do people choose you is the question.
And what you wanna find out from them is what are the results that they’re looking for and how can I help you get them?
And that’s why you, you’ve either read this in my books or you’ve heard me speak about the 3 things.
I actually learned this from a client, a rental company in Westchester, New York, and, uh, Kenny Puff. And he said 3 questions you’re trying to get answered.
What’s the occasion? Who’s coming and what does success look like?
In other words, what are the results that they’re looking for?
So if they come to you and say, we’re planning a fill-in-the-blank type of an event, let’s say it’s a wedding, right? You know what the occasion is.
Who’s coming, right? Do you, you wanna know who’s coming? Are they local? Are they out of town? Are they young? Are they old? Is it a range?
I’ve spoken before about that. I was at a wedding where the youngest person was 4 and the oldest was 92. That’s a pretty wide range there.
You wanna know that when you’re planning activities and, and things for them, right?
And then what does success look like?
What, what is the target that we’re trying to hit when we say at, at the end of the night, how was everything? And you say, amazing, it was everything we were looking for and then some.
What is that target?
Because we can’t hit a target we can’t see.
And that’s what you’re trying to do is to help them buy the results that they want, right?
Maybe offer them some results they didn’t even think of because they’ve never done this before and you know more than they do about it, but it’s not forcing it on them and saying you should do this, this.
It’s saying, have you thought about this? Have you ever heard of this? Have you seen anybody do this?
And then they get to choose, because when it’s their choice, it’s a good decision.
When they feel it was your choice, they will second-guess that. They will have second thoughts. They will have buyer’s remorse.
That’s when you get some people that sign up with you and they’ll cancel the next day because they feel they were sold to instead of that they bought what they wanted.
So great line from Beth.
Again, if you haven’t heard that, it was Beth Fox. It was just this past Monday. I think that was April— let’s see, no, it was March 30th, the March 30th episode.
Just listen to that. Hear how Gen Z wants to buy. Hear how Gen Z wants you to follow up with them, how they want you to respond to their inquiries, the information that they’re looking for.
And remember, people like to buy. They don’t like to be sold to.
Thanks for listening.
If you need help with how to reword your things, you can always use Ask Alan Anything. Just use the coupon code PODCAST for 50% off. If it’s just for you, it’s only $10 a month. That’s half the price of ChatGPT.
Thanks for listening.
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] or you can text, use the short form on this page, or call +1.732.422.6362, international 001 732 422 6362. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.
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