May 19, 2021 • 53 mins
Episode 17
Do you like to be sold to?
Likely not, you want to buy. Your customers want the same thing. Help them understand why you are the best choice for them.
Listen to Alan Berg from Wedding Business Solutions give a mini masterclass on selling in the wedding business.
Join Pat Blackwell here every week, where you, the BEST vendors, expand your wedding business into this lucrative Jewish market. By understanding the traditions & vocabulary, you will build TRUST and GROW your business. Cha Ching
Links mentioned in this episode:
- For information on how to get on the Jewish Party Maven Certified Vendor List just click here: I want to get on that Certified Vendor list
- CLICK HERE to get the FREE DOWNLOAD JPM Top 12 Wedding Words the Best Vendors Know
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:06):
Hello there, and welcome to episode number 17 of
the book more Jewish weddingspodcast. I'm Pat Blackwell. And
I'm excited today because I gotto interview the amazing Alan
Berg who founded the weddingBusiness Solutions.
He says things like, sell theoutcome, not your packages.
(00:27):
It's just so smart. The way hedoes it, I love it. He says ask
your potential client. What haveyou seen at weddings recently
that you really loved? Then usethat information to help that
client understand why you aretheir best choice for a vendor.
But don't sell them, help thembuy. Nobody likes to be sold to.
(00:49):
These are just a few of the manymany concrete actionable tips in
today's podcast. Like I said,elenberg founded the wedding
business solutions. And hetravels around the world
teaching wedding vendors how togrow their businesses.
So turn off those distractions,you're going to want to focus
while you listen to this episodeof the book more Jewish weddings
(01:11):
podcast. Let's dig right in.
Here's my interview with AlanBerg.
Hello, Alan. Welcome to thepodcast. So this
is called book more Jewishweddings. Okay, and so let's
talk about what you do ingeneral, introduce yourself and
let us know what's going on.
Thanks so much for inviting me,Pat. My name is Alan Berg. I'm a
(01:33):
speaker. I'm an author. I'm anexpert on the business of
weddings. Short story I soldwedding advertising published
two wedding magazines, I wasvice president of sales at the
not the not.com, the localmagazines. And for the last 10
years, I've been an independentspeaker and consultant to
wedding professionals around theworld. I've spoken in 14
countries by them in Spanish.
Last year, since I didn't get totravel anywhere, people from 48
(01:55):
countries tuned in to the remotethings that I was doing. And I
think it's more than that. But Icould I could actually attribute
48 countries. So it's amazing.
If I could only get the frequentflyer miles for that it would
have been great.
Wow. Well, I had the pleasure ofhearing you twice now at the
wedding MBA in Las Vegas. Andobviously not last year, but you
(02:20):
do fabulous stuff. So what's thelatest and greatest what you got
going on? I am so proud becauseApril 1, we launched the wedding
Business Solutions podcastpeople have been asking me for
years, how come you don't have apodcast because I come on
podcasts like yours. And thepandemic kind of changed things
because I used to travel somuch. I didn't want to commit to
that. And I haven't traveled in13 months. So I had a little bit
(02:42):
more time on my hands.
But what I did is I listened topodcasts as well. And I said
what? What do I like what wouldbe good for me what would be
good for my audienceunderstanding who wedding
professionals are. So mine areevery Wednesday, and it's about
10 minutes, summer eight, Summer1314 I dropping some bonus
dialogue episodes because everyweek it's just me for you know,
(03:03):
a particular thought. And thenI'm adding dialogue. Some of
those have gone to 1718 minutes,which still by podcast standards
is not that long. And peoplehave told me I love that little
soundbite. That idea came frommy latest book, which is called
wit wisdom in the business ofweddings. And unless you don't
know that one so conveniently,conveniently over my shoulder
(03:24):
here,right over here, the blue one
over there. It's the first bookthat I've written that wasn't
meant to be read front to back.
It's actually 45 chapters underthe headings of sales, business
and inspiration. And there's 15of each of those 15 sales 15
business for the inspiration.
And each one each chapter is adifferent thought. It's it's
actually just like the podcast,it's a different thought. And I
(03:47):
when I published it, I wasn'tsure how would the audience
react because my other fourbooks are started in the
beginning and read it throughthe end. They're short, they're
short, but still, people told meI love the fact that if I want
to know more about this subject,I went to chapter 27. There it
was, and in five minutes, sevenminutes, I'm done. So that
inspired the podcast to be justlike that. Let me come up with a
(04:09):
thought. only talk about thatthought done. The next podcast
will be about a differentthought. Such as I'll give you a
little preview one that Ihaven't recorded yet I might
record right after this was athought I had the other day I
think it was staples sent me anemail and the subject line. I
love reading subject linesbecause I love to share good
good ones was something aboutincome and outcome. Right? It
(04:31):
was something about that. And Italked about results. You might
have heard me at wedding MBA.
I've actually the only speakerwho's spoken at every wedding
MBA they've ever had since 2007.
Right The first one in Phoenixin 2007 and eight were in
Phoenix. So I'm thinking incomeoutcome I talk about results. We
don't sell weddings, we don'tsell photography and catering
(04:51):
and venues and flowers and andkeep us we don't sell that what
we sell is the results. SoThis podcast is going to be
based upon this thought, whichis you don't get the income if
you're not selling the outcome.
Or, or to get the out to or toget the income, sell the outcome
or something like that. And I'mjust going to riff on that for
(05:14):
about, I don't know, seven oreight minutes. And that'll be a
podcast. And that's the way itis. Because what, again, you've
heard, you've seen me speaktwice, I want you to have
takeaways that you're going tobe like, I'm in the hallway on
my phone using this already, Idon't even have to wait to get
back to my office to use this.
And that's the same thing I'mtelling you, you. If you're
making invitations, you're notselling invitations, you're
(05:36):
selling the preview to what thatmitzvah is going to look like
preview to what that wedding isgoing to look like. If you're
selling invitations, somebodysells them cheaper, right? But
if you're selling the outcomethat only you can provide, they
have to hire you. So it's thesame thing to get the income,
you need the out, you need tosell the outcome or something to
that effect. So that'sdefinitely my dream lady.
(05:59):
As a regular lady, I don't sellany stuff. I'm not the band. I'm
not the DJ, we are partymanagers. And so we totally sell
the experience. And I had abusiness coach written recently
who said to me, how many secondsare there in a party? How many
memories can be created in aparty? And that's what you're
selling? Are you going toremember yourself in the kitchen
(06:21):
yelling at the chef or you'regoing to remember the good times
out on the dance floor? Exactly,exactly. I was sitting with a DJ
one time in Kansas City. Andwe're having some barbecue
because that's what you're doingKansas City. And he gets it he
gets an email through hiswebsite, or through the knot or
wedding wire or something. Howmuch is your five hour package?
Right? Very typical thing. Andhe's like, Here we go again. I
(06:44):
said, Well, have you everfigured out how much time you
actually invest in a customerfrom the initial inquiry through
all the planning all themeetings, everything you do and
getting there and the party andgoing home. And he's we started
thinking about it, we came upwith somewhere between 30 and 40
hours because he does grandentrances, and he and it's
different music for everyintroduction and stuff. So it's
(07:04):
a big production at a time whenthe other DJs in Kansas City
were getting $1,000 he wasgetting $3,000 Okay, so, but
he's investing a lot more time.
And I said one of your writeback and say thanks so much for
inquiring, we'd love to makeyour wedding great. And have
your guests say it was the mostfun they've ever had in a
wedding. I don't have a fivehour package. But I would love
to tell you about the 30 to 40hours I'm going to invest to
(07:25):
make your wedding amazing.
Well, okay, and then ask aquestion just to get them. A
speaker friend of mine, BrianWalker calls it the Scooby Doo,
you want them to go wood?
That's their friend. What?
Right? And that's the key. Whyare you three times more than
everybody else? Because it'sdifferent. But if you can
articulate why it's different.
(07:47):
It's a price point, you're justgoing to sell a price point.
Yesterday, I talked with awedding client who I've talked
to several times already, andshe hasn't paid a deposit yet.
But she wants to know if shecuts out one hour of service,
how much will that reduce theprice?
I said, Well, 35 bucks or so shesaid, but you're gonna be there
(08:09):
15 hours and your hourly rate isa lot more than that. I said,
Yeah. But my hourly rateincludes this. And this isn't
gonna change. In fact, we've hadseveral meetings already and the
right, yeah, right. Yeah. Again,the customers aren't supposed to
understand because they've neverdone it before. And some people
are like, oh, okay, that makessense. And then other people are
(08:32):
just looking, you know, how canI line item this? How can I How
can I do this? I actually tellpeople when they're doing
proposals, don't line itemprices, give them a total for
what you're going to do. Becauseevery number on there becomes
negotiable in their mind. Yep.
And you're not including this.
So do I get a discount? And itwas actually a question that
came up on Facebook the otherday, somebody tagged me and this
(08:53):
happens to me a lot on socialsomebody, you'll see something
and go, Hey, Alan, I heard AlanBerg say this, or I read this in
Allen's book, or Alan taught methis in my consulting. And it
was a DJ asking, has anybodyever thought about just having
one package? And somebody taggedme because I've said this to a
lot of DJs photographers andother people, especially if you
are a single op, meaning you'reit's just you You're the only DJ
(09:16):
or the or the only band Are youthe only whatever photographer,
whatever it is, you can only bein one place that day. So if
it's a popular day, in a popularmonth, alright, we know that may
through October in the UnitedStates are the most popular time
of the year. We know Octoberspecifically is the most
popular. We know that 50% of allweddings in the US are going to
happen on 22 Saturdays roughlybetween May and October. Right.
(09:40):
We know that that's just the wayit is. Well, you know you're
going to get multiple inquiriesfor that most popular day.
Whatever it is for your industrybecause we know in Arizona
they're not doing many July andAugust things right. But they're
doing a whole lot more inFebruary. right but but you know
in Michigan in New Jersey,February not so busy, right? Not
so busy for weddings here.
So, you know, you're popularmonths, and I said, What if you
(10:03):
were you took I called it theMary Poppins approach. You
remember Mary Poppins had thatbag?
Yeah. And whatever she wanted,came out of the bag, including a
canoe, including whatever shewanted. I said, if you were
selling you being the plan Areyou being the DJ, you being the
band, you being thephotographer, videographer,
whatever. And you come with yourMary Poppins bag, and it's one
(10:26):
price. And if you want the, inhis case, the uplighting, whoo,
I'll pull out the applied. Andif you want a monogram, you got
a monogram. But if you don't,it's in the bag. It's no
difference in price because I'm,what makes the difference, not
the stuff. And as a planner, asa planner, you're like an
architect, right? architectssell their ideas. They don't
(10:47):
build buildings. Now they canarrange it and do all that kind
of stuff, project management ifyou want. But they don't build
the building. You know, youdon't say to architect Hey, can
I have those plans before thatyou've hired them? No, no, no,
that's what you're hiring mefor? Is that and what you
execute? Is what took you solong? So many planners I work
with? I say, Have you figuredout how many hours you know you
(11:08):
invest? And one of them told merecently? I don't want to know,
I don't want to know because Icould probably flip burgers at
McDonald's and make more moneyby the hour. I say, yeah, most
people could based upon whatI've seen on the pricing. But
you know, you don't have apassion for flipping burgers.
You have a passion for helpingpeople have amazing weddings.
Absolutely. Well, you've gotthese amazing books, and I keep
(11:31):
seeing them over your shoulder.
So I love your book, shut up andsell more. So can you give me
the one minute synopsis? Um, setup and sell more? Where'd you
come up with that title? I wasactually in a in a previous
life. I was selling Chryslercars. I had just won the first
ever national productinformation championship for all
Chrysler salesmen in the entireUnited States who got the golf
(11:52):
check a big object, go back tomy dealership, my sales manager
puts his arm around me one dayand says Alan, you know more
about these cars than anyoneI've met in 20 years in the
business. I said, thanks. Hegoes, good. Shut up.
Now we're in New York. So youcan say that to people? So I say
I said Why? He said you'retelling people things they don't
(12:12):
need to know. I said, I don'tunderstand. He said, what a
couple of before you told themabout this. I said, Yeah. Well,
they needed to know he goes,they never asked you. I said
they didn't know. And then theperson before that you told them
this? I said, Yeah, well, sheneeded to, she never asked you.
Really, I didn't realize I wasjust spewing data information,
(12:34):
which is a very common thing. Wewant to tell people what we do.
By the time someone walked intoa car showroom, they already
needed a car, right? They couldhave been at the grocery store,
but they were at the car dealer,right? By the time you get an
inquiry, somebody is planning anevent. Right? So what I learned
is you don't have to sell them,you have to help them buy, but
(12:54):
you're not going to know whatthey want. And let's go back to
that outcome and income thing.
You're not going to know theresults they want from their
planner or from their band fromtheir photographer from whoever,
if you're talking. Because whenyou're talking everything you're
going to say you already know.
Right? You might phrase itdifferent, like I phrase that
thing about income and outcomefive different ways. But I knew
(13:15):
what I was trying to say, I'mjust coming up with the it's
like I play piano music musicianas well, not professionally. But
if you've seen my Facebookposts, as always, though, must
raise $3,000 for charities,mostly food banks, good for us
up. But you know, as a musician,it's the same 88 keys on the
piano. But you put them togetherin a different way. When a
(13:37):
customer is talking, you'regoing to find out something
about what they want somethingabout what's important to them
something what they don't want,which is also actually more
important. Two very goodquestions I talked about in the
book are saying to someone sowhat's the most important factor
when choosing yourflorist? When choosing your
caterer when choosing fill inthe blank? Whatever it is, and
then let them go? And then sayhave you been to other weddings
(14:00):
and events? You know, the answeris yes. Right asking you a yes
or no question. You know theanswer to what have you seen at
other events that you definitelywant it yours? And let them go?
What have you seen at otherevents? You don't want it yours?
And Pat, those are the thingswhen you're a guest and you're
sitting there and you lean overto the person next to you go
Hey, Pat, can you believe they,you know, I was at lunch with my
(14:20):
cousin the other day she comesin from California for a
wedding. And she was telling meabout the wedding. The last
wedding she went to in NewJersey was at the pleasantdale
Chateau, which is this justgorgeous venue very expensive.
And she said the centerpieceswere trees they were they just
they were huge. I said could yousee under she said yeah, I said
(14:41):
okay, so he had a sight line.
But this is what she remembered.
When the couple got introducedout of the centerpieces
sparklers formed an arch thatthe couple was and my cousin's
first reaction was, is there afire in here?
Right, because there's smoke,everybody's looking at the
(15:02):
couple and all of a suddenthere's smoke all over the
place. And then she's like, Arewe allowed to have fire in here?
That was our second thought.
Instead of who, right? It was.
Right? So, you know, what do younot want is first of all, I
don't want to have a fire, rightSecond of all, I don't want
people going, you know, my hair.
You know, let's go. Right.
You're just thinking about thegoing. Okay. The centerpieces
(15:23):
are too big. Right. I don't wantmy centerpieces to be too big. I
want people to say it was justperfect. Not Oh, gosh, why would
the centerpieces so big? Right.
And that's a you wouldn't knowthat because somebody else at
the same wedding would havegone? Pat, you should have seen
these centerpieces they were Ohmy God, the Most Beautiful ever
seen just a differentperspective. You can ask those
(15:44):
two people the same question.
They're two different answers.
So shut up and sell more is thatsubtitle is asked better
questions, really listen to theanswers, and sell more. And
that's the key is you have toreally be listening. Because
sometimes we're like CharlieBrown's teacher, you know, the
other person's talking.
(16:05):
You're not, you're just what Icall it waiting for them to get
to the period. Like when you getto the end of that sentence, I'm
going to tell you this, nomatter what you just said, I'm
still gonna tell you this is I'mnot listening. Yep, I'm not
listening. So shut up and sellmore really came from that. And
if I ever write another salesbook, it'll be called stop
selling and help them buy.
Because they came to you. Thinkabout this, how many other
(16:25):
planners are there in within 50miles of you? And I know, we
don't know each other all thatwell. But I am not a planner.
And I'm sorry. I specialize inday of management and okay, but
the answer to your question is alot. Right? And do they have
management as a service thatfalls under planning? Right?
Absolutely. So the technicalanswer is lots because that's,
(16:48):
that's a number there. Right?
That's, that's it. There's a lotski on my keyboard here. So
maybe a locks key, that would benice, like a guy.
In this market, there we cancome. So by the time you get an
inquiry, they've eliminatedalmost everybody else. Right?
You took lots down to a smallgroup. Because we do this
(17:10):
filtering, we it's called theParadox of Choice, if you like
reading this great book by bylansman. Barry Schwartz, right?
by so many choices on jams, youknow that I've heard you talk
about it many times, right? Sothey've taken I want to know,
everybody that's out there, too.
Oh, that's too many. Let mestart filtering, filtering,
filtering. And now by the timeyou get the inquiry, you're in a
(17:31):
small group could be three couldbe five, could be seven,
whatever. But it's a small groupcompared to the blocky on our
keyboards here. So they alreadysaid I need what you do. They
already said whatever I saw,heard watched, read whatever
reviews, videos what I like it,because I'm still going forward.
So don't sell them, help thembuy the results that they think
(17:52):
they can get from you theresults they don't even know
that they could get from youbecause you're going to ask
better questions, and it'll getto the point. And that's why
it's helped them by. And it'skind of like going to a
networking event. If I came upthere, and I went to a
networking event with you. Andsomebody walked up and didn't
know me and says hi, you know,my name is Pat. And I say, Hi,
my name is Alan. So you know,Pat, what do you do? And you
(18:14):
say, Oh, this is what I do. AndI said, Oh, that's really
interesting. And I asked himanother question, then I asked
you a follow up and follow upand you're like, I like this
guy. Right? Then the other one,and we've seen this at no ring
events is, you know, Hi, my nameis Alan. And I just go on and on
about myself. And I'm a speaker.
I'm an author. And I've spokenin 14 countries who would like
me to list the countries, Icould list the countries for
you. But if you'd like I coulddo that. I was married to a guy
(18:37):
like that.
There you go. And the thing is,that person who doesn't come up
for air, that person just wantsto tell you and their sales
people. But actually, I wouldsay people that don't even
consider themselves salespeople.
That's what they do. Let me tellyou about what I do. know, I
kind of already know it a lot.
Hopefully, I already know alittle bit about what you do.
(18:58):
Hopefully 90% according to nothave read reviews, so they know
that other people love what youdo. they've read other people's
reviews, but they didn't reachout to them, they reached out to
you. So they know I call it yourbrand, your brand is in those
reviews. Just help them get theresult. When somebody comes to
me for speaking, I had somebodycome to me the other day for
(19:18):
speaking and I don't talk abouttopics. I said tell me about
your group, Who are the membersof the group. You know, what
kind of other speakers if youhad when you guys are chatting
online, what are the biggestconcerns people are talking
about? And instead of me sayingI can speak about this, I
listened to that and I said hey,well, you know,
sounds like you're in line withmy podcast because my most
(19:40):
popular podcast is aboutpackages versus ala carte and
pricing. And she's like, yes,but I knew that because I asked
I asked I didn't say what topicI didn't say go to my website.
This will allow people to go tomy website, pick out what you
want. Tell me. Okay, that's thee commerce go to shop
allanberg.com you can pick outany of these books dombey and
Tony's Libras disponibilien espanol. So if you need the
books in Spanish they they'rethere again. But that's
(20:02):
ecommerce services is notecommerce services is, let me
show you the results of what Icould do because of what the
results I've done for otherpeople. It's actually just a
little quick sidebar here. Thefour things you should have on
your website, every page everymonth isn't gonna ask, okay,
more things, aspirationalimages. If I go to your website
(20:23):
and you do Jewish weddings, andI don't see somebody with a
yarmulke, or in or with ahookah, or in the middle of
stomping the glass, it thepicture doesn't yell. Jewish
wedding. Okay, so that's thefirst thing, but aspirational. I
want to touch the heart becausethe heart has no budget. heads
have budgets, heads, make upbudgets. That's what they do.
(20:44):
Budgets are made up. Phil M.
Jones is an author and he saidall budgets are made up, which
is true. Somebody had to make alump. But with weddings, they're
typically they're not using datathe way a company would use
data. But all budgets are madeup means all budgets can be
changed also, which is anotherthing so what's the aspirational
image? So show me happy Jewishpeople if that's what you're
(21:06):
selling, now, if you don't onlydo do Jewish weddings, then show
me Jewish people. Show me SouthAsian people show me same sex
couples show me whatever. Okay.
The second thing is the wordingshould talk about the results of
hiring you not just what you do.
So I have a six hour package.
Exactly. Or, or the verycorporate sounding or worse,
(21:27):
actually, another I made myselfa note this morning, talking
about the language. No, I'msorry, the voice on your
website. Everybody's got avoice. Every company has a
voice. Target has a voice. It'sdifferent than Walmart's voice.
It's different than Macy's voiceright? car companies have
voices. They're different.
What's your voice but a lot ofwebsites sound like this very
(21:48):
corporate sounding, or worse,like your ninth grade English
teachers looking over yourshoulder going, excuse me, young
lady, that is not propergrammar.
But what's your voice? You know,if you've read my books like you
have, it's this voice. This isit. I write this way, I only
have one voice. But my truevoice comes through in the
books, we fix a little bit. Idon't like the word, the way the
(22:11):
word gun looks on paper. So Ichange it to going to But
otherwise, this it's not perfectEnglish and magic. My first
book, where is it over there iscalled if your website was an
employee, would you fire it?
Which is not proper grammar? Ifyour website were an employee,
would you fire but I don't speakthat way. So I don't write that
way. Right. Okay.
(22:34):
Um, what you want to alsoinclude is the word you. So
here's what I want everybody todo, go to your website. And in
any browser, it up to the menu,you can find under the Edit
command, you can find the wordfind actually find. And you pop
up a little search box and typein the word u y o u i called the
U test. It'll highlight on thepage in a color. The word you
(22:56):
it'll also tell you how manytimes it's on the page. I go to
some sites, it's not there atall, because it says we do this
we do this we do this we do thisor I do this or whatever. So I
we us our mind Bolla that isinward focused, you and your is
outward focused. So instead ofsaying that we've been in
business for 25 years, whichnobody cares, because they care
(23:16):
what you did 25 minutes ago, notwhat you did 25 years ago, you
can say, you and your guests canhave an amazing time and with
our 25 years of experience weright so put them first look for
the word you third piece, socialproof, hugely important these
days. It's not what you say it'swhat other people say after they
do business with you. Becausethat is your brand. The reviews
(23:39):
and testimonials is your brand.
You've probably I'm sure you'vebeen to my website, Alan Berg,
comm those of that haven't it'sjust my name, a l a n b e r
g.com, right below the headerimage, which by the way, since I
don't do weddings myself, it's apicture of me on stage from the
stage, looking at the audience.
So you see me, but you see theirfaces, because it's not about
(24:02):
me. They hired me that happensto be a wedding MBA picture, the
higheryou find yourself in there, I've
had people do that. So I wantyou to see the audience because
that's what I see is I want tosee your faces just like when
you're at a wedding. I'm not thefocus here, right? I'm not the
focus. There's there's thecouple This is the focus over
here. I'm helping behind thecurtain pulling the levers.
(24:24):
Right. So that's what you seeright below that you see
testimonials, because I can'tsay what people say.
People use phrasing you wouldnever use about yourself. I had
somebody who said you'reprobably the only Speaker I can
listen to without once lookingat my watch. Like oh, that's
good. Yeah, somebody read that.
Somebody read that and thenwrote Alan, I was looking at my
(24:48):
watch because I was hoping itwasn't over yet. Like oh, it
just when you thought itcouldn't get better, right? It
gets better.
But you he wrote morethan that, I use just that line.
It's a speed bump, I want you toeverybody think about speed
bumps, you're driving down theroad, you get to a speed bump.
Most of us slow down, somepeople don't most of us slow
(25:09):
down when we get to a speedbump, and we keep going. But if
there was a brick wall in theroad, we would have to go around
it. And that's what a paragraphlooks like to someone who's
trying to read a page,especially on a phone. So what
what is the phrase or thesentence that you can pull out
of that great review, whichsometimes you can pull 234 or
five sentences and just sprinklethem in different places on your
(25:29):
site? for SEO, you want toattribute that to someone? So if
you said that this was, youknow, Jennifer, and David from
and then you say where they camefrom? Or if you're if you're not
the venue, you can say what thevenue was and where the venue is
located. Ifno, no, you don't need last
names. If it would, first names,if it came from Facebook or
(25:52):
Google, you could say, Jenniferand David on Facebook, you could
say or on wedding wire or theknot. But that's not going to
help your SEO as much as if yousaid, this was Jennifer and
David from Auburn Hills. This isJennifer and David from Raleigh,
North Carolina, right? Becausethose are SEO phrases there. And
it can be small, because Googlecan read it small. The fourth
piece, very important, tell themwhat to do to get that result.
(26:16):
So the picture shows the result.
The words talk about the result,the testimonial is in context,
what that result was, and thenthe call to action is how to get
it. So in your case, you'reshowing me a beautiful wedding,
then you have talking about youryou know, wedding day
management, what you're going todo there, right, do you have a
testimonial now let's say youspoke about how you're going to
(26:37):
make sure that they're going tohave fun and be stress free.
Just use that that's the that'sthe phrase, that's my word.
There you go at Whoo. And then,exactly. And then and then the
testimonial says, you know,woohoo, indeed, pat my made my
wedding so much more fun andstress free than I could
imagine, right just to getsomething like that. It has to
have context, it wouldn't beabout you know, it just to say
(27:00):
Pat's a nice person. That's notcontext what you just talked
about. But then the call toaction is, if this is the way
you want to feel about yourwedding, and your wedding day
manager, call email or contactpath today, call text, email,
whatever those things are. Andthen they're all actionable
click to dial, click the email,click to text, if you give text
as an option, I have a shortform on every page of my website
(27:23):
except the homepage. Andanywhere on the page. If you
click the words, use the shortform on this page, which is in
bold, it takes you either up ordown to that form. So you don't
even have to leave the page. Andif you do that on every page,
photos, and then just keep doingit, because nobody can step back
far enough to see an entire pageof a website, you can only see
(27:45):
this much right but probablythis much, right. And then as I
scroll if I have to scroll morethan twice before, there's
another call to action, you'renot getting the conversion you
want. Tell them again, I didthis with a client the other
day, we counted, I think it was14 or 15 calls to action on one
page on my site. Oh my but butsomewhere hidden in those little
(28:05):
toggles, you know, you click theplus sign and it opens and
closes. So you couldn't see itunless you opened it somewhere
in tabs, we have to click theother tab to bring it forward,
so you couldn't see it. And thenthe one at the top of the page,
you scroll three times already,you can't see that. So I have to
do it again. I have to do itagain, I have to do it again.
And it's very clear on my site,what you're supposed to do and
(28:27):
why and how to do it. Becausethere's this which is if you
don't ask the answers, alwaysNo.
And then this which isambiguous. Next Steps bring
ambiguous results. And this iswhat you do at the top of
bourbon bottles just in caseyou're wondering.
But ambiguous results, ambiguousnext steps, you just list your
(28:49):
phone number or you say contactus, okay, for why'd you know to
check our availability and findout just how fun and stress free
your wedding can be? Call emailor contact Pat today, that's
better than contact us. Hello,right, those results. It's the
outcomes again. I knew I wasgonna get some good stuff from
you today. But I didn't expect amini masterclass. And so thank
(29:12):
you. That's, well get you know,getting a professional speaker
to start talking is easy gettingup to stop as hard. Sounds like
a rabbi.
Amen to that. Yes. So this isthe bookmark Jewish weddings
podcast. Is there anythingdifferent about selling to
Jewish clientele than selling toanybody else?
(29:35):
it from a 10,000 foot view? No,I've spoken in 14 countries,
including India, includingDubai, Australia, England,
Ireland, Colombia, SouthAmerica. The business of
weddings is the same all over.
There's basically four steps youget someone's attention. So how
do you get their attention?
Well, you could be referred bythe show. You could be social
(29:56):
media. It could be advertising,could be marketing could be
whatever butIf they don't know you exist,
nothing else is gonna happen.
It's like having a store with nosignage on it, right? There's
like, they think you're closed,right? The second is once you
have their attention, you needthem to make an inquiry. So how
are they going to do that callyou email, you text, you fill
(30:16):
out your form? What are yougoing to do? So if you take,
let's say, you did a Facebookad, and you did Facebook ads,
and you targeted people in yourgeographic area with a status of
engaged who have liked weddingwire, the nod and mitzvahs, Rs,
I don't know, whatever. Whateverit is something that targets You
know, they're probably Jewish,because they've you know,
they've liked it maybe been abreath, or whatever it is,
(30:38):
they've liked something.
So now, what do you want them todo? You want them to make an
inquiry. So with Facebook ads,you could have a contact form
pop pop up, or if you land themon a page on your website, you
want to tell them to contactyou. Make it easy, reduce the
friction, another lansman Shephyken, h YKN. He's got a great
book called The conveniencerevolution. And he talks about
(30:59):
reducing the friction is verygood friend of mine, one of the
top customer service experts inthe world. Companies put this,
these barriers in front of usthey make it hard for us to do
business with it. Like you go toa website, you can't find a
phone number, right? Or I wentto a website recently, I
couldn't email customer serviceI it was late at night, I just
wanted to send them an email, goto the FA Q's go to the
(31:20):
knowledge base go into as like,Oh my gosh, I want to grow hair
so I can pull it out. I mean,just stop. Right? Amazing how
many vendor websites don't havea phone number. So this is
friction, right? So we want toreduce the friction. So you want
to make it easy for them to makethe inquiry. Once they make the
inquiry. You get to have aconversation, which could be a
digital conversation. You and II'm going to go out on a limb
(31:42):
here. We're digital immigrants.
Okay, indeed. Second Language,right? I am a digital immigrant
who loves technology. So digitalimmigrant doesn't mean you don't
like technology. It just meansit wasn't here. You know, when I
started in the business, I mighthave still had a beeper right? I
might, I might have still had abeeper I had a cell phone but it
was so expensive you didn't wantto use it you know one of those
like that stop at the payphone,which you can't even find one
(32:03):
anymore. Stop at the payphonewith my calling card my 1010
number right I just did a when Iapplied for a job at Temple
Israel, I answered a PO box inthe newspaper, in the newspaper,
p o box and newspaper. There wego. We're dating myself. Now, if
you were looking for somethingnow you would go online, you
would find the sites you wouldgo that the digital natives,
they just don't know the otherway it just didn't exist. You
(32:25):
know, when we talk about dialinga phone, some people don't
understand why we call itdialing a phone, right. So, but
these are things like a Kleenex,not all tissues are clean x, but
we call them a Kleenex there. Weget them to make an inquiry, we
want to try to respond using themethod that they've chosen. So
if I gave them choices, in mycase, my website, call email
(32:46):
text, fill out the form on thepage, or fill out the form on my
contact page. So you really havefive ways you can contact me.
people contact me all of thoseways. Some people call me some
people fill out the form on thesite, I can tell the difference
between that and my contactpage. Some people text me some
people email me, the firstperson who texted me when I
first put texting up on mywebsite was a baby born
(33:09):
wasn't a millennial, it was ababy born. She saw it. She
clicked she texted me. We had alittle conversation. You can
switch the method, but if youtry to switch it too soon,
you're going to end up gettingghosted. A lot ghosted is when
they stop responding. So someoneemails you and then you email
back and say, Hey, love To findout more, when's a good time for
a call? Okay, and then theyghost you? Well, they didn't
(33:30):
want to call you. And let unlessyou didn't have your phone
number on your website, theycould have called you. I was
just had a masterclass recently,and an officiant that was in the
class, his website only offeredcall and text did not offer
email or a contact form. And Isaid, Why? And he said, Well, I
was getting too much spam. Isaid, so instead of investing in
a better spam filter, you weregonna make it so your customers
(33:52):
can email you. I said, Thisdoesn't make any sense. Talk
about friction right there onyour website, the to likely
times that a wedding couple islooking at your website, or
during the week during the dayor late at night. So they can't
call you from work. And theydon't think they can call you at
10 o'clock at night or atmidnight. So they just want to
say and and do you want themtexting you?
(34:13):
So he was looking at it from hisperspective, I hate the spam. I
said, You know what, I get verylittle spam on my contact forms.
I have a capture of some kind onthere, I get very little spam.
And I'm not going to make ithard for a customer because 90
plus percent of my inquiriescome through the contact form on
the side of my website. So whywould I say you can't do that
(34:37):
anymore?
That would be crazy. So when youwhen you get the inquiry, we
digital immigrants had to learnhow to have a conversation
through our fingers. Okay, wehad to because we used to just
Oh, hi, I'd like to find outmore about your services. And
everybody tells me which is whythis book over here is called
(34:57):
Why don't they call me nowI hear that. I hear that from
wedding pros all the time.
Actually, Pat, it was going tobe the shortest book ever. It
was gonna say why don't theycall me? You were going to open
it, it was going to say, Getover it. And that would be the
book.
That'd be the whole book. That'sall I needed to say was get over
it, because it's just not goingto change. You know what I think
is funny. I don't know why wecall these smart phones. Because
(35:20):
it's the least thing that youuse it for. Right?
Email, WhatsApp, websites, apps,right? The least the least thing
that this thing gets used for isactually making phone calls,
especially by millennials andGen Z's. Right. So smart device,
I don't know what we'd call itinstead. But there so you get
(35:40):
this inquiry. Your goal is torespond as quickly as you can
mirror their tone, mirror, theirenergy, all the things I speak
about in the book, but get themto respond. So I actually had a
dinner in Philadelphia, it wasmy first dinner out, it was
outside coverlet ever. Yes. Withonly vaccinated friends. One of
them is actually an officiantfrom California, another
(36:01):
linesman Alan cats. And he'scredited in the book in the
dedication because he and I werein California, I was in
California one time with him.
We're driving just talking likewe always do. And he just
dropped this comment about he,he always has his people end
every email with a question,because people respond better.
And I just I lightbulb, like theStatue of Liberty went off. I
was like, duh, of course. And Ihave changed my emails, because
(36:25):
I've listened to you say, Don'tsay things after that question.
And request. Don't bury thequestion, right? And make it its
own paragraph make it nice andshort, one question at a time,
just like any otherconversation. So once you get to
have the conversation, then thequestion is, can you make the
sale using that method? Or do weneed to switch it to a phone
call a zoom, call an in personmeeting, or whatever, whatever
(36:47):
the next step is to make thesale. The pandemic has taught us
that a lot of people are able tomake sales without being in
person with the other with thecustomer. And I actually just
had somebody who heard me speakon my podcast about this, and I
didn't use his name, but I tellthe story that he was in. I was
in Ontario, Canada 10 DJs. AndI'm doing a mastermind day, this
(37:09):
was December of 2019. So this isbefore all the Wild West that
that pot.
And nine of the companies thatwere there insisted, you know, I
get an inquiry. My goal is toget them into in for a meeting,
get him in for a meeting get himfor me. The 10th one at the time
was living in Nova Scotia, buthis business is in Toronto, so
(37:29):
all of his DJs everybody's inToronto, but he lives in Nova
Scotia. So it's flying in, if hehad to meet somebody, and you
don't want to do that every timeyou get to meet with somebody.
So for 10 years he had beenselling remotely. And this is
presumed this is you know, he'dbeen selling remotely. So in
that when the pandemic hit, hejust kept doing what it was
doing. The other nine had to belike, Oh my gosh, now how do I
(37:52):
how do I do this? How do I learnhow to do this? Well, he
messaged he actually I put thatpodcast up. And he commented on
it. He said thanks for you know,mentioning me and my successes.
He actually moved to Calgary. Sohe moved if anybody not familiar
with Canada, Nova Scotia is onthe extreme east coast. Calgary
is much more towards the west.
His business didn't change. He'sstill selling remotely, nothing
(38:13):
had to change there. So he had areal he had a real leg up. And I
think that was one of mypodcasts. It's already launched,
which is will you still be usingzoom post COVID. And yeah, if
you can do that I spoke inColumbia, South America,
Cartagena, Colombia, got anemail in Spanish responded in
Spanish back and forth, back andforth. booked, paid in full. I
(38:34):
didn't even know how manyspeeches I was giving yet. It
was a one day event. So I didn'tcare whether it was one or two
or three.
But I never tried to change itto a phone call or a zoom call
because the conversation wasgoing fine. There was no reason
to add the friction to that. Andthen we're all done. She and she
wrote me she said the AcceptPayPal. I said yes. What's your
(38:56):
PayPal? I gave it to her fiveminutes later to Jane Did you
know you get the sound effect? Igot paid. And I wrote her back.
And I said by the way, how manypresentations Do you want me to
give? And do you want me to givethem an English or Spanish and
she wrote back to me and saidyou can present in Spanish? We
just we just had an entireconversation. And Pat I'm
talking about a good six eightback and forth right? She's from
(39:20):
Uruguay Montevideo I had spokenin your grade the year before I
just assumed she had seen methere because the Euro
connection so it's your shrimpactually you can present in
Spanish this and what Didn't yousee me in Montevideo? And she
said no. I saw your wedding MBAin Las Vegas.
As a silly silly me right. Butthe whole sale was done through
(39:42):
email. DJ client of mine inNorth Carolina wrote a shortly
after having me do a consultabout it. He wrote a sale
through Facebook Messenger. Thebride emailed them he wrote back
back back back exactly as if itwas email just the questions the
same way we would do it got thecontent
tract got paid, done? Nevertried to change it because why
(40:04):
it was going so well, why wouldyou now try to switch it to
something else? And and that'sthe key. Tell me how this works.
So you start an email chain,then do you keep a Google doc or
something where you keeping allthat information separate,
because to sort through those 10emails is sometimes a chore.
(40:25):
So it depends upon your emailprogram. There's a couple of
ways to do it. Outlook, and I'msure some of the others you can
sort by conversation.
So if I sort by conversation,your conversation is there. One
thing that I do is all of myinquiries, my initial inquiries
come into a different emailaddress than my main email. And
that way, it never gets buried.
If I see there's a number on,there's a new email on that
(40:48):
email address, it's got to be anew inquiry, because nobody has
that address, it only comes in.
And actually the way it works isyou fill out the form on my
website, the contact form on theside, it goes into
salesforce.com. Right?
Salesforce then emails me thatdata, just like it was on the
forum. So Salesforce acts as amiddleman there. Now, when I
(41:09):
email, because that emailaddress is now in Salesforce.
Salesforce is amassing all ofthose emails under your lead. So
I can just go go to Salesforceand the whole conversations
there. But I don't want to lookat 10 conversations anymore, I
want to look at doing 12 200people,
(41:34):
whatever be your notes, thatwill be your notes. So if you're
using a CRM, that would be youputting those those notes in
there doing it that way.
I'm fortunate I don't have It'sfortunate or unfortunate, I
don't get a ton of leads,because it's just the nature of
my businessis only so many places I can go
in so many people I can workwith. So I don't have to deal
with it that way. CRM systems,those are the really the the
(41:57):
best way to try to keep track ofthis. And there's honeybook and
17, hats and Salesforce and youknow all these other ones out
there.
But you do need a system, somepeople just do it on a
spreadsheet, some people areprobably still use a canary pad,
you know,could be doing it and I use the
just keep them in Evernote. So Ihave Evernote, which is like you
(42:18):
know, OneNote, or whatever.
But it wasn't really easy tosearch and stuff like that. And
Salesforce came up with what'scalled Salesforce essentials,
which is a very light version ofSalesforce, it has an outlook
extension. So if you send me anemail, I can have a little
sidebar and I can add you toSalesforce without leaving
outlook. So that was veryconvenient for me. They said
(42:41):
they have an offline version,which I needed for airplanes.
But if you don't sync it beforeyou get on the plane, you don't
have the latest that is youknow, it's not there's no
perfect system out there. Butyou know, you do need to follow
up because I talked about thatin a couple of my books. That
person who reached out to you isgoing to hire somebody, and you
(43:02):
are already on the shortlist.
Don't take yourself off thelist. One of my clients has
multiple venues, they're up to Ithink 23 different venues I work
with their team every month. Andwhen I they give me stats,
because I don't have any access.
When I give me stats, I try tocall out the good behavior. I
don't like calling out badbehavior and punishing people. I
don't think anybody's motivatedby that. I when I was vice
(43:24):
president of sales at the knot,I never said to someone Hey,
your numbers stink, right? Iwould say what do you not have
from me? What do you need fromme that's preventing you from
getting to where you need to be.
So I like calling out the goodbehavior? Well, there's no
surprise that the people thatare performing the highest are
following up the most.
The people that are performingthe highest are following the
(43:46):
system that we gave them, whichis fitted on one screen to their
phone and it with the one lowcommitment question. Don't ask
for the call or the meeting justyet. You can do it later. don't
attach any PDFs, don't send themany links, just have a
conversation. And the peoplethat are doing that closest to
what we taught them areperforming the highest. They're
following up. Yeah, becausebecause we're secret shopping
(44:08):
them as well. So they'refollowing up four and five times
whereas competitors because weshop competitors as well, once
if they even respond at all,because some of them it's either
nothing or an auto reply. Maybea second time about 50% of the
companies we Secret Shop willtry a second time. Right? And
(44:29):
then very few will try afterthat while my clients are going
three, four or five times andnot surprisingly, the ones that
are doing it are performing thehighest. So think of it like a
sponge, right? You get a spongeyou squeeze the water out, it's
not dry. There's water in there,right squeeze it again. Squeeze
it again, right go thetoothpaste too, right the third
the toothpaste was empty but youcan give it a good
(44:51):
you can get another one outthere. But that's that's the
idea is following up. It's yourresponsibility. It's not the
customers responsibility to comeback.
can say, Pat, I want to do it.
Sometimes they do. Butproposals, that's another thing.
Too many people are sending aproposal waiting for the
customer to get back to them.
They're not putting a deadlineon it or any kind of time limit
(45:13):
on it. What I've taught them is,why don't you set an
appointment? If you can't givethem a proposal right now, while
you're talking to them? Whydon't you set an appointment to
deliver the proposal via zoom?
And then don't send it to them?
Show it to them? Let's gothrough it. If there's anything
I need to change, I can changeit, then you can have it. And
then you can ask for the saleright? Then you make it all
(45:33):
sound so easy.
It's easier. It's easier thanthrow it out into the ether.
Hope they've even opened it andread it. Hope they understand
it, and then hope they get backto you. Right? I would much
rather more effective. Yeah,well, ambiguous. Next Steps
bring a biggerThere you go. That's why they're
conveniently Oh, yep. So I haveanother one. And it's being made
(45:56):
right now. It's don't just takenotes. Take action. I love that.
And my kids have learned that Ioften say just because somebody
says no, they don't mean it. Andgive them another opportunity to
change their mind and give themanother opportunity to change
their mind. And yeah, and it'stheir mind to change, not yours.
(46:18):
But the reason I'm happilymarried is because I know I
can't change my wife's mind. Ican provide her with information
she didn't have, she can decideto come to a different
conclusion.
And that's fine, because youcan't change a customer's mind.
But you can. You can have themgo, Oh, I didn't know that.
(46:39):
Okay, now maybe you'll come to adifferent conclusion, right? But
trying to change someone's mindis just going to add friction.
Now. Don't take it personally,if they don't buy from you. I
listened to someone recentlysay, imagine if the waiter at
the restaurant, you just hadthis fabulous dinner. And the
waiter came in showed you thedessert menu? And you said no,
because you're stuffed. If hewent back in the kitchen and
(47:01):
said, Oh, they didn't buy fromme. Is it my hair is it my dress
was not like me. It's not likethat. Right? And the other side
of that is I want the waiter tobring over the dessert tray.
Because a lot of people are onthe seafood diet. Right? So
let's see, we're gonna eat it.
And I've spoken about that aswell. So you just had this meal.
We're actually going to dinnertonight, for the first time with
(47:22):
our closest friends. We used togo out once a month, and we
haven't been out to dinner withthem and you know, a long time.
So we're all vaccinated. Rog,we're going to go out to dinner,
we had gone out one time to anItalian restaurant here in New
Jersey. Right? So the theabundance of food and carbs. You
can imagine if typical Italianrestaurant, right? So here we
are at the end of dinner, youknow, we need the four
(47:44):
wheelbarrows to get us out ofthere. And if the waitress had
come by and said, So did youleave room for dessert? No, we
didn't. Would you like to seethe dessert menu? Now? Thanks.
If she would have brought thedessert menu, you might have
taken a peek, right? If shebrought the menu opened it and
said, You know, we're known forour cannolis. Closer, but she
(48:07):
didn't. She brought over thisbig silver tray with actual
desserts on it not not like fakeones, the real ones. And we
ended up with two pieces of cakefor the four of us, right? Lady?
Yeah. But that's let thecustomer decide. And that's my
other sign. If you don't ask theanswers always No. Don't ask me
(48:27):
the wrong question is do youwant to see the dessert menu?
That's not the the question. Thequestion is, look at this. Is
there anything here you which ofthese? Do you want that? Is
there anything yet? Which ofthese do you want? Well, it was
a red velvet and the chocolatelayer cake ended up on the
table. There we go. Because theywere also huge. They were also
huge. But that's the same thingwith a wedding Pro. bottom up
(48:48):
selling is trying to sell themthe cheapest thing and then try
to get them to buy more. topdown is the say here, this is
the result you want. And then ifthey say it's too much, take
things away to come down to aprice point that makes more
sense. The next week's podcastso it'll be the May 12 podcast
is what Jenga can teach us abouttop down selling. Ah, great
(49:11):
title. Fun. There you go. Andyou are just filled with good
tidbits and I love it. I loveit. I love it. And I know we can
keep going for a while but I soappreciate having you here. Is
there one piece of advice thatyou would give to someone who
wants to get started in thewedding world.
(49:33):
The barrier to entry in thewedding industry is low. It's
zero for most most parts, whichis great. It's a real business.
It's a real business. There'stwo parts you have to have your
technical skills and yourbusiness skills. If you're
starting out in the weddingbusiness, you want to talk to
people and find out the mistakesthat people have made. And if I
(49:54):
have to leave you with a book,not one of my books to read.
Anybody here is listening andnew in the business. Mike Mike
Hello, what's his profit first?
love that book. He's wonderful.
If you're starting a business, Idon't care if it's a dog
grooming business, if you'restarting a business read profit
first, it'll change the way youthink about business. It'll
change the way you think aboutprofit. This is a great
(50:15):
recession resistant industrybarring 2020, which was not like
the typical recession. Gettinginto the one this wedding
industry is fantastic. This goesback to the income and outcome
if you think about how can Igive people an unbelievable
weddings wherever whatever yourservice is, the income will
follow.
That's fabulous. I love Mikemccalla wits, his book and I
(50:37):
think you are just awesome. Sothank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I so appreciate your time andyour expertise. And I look
forward to seeing you in personat another wedding MBAs in
November. I'll be there forspeaking for grabs. Thanks.
Thank you. Well, thank you forlistening. I warned you there
was lots of information packedinto this episode. When I think
(50:58):
of Alan Berg's advice, I hearfour things loud and clear.
Number one, don't tell theclient about you. Tell the
client about how you can helpthem.
Number two people buy with theirhearts. Budgets are created by
their minds. So your job is totug at their hearts.
(51:21):
Number three, what do you needon your website, things that tug
at their hearts, aspirationalimages of your ideal client and
the type of event they want tohave. If you're a DJ, show him a
picture of a packed dance floor.
If you're a party manager likeme, show him a picture of a calm
relaxed bride.
(51:44):
Number four, we are all in thisbusiness to make money. So read
the book profit first by Mikemccalla wits, and start making
your business a profitablebusiness. While you're at it,
read some of Alan Berg's books,too. He's got some great books
out there. And I'm putting themall in my show notes for you.
(52:07):
Well, I hope you enjoyed thisepisode, you can find out ways
to connect with elenberg on hispodcast, and on his website in
the show notes.
This podcast is all about how wecan help each other better serve
our Jewish clients. I just wantto give a shout out to know what
country club two. They are allabout great customer service and
(52:28):
taking care of their members.
They had a workshop this weekfor their staff to learn all
about the Jewish celebrationcustoms and traditions. This
will put them way ahead of mostother venues in terms of knowing
what's important to theirclient.
Do you want to workshop give mea call or look up what we got
going on at the Jewish partyMaven.
(52:51):
If you'd like to learn more,follow me on Facebook or
Instagram at the Jewish partyMaven.
If you'd like to learn about myparty business, check out the
red coat ladies calm. Wespecialize in bar and Bat
Mitzvahs and weddings. And we'dlike to help you have a stress
free party.
Now, join me next week when welearn another Jewish wedding
(53:11):
word and you'll be one wordcloser to booking your next
Jewish party. In the meantime,check out your sales process and
see what you can change based onAlan Berg's proven advice.
Thanks for listening
Hello there, and welcome to episode number 17 of
the book more Jewish weddingspodcast. I'm Pat Blackwell. And
I'm excited today because I gotto interview the amazing Alan
Berg who founded the weddingBusiness Solutions.
He says things like, sell theoutcome, not your packages.
(00:27):
It's just so smart. The way hedoes it, I love it. He says ask
your potential client. What haveyou seen at weddings recently
that you really loved? Then usethat information to help that
client understand why you aretheir best choice for a vendor.
But don't sell them, help thembuy. Nobody likes to be sold to.
(00:49):
These are just a few of the manymany concrete actionable tips in
today's podcast. Like I said,elenberg founded the wedding
business solutions. And hetravels around the world
teaching wedding vendors how togrow their businesses.
So turn off those distractions,you're going to want to focus
while you listen to this episodeof the book more Jewish weddings
(01:11):
podcast. Let's dig right in.
Here's my interview with AlanBerg.
Hello, Alan. Welcome to thepodcast. So this
is called book more Jewishweddings. Okay, and so let's
talk about what you do ingeneral, introduce yourself and
let us know what's going on.
Thanks so much for inviting me,Pat. My name is Alan Berg. I'm a
(01:33):
speaker. I'm an author. I'm anexpert on the business of
weddings. Short story I soldwedding advertising published
two wedding magazines, I wasvice president of sales at the
not the not.com, the localmagazines. And for the last 10
years, I've been an independentspeaker and consultant to
wedding professionals around theworld. I've spoken in 14
countries by them in Spanish.
Last year, since I didn't get totravel anywhere, people from 48
(01:55):
countries tuned in to the remotethings that I was doing. And I
think it's more than that. But Icould I could actually attribute
48 countries. So it's amazing.
If I could only get the frequentflyer miles for that it would
have been great.
Wow. Well, I had the pleasure ofhearing you twice now at the
wedding MBA in Las Vegas. Andobviously not last year, but you
(02:20):
do fabulous stuff. So what's thelatest and greatest what you got
going on? I am so proud becauseApril 1, we launched the wedding
Business Solutions podcastpeople have been asking me for
years, how come you don't have apodcast because I come on
podcasts like yours. And thepandemic kind of changed things
because I used to travel somuch. I didn't want to commit to
that. And I haven't traveled in13 months. So I had a little bit
(02:42):
more time on my hands.
But what I did is I listened topodcasts as well. And I said
what? What do I like what wouldbe good for me what would be
good for my audienceunderstanding who wedding
professionals are. So mine areevery Wednesday, and it's about
10 minutes, summer eight, Summer1314 I dropping some bonus
dialogue episodes because everyweek it's just me for you know,
(03:03):
a particular thought. And thenI'm adding dialogue. Some of
those have gone to 1718 minutes,which still by podcast standards
is not that long. And peoplehave told me I love that little
soundbite. That idea came frommy latest book, which is called
wit wisdom in the business ofweddings. And unless you don't
know that one so conveniently,conveniently over my shoulder
(03:24):
here,right over here, the blue one
over there. It's the first bookthat I've written that wasn't
meant to be read front to back.
It's actually 45 chapters underthe headings of sales, business
and inspiration. And there's 15of each of those 15 sales 15
business for the inspiration.
And each one each chapter is adifferent thought. It's it's
actually just like the podcast,it's a different thought. And I
(03:47):
when I published it, I wasn'tsure how would the audience
react because my other fourbooks are started in the
beginning and read it throughthe end. They're short, they're
short, but still, people told meI love the fact that if I want
to know more about this subject,I went to chapter 27. There it
was, and in five minutes, sevenminutes, I'm done. So that
inspired the podcast to be justlike that. Let me come up with a
(04:09):
thought. only talk about thatthought done. The next podcast
will be about a differentthought. Such as I'll give you a
little preview one that Ihaven't recorded yet I might
record right after this was athought I had the other day I
think it was staples sent me anemail and the subject line. I
love reading subject linesbecause I love to share good
good ones was something aboutincome and outcome. Right? It
(04:31):
was something about that. And Italked about results. You might
have heard me at wedding MBA.
I've actually the only speakerwho's spoken at every wedding
MBA they've ever had since 2007.
Right The first one in Phoenixin 2007 and eight were in
Phoenix. So I'm thinking incomeoutcome I talk about results. We
don't sell weddings, we don'tsell photography and catering
(04:51):
and venues and flowers and andkeep us we don't sell that what
we sell is the results. SoThis podcast is going to be
based upon this thought, whichis you don't get the income if
you're not selling the outcome.
Or, or to get the out to or toget the income, sell the outcome
or something like that. And I'mjust going to riff on that for
(05:14):
about, I don't know, seven oreight minutes. And that'll be a
podcast. And that's the way itis. Because what, again, you've
heard, you've seen me speaktwice, I want you to have
takeaways that you're going tobe like, I'm in the hallway on
my phone using this already, Idon't even have to wait to get
back to my office to use this.
And that's the same thing I'mtelling you, you. If you're
making invitations, you're notselling invitations, you're
(05:36):
selling the preview to what thatmitzvah is going to look like
preview to what that wedding isgoing to look like. If you're
selling invitations, somebodysells them cheaper, right? But
if you're selling the outcomethat only you can provide, they
have to hire you. So it's thesame thing to get the income,
you need the out, you need tosell the outcome or something to
that effect. So that'sdefinitely my dream lady.
(05:59):
As a regular lady, I don't sellany stuff. I'm not the band. I'm
not the DJ, we are partymanagers. And so we totally sell
the experience. And I had abusiness coach written recently
who said to me, how many secondsare there in a party? How many
memories can be created in aparty? And that's what you're
selling? Are you going toremember yourself in the kitchen
(06:21):
yelling at the chef or you'regoing to remember the good times
out on the dance floor? Exactly,exactly. I was sitting with a DJ
one time in Kansas City. Andwe're having some barbecue
because that's what you're doingKansas City. And he gets it he
gets an email through hiswebsite, or through the knot or
wedding wire or something. Howmuch is your five hour package?
Right? Very typical thing. Andhe's like, Here we go again. I
(06:44):
said, Well, have you everfigured out how much time you
actually invest in a customerfrom the initial inquiry through
all the planning all themeetings, everything you do and
getting there and the party andgoing home. And he's we started
thinking about it, we came upwith somewhere between 30 and 40
hours because he does grandentrances, and he and it's
different music for everyintroduction and stuff. So it's
(07:04):
a big production at a time whenthe other DJs in Kansas City
were getting $1,000 he wasgetting $3,000 Okay, so, but
he's investing a lot more time.
And I said one of your writeback and say thanks so much for
inquiring, we'd love to makeyour wedding great. And have
your guests say it was the mostfun they've ever had in a
wedding. I don't have a fivehour package. But I would love
to tell you about the 30 to 40hours I'm going to invest to
(07:25):
make your wedding amazing.
Well, okay, and then ask aquestion just to get them. A
speaker friend of mine, BrianWalker calls it the Scooby Doo,
you want them to go wood?
That's their friend. What?
Right? And that's the key. Whyare you three times more than
everybody else? Because it'sdifferent. But if you can
articulate why it's different.
(07:47):
It's a price point, you're justgoing to sell a price point.
Yesterday, I talked with awedding client who I've talked
to several times already, andshe hasn't paid a deposit yet.
But she wants to know if shecuts out one hour of service,
how much will that reduce theprice?
I said, Well, 35 bucks or so shesaid, but you're gonna be there
(08:09):
15 hours and your hourly rate isa lot more than that. I said,
Yeah. But my hourly rateincludes this. And this isn't
gonna change. In fact, we've hadseveral meetings already and the
right, yeah, right. Yeah. Again,the customers aren't supposed to
understand because they've neverdone it before. And some people
are like, oh, okay, that makessense. And then other people are
(08:32):
just looking, you know, how canI line item this? How can I How
can I do this? I actually tellpeople when they're doing
proposals, don't line itemprices, give them a total for
what you're going to do. Becauseevery number on there becomes
negotiable in their mind. Yep.
And you're not including this.
So do I get a discount? And itwas actually a question that
came up on Facebook the otherday, somebody tagged me and this
(08:53):
happens to me a lot on socialsomebody, you'll see something
and go, Hey, Alan, I heard AlanBerg say this, or I read this in
Allen's book, or Alan taught methis in my consulting. And it
was a DJ asking, has anybodyever thought about just having
one package? And somebody taggedme because I've said this to a
lot of DJs photographers andother people, especially if you
are a single op, meaning you'reit's just you You're the only DJ
(09:16):
or the or the only band Are youthe only whatever photographer,
whatever it is, you can only bein one place that day. So if
it's a popular day, in a popularmonth, alright, we know that may
through October in the UnitedStates are the most popular time
of the year. We know Octoberspecifically is the most
popular. We know that 50% of allweddings in the US are going to
happen on 22 Saturdays roughlybetween May and October. Right.
(09:40):
We know that that's just the wayit is. Well, you know you're
going to get multiple inquiriesfor that most popular day.
Whatever it is for your industrybecause we know in Arizona
they're not doing many July andAugust things right. But they're
doing a whole lot more inFebruary. right but but you know
in Michigan in New Jersey,February not so busy, right? Not
so busy for weddings here.
So, you know, you're popularmonths, and I said, What if you
(10:03):
were you took I called it theMary Poppins approach. You
remember Mary Poppins had thatbag?
Yeah. And whatever she wanted,came out of the bag, including a
canoe, including whatever shewanted. I said, if you were
selling you being the plan Areyou being the DJ, you being the
band, you being thephotographer, videographer,
whatever. And you come with yourMary Poppins bag, and it's one
(10:26):
price. And if you want the, inhis case, the uplighting, whoo,
I'll pull out the applied. Andif you want a monogram, you got
a monogram. But if you don't,it's in the bag. It's no
difference in price because I'm,what makes the difference, not
the stuff. And as a planner, asa planner, you're like an
architect, right? architectssell their ideas. They don't
(10:47):
build buildings. Now they canarrange it and do all that kind
of stuff, project management ifyou want. But they don't build
the building. You know, youdon't say to architect Hey, can
I have those plans before thatyou've hired them? No, no, no,
that's what you're hiring mefor? Is that and what you
execute? Is what took you solong? So many planners I work
with? I say, Have you figuredout how many hours you know you
(11:08):
invest? And one of them told merecently? I don't want to know,
I don't want to know because Icould probably flip burgers at
McDonald's and make more moneyby the hour. I say, yeah, most
people could based upon whatI've seen on the pricing. But
you know, you don't have apassion for flipping burgers.
You have a passion for helpingpeople have amazing weddings.
Absolutely. Well, you've gotthese amazing books, and I keep
(11:31):
seeing them over your shoulder.
So I love your book, shut up andsell more. So can you give me
the one minute synopsis? Um, setup and sell more? Where'd you
come up with that title? I wasactually in a in a previous
life. I was selling Chryslercars. I had just won the first
ever national productinformation championship for all
Chrysler salesmen in the entireUnited States who got the golf
(11:52):
check a big object, go back tomy dealership, my sales manager
puts his arm around me one dayand says Alan, you know more
about these cars than anyoneI've met in 20 years in the
business. I said, thanks. Hegoes, good. Shut up.
Now we're in New York. So youcan say that to people? So I say
I said Why? He said you'retelling people things they don't
(12:12):
need to know. I said, I don'tunderstand. He said, what a
couple of before you told themabout this. I said, Yeah. Well,
they needed to know he goes,they never asked you. I said
they didn't know. And then theperson before that you told them
this? I said, Yeah, well, sheneeded to, she never asked you.
Really, I didn't realize I wasjust spewing data information,
(12:34):
which is a very common thing. Wewant to tell people what we do.
By the time someone walked intoa car showroom, they already
needed a car, right? They couldhave been at the grocery store,
but they were at the car dealer,right? By the time you get an
inquiry, somebody is planning anevent. Right? So what I learned
is you don't have to sell them,you have to help them buy, but
(12:54):
you're not going to know whatthey want. And let's go back to
that outcome and income thing.
You're not going to know theresults they want from their
planner or from their band fromtheir photographer from whoever,
if you're talking. Because whenyou're talking everything you're
going to say you already know.
Right? You might phrase itdifferent, like I phrase that
thing about income and outcomefive different ways. But I knew
(13:15):
what I was trying to say, I'mjust coming up with the it's
like I play piano music musicianas well, not professionally. But
if you've seen my Facebookposts, as always, though, must
raise $3,000 for charities,mostly food banks, good for us
up. But you know, as a musician,it's the same 88 keys on the
piano. But you put them togetherin a different way. When a
(13:37):
customer is talking, you'regoing to find out something
about what they want somethingabout what's important to them
something what they don't want,which is also actually more
important. Two very goodquestions I talked about in the
book are saying to someone sowhat's the most important factor
when choosing yourflorist? When choosing your
caterer when choosing fill inthe blank? Whatever it is, and
then let them go? And then sayhave you been to other weddings
(14:00):
and events? You know, the answeris yes. Right asking you a yes
or no question. You know theanswer to what have you seen at
other events that you definitelywant it yours? And let them go?
What have you seen at otherevents? You don't want it yours?
And Pat, those are the thingswhen you're a guest and you're
sitting there and you lean overto the person next to you go
Hey, Pat, can you believe they,you know, I was at lunch with my
(14:20):
cousin the other day she comesin from California for a
wedding. And she was telling meabout the wedding. The last
wedding she went to in NewJersey was at the pleasantdale
Chateau, which is this justgorgeous venue very expensive.
And she said the centerpieceswere trees they were they just
they were huge. I said could yousee under she said yeah, I said
(14:41):
okay, so he had a sight line.
But this is what she remembered.
When the couple got introducedout of the centerpieces
sparklers formed an arch thatthe couple was and my cousin's
first reaction was, is there afire in here?
Right, because there's smoke,everybody's looking at the
(15:02):
couple and all of a suddenthere's smoke all over the
place. And then she's like, Arewe allowed to have fire in here?
That was our second thought.
Instead of who, right? It was.
Right? So, you know, what do younot want is first of all, I
don't want to have a fire, rightSecond of all, I don't want
people going, you know, my hair.
You know, let's go. Right.
You're just thinking about thegoing. Okay. The centerpieces
(15:23):
are too big. Right. I don't wantmy centerpieces to be too big. I
want people to say it was justperfect. Not Oh, gosh, why would
the centerpieces so big? Right.
And that's a you wouldn't knowthat because somebody else at
the same wedding would havegone? Pat, you should have seen
these centerpieces they were Ohmy God, the Most Beautiful ever
seen just a differentperspective. You can ask those
(15:44):
two people the same question.
They're two different answers.
So shut up and sell more is thatsubtitle is asked better
questions, really listen to theanswers, and sell more. And
that's the key is you have toreally be listening. Because
sometimes we're like CharlieBrown's teacher, you know, the
other person's talking.
(16:05):
You're not, you're just what Icall it waiting for them to get
to the period. Like when you getto the end of that sentence, I'm
going to tell you this, nomatter what you just said, I'm
still gonna tell you this is I'mnot listening. Yep, I'm not
listening. So shut up and sellmore really came from that. And
if I ever write another salesbook, it'll be called stop
selling and help them buy.
Because they came to you. Thinkabout this, how many other
(16:25):
planners are there in within 50miles of you? And I know, we
don't know each other all thatwell. But I am not a planner.
And I'm sorry. I specialize inday of management and okay, but
the answer to your question is alot. Right? And do they have
management as a service thatfalls under planning? Right?
Absolutely. So the technicalanswer is lots because that's,
(16:48):
that's a number there. Right?
That's, that's it. There's a lotski on my keyboard here. So
maybe a locks key, that would benice, like a guy.
In this market, there we cancome. So by the time you get an
inquiry, they've eliminatedalmost everybody else. Right?
You took lots down to a smallgroup. Because we do this
(17:10):
filtering, we it's called theParadox of Choice, if you like
reading this great book by bylansman. Barry Schwartz, right?
by so many choices on jams, youknow that I've heard you talk
about it many times, right? Sothey've taken I want to know,
everybody that's out there, too.
Oh, that's too many. Let mestart filtering, filtering,
filtering. And now by the timeyou get the inquiry, you're in a
(17:31):
small group could be three couldbe five, could be seven,
whatever. But it's a small groupcompared to the blocky on our
keyboards here. So they alreadysaid I need what you do. They
already said whatever I saw,heard watched, read whatever
reviews, videos what I like it,because I'm still going forward.
So don't sell them, help thembuy the results that they think
(17:52):
they can get from you theresults they don't even know
that they could get from youbecause you're going to ask
better questions, and it'll getto the point. And that's why
it's helped them by. And it'skind of like going to a
networking event. If I came upthere, and I went to a
networking event with you. Andsomebody walked up and didn't
know me and says hi, you know,my name is Pat. And I say, Hi,
my name is Alan. So you know,Pat, what do you do? And you
(18:14):
say, Oh, this is what I do. AndI said, Oh, that's really
interesting. And I asked himanother question, then I asked
you a follow up and follow upand you're like, I like this
guy. Right? Then the other one,and we've seen this at no ring
events is, you know, Hi, my nameis Alan. And I just go on and on
about myself. And I'm a speaker.
I'm an author. And I've spokenin 14 countries who would like
me to list the countries, Icould list the countries for
you. But if you'd like I coulddo that. I was married to a guy
(18:37):
like that.
There you go. And the thing is,that person who doesn't come up
for air, that person just wantsto tell you and their sales
people. But actually, I wouldsay people that don't even
consider themselves salespeople.
That's what they do. Let me tellyou about what I do. know, I
kind of already know it a lot.
Hopefully, I already know alittle bit about what you do.
(18:58):
Hopefully 90% according to nothave read reviews, so they know
that other people love what youdo. they've read other people's
reviews, but they didn't reachout to them, they reached out to
you. So they know I call it yourbrand, your brand is in those
reviews. Just help them get theresult. When somebody comes to
me for speaking, I had somebodycome to me the other day for
(19:18):
speaking and I don't talk abouttopics. I said tell me about
your group, Who are the membersof the group. You know, what
kind of other speakers if youhad when you guys are chatting
online, what are the biggestconcerns people are talking
about? And instead of me sayingI can speak about this, I
listened to that and I said hey,well, you know,
sounds like you're in line withmy podcast because my most
(19:40):
popular podcast is aboutpackages versus ala carte and
pricing. And she's like, yes,but I knew that because I asked
I asked I didn't say what topicI didn't say go to my website.
This will allow people to go tomy website, pick out what you
want. Tell me. Okay, that's thee commerce go to shop
allanberg.com you can pick outany of these books dombey and
Tony's Libras disponibilien espanol. So if you need the
books in Spanish they they'rethere again. But that's
(20:02):
ecommerce services is notecommerce services is, let me
show you the results of what Icould do because of what the
results I've done for otherpeople. It's actually just a
little quick sidebar here. Thefour things you should have on
your website, every page everymonth isn't gonna ask, okay,
more things, aspirationalimages. If I go to your website
(20:23):
and you do Jewish weddings, andI don't see somebody with a
yarmulke, or in or with ahookah, or in the middle of
stomping the glass, it thepicture doesn't yell. Jewish
wedding. Okay, so that's thefirst thing, but aspirational. I
want to touch the heart becausethe heart has no budget. heads
have budgets, heads, make upbudgets. That's what they do.
(20:44):
Budgets are made up. Phil M.
Jones is an author and he saidall budgets are made up, which
is true. Somebody had to make alump. But with weddings, they're
typically they're not using datathe way a company would use
data. But all budgets are madeup means all budgets can be
changed also, which is anotherthing so what's the aspirational
image? So show me happy Jewishpeople if that's what you're
(21:06):
selling, now, if you don't onlydo do Jewish weddings, then show
me Jewish people. Show me SouthAsian people show me same sex
couples show me whatever. Okay.
The second thing is the wordingshould talk about the results of
hiring you not just what you do.
So I have a six hour package.
Exactly. Or, or the verycorporate sounding or worse,
(21:27):
actually, another I made myselfa note this morning, talking
about the language. No, I'msorry, the voice on your
website. Everybody's got avoice. Every company has a
voice. Target has a voice. It'sdifferent than Walmart's voice.
It's different than Macy's voiceright? car companies have
voices. They're different.
What's your voice but a lot ofwebsites sound like this very
(21:48):
corporate sounding, or worse,like your ninth grade English
teachers looking over yourshoulder going, excuse me, young
lady, that is not propergrammar.
But what's your voice? You know,if you've read my books like you
have, it's this voice. This isit. I write this way, I only
have one voice. But my truevoice comes through in the
books, we fix a little bit. Idon't like the word, the way the
(22:11):
word gun looks on paper. So Ichange it to going to But
otherwise, this it's not perfectEnglish and magic. My first
book, where is it over there iscalled if your website was an
employee, would you fire it?
Which is not proper grammar? Ifyour website were an employee,
would you fire but I don't speakthat way. So I don't write that
way. Right. Okay.
(22:34):
Um, what you want to alsoinclude is the word you. So
here's what I want everybody todo, go to your website. And in
any browser, it up to the menu,you can find under the Edit
command, you can find the wordfind actually find. And you pop
up a little search box and typein the word u y o u i called the
U test. It'll highlight on thepage in a color. The word you
(22:56):
it'll also tell you how manytimes it's on the page. I go to
some sites, it's not there atall, because it says we do this
we do this we do this we do thisor I do this or whatever. So I
we us our mind Bolla that isinward focused, you and your is
outward focused. So instead ofsaying that we've been in
business for 25 years, whichnobody cares, because they care
(23:16):
what you did 25 minutes ago, notwhat you did 25 years ago, you
can say, you and your guests canhave an amazing time and with
our 25 years of experience weright so put them first look for
the word you third piece, socialproof, hugely important these
days. It's not what you say it'swhat other people say after they
do business with you. Becausethat is your brand. The reviews
(23:39):
and testimonials is your brand.
You've probably I'm sure you'vebeen to my website, Alan Berg,
comm those of that haven't it'sjust my name, a l a n b e r
g.com, right below the headerimage, which by the way, since I
don't do weddings myself, it's apicture of me on stage from the
stage, looking at the audience.
So you see me, but you see theirfaces, because it's not about
(24:02):
me. They hired me that happensto be a wedding MBA picture, the
higheryou find yourself in there, I've
had people do that. So I wantyou to see the audience because
that's what I see is I want tosee your faces just like when
you're at a wedding. I'm not thefocus here, right? I'm not the
focus. There's there's thecouple This is the focus over
here. I'm helping behind thecurtain pulling the levers.
(24:24):
Right. So that's what you seeright below that you see
testimonials, because I can'tsay what people say.
People use phrasing you wouldnever use about yourself. I had
somebody who said you'reprobably the only Speaker I can
listen to without once lookingat my watch. Like oh, that's
good. Yeah, somebody read that.
Somebody read that and thenwrote Alan, I was looking at my
(24:48):
watch because I was hoping itwasn't over yet. Like oh, it
just when you thought itcouldn't get better, right? It
gets better.
But you he wrote morethan that, I use just that line.
It's a speed bump, I want you toeverybody think about speed
bumps, you're driving down theroad, you get to a speed bump.
Most of us slow down, somepeople don't most of us slow
(25:09):
down when we get to a speedbump, and we keep going. But if
there was a brick wall in theroad, we would have to go around
it. And that's what a paragraphlooks like to someone who's
trying to read a page,especially on a phone. So what
what is the phrase or thesentence that you can pull out
of that great review, whichsometimes you can pull 234 or
five sentences and just sprinklethem in different places on your
(25:29):
site? for SEO, you want toattribute that to someone? So if
you said that this was, youknow, Jennifer, and David from
and then you say where they camefrom? Or if you're if you're not
the venue, you can say what thevenue was and where the venue is
located. Ifno, no, you don't need last
names. If it would, first names,if it came from Facebook or
(25:52):
Google, you could say, Jenniferand David on Facebook, you could
say or on wedding wire or theknot. But that's not going to
help your SEO as much as if yousaid, this was Jennifer and
David from Auburn Hills. This isJennifer and David from Raleigh,
North Carolina, right? Becausethose are SEO phrases there. And
it can be small, because Googlecan read it small. The fourth
piece, very important, tell themwhat to do to get that result.
(26:16):
So the picture shows the result.
The words talk about the result,the testimonial is in context,
what that result was, and thenthe call to action is how to get
it. So in your case, you'reshowing me a beautiful wedding,
then you have talking about youryou know, wedding day
management, what you're going todo there, right, do you have a
testimonial now let's say youspoke about how you're going to
(26:37):
make sure that they're going tohave fun and be stress free.
Just use that that's the that'sthe phrase, that's my word.
There you go at Whoo. And then,exactly. And then and then the
testimonial says, you know,woohoo, indeed, pat my made my
wedding so much more fun andstress free than I could
imagine, right just to getsomething like that. It has to
have context, it wouldn't beabout you know, it just to say
(27:00):
Pat's a nice person. That's notcontext what you just talked
about. But then the call toaction is, if this is the way
you want to feel about yourwedding, and your wedding day
manager, call email or contactpath today, call text, email,
whatever those things are. Andthen they're all actionable
click to dial, click the email,click to text, if you give text
as an option, I have a shortform on every page of my website
(27:23):
except the homepage. Andanywhere on the page. If you
click the words, use the shortform on this page, which is in
bold, it takes you either up ordown to that form. So you don't
even have to leave the page. Andif you do that on every page,
photos, and then just keep doingit, because nobody can step back
far enough to see an entire pageof a website, you can only see
(27:45):
this much right but probablythis much, right. And then as I
scroll if I have to scroll morethan twice before, there's
another call to action, you'renot getting the conversion you
want. Tell them again, I didthis with a client the other
day, we counted, I think it was14 or 15 calls to action on one
page on my site. Oh my but butsomewhere hidden in those little
(28:05):
toggles, you know, you click theplus sign and it opens and
closes. So you couldn't see itunless you opened it somewhere
in tabs, we have to click theother tab to bring it forward,
so you couldn't see it. And thenthe one at the top of the page,
you scroll three times already,you can't see that. So I have to
do it again. I have to do itagain, I have to do it again.
And it's very clear on my site,what you're supposed to do and
(28:27):
why and how to do it. Becausethere's this which is if you
don't ask the answers, alwaysNo.
And then this which isambiguous. Next Steps bring
ambiguous results. And this iswhat you do at the top of
bourbon bottles just in caseyou're wondering.
But ambiguous results, ambiguousnext steps, you just list your
(28:49):
phone number or you say contactus, okay, for why'd you know to
check our availability and findout just how fun and stress free
your wedding can be? Call emailor contact Pat today, that's
better than contact us. Hello,right, those results. It's the
outcomes again. I knew I wasgonna get some good stuff from
you today. But I didn't expect amini masterclass. And so thank
(29:12):
you. That's, well get you know,getting a professional speaker
to start talking is easy gettingup to stop as hard. Sounds like
a rabbi.
Amen to that. Yes. So this isthe bookmark Jewish weddings
podcast. Is there anythingdifferent about selling to
Jewish clientele than selling toanybody else?
(29:35):
it from a 10,000 foot view? No,I've spoken in 14 countries,
including India, includingDubai, Australia, England,
Ireland, Colombia, SouthAmerica. The business of
weddings is the same all over.
There's basically four steps youget someone's attention. So how
do you get their attention?
Well, you could be referred bythe show. You could be social
(29:56):
media. It could be advertising,could be marketing could be
whatever butIf they don't know you exist,
nothing else is gonna happen.
It's like having a store with nosignage on it, right? There's
like, they think you're closed,right? The second is once you
have their attention, you needthem to make an inquiry. So how
are they going to do that callyou email, you text, you fill
(30:16):
out your form? What are yougoing to do? So if you take,
let's say, you did a Facebookad, and you did Facebook ads,
and you targeted people in yourgeographic area with a status of
engaged who have liked weddingwire, the nod and mitzvahs, Rs,
I don't know, whatever. Whateverit is something that targets You
know, they're probably Jewish,because they've you know,
they've liked it maybe been abreath, or whatever it is,
(30:38):
they've liked something.
So now, what do you want them todo? You want them to make an
inquiry. So with Facebook ads,you could have a contact form
pop pop up, or if you land themon a page on your website, you
want to tell them to contactyou. Make it easy, reduce the
friction, another lansman Shephyken, h YKN. He's got a great
book called The conveniencerevolution. And he talks about
(30:59):
reducing the friction is verygood friend of mine, one of the
top customer service experts inthe world. Companies put this,
these barriers in front of usthey make it hard for us to do
business with it. Like you go toa website, you can't find a
phone number, right? Or I wentto a website recently, I
couldn't email customer serviceI it was late at night, I just
wanted to send them an email, goto the FA Q's go to the
(31:20):
knowledge base go into as like,Oh my gosh, I want to grow hair
so I can pull it out. I mean,just stop. Right? Amazing how
many vendor websites don't havea phone number. So this is
friction, right? So we want toreduce the friction. So you want
to make it easy for them to makethe inquiry. Once they make the
inquiry. You get to have aconversation, which could be a
digital conversation. You and II'm going to go out on a limb
(31:42):
here. We're digital immigrants.
Okay, indeed. Second Language,right? I am a digital immigrant
who loves technology. So digitalimmigrant doesn't mean you don't
like technology. It just meansit wasn't here. You know, when I
started in the business, I mighthave still had a beeper right? I
might, I might have still had abeeper I had a cell phone but it
was so expensive you didn't wantto use it you know one of those
like that stop at the payphone,which you can't even find one
(32:03):
anymore. Stop at the payphonewith my calling card my 1010
number right I just did a when Iapplied for a job at Temple
Israel, I answered a PO box inthe newspaper, in the newspaper,
p o box and newspaper. There wego. We're dating myself. Now, if
you were looking for somethingnow you would go online, you
would find the sites you wouldgo that the digital natives,
they just don't know the otherway it just didn't exist. You
(32:25):
know, when we talk about dialinga phone, some people don't
understand why we call itdialing a phone, right. So, but
these are things like a Kleenex,not all tissues are clean x, but
we call them a Kleenex there. Weget them to make an inquiry, we
want to try to respond using themethod that they've chosen. So
if I gave them choices, in mycase, my website, call email
(32:46):
text, fill out the form on thepage, or fill out the form on my
contact page. So you really havefive ways you can contact me.
people contact me all of thoseways. Some people call me some
people fill out the form on thesite, I can tell the difference
between that and my contactpage. Some people text me some
people email me, the firstperson who texted me when I
first put texting up on mywebsite was a baby born
(33:09):
wasn't a millennial, it was ababy born. She saw it. She
clicked she texted me. We had alittle conversation. You can
switch the method, but if youtry to switch it too soon,
you're going to end up gettingghosted. A lot ghosted is when
they stop responding. So someoneemails you and then you email
back and say, Hey, love To findout more, when's a good time for
a call? Okay, and then theyghost you? Well, they didn't
(33:30):
want to call you. And let unlessyou didn't have your phone
number on your website, theycould have called you. I was
just had a masterclass recently,and an officiant that was in the
class, his website only offeredcall and text did not offer
email or a contact form. And Isaid, Why? And he said, Well, I
was getting too much spam. Isaid, so instead of investing in
a better spam filter, you weregonna make it so your customers
(33:52):
can email you. I said, Thisdoesn't make any sense. Talk
about friction right there onyour website, the to likely
times that a wedding couple islooking at your website, or
during the week during the dayor late at night. So they can't
call you from work. And theydon't think they can call you at
10 o'clock at night or atmidnight. So they just want to
say and and do you want themtexting you?
(34:13):
So he was looking at it from hisperspective, I hate the spam. I
said, You know what, I get verylittle spam on my contact forms.
I have a capture of some kind onthere, I get very little spam.
And I'm not going to make ithard for a customer because 90
plus percent of my inquiriescome through the contact form on
the side of my website. So whywould I say you can't do that
(34:37):
anymore?
That would be crazy. So when youwhen you get the inquiry, we
digital immigrants had to learnhow to have a conversation
through our fingers. Okay, wehad to because we used to just
Oh, hi, I'd like to find outmore about your services. And
everybody tells me which is whythis book over here is called
(34:57):
Why don't they call me nowI hear that. I hear that from
wedding pros all the time.
Actually, Pat, it was going tobe the shortest book ever. It
was gonna say why don't theycall me? You were going to open
it, it was going to say, Getover it. And that would be the
book.
That'd be the whole book. That'sall I needed to say was get over
it, because it's just not goingto change. You know what I think
is funny. I don't know why wecall these smart phones. Because
(35:20):
it's the least thing that youuse it for. Right?
Email, WhatsApp, websites, apps,right? The least the least thing
that this thing gets used for isactually making phone calls,
especially by millennials andGen Z's. Right. So smart device,
I don't know what we'd call itinstead. But there so you get
(35:40):
this inquiry. Your goal is torespond as quickly as you can
mirror their tone, mirror, theirenergy, all the things I speak
about in the book, but get themto respond. So I actually had a
dinner in Philadelphia, it wasmy first dinner out, it was
outside coverlet ever. Yes. Withonly vaccinated friends. One of
them is actually an officiantfrom California, another
(36:01):
linesman Alan cats. And he'scredited in the book in the
dedication because he and I werein California, I was in
California one time with him.
We're driving just talking likewe always do. And he just
dropped this comment about he,he always has his people end
every email with a question,because people respond better.
And I just I lightbulb, like theStatue of Liberty went off. I
was like, duh, of course. And Ihave changed my emails, because
(36:25):
I've listened to you say, Don'tsay things after that question.
And request. Don't bury thequestion, right? And make it its
own paragraph make it nice andshort, one question at a time,
just like any otherconversation. So once you get to
have the conversation, then thequestion is, can you make the
sale using that method? Or do weneed to switch it to a phone
call a zoom, call an in personmeeting, or whatever, whatever
(36:47):
the next step is to make thesale. The pandemic has taught us
that a lot of people are able tomake sales without being in
person with the other with thecustomer. And I actually just
had somebody who heard me speakon my podcast about this, and I
didn't use his name, but I tellthe story that he was in. I was
in Ontario, Canada 10 DJs. AndI'm doing a mastermind day, this
(37:09):
was December of 2019. So this isbefore all the Wild West that
that pot.
And nine of the companies thatwere there insisted, you know, I
get an inquiry. My goal is toget them into in for a meeting,
get him in for a meeting get himfor me. The 10th one at the time
was living in Nova Scotia, buthis business is in Toronto, so
(37:29):
all of his DJs everybody's inToronto, but he lives in Nova
Scotia. So it's flying in, if hehad to meet somebody, and you
don't want to do that every timeyou get to meet with somebody.
So for 10 years he had beenselling remotely. And this is
presumed this is you know, he'dbeen selling remotely. So in
that when the pandemic hit, hejust kept doing what it was
doing. The other nine had to belike, Oh my gosh, now how do I
(37:52):
how do I do this? How do I learnhow to do this? Well, he
messaged he actually I put thatpodcast up. And he commented on
it. He said thanks for you know,mentioning me and my successes.
He actually moved to Calgary. Sohe moved if anybody not familiar
with Canada, Nova Scotia is onthe extreme east coast. Calgary
is much more towards the west.
His business didn't change. He'sstill selling remotely, nothing
(38:13):
had to change there. So he had areal he had a real leg up. And I
think that was one of mypodcasts. It's already launched,
which is will you still be usingzoom post COVID. And yeah, if
you can do that I spoke inColumbia, South America,
Cartagena, Colombia, got anemail in Spanish responded in
Spanish back and forth, back andforth. booked, paid in full. I
(38:34):
didn't even know how manyspeeches I was giving yet. It
was a one day event. So I didn'tcare whether it was one or two
or three.
But I never tried to change itto a phone call or a zoom call
because the conversation wasgoing fine. There was no reason
to add the friction to that. Andthen we're all done. She and she
wrote me she said the AcceptPayPal. I said yes. What's your
(38:56):
PayPal? I gave it to her fiveminutes later to Jane Did you
know you get the sound effect? Igot paid. And I wrote her back.
And I said by the way, how manypresentations Do you want me to
give? And do you want me to givethem an English or Spanish and
she wrote back to me and saidyou can present in Spanish? We
just we just had an entireconversation. And Pat I'm
talking about a good six eightback and forth right? She's from
(39:20):
Uruguay Montevideo I had spokenin your grade the year before I
just assumed she had seen methere because the Euro
connection so it's your shrimpactually you can present in
Spanish this and what Didn't yousee me in Montevideo? And she
said no. I saw your wedding MBAin Las Vegas.
As a silly silly me right. Butthe whole sale was done through
(39:42):
email. DJ client of mine inNorth Carolina wrote a shortly
after having me do a consultabout it. He wrote a sale
through Facebook Messenger. Thebride emailed them he wrote back
back back back exactly as if itwas email just the questions the
same way we would do it got thecontent
tract got paid, done? Nevertried to change it because why
(40:04):
it was going so well, why wouldyou now try to switch it to
something else? And and that'sthe key. Tell me how this works.
So you start an email chain,then do you keep a Google doc or
something where you keeping allthat information separate,
because to sort through those 10emails is sometimes a chore.
(40:25):
So it depends upon your emailprogram. There's a couple of
ways to do it. Outlook, and I'msure some of the others you can
sort by conversation.
So if I sort by conversation,your conversation is there. One
thing that I do is all of myinquiries, my initial inquiries
come into a different emailaddress than my main email. And
that way, it never gets buried.
If I see there's a number on,there's a new email on that
(40:48):
email address, it's got to be anew inquiry, because nobody has
that address, it only comes in.
And actually the way it works isyou fill out the form on my
website, the contact form on theside, it goes into
salesforce.com. Right?
Salesforce then emails me thatdata, just like it was on the
forum. So Salesforce acts as amiddleman there. Now, when I
(41:09):
email, because that emailaddress is now in Salesforce.
Salesforce is amassing all ofthose emails under your lead. So
I can just go go to Salesforceand the whole conversations
there. But I don't want to lookat 10 conversations anymore, I
want to look at doing 12 200people,
(41:34):
whatever be your notes, thatwill be your notes. So if you're
using a CRM, that would be youputting those those notes in
there doing it that way.
I'm fortunate I don't have It'sfortunate or unfortunate, I
don't get a ton of leads,because it's just the nature of
my businessis only so many places I can go
in so many people I can workwith. So I don't have to deal
with it that way. CRM systems,those are the really the the
(41:57):
best way to try to keep track ofthis. And there's honeybook and
17, hats and Salesforce and youknow all these other ones out
there.
But you do need a system, somepeople just do it on a
spreadsheet, some people areprobably still use a canary pad,
you know,could be doing it and I use the
just keep them in Evernote. So Ihave Evernote, which is like you
(42:18):
know, OneNote, or whatever.
But it wasn't really easy tosearch and stuff like that. And
Salesforce came up with what'scalled Salesforce essentials,
which is a very light version ofSalesforce, it has an outlook
extension. So if you send me anemail, I can have a little
sidebar and I can add you toSalesforce without leaving
outlook. So that was veryconvenient for me. They said
(42:41):
they have an offline version,which I needed for airplanes.
But if you don't sync it beforeyou get on the plane, you don't
have the latest that is youknow, it's not there's no
perfect system out there. Butyou know, you do need to follow
up because I talked about thatin a couple of my books. That
person who reached out to you isgoing to hire somebody, and you
(43:02):
are already on the shortlist.
Don't take yourself off thelist. One of my clients has
multiple venues, they're up to Ithink 23 different venues I work
with their team every month. Andwhen I they give me stats,
because I don't have any access.
When I give me stats, I try tocall out the good behavior. I
don't like calling out badbehavior and punishing people. I
don't think anybody's motivatedby that. I when I was vice
(43:24):
president of sales at the knot,I never said to someone Hey,
your numbers stink, right? Iwould say what do you not have
from me? What do you need fromme that's preventing you from
getting to where you need to be.
So I like calling out the goodbehavior? Well, there's no
surprise that the people thatare performing the highest are
following up the most.
The people that are performingthe highest are following the
(43:46):
system that we gave them, whichis fitted on one screen to their
phone and it with the one lowcommitment question. Don't ask
for the call or the meeting justyet. You can do it later. don't
attach any PDFs, don't send themany links, just have a
conversation. And the peoplethat are doing that closest to
what we taught them areperforming the highest. They're
following up. Yeah, becausebecause we're secret shopping
(44:08):
them as well. So they'refollowing up four and five times
whereas competitors because weshop competitors as well, once
if they even respond at all,because some of them it's either
nothing or an auto reply. Maybea second time about 50% of the
companies we Secret Shop willtry a second time. Right? And
(44:29):
then very few will try afterthat while my clients are going
three, four or five times andnot surprisingly, the ones that
are doing it are performing thehighest. So think of it like a
sponge, right? You get a spongeyou squeeze the water out, it's
not dry. There's water in there,right squeeze it again. Squeeze
it again, right go thetoothpaste too, right the third
the toothpaste was empty but youcan give it a good
(44:51):
you can get another one outthere. But that's that's the
idea is following up. It's yourresponsibility. It's not the
customers responsibility to comeback.
can say, Pat, I want to do it.
Sometimes they do. Butproposals, that's another thing.
Too many people are sending aproposal waiting for the
customer to get back to them.
They're not putting a deadlineon it or any kind of time limit
(45:13):
on it. What I've taught them is,why don't you set an
appointment? If you can't givethem a proposal right now, while
you're talking to them? Whydon't you set an appointment to
deliver the proposal via zoom?
And then don't send it to them?
Show it to them? Let's gothrough it. If there's anything
I need to change, I can changeit, then you can have it. And
then you can ask for the saleright? Then you make it all
(45:33):
sound so easy.
It's easier. It's easier thanthrow it out into the ether.
Hope they've even opened it andread it. Hope they understand
it, and then hope they get backto you. Right? I would much
rather more effective. Yeah,well, ambiguous. Next Steps
bring a biggerThere you go. That's why they're
conveniently Oh, yep. So I haveanother one. And it's being made
(45:56):
right now. It's don't just takenotes. Take action. I love that.
And my kids have learned that Ioften say just because somebody
says no, they don't mean it. Andgive them another opportunity to
change their mind and give themanother opportunity to change
their mind. And yeah, and it'stheir mind to change, not yours.
(46:18):
But the reason I'm happilymarried is because I know I
can't change my wife's mind. Ican provide her with information
she didn't have, she can decideto come to a different
conclusion.
And that's fine, because youcan't change a customer's mind.
But you can. You can have themgo, Oh, I didn't know that.
(46:39):
Okay, now maybe you'll come to adifferent conclusion, right? But
trying to change someone's mindis just going to add friction.
Now. Don't take it personally,if they don't buy from you. I
listened to someone recentlysay, imagine if the waiter at
the restaurant, you just hadthis fabulous dinner. And the
waiter came in showed you thedessert menu? And you said no,
because you're stuffed. If hewent back in the kitchen and
(47:01):
said, Oh, they didn't buy fromme. Is it my hair is it my dress
was not like me. It's not likethat. Right? And the other side
of that is I want the waiter tobring over the dessert tray.
Because a lot of people are onthe seafood diet. Right? So
let's see, we're gonna eat it.
And I've spoken about that aswell. So you just had this meal.
We're actually going to dinnertonight, for the first time with
(47:22):
our closest friends. We used togo out once a month, and we
haven't been out to dinner withthem and you know, a long time.
So we're all vaccinated. Rog,we're going to go out to dinner,
we had gone out one time to anItalian restaurant here in New
Jersey. Right? So the theabundance of food and carbs. You
can imagine if typical Italianrestaurant, right? So here we
are at the end of dinner, youknow, we need the four
(47:44):
wheelbarrows to get us out ofthere. And if the waitress had
come by and said, So did youleave room for dessert? No, we
didn't. Would you like to seethe dessert menu? Now? Thanks.
If she would have brought thedessert menu, you might have
taken a peek, right? If shebrought the menu opened it and
said, You know, we're known forour cannolis. Closer, but she
(48:07):
didn't. She brought over thisbig silver tray with actual
desserts on it not not like fakeones, the real ones. And we
ended up with two pieces of cakefor the four of us, right? Lady?
Yeah. But that's let thecustomer decide. And that's my
other sign. If you don't ask theanswers always No. Don't ask me
(48:27):
the wrong question is do youwant to see the dessert menu?
That's not the the question. Thequestion is, look at this. Is
there anything here you which ofthese? Do you want that? Is
there anything yet? Which ofthese do you want? Well, it was
a red velvet and the chocolatelayer cake ended up on the
table. There we go. Because theywere also huge. They were also
huge. But that's the same thingwith a wedding Pro. bottom up
(48:48):
selling is trying to sell themthe cheapest thing and then try
to get them to buy more. topdown is the say here, this is
the result you want. And then ifthey say it's too much, take
things away to come down to aprice point that makes more
sense. The next week's podcastso it'll be the May 12 podcast
is what Jenga can teach us abouttop down selling. Ah, great
(49:11):
title. Fun. There you go. Andyou are just filled with good
tidbits and I love it. I loveit. I love it. And I know we can
keep going for a while but I soappreciate having you here. Is
there one piece of advice thatyou would give to someone who
wants to get started in thewedding world.
(49:33):
The barrier to entry in thewedding industry is low. It's
zero for most most parts, whichis great. It's a real business.
It's a real business. There'stwo parts you have to have your
technical skills and yourbusiness skills. If you're
starting out in the weddingbusiness, you want to talk to
people and find out the mistakesthat people have made. And if I
(49:54):
have to leave you with a book,not one of my books to read.
Anybody here is listening andnew in the business. Mike Mike
Hello, what's his profit first?
love that book. He's wonderful.
If you're starting a business, Idon't care if it's a dog
grooming business, if you'restarting a business read profit
first, it'll change the way youthink about business. It'll
change the way you think aboutprofit. This is a great
(50:15):
recession resistant industrybarring 2020, which was not like
the typical recession. Gettinginto the one this wedding
industry is fantastic. This goesback to the income and outcome
if you think about how can Igive people an unbelievable
weddings wherever whatever yourservice is, the income will
follow.
That's fabulous. I love Mikemccalla wits, his book and I
(50:37):
think you are just awesome. Sothank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I so appreciate your time andyour expertise. And I look
forward to seeing you in personat another wedding MBAs in
November. I'll be there forspeaking for grabs. Thanks.
Thank you. Well, thank you forlistening. I warned you there
was lots of information packedinto this episode. When I think
(50:58):
of Alan Berg's advice, I hearfour things loud and clear.
Number one, don't tell theclient about you. Tell the
client about how you can helpthem.
Number two people buy with theirhearts. Budgets are created by
their minds. So your job is totug at their hearts.
(51:21):
Number three, what do you needon your website, things that tug
at their hearts, aspirationalimages of your ideal client and
the type of event they want tohave. If you're a DJ, show him a
picture of a packed dance floor.
If you're a party manager likeme, show him a picture of a calm
relaxed bride.
(51:44):
Number four, we are all in thisbusiness to make money. So read
the book profit first by Mikemccalla wits, and start making
your business a profitablebusiness. While you're at it,
read some of Alan Berg's books,too. He's got some great books
out there. And I'm putting themall in my show notes for you.
(52:07):
Well, I hope you enjoyed thisepisode, you can find out ways
to connect with elenberg on hispodcast, and on his website in
the show notes.
This podcast is all about how wecan help each other better serve
our Jewish clients. I just wantto give a shout out to know what
country club two. They are allabout great customer service and
(52:28):
taking care of their members.
They had a workshop this weekfor their staff to learn all
about the Jewish celebrationcustoms and traditions. This
will put them way ahead of mostother venues in terms of knowing
what's important to theirclient.
Do you want to workshop give mea call or look up what we got
going on at the Jewish partyMaven.
(52:51):
If you'd like to learn more,follow me on Facebook or
Instagram at the Jewish partyMaven.
If you'd like to learn about myparty business, check out the
red coat ladies calm. Wespecialize in bar and Bat
Mitzvahs and weddings. And we'dlike to help you have a stress
free party.
Now, join me next week when welearn another Jewish wedding
(53:11):
word and you'll be one wordcloser to booking your next
Jewish party. In the meantime,check out your sales process and
see what you can change based onAlan Berg's proven advice.
Thanks for listening
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