Alan Berg Part 2: Actionable Steps to a Profitable Wedding Business

Alan Berg is the leading international expert on the business of weddings and events. Whether you're a seasoned veteran or brand new to the industry, you're going to learn actionable content that you as a wedding pro need to utilize NOW!

• Are you the "making it happen" or "the center of attention"?
• How to sell results before selling the service
• Why are you getting ghosted?
• How to never get ghosted again
• When is a ghost not really a ghost?

Alan is fluent in the language of business. He's been in marketing sales and sales management for over 20 years, working with businesses like yours and like mine within the wedding and events industry. Before striking out on a zone as the business consultant, author, and professional speaker, he served as the Vice President of Sales and The Knot Market Intelligence, at The Knot worldwide.

And addition to his speaking and consulting services, he serves as an educator for WeddingWire, which is the leading wedding technology company, doing webinars, live presentations, and writing articles. Alan is the wedding at events industries only certified speaking professional, the highest earned designation for a professional member of the national speakers association.

One of only 36 global speaking fellows in the world, he's able to help new businesses and solopreneurs, as well as the established players and corporations, understand and achieve their goals. Alan understands business as he's own several of his own, including publishing to wedding magazines. He's spoken and consulted domestically and internationally in 14 countries, and 5 continents and counting.

We're chatting about his latest book, Wit, Wisdom and the Business of Weddings: A Compendium of Ideas, Insight and Inspiration from an Industry Leader. Part "How-to-do" and part "How-to-think", Wit, Wisdom and the Business of Weddings is your companion on a journey to a more successful wedding business.

Listen to Part 1

Alan Berg's Website
Wit, Wisdom, and The Business of Weddings
More of Alan's Books

Funktastic Chats website

Transcript

0:00

Actionable steps to a profitable wedding business. Part two with the leading international expert on the business of weddings, Alan Berg, if you were going out to eat, would you choose the restaurant or would you choose the dish? You're going to have. You'd most likely choose the restaurant. It blows caterers minds when Alan asked. So why are you giving out the menus to all the food you serve when you haven't chosen the caterers yet. The award-winning chefs, five-star reviews, years of experience selling the results of the service, not just the service itself is one topic coming up for actionable step to a profitable wedding business. Part one with Alan Bert, we talked about the dichotomy of feeding your ego versus being the most profitable, how to give a range of pricing that creates framing, how Ellen's love from music speaking, writing, and consulting made him the leading international expert on the business of weddings. Alan Berg is fluent in the language of business. He's been in marketing sales and sales management for over 20 years, working with businesses like yours and like mine within the wedding and events industry, before striking out on his own as a business consultant, author and professional speaker, he served as the vice president of sales and the not market intelligence at the knot worldwide. In addition to a speaking and consulting services. He also serves as a consultant and educator for wedding wire. The leading wedding technology company doing webinars, live presentations, writing articles, and more. Alan is the wedding and event industry is only certified speaking professional, the highest earned designation for a professional member of the national speakers association. Only one of 36 global speaking fellows in the world. Today, we're continuing talking about his latest book, wit wisdom in the business of weddings, a compendium of ideas, insight and inspiration from an industry leader. If you want to know more about Alan's background within the wedding industry, check out part one. We're going to jump right into actionable steps to a profitable wedding business. Today's topics include, are you in the mindset of the making it happen or the being the center of attention? Why and how you should be selling the results before the service. How to discount without giving away profits and why you are getting ghosted, how to never get ghosted again. And when is a ghost not really a ghost. Welcome to Funktastic Chats. I'm your host, Mike Zabrin I've teamed up with the best and most successful leaders within the creative field to help you navigate being a boss and dominate with originality and vision. Having a long standing career in the wedding and events industry Funktastic Chats is a podcast that includes essential information for all small businesses. Industry leaders join me every week to help you monetize their passion, automate repetitive tasks to allow for more time for what you love. How to convert more leads and turn clients in the brand fanatics and how to thrive in what you do. Enjoy today's episode as we talked to the international expert on the business of weddings.. Mike Zabrin: How many times have you current clients here in this firm couples you've given us so much to think about. We need to go home and process everything and we'll get back to you. How many choices is too many?

Alan Berg: 3:01

well, there's a great book called the paradox of choice by Barry Schwartz. Okay. Also on audio book one of the first audio books I ever listened to twice, by the way. So the paradox of choice, not a very big book. It's great. The paradox of choice is this when you're the customer you want to know, you've seen all the choices. The problem is we live in a world where there's too many choices. So once you see all the choices you can't decide, and I'll give you an example. You've heard of this company called Amazon. You heard of that company,

Mike Zabrin: 3:30

Heard of

Alan Berg: 3:31

I've heard of it. Yeah. So have you ever gone on Amazon and you're like, I need something and you start looking and you go down the rabbit hole because people who like this also like that, and people who bought this also bought that. Have you ever been there for 40 minutes and bought nothing? That's that is decision paralysis. Now the paradox of choice book, he talks about people who satisfies a decision and maximize a decision. So again, if you were going to buy a base, you're going to maximize that decision because you know, better. And you're like, I know what I need, and I'm going to do this. And it's got to have Grover tuners and it's gotta be whatever. Okay. But other people are gonna satisfies a decision and say, Yeah, that's good enough. So for instance, like the microphone I'm using over here, I can see the microphone you have over there. You don't want to cheat Mike you want a good mic? You care about sound quality stuff. I have my blue Yeti over here. Right. And it's hanging on the wall, you know, I'm all set here. That was a maximized decision. What is the right mic for podcasting, for zooming, for stuff like that? My camera

Mike Zabrin: 4:32

right, right now,

Alan Berg: 4:33

what's that?

Mike Zabrin: 4:34

are you going through that? Mike right now.

Alan Berg: 4:36

Oh yeah.

Mike Zabrin: 4:37

I was wondering like how you were getting such great audio quality from your Apple, your

Alan Berg: 4:42

Oh no, that's.

Mike Zabrin: 4:43

this? How is this happening?

Alan Berg: 4:46

None of the microphone is here. The headphones are actually plugged into the Yeti. So on the top, over here. So they're plugged into the

Mike Zabrin: 4:53

Now I was just like, how is this audio quality? So superior

Alan Berg: 4:57

No. I, what I found is my air pods. We're running out too fast. Cause I would be on some calls or like a clubhouse or whatever. And about 90 minutes in, they cut off. So I had this happen to me last week, so I always use corded headphones. I also have a pair of Bose noise canceling over the year or whatever. I just don't like the way I look, you know, with the headphones on. So see they blend into your hair. I don't have that. So that's not going to happen. That's not going to happen. So the. When my camera is a Logitech Breo. The camera that I had, I just didn't feel it was sharp enough. So I started asking around and people told, everybody said, Logitech Breo, Logitech, Bree, $199 camera. I recommended it to one of my sons and he's I don't need $199 camera. Right. See, he didn't need it. I need it. Because when he gets on a video call, it's not to be recorded and whatever, it's just within his, you know, his company and stuff like that. So he's going to satisfy the decision for a camera is that good enough? Where I was going to maximize the decision and it comes down to priorities. Good video quality, good audio, quality lighting. Right? I have, you can't see it in here, but I have 900 watt equivalent of led running around here right now, which is how I have the, yeah. It gets warm in here, but I have good lighting because it matters to what I do. I have a 27 inch high definition monitor here, all that matters when. You present the customer with too many choices, you create the decision paralysis. Another story out of that book is this is pre COVID, obviously, but there went into a grocery store and they set up a table with samples of six different flavors of jellies and jams. Let people taste them. And then they measured. How many got bought? They did the same thing, same store, 20 different flavors. Less got sold when there were 20 different flavors. Then when there were six, because you can't focus on 20 different flavors. But on six, you could like, you might immediately eliminate, okay. Orange mom, loud. I know. I don't like that. That one's out now you're down to five and you look at these and go, let me taste over here. I was like, Ooh, I like the blueberry. And Ooh, I like the strawberry and people are buying blueberry and strawberry, but now you put 20 out there and you have raspberry and you have Blackberry and you have Ryan. It was like more so your job is not to have less choices. It's to present less choices. So they're one of my books, which way over here, this one over here, it's called shut up and sell more weddings and events. It's about asking better questions. You don't learn anything when you're talking like right now, I'm talking to you. I'm not learning anything, but when you're talking, I'm learning, I'm listening. I'm hearing. So when I'm in a sales mode, I'm asking people questions and now I'm learning. But if I'm talking, I'm not learning anything. So your job is to ask them good questions. And in your mind, you're going, okay. Five pieces is out. Seven pieces is out there having 250 people. It's at this beautiful venue over there. You're finding out it's going to be a black tie affair. It's going to be an evening, whatever, and you go, okay. Okay. You're asking if they're having the ceremony and reception there, you find out that they are. So now we know we need some ceremony, musicians. We might want to have a jazz combo playing at the cocktail hour. Right. And you're building this in your head and then you're going to present them with the one or two no more than three. And preferably only two choices. That are right for them. But if you had given them a menu virtually or otherwise, and it showed five pieces, six pieces, seven pieces, eight pieces, nine pieces 10,

Mike Zabrin: 8:42

I'm guilty.

Alan Berg: 8:43

right? Because we think we're being helpful. Right. But now let me give you, let me tell it to you a different way. Let's say you were a caterer and you didn't know what they needed and you and my, one of my customers did this, that you send them your menus. Breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, buffet, dinner, sit down after party food snacks, right? All this kind of stuff. Now you don't know what they need yet. And you just gave him that and it's followed by their choices that they could have for appetizers, their choices for salads, their choices for entrees, their choices. Right? One of my clients did this 40 pages. I'm not kidding. Four, zero 40 pages of menus. So now what you've said to the customer is here's everything we offer, what do you want? Right. Right. You ever been in a restaurant and you're looking at the menu and you're not paying attention to the headings and you turn to something like, and you say to the waiter, Hey, I'd like to have this. And they say, Oh, that's the lunch menu. Right. It's dinner time because the menu had the lunch menu, whatever. And you're looking at the lunch special go, Oh, that looks good. Right, but it was the lunch thing. I wish they wouldn't have shown that to me because now I got excited about the lunch menu. And now I got to go look at this now. Yeah, my bad.

Mike Zabrin: 10:01

It's kind of like what you said too with do you sell the cater or do you sell the, where we're going to like where the restaurant first? Right? We sell the restaurant where it's do we decide what this we're going to have? Or we decide where we're going to go eat, you know?

Alan Berg: 10:14

I say this to caterers all the time and it blows their mind because I asked them that question and I said, okay, we're going to go out to dinner tonight. Are we going to choose the restaurant? Are we going to choose the dish? Now I get it. That if you're in Chicago, you live in Chicago and you might be like, Oh, I am tasting what right from somebody's place. There. It's like the original, deep dish place. I forget what the two of them. I know there's a.

Mike Zabrin: 10:35

Lumo

Alan Berg: 10:36

Yeah, like women, and if you're thinking, all right, we're going to go to little Mounties and you're going to have X, but you know what, when you show up at Lou Malnati's and the waiter says we have a special tonight, are you listening? Yeah. Yeah. You're listening. So you could still change your mind on what you're going to eat, but you're still at Luma noughties, right? So why Decatur is put their menus out and say, here's the food we can serve when you haven't chosen the caterer yet?

Mike Zabrin: 11:02

Another quote in your book, you say I see lists of people. Products and services that look like my attic stuff goes in, but nothing ever comes out. I once did a sales training for a venue that had 12 different chicken dishes on their menu.

Alan Berg: 11:16

no joke. So I was doing sales training for a venue in Maryland, a venue group. And before I went there, they said, let us send you our. Materials. I said, great. Send me your materials. I'm expecting to get like a brochure or pages stapled together. Two, three inch thick binder is one for corporate work. And one for weddings. I was like, Ugh. I mean, this box shows up. I'm like, what the heck is this? I'm looking through the wedding one. And when I got to the chicken section, there were 12 different chicken dishes with photos, full-page photos. And I asked them, I said, How many dishes do people actually choose? I'm like out of these 12, which ones did they choose? And it was two. I said, so why the other 10? And they said, well, you know, somebody asked us, can you do chicken Kiev? Yes. And it ended up on the menu. Somebody said, can you do chicken cacciatore? Yes. And it ended up on the menu. I said, just because that couple wanted it. What you need to do is put the two pages in, keep the other 10 pages aside. And if somebody says, Oh, I see these chicken dishes. But, you know, can you do chicken cacciatore? Absolutely. As a matter of fact, let me show you what it looks like. Right. But what they're doing is getting them to try to decide which of 12 chicken dishes, right. It should be beef, chicken, or fish. Right. That's and that's what the choice should be. Now, once you've said, I want chicken, now we can talk about that, but it was just overload. And when I say it means it's like your garage or your attic, it's like, how did those 12 on up and up there? Well, somebody wanted it. So we put it in. Somebody wanted it. So we put it in.

Mike Zabrin: 12:46

I can't even think of 12 chicken dishes.

Alan Berg: 12:48

Yeah, the opposite of that is, and it's funny, I'll use a chicken story. I was in Denton, Texas one time, and I was doing training at this venue and I thought it was going to have dinner with the client, but he had something with his family. So I ended up being on my own. So I went onto Facebook and I said, Hey friends, I'm in Denton, Texas. Where should I go to dinner? And people came back and somebody said you should go to this town. It was about 20 minutes away and go to babes and get fried chicken. I was like, Ooh, fried chicken. Sounds good right about now. Why not? I got some time I can take the 20 minutes. So I look it up on the map and I go in and I go to this town and this was like this tiny little don't blink town, like a cross street. Right. And babes is this building clearly from the early 19 hundreds, if not older brick building with a big. Metal chicken sculpture outside. And I walk in, it was getting kind of late at that point. I walk in and I said, you just one. And they sent me down, the waitress comes over and says, what do you have? I said, I didn't get a menu. She said, well, we only do chicken. I say, and we serve at five different ways. I said, well, my friend told me I should come here for fried chicken. She said, well, okay then. And she starts, turns and walks away. I was like, Oh, excuse me. What else do I, what else can I have? And she said, you get all the sides, whether you want them or not. So think about the decision, right? You're going to get all the side dishes you had to choose from five different chicken things, which was probably like roasted fried. And I don't know what else, the things were there, chicken fingers. I don't know what it was, but my choice was I went to babes to get fried chicken. And that was it. And she comes over and gave me like baked beans, Cole, slaw, macaroni, and cheese cream, corn and green beans. Scratch-made biscuits. And that's all before you got your fried chicken. Right. And then the fried chick, but what was the decision? The decision was to go there. Right? That was it. So what you want to do is you don't want to yeah. You want to talk music with them a little bit, but realistically choose the band. And whatever it is you want we'll play it, right? Like you want klezmer music. We'll do the whole roll night for you. Right? If you want country Western, we will play that for you. If you need somebody, that's going to be, you know, Tony Bennett, Michael bubl, whatever. We got a singer that can do that for it. You need a sax player. I got Clarence Clemons or, you know, bird or whoever. Right. I I got him, but it's not about that. It's do they like you, do they trust you? And do they want you. To be the band. Right. And that's why I talk about results. You're not selling, you're not selling the band. So the picture that you're going to show on your website is not the band. It's the pack dance floor with the wedding couple on the dance floor. And the band is in the back making that happen because let's face it. You're not the center of attention. You're the making it happen. But too many mans say, Hey, look at the band. Look at us. Not about that. Right? If you look on my homepage on my website, it's unlike most speakers because it's from behind me and you're looking at the audience, you see me, but you're looking at the audience. Whereas most speakers it's Hey, look at me on stage. And I wanted it to be, Hey, look at those people who are watching me on stage, because you could be one of them.

Mike Zabrin: 16:10

Just people engaging with your service

Alan Berg: 16:12

right. I love a picture from behind the band. So you see the band and people are getting into it. But what you're seeing is the packed dance floor because you made that happen. And your message to the couple is when it's late at night at your wedding. And the cake has been cut and all these different ceremonial things have been done. And you are, you got your shoes off because they're brand new shoes and there's feet. You're hurting your feet. We know how that goes. And you are dancing there and he's got his jacket off and you had just like hands in the year, having the greatest time of your life, you look around and you're surrounded by the most important people in your life, friends and family. And if you glance over at the bandstand, do you see us making it happen?

Mike Zabrin: 16:56

How do you go about upselling versus too much information?

Alan Berg: 17:00

Sell the results, not the stuff. That's how you do it. So if you're listening to them and finding out what's important. So let's say you're talking about music with them a little bit and saying, you know, when you're on the dance floor, what are you hearing? Right. Are you hearing what's on the radio today? Are you hearing. Top 40, you know, classic rock. Are you hearing fifties? Are you hearing old standards? What are you hearing there? And if they tell you that they're hearing you know, Chicago, the band, or they're hearing the Commodores or they're hearing in tower of power, right? You're like, well, we need a horn section, right? I need a horn section. Funktastic there you go. But if that's what they're looking for and you say so, so when you were here in Chicago or you're hearing tower of power, right. And you're hearing what is hip, right. Cause we're playing, what is hip for you? Right. You can hear all those horns. So what we need to do is we need to make sure that we have not just our regular horn section with some fantastic, we're going to have more than just that, because you want to hear. When you hear that crisp horn sound, that foam is because of what you're hearing from Chicago, what you're hearing from tower of power, what you're hearing from earth, wind, and fire, what you're hearing from them. And we'll make sure that happens. And this therefore, we're going to have those extra three pieces there. Right? But you're selling the result. You're not selling this stuff. I tell people if they're selling a photo booth, if you have a photo booth to upsell, never sell the photo booth, say to them like this, Hey Mike have you thought about something fun for your guests to do when they're not dancing? I didn't say photo booth. Right? Right. And you want them to go well, what do you mean. Well, you know, some people dance all night, some people dance sometimes and some people just don't dance for one reason or another. They just don't dance. So have you thought about something fun for them to do when they're not dancing and you want them to kind of give you that Scooby do it like woo. And you say, well, a great idea for you, right? People would dance and having a great time. Some people are not dancing. And then over there, right off, off to the side, you have people there just laughing, having a great time, mugging it up. In the photo booth and the best part about a photo booth is not what happens at your wedding. It's what happens two years later, when somebody goes into a drawer and they're looking for a roll of tape. And they pull out a photo strip from your wedding and they remember, Oh, that was a fun time. So not only did they have fun at the wedding, they're going to have fun every time they look at that. And I I have a photo strip right here from a wedding. I was at October 30th. It's right on my corkboard with my family photos. And I look at that and there's my wife and I'm transported back there. So how about we give your guests that same kind of fun, both at your wedding and later.

Mike Zabrin: 19:41

Sometimes when bands do send their pricing. I'm curious your opinion on bundling services together to create a package that sometimes to see bands offer packages that are multiple services. Bundled together. So this is our first package. You're going to, you're going to have a silver increment for the ceremony, jazz trio for cocktail quartz effort there not going to do an APS. Pat for the reception is bundling services package a good thing, helping alleviate choices, or am I excluding people who necessarily aren't looking for all that?

Alan Berg: 20:08

According to a wedding wire survey couples prefer to start with packages because it was easier for them. So here's what I would say to you and to other bands and other people in general is if you've been doing this long enough, you can go back and look and see what people actually bought. So that could be the ceremony, music, the cocktail music, that, and if that is a popular combination or some variation as a popular combination, Then say our most popular combinations for weddings like yours is this package ceremony reception then because you need to have all of those things, ceremony, reception there. Right now you could have three packages. So one could be as a smaller lighter package. One could be have this and one could be even bigger. And the key is to not just list what's in the package, but tell me why. So tell me that we're going to have a string quartet for your for your ceremony and our string quartet can do anything from classical music. Two variations on the latest music done in a string quartet way to give it a classical, modern feel, right? And then you're going to have cocktail music, and then we're going to have a jazz trio for the cocktail music, and they're going to play the right background music and don't worry. The sound level is going to be just right that people can still have a great conversation while they're having their drink. But it's the perfect background music. And then for your wedding, Previous reception, we're going to have this and this we'll be able to do these things, whatever, but give me the result, not just the service, because the service is now a commodity. The result is what they want from it. And it's there's an old saying nobody ever buys a drill bit because they need a drill bit. They buy a drill bit because they need to make a hole, but they need to make a hole like here. I told you about my corkboard. I needed a drill bit to make a hole, to put a hanger, to put the corkboard so I can put the photos there. Right. So why did I need the drill bit? So I can put the photos there, but if somebody thinks, well, you need a drill bit because you need a drill bit. No, I don't. And I don't need a band because I need music because you could pump in music through the house sound system. Right? Why do they want a live band versus a DJ, right? Or why do they want a live band versus a DJ versus pumping in through the sound system? Because it's different because to see the people they're playing it, to hear their people, they're playing it. And because the band. Can look out and say, Hey, don't stop this song, right. Let's go around one more time. Let's do this again. Right. We can do that when we're playing live music, the DJ can do some variation of that, but you can do that. And. It's different right now. Some people don't value that. Some people say no, either for budgeting reasons or because no, I want to hear Bruno Mars singing it when it's Bruno Mars. Right. And you can't compete with that because you might have somebody that sounds just like Bruno Mars, but you don't have somebody that sounds just like Bruno Mars out. Sounds like Madonna and Sansar. Right? You can't be that good on all of those. You can be good on some of them, but you can't be good on all of them. Do they value it because if they don't value the difference, it's not affordability. It's if they don't value the difference, they won't pay that they won't pay. But just because somebody has money doesn't mean they're going to use it for your service. Right? I, I bought a car late last year from a friend of mine in St. Louis. Actually I can afford a new car. But I bought a used car. It was an opportunity. I don't need a new car right. In a normal year. I'm away, half the year. It's right. And now I drive five miles and come home. Right. So I I don't need to spend that money. I don't, again, can I afford it? Sure. But do I need to, I don't need to write other things. I buy brand new, my microphone, my monitor, my computer, other things. I'm going to buy brand new and some stuff it's no, I don't need to. The package idea, I think is a really good idea. As long as you do it, now, you can do it this way. If you're having a, a small wedding these days, you know, maybe 50 people or so. Then this is a great combination for you and maybe it's five pieces, or we're going to have two pieces playing at your ceremony. We're going to have somebody playing at the cocktail and then we'll have the five pieces for your wedding. Maybe it's three pieces, four piece, whatever it is, right. If you're having a wedding, you know, between 102 hundred and 50 people or a hundred and 150 people, here's a great package for you. And again, you could have 12 variations of this, but you're only going to show them. The ones that are right for them. So if they're having 250 people at an elegant affair, they're never going to see the tiny package. You just never going to show it to them. But the idea of packages is you're making one sale. And then by the way, that package can have options. So let's say you do the package for a typical, 150 person wedding, and it's, I'm going to pick a number it's seven pieces, but the option is we could have a, you know, an extra singer or we could have. Add two horns a week at right. You could have those options. It's still looks like one package, but you can have those add ons.

Mike Zabrin: 25:10

We talk about selling the results of the service. I love in the book. When you mentioned a DJ told you he gets a lot of requests for his five-hour package, do you remember that? And you helped him with this response. Thanks so much for giving me the opportunity to tell you. About how much fun I can make your wedding. I don't have a five-hour package, but I'd love to tell you about my 35 hour package, the five hours you and your guests will see. And the 30 hours that I'll be investing to ensure its success, which you can see from my dozens and dozens of fantastic reviews. I love that quote so much.

Alan Berg: 25:43

well, you think about it, you know, you as a band, you don't just show up that day and start playing, right. You had to prepare and the preparation takes longer than the wedding day. Just like when I give a speech somewhere even if I've given the speech before I'm going to invest five, 10 hours in preparing for that speech, even if I've given that exact same presentation before, if I've never given it, like with wedding MBA coming up 20, 30, 40 hours, we'll go into a new speech. What are you going to see? 45 minutes, right? The easier it looks. The more prep usually went into it. Right. All right. So you're in Chicago, Michael Jordan, didn't just become Michael Jordan. Right? Michael Jordan worked in, matter of fact, Michael Jordan got rejected early on, you know, with high school and college, and then he worked his way towards it. It's putting in that extra time putting in the extra work. You know, we talked about me as a speaker and people doing speaking stuff. I studied the craft of speaking. It doesn't matter. Then a one of 36 global speaking fellows in the world. I watch other speakers sometimes with the sound off and go, what did she do there? That was so good. Or sometimes I cringe when I go Ooh, why did they do that? Right. It's that same thing. And I'm breaking it down and saying, Oh, I thought, I know this was the quote. Was it in this book? It's in one of my books, but I'm not seeking perfection. I don't want to seek perfection. I want to be the best I've ever been. Every time. I don't want to be the best I can ever be, but I want to be the best I've ever been. So the next time I give a presentation, I want it to be the best presentation I've ever given, but not the best I can ever give, because if it's the best I can ever give, I can't be better. Drop the mic and leave. That's it. I'm done. But never drop a mic. They're expensive. Don't drop the mic.

Mike Zabrin: 27:38

That's a great, mindset you say a huge mistake. Wedding pros make is not asking for the sale when they hear, especially when they hear buying signals. And one of these buying signals is couples asking for a discount. In fact, there's a chapter called how emotions affect your business decisions, where wedding pros will get upset. When in fact asking for a discount could be a good buying signal. Can you talk a little bit about discounting versus negotiating against yourself and asking for the sale?

Alan Berg: 28:04

Sure. So the first thing is why is asking for a discount to buying signal? Well, the first buying signal that you saw was when they made the inquiry. It wasn't the first buying signal. There was, cause the first buying signal there was is them deciding that they need to have music for their wedding and then deciding that they want a band and then going and searching and whatever, by the time they get to you, they've gone through three, four, five, seven, eight, 10, 12 different steps. So when they come to you and they ask you how much it is, that's a buying signal. People who are buying things, ask how much it costs when they're excited about it. And they say, Hey, that sounds great. You know, is there anything you can do on the price? It's a bigger buying signal because. If they didn't want it, they wouldn't be asking for a discount, like who asks for a discount on something you don't want. I'm not really interested. Could you do better, said nobody ever. Right. So that right. So discounting and negotiating, the first thing is understanding that you don't have to give them a discount. Just because they asked you don't have to. And I have many, many people have told me that after they hear me speak about this or read it, read about it, that they stopped giving discounts, just so reactively. And part of it is if you like getting a discount, when somebody asks you for one, you want to give them one because you like getting one, you figure they like getting one. So why not this caterer in California? She came to a mastermind that I did. And afterwards she said, I stopped giving the discount. I was just giving it because they asked for a discount. I was like, sure, here you go. She says, so I'm giving him 300, $500 every time. And that's my money. I said, yeah, that's profit. That's real money right there. Right. I even if she at $500 each, if she did 20 weddings a year, it's $10,000. Right. Right. So she just stopped. This is what I do with an audience. I'll put up a slide and it'll have an Apple watch and an iPhone and a Mac book. And I'll say, how many of you own one or more of these? And of course, lots of hands go up. I said, how many of you got a discount on it? And very few hands. I did have somebody to raise their hand and I said, how'd you get a discount on Apple products? She goes, my husband works for Apple. I was like, all right. All right, fair enough. But they also give to students and they give to military and stuff, but it's a fixed number. So if it's 15% off, which was what she gets at, you know, the employee discount. If it's 15% off, you can't negotiate 16. But you also can't negotiate 14, right? It's 50. And that's what it is. I like discounting to be both intentional and structural. So let's go back to the package idea. If you have people that will buy, let's say the ceremony, music and the reception, but they don't want to pay extra for the cocktail. Have an Allah cart price for ceremony. Cocktail and reception, put them into a bundle and then reduce the price on the bundle. So that's less than the Allah carte pricing, which sometimes means raising your Ellicott pricing. Right? And now you say, Hey, listen, this package here just saved you $350,$500, a thousand dollars, whatever it is over buying them separate. And if they say, Hey, I don't need that. Whatever you say. No worries. No difference in price because your discount was already bigger. If you have a price for a weekday that's different than a weekend price that's okay. The key is discounting structure. You have to hold to the structure. So if Friday costs, you know, X percent, less than Saturday night or X dollars, less than Saturday night, it is always that difference. You don't say, well, they'll pay the same for set for Friday and Saturday. So let's just take their money. You can feel that way sometimes, but. You're now negotiating. You're not discounting. Negotiating means you have to remember what you told everybody. Now I'm not saying don't do it. I'm just saying you have to remember what you told everybody. Whereas with discounting, it's here's the price. So let's say your price for February is different than your price for may, right? Because there's not as much demand. Well, if somebody says, Hey, you know, my friend's paying this much, right? They're getting married in February. You're getting married in may. Here's our price structure. Supply and demand says that we get more demand. We have to turn away more business in may than February. That's all you can explain it to them. But when you took two Saturdays in may and you charge them two different prices for exactly the same thing and they ask why, and you just start doing the whole tap dance, because you can't explain why they're a better negotiator than you. That's not a good answer.

Mike Zabrin: 32:27

people talk to, especially on the internet in today's day and age too. So

Alan Berg: 32:31

Oh, gosh, one of my clients actually out out near you, just outside the loop, they the, one of the owners of this venue was on Facebook chatting with some brides. And one of the brides shared this venues PDF. The owner did not the venue shared the PDFs like here, there's their prices now who knows how recent that PDF was. Right. And they're sharing this out there. They do talk and they do stuff like that. And I've also said to people, I say, Hey, how come you don't have pricing on your website? And they go, well, I don't want my competitors to know. I'm like, they already do. It's let's fate.

Mike Zabrin: 33:05

shopped you 20

Alan Berg: 33:06

Oh, come on. And not even just secret chapel, look what just happened there. Right. They, somebody sharing this PDF out there, they already know that's the worst reason to do that. I'm if you're confident in your pricing, That you are providing good value for what you're doing. It shouldn't matter. Who knows what it is right now. Some people will look and say, and they're going to judge you based on price because they're looking at their price and your price, and they don't understand the difference. And that's why better marketing materials, better branding, better messaging is important. And here's a line that I've used. It's probably in the book or it's definitely in some of my books.

Mike Zabrin: 33:42

Can, I guess

Alan Berg: 33:43

Go ahead.

Mike Zabrin: 33:45

this might be, it might be what you're going to say. I was going to say, you need to invest in yourself if you want other people to invest in

Alan Berg: 33:52

the new right? That, that absolutely that comes to advertising and marketing and branding. For sure. What for the customer it's, if price is the most important factor, when choosing the entertainment for your wedding, we're not going to be the right fit because there's always going to be somebody cheaper. So if you're going to judge based on price, there's always going to be somebody cheaper. However, if what's important to you in your wedding, Is having the right entertainment at the right time, the right announcements, the right coordination with it, with the other, the caterer and the photographer and everybody at your wedding. And what's important to you is having your guests walking out with smiles on their face and tired feet from dancing all night and telling you three weeks later that they're still remembering how fun it was. That's what we do. And we do it at our price because that's the results we provide. So you could have somebody else's price. Or you can have those results.

Mike Zabrin: 34:48

Can you talk a little bit about objections too and how that's also a buying signal.

Alan Berg: 34:53

Yeah. So if somebody is having a conversation with you and they bring up an objection, which I call a yes, but I'm not ready to say yes, but let me get this, the fact that they're still conversing with you and bringing up that particular objection is a good sign because they could just go away. Same thing with complaints, by the way, I, one of my clients, I'm going to do sales training for his company and the owner. And I were talking about talking to the other day and he said a good client complaints, a bad one just goes away. Right. Because the idea of complaining is giving the company an opportunity to make it right. So with an objection, if somebody says, you know, that's more than we were looking to spend, but they're telling you that. They're giving you a chance to have some reply to that. You're the first band we've spoken to that's a statement. That's not, it doesn't mean we won't buy it's a statement, but you could take it wrong. Just like you could take somebody sending you an inquiry and it says, hi, could you send me your prices and packages? And you could go out there looking for a cheap band. You don't know that. You can't tell that from those words, because they're sending those same words to every category. So you can't tell that. So an objection is. A way to find out what it is that they're looking for in terms of results and why they feel that you may or may not be able to deliver those particular results. So if you think about what the objection might be, right? Which again, very often it is those, like the price is the objection or you're the first one that we've seen, or we want to look around or whatever. You know, what you said before is you've given us so much to think about, we need to process it. And I say, if you hear that a lot, you're the problem. Right. You're going to hear it occasionally, no matter what, but if you hear it a lot, you're creating the confusion you're bringing in those problems in there. Or as I like to say it nicely to people that, you know, the problem is actually in your office, somewhere between the chair and the keyboard. Yeah. Between those two. And listen, I know I'm the problem. Sometimes I called up for tech support one time and I said, listen, I did it. I pushed something. I don't know what I did. Here's what I did to try to fix it. It didn't work helped me. And I've had tech people say to me, thank you for admitting that because so many people like, Oh, I don't know what happened. You know, I don't know what happened to me while they spilled their coffee on the keyboard or something. Right. I admit it right? Cause I don't call tech support until I've gone through all the normal stuff. So now I need, I usually need to go right to level two is what happens. It'll go onto that. But objections are an opportunity to talk about a result again, that they're looking for. And too many people are like, Oh, you know, here is an objection is no, let's do it. Let's talk. Same thing with price. I love when somebody calls me, emails, me, text me whatever, and says, how much does it cost for you to train my team? To give me an example. I spoke for a group in San Diego the other day remotely. And somebody reached out and said, Hey I've been a photographer for 20 years and I want to be redoing my prices and packages. And I think you can help me with that. Can I get an hour of your time now? I don't start usually with people with an hour of my time. I start with two hours and then we can do by a half hour after that. So I could have read into his message, you know, how he wants to buy an hour of my time, but I'm going to go back to him. I'm going to tell him it's two hours. So I went back and I said, You know, thanks so much for reaching out, you know, 20 years in business, you know, with customers have changed the way they buy us change. It's a really good idea to do that. Mike I can definitely help you with that. I usually start with a two hour consultation. We can record the whole thing and we can talk about more than just your prices, because more things were involved. Should you put them on your website? How do you do it? How do you respond in an email and all that? And that's going to be two hours at $699. Did you have any other questions or would you like to schedule. He could've come back and said, Oh, I only did an hour. He came back and said, sold in all caps with an exclamation point. Right. So I didn't say, well, he asked for an hour and I offered to, he could have said, I only need an hour. He didn't. He said done. Right. This is a, and again, I don't know, who's watching on video or who's not, but here's, if you don't ask the answer's always no, right.

Mike Zabrin: 39:18

I like your other quote. The answer is yes. Now what's the question.

Alan Berg: 39:21

That's a question. That's the best customer service customer comes over. Can I ask you something? Yes, you can. And the answer is yes. What's your question, right? Right. That's the best because that's customer service.

Mike Zabrin: 39:33

Could you talk a little bit about ghosting and how you've helped clients of yours when couples back

Alan Berg: 39:42

Yeah. So let's first talk about what ghosting is. Ghosting is someone makes an inquiry, you respond to them and then you don't hear back. Or maybe you do hear back and then you responded again and you don't hear back, but at some point the conversation just stops. So there's three possible outcomes from getting an inquiry and you reply, you can get them to say yes, at some point they could tell you no, at some point, or you could hear nothing, which is the worst of those three.

Mike Zabrin: 40:13

To hear the word? No, I mean,

Alan Berg: 40:15

It's actually the ghosting. And here's why. Yes means yes. Right? No means we've chosen someone else, but you do have an opportunity because maybe that other band doesn't offer ceremony, music or something, and you might ask, you know, if there's something you can do, but at least you have a definitive band, but the ghost thing could be a yes, they could still be interested. So the opportunity that we all have as businesses is we get the yeses, we get the nos and if we still have inquiries and they haven't responded to us, They inquired with us, right? Who started this? You started this, I didn't start this. You started, right. Somebody went to your website, Mike filled out your contact form. You sent the reply and they don't reply back to you. Wait a minute. I didn't just call you randomly out of the blue. You came to me. So theoretically, a hundred percent of the people that reach out to you should respond theoretically. It doesn't happen. And it still boggles my mind. Now, maybe through wedding wire or the knot, you might not get, you know, you might not expect that the a hundred percent, because you do get some people who like this band also like that band stuff over there but through your own website, why would they not reply? And I get the same thing. I get the same people go to my website, fill out my contact form. I reply. I hear nothing. Right? So I've laid out in a w which is it over here? Mike this book is called. Why don't they call me eight tips for converting wedding and event inquiries into sales. I laid out eight, eight things and then a five-step process for follow-up and five steps. It's like my clients don't give up on a lead. Unless they've tried at least five times to get ahold of someone in the secret shopping. We do most wedding professionals try once or twice and they're done, that's it. They try once or twice. So why do people not reply to you? It's a couple of big reasons. First, you replied as quickly as you could hopefully use the same method that they reached out because they've chosen that method, email, phone, texts, live, chat, whatever it is, right. You. Reply back quickly, but does your message fit on one screen of their phone? Because, you know, and I know if you open, like when we're done here, if you open up your phone, Oh, what did I get? And you see an email Oh, look at that email and you open it up and it's two and a half screens long. You're like, eh, I'll get to that later. Right? I'm done. I'll get to that later. And maybe you will, maybe you won't. Okay. That's one reason, another reason why big reason why people ask for a high commitment immediately, which is ask for a phone call, ask for a meeting. Now, why are those high commitments? Well, if they want it to have a meeting, they would have said, hi, we'd like to arrange a meeting with you, but they didn't do that. Or they would have said, well, they would have called you actually, if they wanted to talk on the phone or they would, I've had this happen with a client where they get a message. It says, it comes in late at night and it says, Hey, can you give us a call tomorrow about whatever. Great. If they say, can you give us a call? Call them? But if they don't ask for the meeting and they don't ask for the call, you're being very forward because you're asking for them to make a higher commitment than just replying to a message. It would be like, you know, let's talk pre COVID or post COVID days. You walk into the bar and you see somebody cute at the bar seat over there. That's open and you walk over and say, Hey, I want to get married. Right. You wouldn't know that, right? That's a a little bit forward. What you would do is say, Oh, excuse me, is this seat taken? Right? And then you sit down and then you see if they're making eye contact, then you might reach over and go, Oh, what do you have over there? Oh, you're having a Manhattan. Oh, you know what? I'll have a Manhattan halls. Right. And you're striking up a conversation. Somebody reaches out to you. They've already eliminated most of your competitors. They like whatever they've seen, read, heard, or whatever, easier way into the higher commitments. Another big reason that people get ghosted is you give people things to do and see that are not responding to you. In other words, you attached your brochure. Okay. So they opened it up on their phone and I challenge everybody listening to this. If you have any PDFs or any documents that you would send to someone, send it to yourself and open it on your phone and see what it looks like and what it looks like is tiny print. Right? Or you gave them links. Go look at our YouTube page. Go look at our wedding wire, go look at the nod, go look at this, go look at that. It's and you're wondering why they're not replying to you. And you gave them three links and an attachment. And they're not replying because you gave them stuff to do that is not everything except replying to you. Okay. So ghosting comes. Self-inflicted where you send them. These links, you send them the attachments you ask for the high commitment of a phone call or a meeting, even if it's a zoom meeting right away, instead of easing your way into it. Okay. And again, the long messages, those are other good reasons there. And another good reason for getting ghosted is you didn't ask them to reply. You ended your message with, I look forward to hearing back from you. Well, good. There's no statement. There that's a statement. That's not a question. So what you want to do is end every message that you want to reply, right? Cause you don't always want to reply. Let's say you set up a meeting with someone and it's for tomorrow at four o'clock I look forward to seeing you tomorrow at four is fine, but if that's not the case, then what's the question that you're going to ask to continue the conversation. And this is in person. This is on the phone. So let's say you were an I we're meeting for the first time we're in Chicago, we're at a networking event and I walk over and I say, hi, my name is Allen. Right. And how do you do? And you say,

Mike Zabrin: 45:51

I'm well, how are you?

Alan Berg: 45:53

Hey, what's your name?

Mike Zabrin: 45:55

Mike what sores?

Alan Berg: 45:56

Ellen. You know, now if I don't ask anything else, it's going to, it's going to get real awkward. Right, right. It's gonna get.

Mike Zabrin: 46:03

It's really awkward.

Alan Berg: 46:04

But if I said, Hey, so what do you do? Mike and you say, Oh, I ha I have a band. That's a really bad, you know, I I play keyboard as well. I said, you know, what kind of band then you say, well, we do weddings. We do corporate. We do stuff like that. Terrific. You know, what do you play? Play bass. And we're having a conversation. And the more I'm asking about you, the more you're going, I kind of like this guy. Right. But then we've all met those people where they start telling you about themselves. And then they tell you more about themselves and then they tell you more about themselves. And then you're like time to get out of here. Right? It's the same thing in a message. It's the same thing in emails. It's the same thing in texting, asking them questions about the results that they want for their wedding easing your way in. So let me give you an example of a story. You get an inquiry, this, that this is somebody right after one of my masterclasses recently. Gets an inquiry and it said, can you send me your packages and pricing? Okay, that's it? Oh no. This bride actually came in. It was for a DJ. And she said our budgets between 1,015 hundred, here's a wedding date. Could you tell me more about what you offer? So he went back and said, thanks so much for reaching out. I would love to make, you know, bring great entertainment to your wedding and have you and your guests say it was the most fun they've ever had. Let me find out a little bit more about what you need, so I don't leave out anything. That's important. Have you already selected your wedding venue or are you still looking? That's a low commitment question because she knows the answer. She's not going to have to consult with our fee. Have we selected our venue yet? Right. She knows the answer. And that's what I mean by a low commitment question. So she comes back and she said, here's the venue. He goes, Oh, I'm so glad you chose that venue. It's a great place. I love working there. You're going to love it. How many guests do you expect that. Right. She doesn't have to ask the Beyonce again. So she comes back and she put in a number there. He said, that's a great number for that dance floor. Perfect. So glad you said that, are you having both your ceremony and reception there? Once again, she doesn't have to ask anybody. She comes back and said, yes, we are having both of them there. He said, Oh, I'm so glad because they have a beautiful outdoor ceremony area. And I have the perfect sound system to make sure that every one of your guests. Can hear every word of you. Beautiful vows. Okay. Results-based right. And then he said, have you guys thought about music yet? Or a theme or a style? And she said, well, we're thinking country, but we might want to add some Disney in there as well. Okay. Country Disney. Okay. Whatever. And he said, that's great. He said, there's just, there's some beautiful Disney songs that I think would really dovetail well with that. I'm getting really excited about your wedding. I'd love to find out more about how to make a great, can I give you a call now or would later today be better now? We were four messages in, right. He was four messages in, but they were quick. She came back and said, sure, can't talk. Now later is better. Six o'clock or seven o'clock. Six o'clock calls are at six, makes the sale for 22 and 95. She said a thousand to 1500 budget. He made a 2295 sale right now. Think about what, what happened? She inquired. She gave him some info. He paid attention to the thousands of 15, but he didn't cause he has things that, that go with. They're not maybe what she needed. But that whole idea of confirming the venue confirming it could be a date sometimes having ceremony and reception there back and forth. Almost every wedding professional can do things like that. And then after getting her excited, then he asked for the higher commitment to the phone call. That's the way it works. Too many people try to rush it.

Mike Zabrin: 49:45

Over these four emails are those just, these are just very short,

Alan Berg: 49:49

But on one screen, the question was always its own paragraph at the end. Right? So when she said, he said, you, have you selected your venue already? Or are you still looking? She came back and said, here's the venue. We were already selected it. That was very short paying attention to the fact that she was writing back short. He kept his messages short. Now, you know, sometimes Mike, sometimes they write you back the whole story, right? Yes. We've selected our venue. We looked at 25 different vendors. We selected this one, you know why we chose this one? We chose this one because they have a beautiful outdoor area. And the beautiful after I has flowers, but not just flowers. Oh my gosh. They have roses. It's not just roses, but they're pink. Right. You know those people. Right.

Mike Zabrin: 50:29

Very well.

Alan Berg: 50:30

But you mirror. Because the person that writes you long will read along message back the person that writes you back short soundbites, doesn't want to read a long message. So pay attention to that. So he was paying attention. Cause that's what I taught on this masterclass that we did. And just that little back and forth a little back and forth, right. Same thing. But you have to pay attention to what they write. So when she said Disney country theme, he responded to that. I had another, I got a client, actually, this this venue I was telling you about where they shared their document on Facebook, somebody did, they got an inquiry and it said where our theme is going to be pride and prejudice and nerdy. I don't even know what that means. Like I know what pride and prejudice is, and I, I know what nerdy means, but I, that mashup just, I can't picture that in my head. But when responding the client didn't even mention it, but they should have said, wow, you guys are so specific on your theme, pride and prejudice, the nerdy. I can't wait to find out more about, you know, what that means and how I can help you bring that to life. That's what they should have said. Acknowledge what they've written. They've taken the time to tell you that you should have written back with that, but they didn't. So paying attention to those types of things is really important because it makes you not sound like automated replies. At that point, it makes you sound more personal, but the idea of those little back and forth now, I will tell you honestly, sometimes those back and forth happened in minutes, and sometimes it takes them hours to get back because. They're working. They have, you know, lives other things going on. So the thing that frustrates wedding professionals is it's not happening in real time. That's what frustrates them. But sometimes it's on Facebook messenger in real time or on live chat in real time or on text in real time, it does happen. It's the wanting to rush the process because you're busy is losing you sales, losing yourselves because let's face it. Mike when you're with the customer. Do you care how busy the other people are that you're the business that you're trying to do business with? No. And your customers don't care either. That this one is they don't care either. So don't rush the process, make it nice and easy for them. Be the one that sounds like you were saying about my books, you read my books. Well, the audio book is my voice, but if you read my books, you're going to hear my voice. Even if you're reading the Kindle or the other paperback version, because that's the way I write your emails should sound that way. I can't tell you how many people have been emailing back and forth with me. And after the second or third one, there'll be like, You're totally doing that short email question thing with me. Aren't you now? And it's yes. And you just realize that because it was just so natural, it was just like having a conversation. Cause it's a conversation.

Mike Zabrin: 53:24

When you were like , this is my magic flashlight. I just broke all of the links and attachments and all of your emails, what you said in the not webinars I'm like that. Yeah, there it is. There it is. And the other thing too is social media. I never really realized how social media can really distract people away from you, even though it's your page, they're going to, you know, they're looking at a thousand things on social media,

Alan Berg: 53:45

Oh, forget, you know, YouTube. If I see a YouTube video on somebody's website, I will go to that video, start playing it and grab the slider and pull it over to the end to see if it pulls up that mosaic of all those videos suggestions at the end, because now they're sitting there going, Oh, should I keep looking at Mike's website? Or should I look at one of these 16 videos, right? No. Send them to Facebook. They are one click away from. Anybody else's page anybody else's page and Facebook is trying to get you to go to other pages and trying to show you ads. Right? They're trying to get you to do that stuff. So it's so easy to get distracted. That's why I don't like I actually don't have any social links on my website except sharing links. And the way of sharing link works is you don't leave my website. It just pulls up the little box. You can share the article or something. I have I'm this close. I have 11,900 Instagram followers. So I'm this close to 12,000. Right. And it's growing without any links on my website to Instagram, because a real social audience is one that organically wants to follow. You wants to find out what you do. Not Hey Mike if you like my page, I like yours. Okay, great. So our numbers just went up by one. And what did that accomplish? Right? It didn't accomplish anything. So for me, I don't want to send you to social. I don't want to send you to WeddingWire or the knot or Google or Facebook or any place else. I just want to continue the conversation that you started when you reached out to me.

Mike Zabrin: 55:18

Alan Berg. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today. This was so much fun. We were talking about wit wisdom and the business of weddings, upending of ideas, insight and inspiration from an industry leader. But Alan has five books out and they're sitting behind them. If you could see on video, the the crown.

Alan Berg: 55:35

Okay. Is Libra. Is this enabling an Espanol? so if you need, my books are all available in Spanish.

Mike Zabrin: 55:44

And check out his website, Alan berg.com one L Ellenberg. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Can we stay in touch with you?

Alan Berg: 55:52

Absolutely. Mike thanks so much for inviting me and that was Alan Berg for more information on Alan's website review and consulting and or sales training services to get a copy of his books or have Alan speak for your company, group or association? Visit www.alanberg.com. That's a L a N B E R g.com. His Instagram handle is at Alan Berg. Check this website out, www.shopalanberg.com to get a copy of Alan's latest book, which we discussed today with wisdom and the business of weddings. You're going to find a lot of good stuff up there. We talked about one of his books today, but you can get a three book bundle or another bundle, including all five of his books that a huge savings. Check it out. Thank you so much for sticking with us you are extraordinary. We'll see you next week.