3 Ways to Get New Customers For Wedding Planners- April 2, 2018
We don't have a lot of questions this morning. I just have one question in two parts. From Dorelis. Here we go. You asked about referrals and sales and what's the best way to get referrals? What's the best way to reach out to people? Uh, is there a system for this? Um, and then, you were hoping that I can give you some examples. So I'm going to try and break that whole question down into parts and see if some of these parts will help you out. I don't think you're asking me for the name of an app or a um, or a program like Salesforce. Uh, but if you're looking for that, Salesforce is a great place to start and there are lots of other programs as well.
3 Ways to get in contact with New Customers.
OK. There's basically three ways to come in contact with someone that you have not yet done business with.
Get a Referral
And those three ways are you can get a referral and the referral comes from someone you know, either someone in your family or a friend or a current customer. That's where you get a lot of referrals are from customers who have already done business with you. That's a wonderful way to get a referral.
Networking
And the second way to get new customers that come in contact with new customers is networking. And I particularly mean in person networking. So going to a networking group or making a, a presentation somewhere, or going to a chamber of Commerce, going to a trade associations going any place that somebody is, in public, that might be interested in you and you might be interested in that person.
Outreach
And then the last way that you can get a potential customers and bumping the potential customers is outreach and outreach has a lot of different parts. You can have physical outreach where you actually go and show up at the place where the customer is. The least fun - the hardest one is cold calling. Cold calling is hard because the person that you calling doesn't know you're coming. And so the likelihood of success with a cold call is much less than the likelihood of success if somebody knows you're coming. But you can actually go and knock on doors and show up where other people are. So that's one way of doing physical outreach. You can also make presentations to groups that might be interested in you or do workshops for groups that are interested in your subject. So, that's something that I like a lot because instead of talking to just one person who might be interested in what you have to offer, you'd be talking to a group of people who would be interested in what you have to offer and that that's a good thing.
So a showing up is, is a nice way of networking. And you just have to get creative about who would want to see you show up. And you're selling - you're a wedding planner? And so, uh, one thing you might do is you might get together with four or five or six people who make money on weddings and see if together you would like to do a presentation about how to put on a wedding. So you might get people who are florists to work with you, where you might get people who are photographers to work with you, or I think you're the event planner. So getting people who contributed to the event that you're putting together and see all yours group could make a presentation that would be of interest to people. You can make it fun, you can have hors d'oeuvres, you can do it during happy hour.
You can do it in a nice place. Um, you can, if you do it without people, you have a chance to get more people to the event. So create an event where people who might be interested in your product would be interested in coming and spending a few minutes with you and make it light and fun. Uh, that will be by my best, um, a recommendation for physical outreach.
Marketing is a way of making ourselves more visible
Uh, there are other kinds of, our reasons aren't physical. They are, you can email, you can phone and you can do digital marketing, which is social media. So you have all these other ways of reaching out to people who don't know you yet, and who would like to get to know you. And this is what marketing is: Marketing is a way of making ourselves more visible so the more people can see you, the greater chance. Or is there someone reaching out to you and saying, I'm interested in what you have to offer? Yeah.
How to facilitate getting in front of more potential customers
You asked for some specific examples of how to facilitate this. One really good way is to have two questions that you asked every single customer. If you can get in the habit of asking these two questions every time you have an interaction with your customer, I guarantee you your business will go up because this works. It worked for me. It's worked for everyone I know who has ever tried it.
The first question is: "Is there anything else that you'd like to add besides what you've ordered?"
And a good place to see this use local things. In Seattle, as an example, so I go to starbucks many mornings and Starbucks no matter how well they normally, and no matter how often I've only ordered my cup of coffee every single time the person at the register says to me, would you like your breakfast item? Is there something else we can get you?
Would that be all for you today? They haven't drilled into them and it's amazing how often that works. That works a lot and in my own personal experience where I had a wholesale distribution company, I can't tell you the number of times, I wouldn't say it's probably at least 50 percent, where the customer said, "Oh, there is something else in the identity of the little this or I do need a little that." I always had an, an item that was on promotion. Usually something that wasn't music, but it was related to music, like blank tapes or carrying cases or something. Cleaning materials. Something that was a, what we call it, an accessory. I always had something on special, so I say to my customers, "We have such and such on special this week, are you interested?" So that's a way of expanding your product base or getting more products out there.
That's the first question you ask a customer. Is there anything else you would like?
The second question you asked every single customer is, "Do you know anyone else who would like to buy from me?"
Again, that, uh, is a question that often gets answered in a positive way. It's the main way that I built my wholesale distribution business. I discovered that most people in the record business had other friends who were in the record business. (I talk about this in my upcoming startup-starter kit) So a guy who owned a record shop in Portland, Maine, for instance, new friend who owned a record shop in Austin, Texas. And he would say, "Yeah, this got down in Boston would probably like to hear about you." And by getting his phone number and his contact information and email, on the internet, from somebody who knew him already. It was a lot better way to reach out to them than just reaching out to them cold.
So ask for referrals from people who, um, who are already buying from you. The more you ask, the more they're gonna say yes. Ask for the big smile on your face. Give them plenty of time to answer. Don't hurry through this part. Ask in such a way that you expect them to answer you.
And then he also asked if there's some way to bump into customer that's better than others. And you, you said you think that you need to be face to face with the customer. I sort of agree. I think, in selling what you sell, I just have to put myself in the place of your customer and I'd say I want to meet you before I decided that I was going to have to plan my wedding. And so I think you need to figure out a way to get face to face, uh, in, in front of people. And I think the best way to do that, that I can think of is, is this idea of organizing a, an event with other people. Um, but I would always offer to go out and meet everyone face to face. And the more you do that, I think, uh, the more people will respond to you.
