Have you given any consideration to your follow-up sales process lately? It’s so important, and yet it’s often forgotten or underutilized by wedding planners.
Let’s take a minute to imagine two scenarios: You’ve just hopped off a complimentary consultation call with a prospective couple. They seem like a great fit! You really connected with the couple and feel like there’s a strong chance they’ll book your services.
Or you’ve just hopped off that same call, and instead of being sure they are ready to book, you left the meeting not so confident. They seem great but might not be a good fit.
Now what?
One of the biggest mistakes I see planners making is conducting a great complimentary consultation, only to just sit back and wait for the prospective client to reach back out to them. They sit there waiting for days, checking their email, and hitting refresh.
Spoiler alert: they never hear back from the client.
Why? Because they didn’t do a follow-up process! The follow-up process is just as crucial as your complimentary consultation process.
After every consultation, you need to have a follow-up sales process in place. Not only does this prevent you from leaving money on the table, but it also encourages your clients to make a quicker decision. And it allows you to make informed decisions on your business and learn more about your ideal clients.
There are different follow-up processes depending on the type of inquiry, so today, we are going over the four most common scenarios. This way, you can outline your follow-up process and book more clients!
Scenario 01.
Ideal Client: Successful Complimentary Consultation [No Proposal]
If you are a planner who has flat pricing and doesn’t need to send a proposal after your consultation, your follow-up process can be short and sweet.
Step One: Send a thank you email within 24 hours of meeting with the client. Make sure to include any details you said you would include and let them know they can reach out with any questions they have.
Step Two: Send a follow-up email eight days post consultation. Thank them again for meeting with you and see if they are still interested.
Step Three: Once you receive verbal or written confirmation, begin your onboarding process.
If you do not hear back from them after that second email, send one final reminder email four days later to wrap up and let them know their date is no longer on your calendar.
Pro Tip: Do not send contracts out until you’ve received verbal confirmation that a client would like to move forward.
Scenario 02.
Ideal Client: Successful Complimentary Consultation [With Proposal]
For most wedding planners, you will create a customized proposal based on your consultation call.
Step One: Send a thank you email within 24 hours of meeting with the client. You should include when they can expect to receive a proposal from you so they know to check their inbox.
Step Two: Send the proposal within 2-4 business days following the meeting while it’s still fresh in their mind. The sooner you can send, the better! Provide a deadline date of one week from the proposal for them to review. This way, they have a timestamp on when they need to decide. Also, let them know what the next step is to book you and that you will be following up again in a few days if they have any questions.
Remember: Under promise and overdeliver! If you promise to send a proposal within the week, send the proposal within 2-4 days of the meeting. Doing so will show you care about earning their business!
Step Three: Send a follow-up email two business days following the proposal to see if they have any questions or concerns about the proposal.
Step Four: Send another follow-up email eight days from the proposal date to see if they would like to move forward or not. Let them know that you won’t be holding their date past a certain day.
Step Five: Once you receive verbal or written confirmation, begin your onboarding process.
Scenario 03.
Non-Ideal Client: Successful Consultation, But Not a Good Fit
Sometimes, the hardest thing to do as a small business owner is say no to an inquiry. However, in order to continue building this dream business of ours and work towards attracting and working with only our most ideal clients – it has to start with us learning to say no when something doesn’t feel right. This includes saying no to those who just aren’t a good fit.
Maybe they expressed interest in services you don’t offer. Maybe your personalities didn’t mesh. Whatever it is, always get out ahead of it and turn down a client early on.
Sometimes we walk away from meetings thinking, “There’s no way they’ll book – I’ll just ride it out and wait for them to say no.” But what happens if they say yes? What do you do? You could put yourself in a situation where you’re working with a not-so-ideal client for months (or even a year plus!).
Step One: Within 24-48 Hours of the consultation, send them an email thanking them for speaking with you and gently share that you feel another coordinator/planner may be a better fit for them. This is also a good time to send referrals to other planners you know might be a better fit.
Unsure of how to word this? Get my Free Complimentary Consultation Workflow! Inside this guide, I share 3 Done-For-You Email Templates – including how to turn down a prospective client.
Scenario 04.
Ideal Client: The Client Says No
While we’d like to hope that every prospective client we’re excited about will book us – that’s just not always the case. As much of a bummer it can be, we still want to end communication with them on a high, positive note and show appreciation for them considering us to be a part of their day. Who knows, maybe they’ll change their mind and reach back out down the road! Or perhaps they needed a little more help than what your services provide, but they still saw great potential in you and will refer you to other friends and family who may be looking for what you have to offer.
Step One: Send an email thanking them for considering your business to be a part of their day and wish them well. If they mention that maybe it was for budget concerns, or they’re unsure they need someone after all – invite them to reach out should they decide otherwise (or find room in their budget) as it gets closer. You never know!
Pro Tip: When a client says no, we often want to find out who they pick instead. However, it is unprofessional to ask detailed questions on who they are talking to or who they decided to go with. I know some experts will say it helps us understand what we could’ve done differently, but oftentimes planners don’t do it for that reason. They do it to be nosy and only become self-conscious about who they went with instead. Plus, it could put the prospective client in an uncomfortable situation. It’s easier to just gracefully reply and move on.
The Follow Up Sales Process
Follow-ups can often be exhausting and eat up a lot of time. But that’s no reason to show frustration, jump ahead of yourself, or heck – lose faith! Life happens. And we of all people know how overwhelming wedding planning can be. We need to be patient and trust the process. Even if we fail to win their business, it’s important to remain professional and end things on a positive note.
Xo,
Jess
