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Are You a Square Peg in a Round Hole?

Posted on 09/29/2011 by admin
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Unfortunately in business things change all the time, and some business people like the challenge of keeping ahead of the competition and coming up with new ways to do business and make themselves original and others definitely do not!  If you want to succeed in business long term then you have to be in the former group I’m afraid because your customers requirements and problems change and unless you keep up then your business will simply run out of people to sell to.

One of the things I like to look at when working with a client is how can we keep streaks ahead of whats already out there, what innovation can we come up with or new way of presenting our skills is there? If you can constantly think outside the box with regards to your business then you are definitely on to a winner.

Did anyone see Dragons Den this week? Two women were on there because they have come up with the idea of people doing their own Wedding Videos. Now this struck me as odd because why aren’t videographers nationwide offering this service already? Lets face it Videos have changed a LOT in the past 10 years, they used to be a novelty that people went for then the price of videos came down and down so people did their own, then the CLEVER videographers started doing videos to music almost like pop videos and they were everywhere on YouTube and now we seem to be going back to the DIY version but brides want them professionally edited, so its changed a LOT!

Other businesses have changed a LOT – cakes are more fancy and quirky, photography has got more artistic, everything has had to change to meet the requirements of the bride and unless you supply what your customer actually wants then you will get left behind. So how do you know what they want? Well the easiest way is to ASK! Keep chatting to future brides at every opportunity and ask them EXACTLY what they want, don’t try and pigeon hole them into what you are offering – its their wedding, they are the customer and they are the ones paying so make sure you listen.  And especially important is to ask when you DON’T get the business, ask the bride why not, was iit price (very rarely is) or was it what you were offering?!?!

 

Claire x

 

Have you heard? I’ve just released my latest book… Wedding Fairs – From Waste of Time to Goldmine. The book tells you EXACTLY how to generate a huge income from every single Wedding Fair you do and bring in all the customers you want from them.

 

 

 

Untargeted Marketing, Otherwise Known as Flushing Your Money Down The Toilet….

Posted on 02/24/2011 by admin
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The other day I heard someone suggest to a small wedding business that they should sponsor a local community magazine as a way of marketing…  Let just think about this for a minute….

Now I’m one of those people that assumes theres nothing in community magazine that I’m interested in and it goes straight in the recycling bin so the first thing you have to take into consideration is that a proportion of people wont even seen your ad or sponsorship.

The next thing you have to take into consideration is that (we’re assuming you are a wedding supplier and looking for business from brides to be) a lot of the people reading the magazine will be married or single and are not looking for wedding suppliers, and this will apply to a LOT of the readers!

Ok, lets assume that several people in the community AND reading magazine are actually planning to get married….. Let me put it this way, a bride to be comes home from a hard days work, flops on the sofa and picks up her local community magazine. She scans through the local magazine to get up to date on local happenings and maybe. just maybe she notices the magazine is sponsored by someone that makes wedding cakes, she looks at this with interest and makes a mental note that when she comes to ordering a wedding cake she will have a look at this supplier, then she closes the magazine and gets on with the rest of her evening. A month or so later she is in a position to book a wedding cake maker and she remembers she saw a local one in the community magazine, but the magazine has long been recycled and she cant remember who it is and so she gets on the net and finds her cake maker.

OK – one in 20 people that advertise in this way may actually get some work out of it but 19 out of 20 people wont! So – would you rather put your money into something that 19 out 20 people find successful and 1 doesn’t, or something that 1 person in 20 find successful but 19 don’t? Well, I for one hate wasting money so I know what I’d rather do. Of course people will tell you that those reading the magazine will KNOW people that ARE getting married – this is true! But how many times have you seen something in a magazine and thought it was relevant to someone you knew and resolved to show it to them only to realise a few months down the line the article or advert was still sat on your coffee table?

In order to get business the easy way you need to show your product or service to a targetted audience – in other words you need to tell people that ARE looking for what you are offering and they are looking WHEN you are telling them – if you put your money into marketing any other way then you may as well stand on your front door with a loud haler and shout at passers-by – it will be just as effective!


Claire x0x


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Wedding Fayres – Waste of Time or Goldmine???

Posted on 12/01/2010 by admin
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When I talk to wedding suppliers they always tell me that one of the biggest expenses they have is the amount they spend on Wedding Fayres, this is Great I say but they look at me blankly and tell me that some of the wedding fayres they attend they hardly get any bookings out of and some actually get nothing out of spending a valuable Sunday at a Wedding Fayre!!!!

Back when I was wedding planning I used to hate the thought of doing a Wedding Fayre because I’d usually been working all day Saturday at a wedding and it meant giving up a valuable Sunday so I wanted to make damn sure I was going to get a lot of work out of it!!!  So how I hear you ask do you get a lot of work out of it?

Well the easiest way to explain what to do is to tell you what to definitely NOT do! I’ve spent loads of time at Wedding Fayres, from the very expensive national ones to the very small village ones and the same things apply, so here are my top tips for what NOT to do at a Wedding Fayre:-

  1. Turn up late or go home early.
    How many times have you been at a wedding fayre and the person next to you packs up an hour early? Yes, we all want to get home and we all hate standing around when noone is about but you’ve committed yourself to be there for the duration of the wedding fayre so make the most of it. Packing up early looks unprofessional and is disrespectful to the brides that do turn up at the end of the day, after all, how would you like to go to a shop at 4.30 that you knew closed at 5pm and they already closed? You wouldn’t be impressed at all and more to the point I’m pretty sure you’d make sure you didn’t shop there again!
  2. Eat lunch at your stand.
    Have you ever wanted to ask someone a question when the person had a mouthful of sandwich? II bet you changed your mind and didn’t bother – well so will the brides! I actually went to a Wedding Fayre once and the person on the stand next to me was eating a Pot Noodle for over 30 minutes! lol  I admit I quite like Pot Noodles but can you imagine the mess it made and how it looked? Yuk! lol Once again it shows disrespect to your potential clients and will not make them want to work with you. I’m not saying for one minute that you can’t eat at a wedding fayre, of course you can but move away from your stand if you have to.
  3. Spend the days at on a seat behind your table.
    In body language terms this says I’m not interested in you, I don’t want to talk to you and I don’t want to be here! Ok – maybe you don’t but do you really want your potential customers thinking that?  I know a couple of people that attend wedding fayres regularly and I know they don’t get much business out of it and the whole time they are there they spend texting on their phones or chatting to each other and sat right behind their table out of the way – I kid you not! Are you really surprised they don’t get the business from Wedding Fayres that they should?
  4. You’re there to Sell, Sell, Sell
    The higher the product or service you are selling the less likely you are to make a sale or booking on the day of a wedding fayre, and if thats the reason you are going you’ve got it all wrong. Have you seen the people at Wedding Fayres that are incredibly pushy to the bides and are all buy, buy, buy – is it any wonder everyone just walks straight past them? You need to get clear in your head what you are at the Fayre for – it should be to get leads, nothing more than that and when you get that right you switch off your  ’Buy me now Bride Repeller’ and the whole process becomes much, much easier.


Ok, so those are my top tips for what not to do at a Wedding Fayre so what should you do?  If you want REAL success at Wedding Fairs then I have written a fabulous book on the subject, available in paperback or immediate download find out more here


Claire xoxo

 

 

Making History…..

Posted on 07/28/2010 by admin
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It’s tricky being the new kid on the block, and the new girlfriend for that matter, and I think its especially hard when you are older. You all know I’m 42 and I have a LOT of history, and of course so do the people I date. Now I’ve been with the same lovely man for 3 months and he IS genuinely lovely, he’s the same age as me, give or take a few months and has a LOT of history of his own, and there the ‘problem’ comes, or should I say challenge…..

In the last 3 months I’ve met lots of friends and even relatives of his and it’s all good, but people like to talk about past experiences, episodes and relive fun times etc, this is fine but of course commonly a certain persons name comes up and an ex’s name keeps occurring.I’m not saying this is one-sided, far from it, I spent 15 years with the same person so he features quite heavily in my history but I do try and refer to him as the anonymous ‘ex’ as much as possible.

Well the other night whilst out I must have heard a certain persons name, we’ll call her ‘Y’ over 100 times, OK, it wasn’t 100 times in fact if closely analysed it was probably only 2 or 3 times in reality but it felt like 100 times and you know yourself, when you are listening for a certain word it seems to appear everywhere – well by the end of the evening I had sufficiently wound myself up and made myself feel as though everyone on earth was getting at me that I could have stamped my feet and screamed at the top of my voice “Stop talking about bloody ‘Y’ “

I managed to hold it in until we got home, and boyfriend knew instantly something was eating me – this is partly due to the fact that I wear my emotions on my face and find it impossible to hide how I’m feeling and partly due to the fact that boyfriend seems to have a radar that detects my bad moods at 20ft which I suppose is a good thing but doesn’t give me much chance to concoct a really good defense in my head of how I’m feeling!

Anyway, mild argument ensued and I do mean mild because neither of us are big arguers and problem resolved in minutes, but I did end up feeling a bit of an idiot for my reaction, after all, why should someone not be able to talk about their history and the personal journey that has made them into the wonderful person they are? In fact if that particular series of events hadn’t happened in that exact way then he probably wouldn’t even be with me, and that doesn’t bear thinking about quite frankly.

The actual meaning of history is ‘the study of past events’  the key word there being ‘past’. We all have a past and its made us become the people we are, the only bearing it has on our present and our future is how we react to it, and this includes how we react to other peoples pasts. We all have a history, past events that have had an impact on our lives and the people we originally had those experiences with become a part of us good or bad, this doesn’t mean that there is any less feeling or emotion for those that we are with now, in fact sometimes past events make us appreciate those people we have in the present a whole lot more.

I agree its tough when everything you think of they’ve done ‘first’ with someone else, or places to visit have always been visited with someone else and it inevitably brings with it a little resentment or jealousy but the truth is it just doesn’t matter. I’ve eaten chocolate cake hundreds of times and it doesn’t mean that each piece is any less lovely, in fact I can’t actually remember the very first piece of chocolate cake I had….. Ok, thats probably a bad example but you get the essence of what I’m saying?? Whether you experience something with someone the first time, the last time or the 100th time, it just doesn’t matter, the important thing is to just make the moment count.

For now, I have chosen to put my ridiculous insecurities aside and embrace the stories and history that have made the man I love into who he is, how his character has been created and changed and how he has evolved into the person he is today and I have decided that the best way to move forward is to start creating our very own history and make it as memorable as possible….


Claire xoxo