Tag Archives: People

Can Surveys and Polls Help Grow Your Business??

Posted on 04/25/2011 by admin
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I’m a BIG fan of lean marketing, and by that I mean the type of marketing that uses automated systems and techniques to turn people from strangers, into prospects and then into paying clients, this process is commonly known as moving people through your sales funnel, so the thinking behind it is……  The sales funnel is big at the top and you get lots of strangers go in there from various avenues and then you have a process in place that literally funnels people out until the paying clients pop out the bottom, and as long as you keep tipping the strangers and prospects in the top in fairly big numbers you will always get a steady stream of paying clients at the end – thats it put VERY simplistically but believe me it works, and not only does it work but it works very well and very cheaply so it not only saves you masses of time but also saves you lots of money too and I’m always all for that!

One of the ways you can use to fill your sales funnel is by using surveys and polls. I must admit this is one of my absolute fave ways for collecting prospects because not only do you get people to raise their hands and say they are interested in what you are offering but you also get to find out lots of information about how people feel about what your offering and whether you are on target with your marketing so it can be incredibly valuable. Good research can propel your business beyond words and can knock your competition off the map. Thisis because most people develop their product or service and THEN find someone to market it too, but if you start a business the right way round you would first find out what people want and THEN develop your product or service. Domioes pizza went from a single pizza restaurant to the multi-million worldwide company they are thorough good research. They had one shop and researched what was important to their customers, thinking that the answers would be something like flavour, texture, value etc but they found out that people actually wanted fresh pizza delivered within 30 minutes – and so that became their mantra – fresh pizza delivered within 30 minutes or you pay nothing! This skyrocketed their business and wiped all the competition out in one swoop – a little research was all it took!

When I was wedding planning I did wedding fairs and ran competitions while I was there but rather than just having an entry form with name and email etc I also asked them if they were thinking of using a planner, if they were what was important to them, if they weren’t, why not? The answers were amazing – they weren’t using them because they perceived them as expensive and they thought they would lose control of their day -valuable information to address when you are doing your marketing!

The key to surveys and polls is to make them REALLY easy for people to complete, don’t make them long and winded, just a few quick questions that literally take a couple of minutes and people are happy to complete them. You can even do them online to make it even easier by using something like Survey Monkey and you;ll gather lots of leads and lots of valuable information all at the same time.

 

Claire x0x

 

If you want help to sky-rocket your business to bring you the Wedding Wealth you want and deserve then my Wedding Wealth Program is for you, sign up NOW and lets get started right away to boost your sales.

Is Your Website About You or Your Customer?

Posted on 04/24/2011 by admin
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I love looking at peoples website, when I meet them on Twitter, Facebook, at a networking event one of the first things I do is look at that website to see how pretty it is and how much business I think it gets them. I actually did this before I started my wedding planning business, I had a look at local and national companies to see what their websites were like and to see if I thought they would be much competition and I was amazed at how bad a lot of them were and to be honest thought that some of them must be very good in marketing in other ways because there was no way they would get business through the website.

When the internet first came about people had websites almost like online brochures, they gave out information about the company and that was about their only purpose, but now that the the whole way we shop has changed and most of the focus is on the net unless your website has changed too then you are being left behind and there is pretty much no point in having a website at all!

One of the biggest website crimes I see is that the website has too many ‘I’s’ and not enough ‘You’s’ -it should be all about your customer and not about you because on the website you are normally only just beginning your relationship with your new, potential client. They actually don’t want to know about what you are doing, they want to know how you can ease the pain or increase the gain of the problem they are currently seeking to solve. By all means reveal yourself and talk about yourself on the About You page, if they click on that and read it its because they want to find out more about the person behind the product or service but the rest of the website should be about your customer.

I wont go into the whole ‘features’ and ‘benefits’ lecture again, I’ve previously written a blog post just about that but when you next look at your website, look at your home page and go through and COUNT, yes COUNT everytime you’ve said ‘I’ (or ‘we’ if theres more than one of you) and everytime you’ve said ‘YOU’ – ideally you should should have mentioned your customer  (the YOUS) FIVE TIMES more than you’ve mentioned yourelf, yes thats right, FIVE TIMES!!!!!

 

Ok – so get counting right now and see how you can immediately improve your website.

 

Claire x0x0

 

If you need help with this or any other marketing problem you have and what to increase your sales and your clients effortlessly then get in contact and join the Wedding Wealth Program - 100% of my clients have said that they were glad they did…..

Can You Sell More Than Just Your Time?

Posted on 03/10/2011 by admin
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When my Wedding Planning business started taking off one of the things that bothered me was the fact that I only had so many physical hours in the day which effectively meant that there was a limit on what I could earn. Of course I could raise my prices but the limit would still be there. Luckily with Wedding Planning I was able to train people so that they could work for me and I could in effect do more than just one wedding on any single day and when business was booming I was doing 4 weddings a day. Unfortunately, many of the professions within the wedding industry mean that it is impossible to clone yourself such as lots of stationery, photographers, designers etc which mean there is a ceiling on your earning potential right? Well no!

Many experts say that the mark of a good business is if you could go away for a year and come back and its still running, could you do this with your business? If you can’t then you don’t have a business, you have a job! And unfortunately for many if us the job we have doesn’t come with the perks of working for someone else because you don’t get bonuses, holiday pay, sick pay, company parties etc, etc.

So how can you get out of this time for money trap and start to build a REAL business? Well the answer is to sell your knowledge. We all have a whole ton of wealth and experience in our heads and this is what people pay you for, but what if you could put some of this knowledge and experience down on paper and sell it? If you’re a wedding planner can you do online workshop advice or sell checklists or planning guides? If you are a photographer could you sell a guide to doing your own wedding photography??  But claire, I hear you say, if I do that I’m going to lose customers!!! NOOOOOOO !!! You will NOT lose customers, if anything you will gain them. The people that will buy your guides are NOT the same people that are your clients, they wont pay your prices, BUT you never know, some may be so impressed by your expertise that they end up booking you!

So, if you want your BUSINESS to grow and to start earning a PASSIVE income, think about what you can sell. If you want help with developing the PASSIVE INCOME side of your business then click here now, the Wedding Wealth Program covers this and many other aspects of growing your business and soon you’ll be earning money in your sleep!!!!!


Claire x0x


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Are you ‘different’ enough to survive the Wedding Industry???

Posted on 02/23/2011 by admin
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Whenever I walk around local wedding fairs to have a look at what people are selling and how people are selling it you tend to see the same thing over and over again and I go to fairs from the perspective of a bride (no, I’m not getting married) but without sounding too sad and pathetic I try and put myself in the mind of the bride and walk around to see what appeals and what doesn’t. Of course not all brides have the same taste as me so the products themselves will appear to some brides and not others but some Wedding Suppliers are indeed ‘different’. This has got nothing to do with what they are selling, this has to do with the people selling them.

If you want to be different and really stand out in the wedding industry then you have to be ‘extraordinary’ and do things that none of your competitors do. If you ask any supplier what makes them different from everyone else then they will say things such as good quality products, great service etc etc – EVERYONE  says this so in fact they are not being different at all, they are being just like everyone else.

In order to rise above everyone else you need to raise the bar! When I was wedding planning I found online these gorgeous silver frogs with little gold crowns – they were really cute and tasteful and they cost me about £30 each so not cheap. Every time I signed a new client (which was generally worth about £3k to me) I would send the couple one of the frogs to thank them for choosing to do business with me and they loved them!

How many of you send your previous clients anniversary cards every year? Do you send thank you gifts for referrals received? One of my lovely clients send gorgeous hand made cards that she writes and send by snail mail to new clients (snail mail in this age of everything electronic can be incredibly effective!)  Do you go out of your way to make your clients feel really good about their decision to work with you? If you do they will be falling over themselves to get everyone else to choose you as well.

The key to going the extra mile it consistency – come up with extraordinary acts that you can do EVERY SINGLE TIME!!!! And do them!

I’d love to hear your comments about what you are going to start doing thats extraordinary in your business!


Claire x0x


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How a little NLP can help your sales rocket……

Posted on 02/19/2011 by admin
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When I tell people I am a Master Practitioner in NLP most of them look at me blankly as if I have started speaking an alien language. NLP stands for neurolinguistic programming and its a way of changing your thoughts and therefore your behaviours so that you think more clearly, communicate more effectively and are able to manage your thoughts, moods and behaviours more effectively, it is a series of techniques rather than ‘programming’ which makes it sound like some kind of freaky brain-washing – But how can some simple NLP knowledge help you sell more effectively?

Part of NLP is the ability to recognise that we all communicate differently. Have you ever met someone and immediately clicked with them and literally felt as if you were both speaking the same language, and yet another time you have spoken to someone and not got on at all and its been really hard work? Well this is in part to do with something called Representational Systems- we all have them and we all communicate using them and knowing a little about them can mean that you can communicate effectively with pretty much anyone, and THAT would help you in your business when talking to prospective clients.

We all fall into one of four representational systems, the most used ones are Visual,Auditory, Kineasthetic and AD. Visual people tend to be creative and think in pictures and use lots of words like see, imagine, picture, visualize. An Auditory person would use words like hear, say, listen, resonate.A Kineasthetic person would use words like feel, grasp, touch, get hold of and an AD person just loves lists and facts andlogic and would use words such as know, think, process and understand. Of course people don’t rigidly stick to this but you definitely find they has a preference for a particular type.

So how does this effect you and your sales?Well imagine (yes, there I go, I am very visual! lol) you are speaking to a bride that is typically AD. She will have in her mind a checklist of criteria that her new florist should fulfil and yet the florist keeps going on about how pretty and colourful the flowers are etc, and at some point she may stop and say to the bride “Do you see what I mean?” This is NOT speaking the brides language, she will feel no connection with you and will shop elsewhere. If the florist was clever though, they would listen carefully to the bride and what she wants, they could talk about how pretty the flowers are but they would also go through the things the bride has in mind, how fresh they are, how much they cost, how long it will take to set up, what time they will be delivered etc, etc and they could end by saying “IS everything clear and understood?” Your AD bride will be beaming and sign you immediately because you are talking HER language!!!!

The real art is to LISTEN to your clients, listen to the words they use, and talk to them in the same way and you will not only have them eating out of your hand but your sales and client numbers will rocket!

Happy Listening

Claire xox


If you want to increase you sales and propel your Wedding Business to new heights in 2011 then the Wedding Wealth Program is for you! Sign Up NOW, before all this months places are filled.


You need to know what your brides REALLY want to buy…

Posted on 01/08/2011 by admin
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When I’m talking to new clients I always like to start by asking the question above, what are your brides buying? Of course I get the usual answers of Wedding Planning, Invitations, a Wedding Video, Photography but are any of those answers correct? Well actually they are not, and that’s where lots of Wedding Suppliers marketing starts going wrong….


Everyone knows Dyson cleaners right? They are definitely one of the giant success stories of recent years, these strange looking, heavily price tagged hoovers have completely blown their competition away and one of the ways they’ve done this is because they identified EXACTLY what they target market wanted and delivered it in every bit of marketing they did with their fantastic slogan “The only vacuum cleaner in the world to maintain 100% suction, 100% of the time”  The slogan is genius and addresses exactly what their customers want but what are people actually buying when they buy a hoover? They don’t actually want to buy a hoover, nobody does, what people actually want is a clean home……. Lets face it, if someone tomorrow invented a system where all you had to do was press a button and all the dust and dirt immediately vanished from your house we’d all get it the minute we woke up wouldn’t we, and I’m pretty sure that most of us wouldn’t even care what it cost, hoovers would never come out of the cupboards ever again. So when we are shopping for a new hoover, we are NOT buying a hoover, we are buying the promise of a new home, just as when we buy a car we are NOT buying a car but a safe, reliable, comfortable way to get from A to B, the reasons for buying particularly cars may vary such as economy, status symbol etc but once again, if someone made teleporting a possibility tomorrow we’d not touch the car again!

So – what are your brides REALLY buying? A wedding is supposed to be the best, happiest day of your life so a bride buys things that she think will make that happen, everything she is buying is to enhance and make real that perfect wedding day that she has in mind.


When I started my wedding planning company I was constantly hearing from brides that they didn’t need a planner because they were doing it themselves and wanted to save the money, this was because I was trying to sell Wedding Planning, of course I was, I was a wedding planner after all right?? Wrong – I quickly reviewed my sales method and took on board the fact that I WASN’T selling wedding planning – what I was actually selling was an outcome! I was selling complete peace of mind for the wedding day, I was selling a wedding day that was going to go perfectly and all the bride and groom had to do was turn up, relax and enjoy the day, worry about nothing and know it was all taken care of, I was selling the happiness of all the guests, the knowledge for the bride and groom that all their guests would be catered for and looked after impeccably, my bride and groom wanted unique and special touches on the wedding day that none of their guests had ever seen before…… now THAT’S what my clients wanted, all of those things, NOT a wedding planner……..


So – have a think about what you are selling, whether you currently think its invitations, favours, flowers, photography, videography or planning, sit down and get clear about what you are REALLY selling and you will see your sales soar……


Claire xox


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How Can You Make Multiple Sales to Each bride?

Posted on 12/07/2010 by admin
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When talking to Wedding suppliers I constantly hear them say that the wedding industry is difficult because brides (hopefully) only get married once, therefore you are constantly looking for new customers. This is true……. or is it?

Have you ever noticed at weddings that there are always loads of other people there that are getting married within a year or so, or have just got engaged etc?  Your potential for sales with every single bride you deal with is enormous and you should take full advantage of this by keeping yourself prominent in the brides mind even after the wedding! Of course you can only take advantage of this fantastic opportunity if you’ve already done an exceptional job in the first place so I can’t stress enough how important excellent customer service is but thats for a whole nother blog……..

You have to remember that for every bride you work for you have a valuable bit of information – their wedding date! This gives you a fantastic opportunity to contact them at least once a year, send them a card celebrating their anniversary and their friends will see the card as well, you can even offer an incentive for every referral they give you, it doesn’t have to be money, it can be vouchers or if you are a cake maker send them a few cup cakes with Thank You on them – I guarantee when they receive them they will go out of their way to find you more customers because they will love receiving your gifts!

One of the nicest gifts I ever received was a gorgeous bottle of Champagne and box of Champagne truffles for recommending a customer to someone. It was fabulous and I was over the moon about it, admittedly the customer meant a lot of financial gain to them, way more than the gift but thats not the point, the point is I literally cannot recommend these people enough now – I’m literally their best salesperson ever and all because of a gift!

A previous client of mine does this kind of marketing fabulously now and every single year she gets masses of orders for anniversary cakes, childrens birthday cakes and christmas cakes from her previous brides – this is virtually NO COST marketing in action at its best and all Wedding Suppliers can do this.

 


Claire x0x

 

If you want your business to grow into the something that brings you the profit you always imagined then sign up for my Wedding Wealth Program NOW, its guaranteed to succeed!


Don’t Wait To Step-Up Your Bridal Marketing…

Posted on 11/25/2010 by admin
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Well its almost the peak engagement season of the year – more than a quarter of engagements take place in December so thats a hell of a lot of future brides you need to be marketing too. But if they get engaged  in December then surely you should beef up your marketing in January right? WRONG!!!  I know, this normally comes as a shock to most people but lets think about it for a few minutes, how many of those engagements are completely out of the blue ? I would suggest that about 95% of those getting engaged have been thinking/dreaming about it for some time and you can guarantee that in that time of dreaming they would have already started planning for their big day, they would have already started looking on the internet and thumbing through magazines so much that by the time the proposal comes they already have a good idea of what they want their wedding to look like.

Most couples book their suppliers within 3 months of getting engaged but this definitely doesn’t mean that they’ve only spent 3 months looking at suppliers, its much more than that so when the peak engagement season approaches, which it is right now you should be aware  that those getting engaged next month are looking at you NOW!!!! So dont wait any longer, get that marketing message sorted right now and reap maximum benefit.

Of course its also reaching peak Wedding Fair season- January -March and you should be fully exploiting this marketing opportunity too, sign up on this page for my FREE download on Top 10 Secrets of Profitable Wedding Fairs.(If you don’t get the download within 24 hours then let me know because its a new addition and gremlins keep appearing! x )


Claire xoxo

Is There an Age Restriction to Loving Without Limits?

Posted on 05/26/2010 by admin
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I live in the now, I preach it to everyone I know and I teach it in workshops and courses – to me it’s the foundation of being happy, so why, for the first time in years am I acting with a fear of the future, a fear of something that may not even happen?


I’m 42 and I’m single, I have no problem with being single, I’m independent and happy. But I haven’t always been single, I’ve had my fair share of long and meaningful relationships and also my fair share of heartache, in fact one relationship left my self-esteem and self-confidence so trampled and shredded that when the heartbreak inevitably occurred it felt good to have a different kind of pain. Having said that I picked my self up and evolved into the confident, self-assured and thoroughly fab person that I am today.

Since then I have dated lots, and I mean LOTS and I’ve been the dumper and the dumpee on many occasions but I can safely say that none of them have hurt. Mildly cheesed-off is about as bad as it’s been to be honest and that’s ok because that’s safe and I can handle mildly cheesed-off but do I want heartbreak again, is being with someone worth that possibility?  Theres a great line in Erin Brockovitch when Erin says  to George “Are you going to be something else I have to get over?” I think when we get older we are all a little guilty of living by that philosophy.


When you meet someone that you really like its like a slippery slope, almost impossible to stop the feelings but at the back of your mind is a voice that says its all going to go horribly wrong and the slippery slope you are on is a slippery slope to inevitable pain.

Up to now I have dated people for up to around 6 weeks, this is plenty of time to get to know someone, get a bit bored, move on and have no residual feelings – I realize now that it’s a strategy that has worked well for me, and its kept me safe, after all, our prime natural instinct is always for our own safety right?  I have even realized that the few of those relationships that could have actually developed into something were magnificently and heroically sabotaged by me, so that I ended up being dumped –job well done Claire!


I have dogs you know, I love them and adore their ‘give it 100%’ unconditional nature –no matter what, they love me, I go out and leave them all day and they don’t sulk, they are just pleased to see me on my return, I scream and shout at them because I’ve had a bad day and they try and understand, don’t take it personally and throw themselves at me when I’ve calmed down. You know where you are with dogs.


Am I a control freak? I dont think so –I just like to be in control of my outcomes haha…..So what’s different now?  Well the universe seems to have cottoned on to my grand plan and has resolved to scupper me! I’m at my 6 weeks point after only a matter of days. Much as I try I can’t get the person out of my mind, constantly wonder what they are doing and more importantly if they are thinking about me and if they are, what are they thinking – it seems a constant stressful, and slightly euphoric state! And its ridiculous quite frankly and rather pathetic – I’m 42 for heavens sake – Isn’t this what happens when you’re 18? I should know better shouldn’t I?


I always tell people when they’ve had a break up that the success of a relationship should not be measured on longevity, it should be measured on how it helped you to develop and grow as a person, how it changed you – that’s the mark of success., so maybe I should listen to my own words of wisdom, the outcome is not the most important part.


What should I do? Keep my heart safe and secure and let nothing happen to it, good or bad or should I jump wholeheartedly, build my wings on the way down and hope that at the bottom of this particularly steep and slippery slope that there is someone to catch me? I have a feeling that there will be, but actually, after the life I’ve had I know that if I do hit the bottom of the slope at full pelt I will be ok ,a little shaken and a little bruised, maybe even a lot shaken and a lot bruised but I’ll be able to get up, dust myself off and life will continue to be good….