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Notes from a Bridal Show

August 15, 2011 By 1 Comment

I worked a bridal show over the weekend and I saw some good things and I saw some not so great.

Now by work, I don’t mean I had a booth, but  several of my clients did. I was there to tweak their booths, and lend support. So, just like you, I was in on the planning, the load in, the set up and working the show for one person or another. It is a very interesting perspective.

Something else that made it interesting was that it was a local show. For me, working a show in my own back yard means I already know all the players, I know what to expect from most of them and am completley caught off guard on the odd occassion.

The misses:

One company had a beautiful booth, a double actually. They did a great job of showcasing their rental products. Well, maybe it was a little over-crowded, but still nicely done. So what’s the problem? I had no idea who’s booth it was. They failed so miserably at signage that even I couldn’t find their sign. If a bride did stop to admire a table setting or chair, I am sure they were handed some collateral but when tomorrow comes there was nothing there to make her connect that table to the collateral. What a waste!

 

 

click to enlarge. Oh PLEASE click to enlarge

Then there was David’s Bridal. WOW! One of my clients was right across the aisle and I had the privilege  pain of watching them for almost 2 hours. Repeat, WOW! They were like predatory cats laying in wait to pounce. At one point I looked across at one of the worse offenders and asked “What’s your quota for the day?” She was not amused. Two things, there is a HUGE difference between being up and informative and being overly agressive.  Second, the number one complaint of the brides I exit polled…the overly agressive vendors !

 

 

The hits:

Showpiece:

This is from another rental company.That skirt is made out of napkins and the sash is a chair tie! Can you tell that they stock a LOT of colors of linen? I hope they used a picture of this in their collaterol.

 

 

 

Swag:

This little swag bag was in the booth of every vendor that participated in the Wedding101 pavillion. I don’t know any of thier client that didn’t feel the love at some point in the day.

Contents:

  • bottled water
  • Ibuprophen
  • trail mix,
  • tissues
  • breath mints

 

Sometimes it’s the little things that mean the most.

Tomorrow some thing that were just very cool.

Filed Under: Blog, bridal shows, Marketing Tagged With: , , ,

What To Do When The Phone Isn’t Ringing

September 20, 2010 By 1 Comment

I was following a thread on a pro forum today about the sudden silence on the phone and in the inbox. The original poster was panicing because they had just done a very modest price increase. She was starting to second guess herself.

Here is the very first thing you should do when you find yourself in this position. Don’t panic and look for patterns.

Go back over the last few years of your business and look for patterns in bookings. You all know when to expect to be busy with weddings, right? They are seasonal, right? Well it only stands to reason thet since bookings mirror that seasonality you will have coresponding lulls in booking, ie. your phone ringing.

I will bet that you will see the patterns.

I know that for me, I didn’t hear a peep from the end of August until the middle of September. Not only did this season affect the number of brides I had calling but weddings were down and the business I did with restaurants was off. For the first couple of years it scared the bejeebus out of me, “What had I done to cause this suden downturn?”

But then I realized that it happened every year.Cool, I could work with that!

By following the patterns I also knew that October through Valentines day would be zoo city for my little business. This early fall hiatus became a time for me to recharge and renew. Just knowing that it happened annually made me relax enough to be able to enjoy it and use it to my advantage.

Have you taken the time to look for the paterns in your business?

Filed Under: Blog, Inspiration, Personal Coaching Tagged With: , ,

Are you a Leader or a Firefighter?

June 2, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Since I know all of my readers are going to make giant leaps in their business in 2010 I want to address some things about how you manage your staff and in some ways your clients.

One of the problems I have is that a client or one of the freelancers I hire comes to me with a problem or glitch my natural tendency is to jump right in and fix it. If you are a parent then you know the drill; it is so much quicker to tie the little darlings shoes as you rush out the door than to take the extra time to show them how one more time. The reality is that if you take that time to let them struggle you will save yourself much more time in the future.

As business owners, many of us are control freaks. When something happens with that little darling that is our business we all have the tendency to jump right in and just do it. The reality is that that attitude is going to limit your growth in the long run. In order to grow you have to let go and let others put out their own fires, or at least attempt to before you rush in to fix it. I know its hard, but just like the child with the untied shoe, if you give them a chance to do it on their own you not only free up your time but you empower them. Both of those are good things.

Your staff has to know that you trust them to handle situations as they arise. If you don’t , you need new staff. Yes I understand that there are situations where that isn’t the case but it is up to you to set those parameters. Once you have, you need to step back and let them figure out the solution on their own. Otherwise they are nothing more than a 911 switchboard with you the only responding firefighter.

Cory Miller wrote a nice article on Solving Your Own Problems With The 30 Minute Rule. This is a technique I use all the time with my clients. My website clients get great customer support and extensive tutorials, so I know they have the knowledge to handle most stuff that comes up. If it is an issue that I haven’t covered in their one on one then I go in and teach them how to handle it. After that, if they ping me with an issue we have covered, I’ll give them a half a day or so to try and solve it on their own. Please understand, that the sites my team builds are designed to be managed by the site owner. I give them the tools and support and then I have to let them learn the system. Some days it may take 5 or 6 emails back and forth to talk them through the solution to something that we could have easily done in about 5 minutes. Had I just fixed, I would be fixing it every time. By taking the time to let them struggle a little on their own first they 1) learn what they did wrong and either don’t do it again or know what to do if it happens  and 2) they get this great sense of “Hey,I did that”

Whether you are thinking of your staff or of your clients, neither one is going to die if you give them some time to figure it out on their own. If you constantly step in a put out their fires you are tying up time that you could be doing more important things.

2010 is going to be busy. Your time will need to be spent on leadership not putting out every tiny fire that comes along. You can do it. Just grit your teeth and trust.

Filed Under: Back to Basics Tagged With: , ,

Connecting the Pieces of Your Social Media

June 2, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I know that if you are smart enough to be a Think subscriber then you are already all over social media. The question is how smartly are you using it?

I was reviewing the marketing of a wonderful new consulting client recently and what struck me was that even though she had all the pieces of a great social media campaign they weren’t in place.  OK Christine, what the heck does that mean? Well it means that they were there but they weren’t working as a team.  Think of it this way, you can see a lovely collection of stars in the heavens, but until you connect the dots they are just random points of light. Draw the lines and you suddenly see that they are the constellation Orion and tell a powerful story.

D had a great Facebook page, Twitter, a blog, YouTube videos and a website but they weren’t connected.  She was putting in a lot more time and effort than she had to and still not getting the results she could have.  Just like the stars, when all your social media is aligned it can have almost magical powers.

So here is what I counseled her to do…

  • Get a plan for Twitter. Rather than just random bits, develop a repeating theme that your followers would look forward to hearing. I don’t want to give away my suggestions to her, but to get an idea look at how @foodimentary publishes food trivia bits every morning. Another good example is @GuyKawasaki, he publishes mostly just links to very cool news stories. Both of these two have a pattern to which you can relate. Also, neither are pitching anything; no spam here.
  • Use an application like TweetLater to load a bunch of tweets to post on future dates or times.
  • Be more systematic with your blog. Keep a tiny journal with you or use your phone to keep ideas for blog posts. Once a week sit down and write a few posts and set the publishing dates to post over the next week.
  • Use an application like Twitter Feed to automatically tweet each new blog post.
  • Set it up so your Tweets automatically post to your Facebook page.
  • Now, the big one…show links to all of your SM channels on the homepage of your website and you have closed the circle. All of your stars are aligned. From you homepage, your visitors can catch up on the collected wisdom you have Tweeted,  open YouTube to see all of your videos in one place, view all your connections on Facebook even  while they are subscribing to your blog. WooHoo! Orion has never shown so brightly.

By taking the time to setup a plan and a system you have freed yourself from the tedium and constant pressure to post, post, post.  Each piece of the puzzle helps to populate the other.  Your followers on one now have easy access to all of your wisdom on all your many channels.

Social media is an important tool once you know how to use it to your advantage.

Filed Under: Ask Christine Tagged With: , ,

Is Email Eating Your Life?

June 2, 2010 By Leave a Comment

In the early days of this website one of the things I used to go on about was email; how if you weren’t using it with today’s brides you were way behind the times. With the state of our inboxes today I almost wish I would have kept my mouth shut.

While it is true that email is still the primary form of communication with today’s brides some of them have gotten completely out of hand. The other side of that coin is that we have let them do it. A few weeks ago I sat next to a wedding planner at a board meeting and she spent the entire meeting replying to email on her blackberry. I know another planner that is notorious for sending email on her Treo while she’s driving. I won’t ride with her anymore. It is not unheard of for people to have 400 emails a day. Now I’ll grant you that 1/2 of them are things that don’t require a response like newsletters, humor or those “keep it going” chain letters but how do you sort through that large of a tangle to get to the stuff you need. For people like me that spend my day on a keyboard the constant ping telling me I have new mail can get deafening. Then comes the angry post on the forum that so and so doesn’t answer his/her email. Every little question a bride has is of earth shattering importance to her and if you don’t respond in a timely fashion –read nanosecond- she thinks you are dropping the ball.  What the heck are you supposed to do?

There is a growing movement to shut it down. More and more people are taking the step of putting an auto responder on their primary email accounts saying something along the following lines:

“I appreciate your email but I have made the decision to only check my mail at the following times: 7:00 AM and in the late evening. If this is an issue that needs a more immediate response please reach me on my cell phone.”

This way they know why they haven’t heard back from you. It also lets you pick up all seven or eight of those silly little questions some brides have and bundle the answer into on email response, saving you a bundle of time.

Another tactic that some are employing is if an email conversation runs into three or more exchanges they pick up the phone, settle it all out in one conversation and be done with it. Great idea.

Personally what I have done is set up multiple email accounts, gmail, Outlook and thunderbird. I have different addys running through each one. Depending on my work load that day I can keep one or all of them open. I also use IM for quick discussions and if I have an ongoing conversation there I can easily switch it to my cell. I have also shut down all my newsletters, if they have an RSS feed I can catch it on my blog reader when I have time with out it cluttering my inbox.  Just to give you an idea there are 700 unopened email in my inbox right now. If any of them were that important they would have called, don’t you think?

Filed Under: What's Hot Tagged With: , , ,

Pink Profits

June 2, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Weddings. That is the business we are in, isn’t it? Last month I touched briefly on the topic of GLBT weddings. This month I want to share with you not only why you should explore this market but I have advice on how.

As of now, five U.S. states — Massachusetts (2004), Connecticut (2008), Iowa (2009), Vermont (2009), New Hampshire (2009 vote, 2010 enactment), as well as the District of Columbia (2009 vote, 2010 enactment) — recognize marriage equality. Meanwhile, one state recognizes civil unions between same-sex couples — New Jersey — and several states have domestic partnership laws that grant certain benefits to same-sex couples. These states include Oregon, Maine, and Washington.

According to PR and marketing firm Witeck-Combs the gay and lesbian population is projected to be 16.3 million in 2011. Further more openly gay men in full-time jobs earn $ 18,000 a year more than the male national average. For lesbians, the premium is $ 12,000.

Couples in this demographic tend to be older and more established in their careers with more disposable income than their heterosexual counterparts. The fact that lesbians and gay men are not traditionally welcomed by society to marry means that their decision to do so – where it becomes available to them – is almost always taken very seriously.  Most gays and lesbians do not think of a quickie wedding in Vegas as their ultimate idea of getting married. They think of the solemnity and love encapsulated in the taking of public vows for the one they love and they are more than willing to spend to celebrate it.

Now that you have an idea why you may want to be more open and welcoming to this market let me share some tips with you on how to navigate it. I have several clients on the forefront of GLBT weddings. One in particular, Marcinho Savant of savvyplanners.com was kind enough to share some tips with me for your benefit.

How to Genuinely Service the GLBT Community

Dignity for all in the 21st century and beyond

By Marcinho Savant, Senior Event Designer

savvyplanners.com

All people want to be treated with dignity.  Don’t you?  So you’re an open minded, good natured, big hearted wedding and event professional who wants to serve the gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender and intersex market but don’t know how.

You’ll never stumble if you only remember how people want to be dealt with— central in this is knowing how YOU want to be treated yourself.

1. Be authentic.  If you’re insincere in your desire to work with this type of couple, it will be instantly and irrevocably obvious from the start.  Be sure, in your heart, that this is a personal mission of being a humane, civil person and not simply a way to capture another revenue stream.

2. Contracts:  Create a template that you can print only as needed (as opposed to preprinted boilerplate contracts), and adjust the typical Bride & Groom text to reflect the composition of your client couple e.g.:  The Brides.  The Grooms.

3. Forms:  Make them gender neutral and equal.  For example: “Partner one and Partner two”.  Separate is NOT equal.

4. “Walk a mile in their shoes”:  Well at least sincerely attempt to put yourself in their place.  Imagine how you would feel, being a GLBTI person, and seeking out vendors to help create YOUR perfect wedding.  Realize that GLBTI people are FORCED to “come out” to each and every vendor they contact: over and over, even when they cannot come out of the closet in their jobs, social circles and lives.  This will go miles in helping you understand their concerns.

5. Role Play:  Conduct client “intakes” with your team, staff or friends.  Perform these interviews with “clients” to get a feel for and experience with the GLBTI community and their needs.  Have someone play the role of a gay or lesbian couple or individual interviewing YOU for the job.  Record these sessions and play them back to see if anything said rubs you the wrong way in stark contrast to your desire for fairness and equality.  If you’re honest and open, you’ll hear the places where you’re uncomfortable or get tense.  Other participants will tell you, “hey… that wasn’t to cool”.

All people want to be treated with dignity and by offering the courtesy and respect you expect, GLBTI couples will feel ‘safe’ and cared for by your demonstrated civility and understanding.  They SHOULD!  If you’ve properly applied these concepts, you’ve EARNED their business and their trust,

Filed Under: Facts & Stat Tagged With: ,

Fear. Banish It.

May 10, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I ran across a quote today in a Seth Godin post that I had to share:

Uninvite the devil’s advocate, since the devil doesn’t need one, he’s doing fine

I just love that quote. How often do you second guess yourself?

Our industry is driven by ideas. Our clients come to us for the new, the unique, the innovative and the creative. Iff you allow the “what if’s” to swirl around long enough they form a tornado of fear.That tornado can wipe out your creativity.

I see this all the time in my clients. In today’s electronic age nearly everything can be changed at the click of the mouse. Be bold, step outside of your box. Think brilliantly. Uninvite the devil’s advocate.

Filed Under: Inspiration Tagged With:

When To Fire A Client

January 22, 2010 By 3 Comments

I sat in a meeting the other night with 10 other wedding professionals. It was supposed to be a board meeting for our local bride-of-chucky-1998-horror-movie-review-21049wedding organization but it quickly digressed to an all out trash fest of one of the brides for next month.

You see, half of the people in the room had already fired this bride. The only one that still had not was the planner. The floral designer, transportation company, the invitation designer and one other had already had to make the decision to walk away from the outrageous behavior and demands of this client. It is not an easy decision to make; I know, I had to do it myself this week.

When do you know it’s time to fire a client? For me, it is when I come to the realization that no matter what I do it will never be right with this client. Often it has to do with communication and for me, it usually has a component of extreme micro-management. For others it is a clash of personalities or a death by paper cuts scenario, what ever has caused it- it is in your best interest to remove yourself as soon as possible. The longer you keep trying the worse it is going to get.

As professionals that are passionate about what we do it is hard to give up on a client. Of course there is the money aspect. Hey, who likes to give up income?  Take a look back at some of the weddings you have done where your instincts were telling you that something was wrong. I bet that most of the time they ended up costing you money in the end. You bent over backwards to please the unappeasable. You replaced, added, amended and redid over and above what was originally agreed upon. In the end, they still were only marginally satisfied.

I have had to do this twice now. The first time was a on a very simple wedding cake. Well I guess it was simple, it was supposed to be buttercream with borders, nothing like most of the designer cakes I usually did. After three design consultations and nearly 5 hours of time spent with this bride I still had no idea what she wanted. At one point it came to me piping the same border for her to look at in 4 different tip sizes at which point she said “Let’s schedule another appointment so I can see some more ideas.” I’m still not sure why she came to me in the first place. Mind you it rarely took more than an hour to an hour and a half to design even the most elaborate cake.

I had worked with brides that I had done as many a 4 redesigns on, no problem. I have had brides request trial tiers if it was an especially elaborate design or we were doing some very specific color matching, again no problem. There was just something about this girl that my inner voice kept screaming at me about. In the end I listened to that voice and made the hard choice to fire her. At first it makes you feel like a failure. How could you not have made this work? Then at some point you realize that you just weren’t a fit no matter how hard you tried.

I called her consultant and talked it over. She completely understood; after all she was working with her too. I wrote her a very professional letter explaining that I felt she would be happier with another cake designer and returned her (non-refundable) deposit. I never regretted it, especially after hearing from the planner after the wedding. Nothing had been right, all the way down to the temperature of the A/C in the limo. That time my instincts were right.

So how do you keep this from happening in the first place? First off never be afraid to NOT take a client. Tell clients at every step of the interview process that if you feel they would be a better fit with a different professional you will happily recommend one. That way you don’t have to take them in the first place.

In the long run a bad client can do you more harm than any amount you stand to make off the wedding. They will kill your self esteem, try to ruin your reputation and generally make you question why you are even doing what you are doing. If your inner voice is screaming, maybe you should not be afraid to listen.

Filed Under: Blog, Building Your Business, Marketing, wedding marketing Tagged With: ,

Where You Meet Matters

January 19, 2010 By 2 Comments

Do you still meet your clients at the local Starbucks? Do you invite them into your living room? That may not be the best plan.

For many of us solo-preneurs having a dedicated off site office is just not something we have thought about or built into our growth plan. Heck, I work out of my bedroom but then I rarely meet with clients, it’s all over the phone and internet for me.  If you meet with clients face to face on a regular basis you need to think about the impression you send with where you meet.

This was prompted by a discussion I was following on a photographer’s forum. The original poster was moving into a new place and was wondering if he should turn his old place into a studio.  Great idea, depending on the location.  It was a 2nd story one bedroom on a side street. No matter how professional he made it, I still worry how comfortable a single woman would be going there alone.  It had better be in a great neighborhood. The thread continued with many people posting about their experiences when they moved into a real office/studio.

Let’s break it down. Brides will tell you that meeting at the local coffee house is OK. It’s a safe, public place that is easy to find. The problem for you is that you project the same image as every other wedding vendor that they meet there. There is nothing there to set you apart, nothing remarkable. There are distractions a plenty and nothing to stick in their mind.

If you meet in your home you are giving them too much information. Every home has its own drawbacks.  Even if you live in a show house designed by the editor of Metropolitan Home there are still a million personal touches that will show. Add to that the safety factor; do you really want to invite perfect strangers into you private space?  I sure don’t. I also don’t know many women that embrace the thought of being alone in a house with a stranger, especially if he is a man. I realize that it is often easier to meet at your home, particularly if you have children.  This is business folks; that isn’t always easy. The exception may be if you have a studio/workspace that is detached from the home.  Then the client is only viewing your home from the outside.

If you have a dedicated, off-site place to meet you set yourself apart. It is decorated in a manner that reflects your style. It screams professional, not amateur. Clients enter the space in a mood to do business, not chat. Unlike a coffee house, you have every possible sales tool at your finger tips. You just can’t carry everything in a briefcase. If it is in a commercial district it is presumed to be safe ground since there are other people near.  Unlike your home, your client only sees what you wish to present them, not everything about your life. All around it is the best solution.

Wait , you say! I can’t afford a place like that! You may be surprised.  I’m not talking about renting a corner office in a swanky high-rise or popping for commercial space in the shopping district; there are a million alternatives.  I know of two different wedding businesses in my small city that have added office suites to their property. They are tiny little spaces design for no more than meeting clients. If there isn’t something like this where you are you may consider doing it yourself.  Rent a place much larger than you need, divide it into small bedroom sized offices and rent them out to other wedding vendors. It pays your rent and they have a “business home.”

Heck, now that I think about it, my editor/publisher started his company this way in a restored mansion near the town square in Franklin, TN. He had one big room on the first floor.  I also remember photographer years ago that landed a similar place. It was a really cool building that a photographer had bought, built a nice studio and divided the rest up into private offices. She rented her office and had rights to schedule use of the studio space.  It worked out well for her for years. You could think of them as small business incubators.

There is a place that can be found if you put your mind to it. Oh, and yes, every single poster to that thread that had moved into professional space had seen a dramatic jump in their close rate. Just though I’d throw that out there.

Filed Under: What Brides Say Tagged With: , , ,

Personal Coaching

August 11, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I have to tell you about one of my coaching clients. I got a call from a very talented graphics designer in Canada asking for help back in May. Holly was doing what she could as far as social media [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blog, Branding, Clients, Marketing, Personal Coaching Tagged With: , ,