A super talented wedding photographer who’s beyond lovely, with a stunning portfolio and over 70 5-star reviews should be fully booked, right?
But yet out of 40 inquiries, only 2 booked…that’s a 5% booking rate, ouch. AND she’s getting ghosted a ton.
Oh and her prices are a steal.
What’s going on?
The first mistake is in her initial inquiry email.
Well-thought, she provides EVERYTHING her potential new client needs to know about working with her in the first email. No question left unanswered, how helpful is that?
It turns out, it’s actually not really helpful at all.
You see, sales is a process. And if you offer a higher-ticket service (i.e., a 4-5 figure wedding photographer), it’s not designed to be done in one step.
Consider that each step of the sales process should focus on just one thing - move your potential client to the next step.
Your website should move them to submit the form. Your emails should move them to schedule a consultation. Your consultation should move them to book.
Provide just enough so they want to move one step forward.
Revisit your initial inquiry email and see how yours stacks up. Or skip to the shortcut with my free standout email guide and get the exact wording I use in my emails - click here to get your copy now.
Connect with Erica
@theewingsstudio
Episode blog post
thesuccessfulcreatives.com
There's an extraordinarily talented photographer who's in my Super Attractor Academy. Her work is gorgeous. She's the loveliest human. But she was having an issue with ghosting. So she, looked back and she had 40 inquiries from the last, I think 6 months in two booked. So that means that she's booking at a 5% rate. That gives us a ton of room for improvement. That's the exciting news. As I started to dig into her current sales process and what she's been doing, it led me to a really interesting discovery. I think it's something that's going to help move your business forward, too.
Let's face it, most of us would rather be creating art than running a successful business, but we can 100% do both. My name is Erica Ewing. I'm a wedding photographer in sales and marketing expert for creative entrepreneurs. I'm here to help you define the life of your dreams and create a business that supports just that. Welcome to the Successful Creatives podcast.
Okay, so this particular wedding photographer sent me the 1st email that her new inquiry gets when they submit the form on her website, they get this inquiry from her and it’s so lovely. She spent so much time on this email and it was really very comprehensive. It walks her potential client through, you know, first confirming availability, sharing more of her work so they really can understand what she's all about, really understand. What they can expect to get from her. She explains the entire process really from start to finish, from booking to what happens after the wedding, how long they can expect to get their pictures. She includes how much is required to book her services, what next steps are as far as booking.
Honestly, it's everything that a new couple would need to know about working with her from start to finish. It’s so, so comprehensive. She definitely spent a lot of time really thinking about what her process is, and really thinking about how she could convey this in such a clear and articulate way for her ideal client. Right. How easy is that for her, for her new prospective client? To get 1 email that takes the entire process and really outlines it all so that they know exactly what to expect. But she was getting ghosted a ton. Like I mentioned, she had 40 inquiries over a 6 month period and only 2 of them booked with her. That’s a really, really low booking rate, 5%. I also should mention that she's definitely under charging for her services too.
Okay, so she's very inexpensive and what about that makes sense. Her work is beautiful. Every time I see a new piece from her portfolio, I'm literally blown away. Her work is beautiful. Her prices are low. She's so lovely, such a lovely human. And she's given her ideal clients everything that they need to know about working with her, about next steps, about everything. Right? More of what they can expect. Her style. She has a ton of 5 star reviews. Like what? What gives? What's going on? Why is she having such a low booking rate and why is she just getting constantly ghosted? Everything about this scenario just seems like she should be overflowing in weddings. So what's going on here?
Well, speaking of overflowing, it's the information that's overflowing. Her ideal client is completely overwhelmed by this email. This email, that probably took her days to write in order to make her client experience so easy. And they can literally read 1 email and they're going to know that she's the exact right fit for them. But that's not how sales works. That's not how the process of choosing a wedding vendor works. What we have to do instead of compiling all of this information for our ideal client and delivering it in 1 email, and thinking that 1 email is going to sell them on working with us. Is actually the exact opposite of what you should be doing here. What you want to do is instead of thinking about selling your client or trying to make their life easier by summing everything up into 1 thing, you really want to take your ideal client on a journey.
You're here to be a guide. You’re not here to be a sales person. This is a huge, huge distinction, especially if sales doesn't feel easy to you. If you feel like you're not a great salesperson. It's kind of funny because I teach sales, like my Super Attractor Academy is an entire sales system, but I created it because I don't love selling. I created it because it's the un-salesy way to sell. But in order to do this, you really have to take your client on a journey, which 1st means meeting them where they are.
Okay, so let's kind of back up to this situation, to this scenario here, and consider your ideal clients perspective at the stage where they're at. So they've found this photographer, they've landed on her website. So what are they thinking at this stage? Well, they're thinking, hmm I'm interested in learning more information. I wonder if this might be the right photographer for me. Right. That's it. I'm going to ask for more information so that I can start to figure out if this is who I want. They submit the form and they are excitedly awaiting for information. Right. Then in this case, they get back, gosh, probably a 3 page long email in small font. It's just a sea of words. It’s so hard to navigate. Yes, it's all the information that they could possibly ever need about the process, but that's not what they need right now.
So this is the really important thing to think about when you're sending emails to your potential clients, is what do they need? What's the 1 thing that they need in order to move to the next step? Okay, so your email doesn't have to sell them on working with you. It doesn't have to give them all of the information. It should give them enough to move to the next step. That's literally all that you want to be doing the entire sales process. So instead of going over the full price list, instead of going over what's required to book with you, instead of talking about the entire process from start to finish to after the wedding, know that they're not worried right now about what happens after the wedding. They're just trying to figure out, are you the right fit for them? Are they wanting to book with you? And you can get to all of that nitty gritty, logistics and process and all of that stuff at a later stage of the game. All that you want to be doing at this stage is getting that initial inquiry. To say this confirmed what I was thinking when I landed on our website. I was thinking this might be the right person for me. They're saying, right, I want to get more information. I want to learn more. So you want to give them just enough? That's going to get them to say my hunch feels right.
I was on the website. I thought that this person might be the right fit for me. Everything that they just sent me succinctly is leading me to want to talk to this person. It's leading me to want to take the next step, which as a higher ticket wedding vendor, the next step should be to schedule a consultation. If you're skipping the consultation piece, you’re going to be stuck at low, low prices. The only way that someone is going to book you without ever speaking to you is because your prices are so low and their # 1 criteria is pricing. Especially for something as intimate as wedding photography, where you're going to be with them the entire day, you're going to be the person who's in the closest proximity to them besides the person that they're marrying for the entire day. If they’re not interested in getting on a call with you, then that truly means that they're hiring you because your price is low and that's it.
So your initial inquiry email, or if you're like me, like in my sales system, I have a couple of emails to warm up and nurture this person to build that know-like-trust before you even get on the consultation with them.
But what you want to be focused on in this phase is just getting that person to say, I want to talk to you more. I like what I'm hearing. It's in line with what I've been looking for. It's in line with what I thought based on visiting your website, and I want to talk to you more. So if you are dealing with ghosting, think about what your pre-consultation experience looks like. Think about how much information you're providing in this email that you're responding to them with. Are you leveraging just the general principles of persuasion, things like scarcity, urgency, um, exclusivity? Are you overwhelming them with information because you think that's service, or are you providing an amount of information that's actually a disservice to them? Does your process align to just get them to the next step, to just get them from inquiry on the website to scheduling a consultation. If you're getting ghosted, you want to focus your attention on. Because they have already raised their hand to say they're interested now. Side note on your website, I do recommend putting an investment level. I just think that it's good business to be fully transparent.
If you're getting ghosted a lot and you're getting bummed out by ghosting, add pricing to your website now. Definitely do not add your full pricing again, because your goal is to take that person at that stage from a curious visitor of your website, to interested enough to submit the form and get more information. Okay, so to me, I always put myself in my prospective clients shoes and I think if I’m going to hire a high ticket service provider. So that's as a wedding photographer, that's what you are. I want to know the general price range. It's going to set me at ease more. If you feel the same way, then your clients will too. Okay?
Your clients will generally enjoy buying in the way that you enjoy buying. So to me, I always recommend putting either an investment range on your website or a starting investment point. Just to give people enough information, you should not have your entire price list on there. That's too much. That's going to encourage price dropping. You just want to let people know, put them at ease, that you're on the right page. And then you can give more information once they submit the form, give more information to them then. But be mindful of whether it's info overload, whether you're cramming all the information in, or if you're helping them.
Just simply get to the next step, right? What can you tell them later in the process? That you don't need to tell them up front. So what is required to book? They're not there yet. Right. You're skipping in this case, she was skipping like ten steps down the road. They don't even know if they want to be booking with you yet. So it doesn't matter. Like to tell them what they need to put down in order to book. They don't even know if they want to hire you yet. I keep saying you, but I mean her. They don't even know if they want to hire her yet, and she's already telling them what's going to happen after the wedding day, right?
I just wanted to share more about this because I felt like it was really helpful to see exactly what she was sending. And it was so easy to take this and look and see like, well, this is why you're getting ghosted. It's so, so clear. Once you sort of take a step back and think about sales as a process where you're not a salesperson, you're just a guide. And your job is to simply get this person from step 1 to step 2, and then from step 2 to step 3, and from step 3 to step 4 and so on.
Okay this can be done in a way that feels really, really good for you and really, really good for your potential client. Also, I hope that this episode was helpful. If you want more help with the email piece of this, you can click in the show notes. I've got my standout email formula, which gives some of the exact wording that I use in my own emails to just help you with this process. Okay? Remember, you're just moving everybody from step 1 to step 2.
Hey, are you a wedding pro? Who wants to stop wondering where your next ideal wedding is coming from? If you crave a stress free way to attract the wedding inquiries that you really want without needing to be on social media constantly, and you're ready to step into the sought after, fully booked wedding business you know that you're capable of, then I would love to invite you to the Magnetic Marketing Mastery. This is a unique experience that gives wedding pros the marketing systems and strategies that I've used in my own business, and taught 1 on 1 to help you create a business that is irresistible to your ideal clients. So that you can attract more of the clients that you want and ultimately increase your profits. I'm all about making dreams come true over here. If this is something that you are interested in learning more about, head to magneticweddingpro.com.