3 Tricks to Book the Wedding Without a Single Meeting

Question: How can I connect with a bride if I never meet her in person?

“I work for a venue and I am the coordinator for that venue. I am full service. I take the preferences of the bride and hire their vendors and design their wedding and coordinate the event the day of. Most of the time, the couples have not met me, nor have they been to the island.

Do you have any advice for the event coordinator who never meets her brides, and plans everything with the bride putting total trust into the coordinator?”

Answer:

Absolutely, yes!

Your relationship with your couples is critical, and since your interaction is all happening from a distance, your follow up has to be super effective.

Some strategies that work great for distance planning:

1) Communicate with couples using their preferred method of communication.

If you want to connect with brides, you have to do it on their terms.  Trying to get them to do what you want is a losing battle!

If your brides prefer telephone, use that.  If they like email (as most do) get used to sending good, detailed emails.

Some brides also like to text or use Skype when planning at a distance, so these are options to explore as well.  We got to the point where we were booking 30% of our couples without ever meeting them!

Create templates for their preferred methods so you won’t forget any important details.  Save email templates and telephone scripts wherever you work for easy use.

2)  Create a free giveaway and make it available to couples who sign up for your email list.  

Send them great free tips and information to prove your expertise and build a relationship with your automated follow up.

This is a MUST for wedding pros who don’t have a chance to meet with couples because the bride gets to know you from your email follow up automatically.  By the time she does speak with you, she already considers you a friend.

An informational series of follow up emails also increases the quality of your leads because they are warmed up and pre-sold with each email.

3) Put together other free reports and/or videos specifically geared towards solving the concerns of couples who are planning from a distance.

Think about the advice you give every couple, and use that as inspiration.  Create one report or video and you can use it over and over without doing any extra work to build these relationships.

Even if you DO meet with your couples, many busy brides and grooms to be appreciate it if they don’t have to meet with you in person.  The more tools you have to create a connection and earn their trust with your communication, the better!

How do you deal with couples who can’t (or won’t) meet with you?

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