Why You’re Not Doing Your Job as a Wedding Pro

What is the goal of your wedding business?

There are a lot of ways to answer that question.  You might answer with a lofty mission statement, “to provide couples with the best wedding EVER!” Or you could list the awesome features of your product or service.  You could say simply, “My goal is to make money.”

No matter what type of wedding business you have, I know what your #1 goal has to be.  To quote the infamous “No BS” marketer Dan Kennedy:

“Sell something.  NOW.”

Your Real Job Description

This was a hard lesson for me.  I didn’t want my goal to be selling.

I wanted to focus on my love for our couples and helping them create a wedding that exceeds their expectations.  I wanted to dream up new ways to improve what we do to wow our clients.  I wanted to be the best.

Then one day we were talking with our marketing coach about all the many, many things we have to do to keep our business going.  The emails, the phone calls, the itineraries.  All the excuses for why we CAN’T just do anything else right now.  Then he said something I’ll never forget…

“Your #1 job is to sell something.  If you don’t sell something, you won’t be doing any of those other things for very long.”

Let me tell you, I did NOT want to hear that!

But what he said was absolutely true.  We were so busy focusing on the busy work of running our business that we’d lost sight of the essential ingredient: SALES.  And it showed in our income numbers.

As soon as we refocused on our sales goals, something magical happened.  All the “busywork” that wasn’t geared directly towards making money took a back seat, and our high leverage activities got the attention they deserved.  We started hitting our income goals every single month.

You can’t stay in business unless you’re booking weddings, and if you are focusing on anything else, you’re losing money.

That’s not to say that you aren’t going to book more weddings by doing all these things: helping your couples, being the best, wowing your clients.  You will.  But your focus needs to stay fixed on that ultimate goal of making the sale because you can’t help the bride or groom until you book them.

What You Believe About Money Shows Up in Your Bank Account

For a long time I was uncomfortable with my identity as a salesperson.  I thought it made me a “better person” if I wasn’t focusing on sales because it meant that I “wasn’t in it for the money.”

The truth is that our discomfort with sales is a symptom of a very disempowering belief that money is “dirty,” or that we don’t deserve to have it.  Your resistance to selling is keeping you from having the business and the life you really want.

Nothing happens in business until someone buys something.

You can’t deliver your excellent service because you won’t have any customers, and you sure won’t stay in business for long.

Spin that dis-empowering belief.  What if every time you make a sale it’s a sign of the high value you deliver (it is!) and each time you focus on selling it’s a re-commitment to delivering outstanding value?

Embrace sales as your #1 goal and the service, quality and skills you need to deliver to it will become crystal clear.  Oh, I almost forgot the best part…focusing on sales also means you’ll hit your income goals and actually get to enjoy the fruits of your labor.  🙂

What do you think about sales?

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