We talked about, “GET REAL Sales: Close ‘Em”. What else?

Here is the transcript and the deets on that chat:

http://weddingmarketnews.com/profiles/blogs/get-real-sales-close-em-with-saundra-hadley

Now I have to tell you it was super hard to keep up with the fast feed … so if I didn’t get to answer your question, please feel free to post it below and I’ll answer for everyone to see.

happy selling!

Personally, I have found it to be a wonderful tool reconnecting with long lost friends, college pals, my third grade teacher, wedding professionals, my son’s friends, local business people and more.

For my event planning business, we of course, have business fan page. Which takes more effort to add content, but it’s a good marketing medium to be all business, event photos and showcase my clients.

However, I will tell you that I personally “friend” my clients to my personal page. This works well for me. Wedding planning is a personal business. We are let into their inner family circle with all the joys and problems that may arise. Why wouldn’t I let my clients into mine?

For instance, it’s great at a consult for them to ask about my dog (Ranger Hadley) or my son. And if I post, I’m “off the grid for family time”, my clients tend to respect it and appreciate the fact I’m making time with my family. It’s personal. Transparent. Emotionally connecting.

For sales purposes, I look up potential clients on Facebook … it lets me see what they look like and see if they know some of the same people as I do.

Be careful; you can’t fib. You can’t make an excuse to a client that you had to cancel a business meeting and then you are FB posting from the bar.

Okay, so …. some people post too much information. Rest assured, while I am “myself” (always) on FB or any other social media, I do NOT post every movement I make. That’s what twitter is for, no? HA!

While I have friends on my Facebook, make no mistake that everything I do for social media has a “business-related” mindset. To be more direct: I don’t show my ass in public.

Which brings me to what Facebook should NOT BE USED for.

• Blabbing super personal information out for everyone to see. Okay, you went the doctor. I don’t want to hear about your yeast infection.
• Vomiting all your deep, dark problems. Why do wedding professionals want to discuss openly about their relationship problems?
• Attacking others. Ah, the Internets makes everyone feel 10 feet tall, no? As a professional, perhaps you should pick up the phone if you have something to say to someone. Calling people out reflects poorly on you. And will get you labeled as bat sh!t crazy.
• Not necessarily bad, but a couple of personal pet peeves:
• Quit asking everyone and their mother to fan your business page. People who WANT to fan your page, will FAN your damn page.
• Please use discernment when inviting all 700+ people to your luncheon that is located in Timbuktu. Take an extra second, and focus your invite list to your local demographic. Repeat offenders will get you unfriended.

Thanks for listening. Let’s remember out their in social media … the stuff you post, would you say it out loud to someone’s face if they were standing in front of you? If so, carry ‘on.

ps Anyone else want to vent about an personal pet peeves?

happy selling!

So here’s a quick recap, from a speaker’s point-of-view:

Things I learned speaking at The Special Events:

1. Being put in a hotel conference room across from the regular convention can be a good thing. I worried that I wouldn’t get any attendees to my session at all. First I competed with lunch time (12:00 pm presentation) and secondly I had fierce competition (Ivy Robinson was speaking and she is pretty awesome). The chairs were more comfortable and we had tables for laptops.
2. Always lay the ground rules before speaking. I did go through the table of contents (good idea to let everyone know what will be coming up), I forgot to mention not to record or video record my session. Just so everyone knows, since it was brought up to me several times. I didn’t mean to embarrass the attendee, it really caught me off guard. You should know she profusely apologized afterwards, she was new to conferences.
3. Cover your blouse when you brush your teeth before your presentation. I’m surprised I had any toothpaste left that was washed down the drain. Apparently my high powered battery operated toothbrush sprayed minty foam all over me.
4. It’s super exciting to see the maintenance workers have to bring in more chairs for people to sit, as there was standing room only. That’s pretty self explanatory.
5. Only one person left my presentation early. See above.
6. A wide room is a better room. The layout was a lot more cozy than the rooms at the convention center. Made for a better presentation and connection with attendees.
7. Don’t flip through slides so fast. Apparently I irritated a few by whizzing through them. Dully noted.
8. If you are going to quiz your audience then have the answers on a slide. But wasn’t that fun?
9. Make sure your posse eats before they come to your session. My girls were there to support me. But they looked hungry the whole time I spoke.
10. Be yourself and don’t worry. People would be SURPRISED to know how many times I wake up at 2am before I give a presentation. It’s not the worry of presenting, it’s the worry that you won’t get anything out of it.

Loved all the feedback from the attendees that would stop me on the trade show floor. You made my heart swell with pride.

Here’s a few video excerpts from some awesome people we met. (Thanks Kelly McWilliams for videotaping these testimonials):

For more fun, check out our 2012 The Special Events Recap … it’s kinda epic. In our own minds….

ps Leave me a note if you were at the TSE session … let me know what you thought!

happy selling!

Selling for Creatives

If you can’t make it to the session, that’s okay. Be sure to find me and say hello. I’ll be the pastey white girl, with no tan. The turtleneck is not because it’s warm here.

So are you coming to TSE2012?

If so, post a comment and include your twitter handle! 

happy selling!

We all know it happens. The wedding vendor community is uber small. Put your index finger and your thumb and squeeze them together and try to peek through, it’s THAT small. We look out for each other. We monitor other vendors. And we tattle.

I’m not talking about looking at other vendor’s stuff to get inspiration. We all do this, even if you won’t admit to it. This is normal.

From my event planning website, I have had a blog post completely stolen from my website.  Every single word, comma, and period was copy and pasted on a reputable online newspaper website (across the country), with the thief’s name as the “author”. A planner brought it to my attention and the person that stole my post, was fired. Ridiculous to think that the WWW was so small that it would not be found.

Blatantly taking another vendor’s proprietary and creative product and calling it your own work is so very, very wrong. This INCLUDES (and not limited to): sales collateral, videos, images, business concepts, company name, logo’s and anything else that you can think of lifting from them. It’s not cool. It’s not reputable. It’s slim shady and it’s wrong. It’s lying to your prospective clients who think they are looking at work you have produced.

In the recent months I have witnessed, first or second hand:

Business Concepts: Vendor A tells Vendor B a great business idea about adding to their current repertoire of services. A few months go by and Vendor B starts to promote the very same, unique idea. When Vendor A casually inquires to Vendor B about this unique idea, Vendor B responds that they had this idea in the works for sometime. Really? Then why wasn’t this disclosed during the initial conversation?

Business Names: I have a personal friend who had to go through this disaster. She built a brand that was absolutely unique. When I say unique, I mean, straight up developed a “word” for her company name that was created and cannot be found in the dictionary. She spent countless hours and expense branding her incredibly unique business name, only to have it stolen from someone across the country. She has re-branded again, only to find that yet another, uncreative business person (who is technically out of the country, but still in the North America continent) take the EXACT SAME name and creative logo. Seriously?

Images/Video: This is probably the MOST frequently stolen items from other vendors. New photographer “lifts” (a gentle term for straight out, gangsta stealin’) photos from another photograher’s website and plops it on their site as if they are images that they have shot. The thieves THINK they are being smart by taking images from a photographer that is out of the country. Like that makes ANY difference? My favorite part of this scenario is when confronted, the website designer always gets blamed. Riiiiiiight.

Sales Pitches/Collateral: A vendor shops another vendor in their own category pretending to be a bride. They listen to the vendor’s sales pitch, greedily take their proposals/agreements and then copy/paste with their own company name/logo. You would initially think that this would be only new vendors, alas, you would be wrong.

What’s a new vendor to do?

For one, find your own voice and style. It’s hard, it’s taken me YEARS to find mine and the courage to be able to be bold and stand on my own (see this blog post’s title for validation of this fact). If you do not have a portfolio, then do some pro bono work to build one. It’s that easy. Well, really, meticulously downloading and cropping out other vendor’s property to plop on your website is “easier”, but won’t get you far… you’ll be found out.

Believe in yourself and sell YOU!  

This blog post is getting long, so I will wrap it up. Quit the shenanigans. Some vendors won’t play around when it comes to stealing. They have support and funds to sue you. It’s not worth it.

happy selling!

I’m talking about your email signature or siggy. Have you looked at yours lately? What information do you have there?

It shocks me how many wedding professionals still have an email address like: awesomephotographer@gmail.com

Really?

It’s not that hard to get a domain name, host a website and then have a hosted email that would look like: firstname@awesomephotographer.com

Please… you want to be professional? Then look professional! Everything you do online will reflect what you are as a store front, whether you have one or not.

Then comes all the extra stuff after your name in an email. Your title, phone number, address and then the LOOK AT ME accolades. I know we all have it.

Here is mine for my event planning company:

saundra hadley
event engineer & owner for:
planning…forever events
………………………………………………..

Now I purposely don’t put my snail mail address on my email … as we schedule by appointments only and I don’t want someone to show up unexpected.

Don’t miss the opportunity to promote your website, twitter, facebook and more. Some people will click on it and some may not … doesn’t matter.

And … don’t forget how important it is to put what days you are open and your work hours. Unless you prefer being at your client’s beckon call at all hours of the day.

Be professional. It’s easy to get your domain name for your email address. I use GoDaddy but there are lots of other ISP’s to use. It’s affordable. And a must.

ps There is still time to hone your sales skills at the St. Louis Get Real Sales Workshop on Monday, December 5th. It’s affordable, fun and informative. Click on the link to find out more!

happy selling!

I’m flying in an airplane right now, coming back from speaking at WedSmith a fabulous wedding conference in Utah. I’ll be highlighting that conference as well as, A Wedding Preview Event that I attended in August. I’m behind. I know.

Back to the subject …

Yesterday, while speaking I had asked the audience a question and someone had mentioned that while she was at a sales consult, her prospective client told her that her portfolio was ugly. Of course, I had an instant cheeky come-back which I gladly shared with everyone.

However this morning I could not get this scenario out of my mind. The sheer audacity of some people.

Always remember: No one has the right to speak to you rudely or suggest you feel inferior about your work, especially when it is subjective.

I don’t care if it is a prospective client, your spouse, your boss, a friend, someone you bumped into on the street or sitting next to on a plane.

As Simon T. Bailey said yesterday, “What other people think of you is not your problem”. That includes prospective clients.

Next time, if someone ever treats you like that… close your portfolio book, look them right in the eye, and say, “If you feel this way then there is no need to continue this meeting. It’s a waste of my valuable time”.

Stand up to leave and on your way out the door, be sure to cuff him really hard in the back of the head. He deserves it. You are nobody’s wedding bitch.

ps Ever had something happen like this to you? If so, please share…

Happy Selling!

On Monday, December 5, 2011

GET REAL Sales Workshop is coming to St. Louis, MO

hosted by the uber talented:

simply and forever event planning

&

Vino Nadoz Wine Bar

Yeah. You read that right.

We’re having our sales workshop at a Wine Bar. Where else? You guys are in for a REAL treat … me surrounded by bottles of wine.

Now I hadn’t even promoted this workshop and we already have one person sign up. So for reals …. 20 spots: first come, first serve.

I could go on and on about it, but that would be redundant to the very informative eventbrite page with all the nitty, gritty details. Don’t be lazy, click over there and find out more …

And look, why trust me to tell you how fabulous this workshop is? Why not hear straight from the mouths of last workshop attendees. Huge thanks to John Jordan Films for capturing these videos.

Get yourself a Christmas present this year … the knowledge in closing more deals.

Sa-weet!

ps I screwed something up with my coloring of my font. But I’m too busy to fix it. Deal.

happy selling!

Let me know what you think?

ps More workshops are in the planning coming to a city near you! Contact me if you are interested in hosting one.

pss Huge thanks to Wedding 101 for their beautiful studio space.

happy selling!

Our local store has been in renovation for the past few months. With everything re-done, the store looks wonderful. Especially the dressing rooms! New stalls with fancy doors and the lighting is superb. What caught my eye though, made me stop and say “hmmmmm”.

Women know that when we start trying on a lot of clothes we start to divide them into groups in the dressing area. What we are going to buy, what we may be on the fence about and what we are not going to purchase.

Marshall’s in their infinite-always-selling-strategy, installed these cute little signs in various places inside the dressing room stall, to help you organize your clothes.

The first sign, “definitely” is what I noticed initially. I thought to myself, “How handy of them to think of this…” and placed my soon-to-be-purchased-new Levi’s on that hook. That’s when I started doing some investigation around the dressing room.

The second sign, “possibly” was another great idea. Makes sense, right? Because sometimes you aren’t sure about your purchase. It’s not a yes, nor is it a no. You might have to try it on again. Which is exactly what I did with a pair of Express pants.

The last sign is what stopped me in my tracks. “tomorrow”. I didn’t see a sign that said, “No.” or “Not Buying”. I saw something that gave me a little hope, that I may go home, kick myself for not buying that new shirt and come back tomorrow for the purchase.

See how subliminal the selling message is? If I’ve said it once, I’ll say it a 100x. Selling is a mind thing. Creating desire and filling the need.

Do you view your potential clients like that? Or do you get down and let the negative, creepy thoughts that multiply quickly into your brain when you haven’t closed the sale immediately?

Always have a little hope. Sometimes the “no” sale might be made today, but “tomorrow” it might be turned into a “yes”.

ps I loved the fact they used all lower case on the signs. That means nothing to you, except it made me happy.

pss I did not purchase the Express pants.

happy selling!