There are many things that get us down as wedding photographers. One of them being bookings! Are you light on bookings for this year? For next year? Are you feeling discouraged?  There are some practical things you can do to help enhance your bookings with couples.

This post is not dedicated to getting more leads, but rather is geared towards those of you who have plenty of leads but can’t seem to book any of them. I’ll tackle “getting more leads” in another post sometime soon.

Just a heads up: all of the good content in this post comes straight from Dave Ramsey. Yep, y’all know I love him. He addresses some awesome steps in his book Entreleadership in regards to sales. 

Wait, I’m not in sales. I’m just a wedding photographer, trying to book brides!

WRONG!

You are in sales. Actually, no matter what business you are in, you’re in sales. You sell yourself. You sell your services. You sell your products. Sales is nothing more than making people believe that you are worth it. You’re worth their time and their money. You are trustworthy, and you are good at what you do!

With that said, there are 4 simple steps to closing a sale. For us photographers, let me rephrase that.

There are 4 simple steps to booking a bride! 

• 1 : Qualification
  You must first qualify your lead as a bride that can afford you, that will mesh well with your style, that is getting married on a day that you are available. Practical stuff! A qualified bride must have:
  • Money
  • Time
  • Need/Want
  • Power to purchase
• 2 : Rapport
  The second step, rapport, can be summed up in two words: common ground. To make a sale, you have to find a way to connect to your bride-to-be. This is where trust is built! I begin every consultation with plenty of questions, (brides love to talk about their wedding!) to get a feel for their style of wedding, their budget, and what is most important to them. 
• Education/Information
  Want to instantly annoy someone? Try selling them a product you know nothing about. Before selling anything, you have to know every little detail! Every detail of the packages you offer. Every piece of equipment you work with. The amount of each package and each product.  As Dave says, “If you wouldn’t want your mother to buy the item or service, then don’t sell it.”
• Close
  If you followed the three steps above, closing the deal is gravy—a natural part of the process. The big thing to remember here is don’t try to close too early. You’ll come off as pushy and lose the sale. Focus on what she needs. (It is her big day after all!) and cater to her needs as much as possible, without compromising the integrity of your business.

I hope this was helpful. I challenge you to take a step back, and analyze each of these 4 steps. Which step needs the most work? How could you improve? At what point in this process do your leads fall off the grid? Maybe you can enhance the quality of your consultation colders, your website, maybe you could blog more frequently. All of these build rapport. Maybe you need to simplify your package system so you can be more confident and knowledgeable. That would make it easier for you to educate your leads. Analyze where you are, and make changes. What’s stopping you!

To give proper credit, this was pretty much written by Dave. I just tweaked it to make sense for wedding photographers. To see the full article, click HERE.

xo!  Nancy

photo source