How To Fix Four Wedding Business Bad Habits
Slow response to inquiries and questions. These days, “Slow” means anything more than by the end of the day. Anything past 24 hours is a tragedy. But, you can’t be in front of your email all the time.
Solution: Automate your lead capture forms to send them to the next step in your inquiry process, whether that’s scheduling a call (!) or sending them a brochure. That will keep the conversation going and gives you time to catch up.
Missed deadlines. For example, every couple is supposed to get a checklist two weeks before their wedding, but you’re sending them late or sometimes VERY late. Not only is it a big productivity wreck, but it’s pretty stressful.
Solution: If it’s the same document you send to every client, click here to learn how to schedule the send through gmail. But if you have to personalize it, create a template in Honeybook which will automatically customize it for your client send it out on schedule AND tell you when it’s been looked at. $35 a month for a virtual assistant isn’t a bad deal, I’m telling you.
Unpaid invoices. Look, only 40% of creative businesses are profitable. In the mad rush to get hired, wedding vendors lose track of how money is coming in or where it’s going, or invoices aren’t going out on time or sometimes not at all.
Solution: First of all, don’t commit to a job without getting a deposit at least, and don’t commit to showing up without receiving the balance. To ensure that doesn’t happen, automate your invoices. When you create a contract and invoice through Honeybook, it’s one click for your clients to pay you, you and your couple will both get reminded before a payment is due, and they have the option of automating their payments, too.
Not acknowledging that you don’t want to do this admin crap. If you’re like most wedding entrepreneurs, you didn’t get into this to get swallowed whole by emails and invoices, and that’s fine, but they’re necessary in order to run a successful business. Unfortunately, anything you don’t want to do takes longer!
Solution: Instead of ignoring it until you can’t, you can find ways to automate, eliminate or delegate them out of your way, so you can focus on the part you love most - the work you do with your couples and clients. Want to learn more? Join my mailing list and get my 10 Tips For Saving 20 Hours a Week In Your High-Volume Wedding Business.
And, if you do have Honeybook, and it isn’t doing any of this stuff you? Let’s talk: Click here to schedule a 15 minute call and we’ll figure out how to make you productive and profitable in the new year!
I’ll talk to you soon,
