When clients book their wedding team, it’s not typically a decisions to which they arrive at lightly. It has likely taken much consideration, comparisons and conversations to make their final choice. It’s no wonder that every day can feel like Christmas when they secure a wedding pro. They are eager to get started with including this person on the planning of what will be one of the best days of their lives.
Up to this point, they’ve been enamored by your website, convinced by your reviews and impressed with your expertise. They’ve been sold a vision of not just their wedding day, but also what it is like to work with you. This, unfortunately, is where for some pros that it begins to fall apart. Here are four mistakes wedding pros make after booking a client:
Go Radio Silent. This is where clients are sent a copy of their contract (maybe) along with a portal link. Pretty much all the requisite things they need to know that they’ve legally and financially secured a vendor, but nothing experiential that gives them a glimpse into the process or brand personality. No call, no email, no gift. Just dead silence.
Do Too Much At Once. This can be almost as bad as doing nothing or going radio silent. This completely overwhelms the client, by bombarding them with tasks, questions, forms, and meetings. Rather than instilling the client with the feeling that they’ve made a great choice, the client is left to feel more overwhelmed and alone than they did prior to booking.
Let the Client Run the Show. This hands the reins over to the client, letting them decide what to work on, how and with whom. While this certainly gives the client a sense of control and security, it will wreak havoc on your process and the process that your colleagues have come to know and appreciate. When this happens, it is terribly hard to regain the position of a leader or expert later in the planning.
Doing Nothing. This is the absolute worst. There’s no calls. No guidance. No emails. Your client is basically left floundering, wondering if they’ve made the right decision. This can lead to feelings of abandonment or for them to start making decisions on their own, which can cause major hiccups later in the planning process.
So how do you avoid these major mistakes? Develop an onboarding process that is reflective of your brand to keep your clients excited about working with you. Your onboarding process will set the tone for everything to come afterwards and establish a framework of how to work and interact with you.
Major 💎s
- Create an onboarding process for each service that you offer. Begin with mutual starting point for all of your services and branch off for each of their individual needs.
- Visually plot out your workflow to make it easy for you to follow– remember it should be easy and efficient, for you and your client.
- Integrate your onboarding workflow into your CRM to automate as much as possible.
- Offer a welcome guide to clients of need-to-know information they can use to as a reference resource throughout their planning.
Yesss!! Omg I literally just wrote a blog post on this ready to post tomorrow hahahahaha woooowww. It’s soo true and we wonder why the clients don’t refer us to people. I actually had 5 things, giving them false hope and information. Many of my clients go through this with vendors!!! Love it
Please send me the link! Would love to read. And of course, great minds 😉
Very helpful tips, Thank you for sharing.
You are so very welcome! Thank you for checking it out!
Thank You Terrica!
These are very helpful tips.
An interesting situation for sure. We are a high volume photo studio with good (not great) customer service. We are more value priced in 2020 and now have chosen quantity as a model. We had been low volume and high customer service for many years. Things change.
Once the contract is signed, we aren’t very connected, until before the wedding. It’s probably a mistake. As I said, we are value priced.
I think our clients want more contact. But frankly, I’m disinterested. I’m a wedding photographer and I work exceptionally hard on the photography, the finishing and the album. I’m not interested in the ‘friendship’. I want my leisure time back!
I have served 49 years and am 63 years old. I have given up 49 summers to be a great photographer. Back when I started, there was no internet for distraction. We sent handwritten notes. I feel that I must be responsive in minutes. I still love the photography, the wedding, the production. I’m not interested in the Instagram, the Facebook or the Pinterest. The customer can promote, or not, their wedding photos.
As I said, an interesting situation. We changed from selling experienced quality to selling experiences, quality or not. My firm interest is the finished album, you can forget my name or my brand. You will love your phots for a lifetime.