Do you own a job, or do you own a business?

If you don’t know what the difference is… a job requires your own personal exchange of time and effort for money.

A business leverages the time and effort of employees or other assets to generate money.

If you run a photo booth company and have multiple booths, and have attendants running events so you can sit at home counting your money, then you’re well on your way to a thriving business.

If you currently own a job, and want to transition to owning a business, the key is to have well documented processes and procedures, and train employees to the lowest common denominator.

The goal is to have your product/service be fulfilled and client expectations exceeded by ANY of your staff. Your staff should be replaceable.

Now, in my business I do more than just photo booths. (We also provide DJs for events/weddings, and do live hosted DJ Trivia in bars & restaurants)

Last year my staff of 37 produced over 1700 events, and my time in the office is spent planning sales & marketing campaigns and writing policy manuals for my management team to use in hiring/training employees.

It’s quite the experience to read a raving review and write a paycheck for an employee you have never met.

What is the next step for you to take in moving towards a thriving business?

Bridal shows 101.

Brides go there to get information, NOT to buy. Perhaps 3% of attendees are in a “buyer” mode.

Collect leads, as many as you can. We do NOT use iPads or laptops to collect info, we use pen and paper slips…. BECAUSE you can have 5-10 people filling out slips at the same time. We collect on average 200-250 leads in our booth this way.

You have to have an incentive to register, we do a drawing for a FREE photobooth. Costs me ~$250 in labor, easy peasy.

Never stop following up.

Bridal shows are worthless if you do not have a systemized sales process.

What do you track your leads with? (If nothing else, use a spreadsheet). You need to maintain a LIST of leads. And regularly prune that list, deleting leads who say NO, or whose date has passed.

Regularly follow up with your list. Send out emails. Mail physical letters. CALL any phone numbers you have.

We run regular sales and promotions, and in between those we send out useful content and planning advice.

The bulk of our money from a January bridal show comes from May through October.

Next week, at the January bridal shows, the majority of brides will have 2019 wedding dates. They JUST got engaged. They are collecting information, and not ready to buy.

I can guarantee you, that I will be the ONLY company that is still following up with them 3 weeks after the show. Most people only send 3 emails, get no response, and wrongly assume “they must have booked someone else, someone cheaper, guess they weren’t my client”.

When in fact, they aren’t ready to buy… and when they ARE ready to buy (12-8 months before their wedding date), they buy from me, because I kept following up, stayed top of mind, and offered them a “1 year away” early bird discount in July 2018 for their July 2019 wedding.

Bridal shows are great, but they are just 10% of the overall sales and marketing strategy. They exist solely to feed leads into a finely tuned selling machine.

So don’t go into a bridal show thinking you’re going to get sales from the show… you won’t. You’ll get leads. You get sales from the blood sweat and tears of selling to your list day in and day out all year long.