They don't value what they can't see
So much of what you do to make weddings and events great, happens out of view of your customers. Are you getting paid for that time? Are your customers valuing the time you put in that they can’t see? In this episode I talk about ways to get them to understand the value that you bring, even when they can’t see the work you put into making the results amazing for them.
Listen to this new 9-minute episode for ideas on how to value the work you put in, both for yourself and your customers.
If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or visit my website Podcast.AlanBerg.com
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I'm Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you'd like to suggest other topics for "The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast" please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.
Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:
©2024 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com
They don't value what they can't see. Listen to this episode and see what I'm talking about. Hi, it's Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast. So much of what happens in our businesses, so much of the work that goes into making your events so amazing, happens out of sight of the customers. It happens in the kitchen, it happens in your offices, it happens in your warehouses, it happens in your factories. It happens before the customer gets the end result. And that's pretty much true with so many of the things that happen in our lives.
I mean, how many times do you see somebody creating your thing from scratch in front of you? Sometimes there's an open kitchen and you can see that, right? You might be watching them in the bakery or at the, what is that pretzel place in the airports that you're walking by and you get that smell and you can watch them making the pretzels. They do that on purpose. They want you seeing that, right? They want just seeing them going, oh, I can't wait till those come out of the oven. Right? So do your customers value the work that you do that they don't see? If you're selling photography as 6 hours or 8 hours, you're shortchanging yourself because what about the 1020, 30 hours you're going to spend afterwards going through photos, picking out the right ones to give to the customer, doing the editing or things like that video? The same thing with all the editing, right? What about the DJ's and the bands that are preparing all that music ahead of time, whether the band is doing different arrangements and charts, has to learn new songs, right. The DJ's getting all the announcements and all those things ready and grand entrances and all. And sometimes with video editing and all these other things that are taking all this time? Caterers, absolutely. What about dress shops, ordering the dress, all that kind of stuff? Great. Getting it in and getting it ready for them and then alterations if you do that and bustling and all those things, but people arent going to value it unless you make it part of the conversation.
And I might have said this one before, but I remember sitting, having barbecue with my friend Ron Ruth years ago in Kansas City, and he got an inquiry that said, how much is your five hour package? And he goes, another five hour package? I said, right, because thats what they see. Thats what they see. Theyre going to see you for 5 hours. Theyre not going to see you set up. Theyre not going to see your breakdown. Theyre going to see you for the 5 hours, but if you go back to them and say, thanks for inquiring, id love to make your wedding amazing for you and your guests. Just as you read in our reviews, I don't have a five hour package, but I would love to tell you about the 30 hours that I'm going to invest to make your wedding that great. Now that sets up a different tone, right? I had something similar where I was going to be speaking at a conference.
I was already speaking multiple times, and the promoter came and said, could you do another presentation? And I said, I'm sorry, I don't have the time. And they said, well, you're going to be there and it's only 45 minutes. I said, oh, no, I have the 45 minutes because I am going to be there. Although that would be taking me away from my booth. But yeah, I'm going to be there. I'll have the 45 minutes. What I don't have is the 20 to 30 hours that I put into every presentation. If it's a new presentation, it's going to be at least 20 to 30 hours, maybe more.
If it's one I've given before, I'm going to still probably give it 10 hours plus to make sure that I've customized the slides, make sure I've updated anything, personalized it for the audience and all those things. And then I go through it again, again and again and I practice it and I go through. Right. Well, you don't see that. You don't see that. And I think the better someone is at something, the more work that went into it that you don't see. What's the joke? It takes 20 years to become an overnight success. Right? It's the people that are doing the work out of sight of the customer because the results matter.
Right? That's where theyre going to value the results. And if youre looking to charge more and youre putting in that kind of work, you need to value that yourself to make sure that youre getting paid for the time that youre spending on that work. I attend multiple speaker conferences every year, regardless of how many acronyms are after my name, regardless of the accolades that ive gotten. I go to speaker conferences because I can be better. I watch other speakers and I analyze, what did she do that was so good? What did they do that was over? Ooh, why did they do that? Right. It's just the good and the bad. You look at that and say, oh, I could use something like that, right? Not copy it, but adapt it for yourself. Are you studying the craft? Are you putting in that time? Your customers aren't going to see that? Are you attending conferences? I hope you are.
Not just because I speak of them, but because you need to be bettering yourself. Because if you think you can't be better, you're right because you won't try. If you know you can be better, you're right because you will try and you will put in the effort. You might have heard me say that. My phrase is, I don't want to be the best I can ever be at anything. I do want to be the best I've ever been every time I do whatever it is. So I want to play the piano the best I've ever played, every time. But the next time will be better.
I want to give the best speech I've ever given, and then the next one will be better, and so on and so forth. Same with my books and same with personal life and all those things. So the whole idea of valuing, you have to start by valuing what they don't see or your customers won't, and make sure that it's understood. And this is why when people show videos of, you know, time lapse videos, let's say, of the room getting ready, I remember, I think I might have told this story. I was in Philadelphia at the Marriott Hotel, at a speaker conference, 1500 people. And I was in the main ballroom. Now, just imagine we're there theater style, watching speakers, right? 1500 seats, watching people speak on stage. Everybody leaves, goes out to breakout sessions.
They now turn that room from theater style to banquet rounds. So round tables with ten seats around them. Those tables were not there. The chairs were in rows. And now those chairs have to get out of the way. The tables have to come in, the tables get there. The chairs have to go around them. Linens have to go on.
Place settings have to go on. Salt, pepper, all the things that have to get done, all the things we take for granted when we sit down at a table have to happen. And I watched that happen. And it was an army, a coordinated army, making this happen. But we didn't value that because we value it when we don't get it. We notice the value when we don't get it. Like, if we walked in the room and there were no linens on the tables, we'd go, what? Why are there no linens on tables? But nobody walked in and said, wow, look, they changed this room really well. I don't think anybody did that.
I valued it because I saw it. But otherwise, how many times have I walked out of a room, walked back in, it was completely changed and I didn't think about it at all because it was set for the next thing that I needed as well, which is now to sit and have lunch or sit and have dinner or something like that. So showing your customers talking about the amount of work that's going to go into making their effort great, not because you're bragging, not because you're looking for credit necessarily, but you're looking for them to understand that the value that you bring, a lot of it is intangible value because they won't see it and the results are because of that. And that's what you want to let them know. Like some people say, I don't charge for the hours, I charge for the years. Right. The years of experience. That's the same thing.
Yeah. It might actually take you less time to do something now than it did five years ago because you're better at it, but you're better at it still by providing a better result. And that's still time that they didn't see. So start by valuing it yourself and then think about ways that you can get your customers to understand that value. And then when youre looking to charge more, its not just because Im going to spend more time on it, because somebody could be really bad at something and thats why they spend time on it. Its, I get these kinds of reviews and this is the kind of results I can provide for you because of the work that Im going to put in that youre not going to see and thats why youre going to have such an amazing day. So I hope you can think about some ways to use that. And as always, I encourage your feedback.
Thanks for listening.
I'm Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you'd like to suggest other topics for "The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast" please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.
Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:
©2024 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com
