Wedding Business Solutions

We shopped 306 companies in 2024 - want to hear how they did?

• Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

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We shopped 306 companies in 2024 - want to hear how they did?

Secret shopping 306 companies revealed some startling insights: Are you part of the 15% not replying at all, or sending emails too long to keep attention? What happens if you follow up more than five times? In this episode, I discuss the importance of follow-up frequency and quality, and how improving these can help close more deals without spending more on leads.

Listen to this new 10-minute episode for insights on boosting your sales by enhancing your follow-up strategies and engaging effectively with those who have already reached out.

Episode Summary: 

In this episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast, I delve into the results from shopping 306 companies in 2024. I highlight that 85% of these businesses responded to inquiries, which is a slight improvement from last year. I emphasize the importance of keeping initial communication concise, as only 44% of the companies managed to fit their first response on one smartphone screen. Additionally, I discuss the critical need for persistent follow-up, pointing out that many businesses lose potential clients by not reaching out multiple times. My advice is to focus on enhancing follow-up strategies to convert more leads without increasing advertising costs.

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 

Please be sure to subscribe to this podcast and leave a review (thanks, it really does make a difference). If you want to get notifications of new episodes and upcoming workshops and webinars, you can sign up at www.ConnectWithAlanBerg.com  

View the full transcript on Alan’s site: https://alanberg.com/blog/


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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.

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©2025 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com

We shopped 306 companies last year. Want to hear how they did? Listen to this. Hey, it's Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast. If you've been listening to this or heard me on stage, you know that we do a lot of secret shopping here at Wedding Business Solutions. And last year was no exception. We actually shopped 306 different companies throughout the year. That's 537 between 2023 and 2024.

And let's talk about how people did. Let's talk about it in by itself in 2024. And let's talk about it, how it compares to 2023 and maybe some things you can learn from this. So over the course of the 306 companies that we shopped, 85% of the companies responded. That's a little bit better than 2023, where it was only 81%. Still not good because that's 15% of the companies never replied to us at all. And just to step back in terms of how we secret shop, we go to a website, we fill out the contact form and act as if we were someone planning a wedding or event. Depending upon what the shopping is, if a client has a shop them about corporate or about a mitzvah or a Kinsey or some other type of event, we might do that.

But most of these are probably wedding inquiries because that's a, of the audience here, a lot of my clients, so 15% didn't reply at all. So that's 15% of your competitors potentially that are saying maybe, maybe they're doing it on purpose or maybe they notice it and realize they're not doing it, or maybe there's a technological issue and they didn't get the inquiry, or maybe we didn't get their response, but 15% got nothing. Okay, now we look to see a couple of things here. One is, is your first response fitting on one screen of a smartphone? I've spoken about this, I wrote about this, and why are they ghosting me? And, and why don't they call me? Probably some of the other books as well. And 44% of the companies fit their first response on one screen, which is actually down from 49 the year before. So that's not a good trend. Just think about it yourself. You get you emails every day, and when you open that email up, you scan it.

You don't read it, you scan it. And if it's longer than one screen, how many times do you go, you know, I don't have time for this now, I'm going to mark this on red, get back to it later or never maybe. Right? Because we're all ghosting somebody right now. Every one of us is ghosting somebody right now. And, you know, that's could be one of the reasons. One thing, you know, that I've spoken about a lot is you need to end with one question. You don't want to bury that question. You want to end with one question.

So 51% of the companies that we shopped ended with one question, which is up from 50%, which is not much of an improvement. It's probably a rounding error at that point, but that's still not good. You know, you don't want to read that long message. They don't want to read that long message. And half of you are still sending a message that's longer than one screen on a phone. And if you're not looking at the messages on phones, shame on you, because that's how a lot of your customers are reading them. And you want to see what they're seeing. So you want to be bcc yourself to, to a Gmail address or something else where you can see what it looks like to them.

Okay, what else do we have over here? How many asked for a phone call or tour or an appointment immediately? That was the main focus of it. Now, that's a good news thing. It was 51% in 2023. It went down to 40% last year. So that's great. So some of you are getting that message, right? 10% more getting the message that I, I'm going to ask for that phone call, meeting or tor. I'm just not going to do it right away. So it's only 40% down from 51%.

We do track auto replies, but we don't count them as a real reply because they're not. So if it is or feels like an auto reply, that was down to 24% from 36% the year before. So that was good as well. Now let's talk about attachments. One of the reasons I don't like attachments is you're delaying them from doing the one thing you want them to do, which is replying to you. And that was also down from 41% to 35%. So some more of you are getting the message that maybe that PDF that's too big to show on a phone screen really well because it's shrunk down, maybe that's not the best thing to do. Maybe that information is redundant from what's already on Your website, so maybe I shouldn't do that.

But 82% of you still had links, down from 85%, so it's pretty even over there. Which again, you want them to reply now. But if you're sending them to your website, to your social channels, to your ad platforms, to some, we've had it where we've been sent to Google Drives for photos and things, all of those are sending them away from doing the one thing you want them to do, which is replying. So if I were were up to you, or if I. Sorry, if it was up to me, I would break your attachment button. So you can't do that until later in the conversation when you could send them something relevant to their specific need, as opposed to just dumping more links and attachments and things on them. Right? If you send them to Facebook or TikTok or Instagram or LinkedIn, right, where all of your competitors are and you're wondering why they're not getting back to you, you might have just sent them to a competitor or you send them to YouTube and now they're watching dancing cat videos instead of responding to you. Okay, now let's get to the next thing.

How many people who did reply tried a second time if they didn't hear back? Right? Because remember, every one of us is ghosting somebody right now, which means we're probably just not making a priority of whatever that message is. We saw it, we do want to handle it, but we just didn't get back to them now, right? I did that today. I got back to somebody from Saturday. I didn't respond on Saturday. I saw it. I chose not to reply because I needed to do a little bit of research first. Got back to them today. I was ghosting them, right? What happened if I didn't reply today? Would they have tried another time? Now, in that particular case, I hadn't initiated it.

I hadn't reached out to them, but if I had initiated it and I didn't get back to them, how many people are trying a second time? And that went up to 51% from 47%, which still means 49% are giving up. That's it. 49% are giving up after one reply and they're not trying even a second time. Now that's good news for those of you that are following up, because that means your competitors, again, half the time are saying, I'm done. I made a response, I'm done. If they want to reach out, they will, which is giving up way too soon. Because remember, we're all ghosting somebody. What about three times, that was even 34% three times versus 2023.

So still that's only a third. Are trying a three a third time. If they don't hear back, they go first time, second time, third time. If they don't hear back, they've given up there. So those of you doing four and more, you're being given that business by those, Right? We get to four times, it's at 27%, slightly up from the 25% the year before. You get to five times, it's at 20%, slightly up from 18%. But still 80% of the companies have given up at that point. So if you can get yourself out to five or more, you're in rarefied air there because you get to six times, it was only 16% of the companies, which by the way, was better than 12%.

The year before you get to seven, it was up to 11%. Thank you. 11% percent of you are trying seven times. And I had somebody came to a workshop I did in Vegas recently and they were, I know because we secret shop them, that they were trying 10 times before giving up. And a week after that workshop, person messaged me, yes, DJ Marek, I'm, I'm talking about you. To say that they got a sale from the seventh message. So being in that 11% that was trying seven times, the Marek got a sale, you get to eight times, it's only 6%, nine times, it's only 3%, 10 times, only 2%. So Merrick, who's doing 10 times, 98% of the companies have given up at that point. He's still asking. He's one of the few that is. And if there are people that are still in the market and he's the only one following up, there's a much better shot at getting that sale than somebody who gave up after 1 or 2 or 3 or 4, or in this case 5 or 6 or 7 or 8. Right. So that's the stats that we have over there. So Overall, for the 537 companies between 2023 and 2024, 83% replied at all. 17% nothing. Right.

Fit on one screen less than half, followed up two times half. I mean, these are the same stats here. If you want to make more sales without spending any more than you are right now on advertising, marketing, networking, et cetera, follow up with the people that have reached out to you one more time. And then if you get some response from that, follow up one more time than that. And if you get something that follow. If I had to invest money or time into something, I would rather see you invested into following up better than spending more trying to get new leads when you already have leads. Somebody I spoke to today, I said, you're getting enough inquiries. They said probably too many, right? That's the problem.

Too many. Some of them that aren't the right ones, which is a whole advertising marketing issue we're going to work on with them. But if you think about it, if you could just convert more of the leads you're already getting, couldn't you fill your calendar more without having to try to get more leads? And the way to do that is to focus on following up more and better. Because just following up more is good. Following up better, keeping it to one screen, not no attachments, no links, things like that. Ending with one question. These are all things I've spoken and written about. If you don't have, why are they ghosting me? Get that? Because we talk about that in there or shut up and sell more or any of my books really.

But I speak about it so much because it's that that important. Your biggest opportunity are the people who've already reached out that haven't yet said no. And that's why the people that are going 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 times following up are getting more of that business than somebody who's getting the same leads in the same market, same category, and following up less, they're giving up on it. Because if you don't ask, the answer is always no. So asking one more time, it might be no, but it might be yes. Thanks for listening and let me know how it's working for.



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Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

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