Wedding Business Solutions

Which of these 3 salesperson types are you?

• Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

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Which of these 3 salesperson types are you?

Do you truly think like an owner when it comes to selling your services, or are you simply "punching the clock"? What happens when you empower your team with both responsibility and authority? In this episode, I explore the three kinds of salespeople you might encounter (or be yourself), why it matters for your clients’ confidence, and how acting with an owner’s mentality can shape your success—and your referrals.

Listen to this new 11-minute episode for insights on adopting an owner’s mindset in every sale and building a team that inspires trust, loyalty, and long-term business.

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


Coming to Wedding MBA this year? Join me for a brand new workshop, before the conference starts. Can't make that? Come to Charlotte NC on Dec. 3rd for a Mastermind Day. Visit www.MastermindDay.com for information and tickets on upcoming events.

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:

©2025 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com

Which of these three salesperson types are you? Listen to this episode and find out. Hey, it's Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast. I have another listener suggestion here. This one from Ian, who, when shopping for a new furnace for themselves, he and his wife encountered different types of salespeople. And he shared this story with me. And the three salespeople are the one who was the salesman who loved chatting, asked for the sale, provided good information, but probably wasn't going to do the installation themselves. Okay.

So you have the salesperson who is not installing, and I think a lot of us can relate to that. You could be selling for a venue, but you don't actually produce the event or you don't cook the food. You could be selling the catering and not cooking the food. You could be selling the entertainment, and then somebody else actually provides the entertainment. Right. So that could be that. Then you had. The second was the installer who was expert but ultimately still needed a sale and approached them like they were friends.

Okay. And they hadn't, quote here, like friends. So now you have the person that's actually going to be doing the work, and they're talking to you like you're a peer. I think that's great. I think it's also creating that relationship. I think no matter whether you're not, if you're the first one or the salesperson who's not doing the installation or not doing the work, you can still approach them like friends. But you have to be careful there. Not everybody relates to that.

And then the third one was the owner who stood behind everything he said and was confident in his business above all else. And again, I'm just quoting here what Ian wrote to me. So you have the salesperson who wasn't going to actually do the final work. You had the installer who was going to do the work, also doing the sale, and then you had the owner who stood behind everything, but probably, again, wasn't going to be doing the installation there. So what's the difference in the mentalities? So the owner mentality is one that we encounter or don't encounter all the time as consumers. And I've heard many, many stories about this where an owner would do it this way. Somebody, you know, the worker would do it this way. I'll give you an example for myself.

I was. My wife and I were away on vacation, and we're in this town, and the stores didn't open for another about 15, 20 minutes. And there's a lot of people there. And you could see the workers inside and the workers were standing around. Now, if an owner was there, the owner probably would unlock the doors and let the people in. As a matter of fact, my wife wanted to go in, ended up not going in because we ended up having to leave. Right. We didn't have the time to go and do.

But if they had done it 20 minutes earlier, we would have done that. I had a friend of mine went into a restaurant with a group of people, and they were a large group, 10, 12 people. They were. Was a section of the restaurant that was closed off, that was not being used. And they said, you know, can you seat us? And they said, no, we're understaffed. And my friend said, listen, we're not in a rush. We don't care how long it takes. Just sit us down.

And when you get to us, you get to us. And they wouldn't do it. So they ended up going to try to find another restaurant. Again, an owner would have said, okay, tell you what, I can sit you over there. Yep. Service might be a little slow. Let me tell you the things on the menu that we can definitely do for you easily. And the things that would be more difficult that we can't do with your group because we're accommodating you.

And they would have been fine with that. Again, the owner mentality, you see people waiting outside of a store to go in, right? I remember going to a Costco and I knew what time they opened, and I knew I was early. And I get there and it's about 15, 20 minutes before they're supposed to open. And the gates were up, the door was open, they were letting people in. Now, nobody was at a register yet. They were just letting us in. We first have to go find what we want. And since you're kind of helping yourself there, mostly that was a smart manager letting you in.

That's an owner mentality, right? What is the mentality of yourself and of the people that you work with? Are they thinking like owners or are they thinking like, I'm here to just a punch a clock, right? So this now, in terms of sales, if you're not the one that's going to actually fulfill the work that you're selling, do people feel the confidence that you're going to be. They're going to be able to deliver that, right? Because in this case, Ian here said salesmen love chatting, asked for the sale, provided good information. Right. If they were asking good questions, again, they're supposed to ask for the sales. Matter of fact, Every one of those three types, and there's probably 20 other different types here. Every one of those, you should be asking for the sale because it's incumbent upon you to ask for the sale. It's not incumbent upon the customer to say, yes, I want to do it. That's every single one of you.

That's important. Right? The installer who wasn't. Who was an expert and I mean, I think he met an expert in doing the installation there, but ultimately still needed a sale and approached us like friends. So I'm not sure you know exactly how that was taken by Ian because he didn't explain here. But, you know, we've had people that come in and again, they're good. They're going to be the ones doing the work. We've had some work done in our house where the person that came said, yep, I'm going to be the one doing it. We have other times where somebody sold us.

Somebody else came in and did it. Right. Sometimes it's a good experience. Sometimes maybe not as good of an experience. Right. We actually had H Vac work done in our house. The salesperson was not the one doing the installation. The installers did a great job.

We've since used the company. Again. A different installer came, it was different work. Also had a great experience with them. We'll continue to use the company. Right. They stand behind what they do. They give a fair price, they do the work on time, come in on budget, all those things.

Right? So think about how are you presenting yourself and how are your people presenting themselves to your customers? Right. Are they taking ownership? I think we should all. If we're doing the sale, we should talk. This is our business, this is my business, whether you own it or not. I've kind of always had that feeling, right? If I'm doing the job, this is my company, I'm doing it. Yeah. I don't own it, but I'm owning the fact that you have to trust me that we're going to do this work for you. And I've had businesses for me where I've owned.

I've been self employed. Employed. And I've had businesses where I've worked for other people. And in every one of them, I still treated it that way, like I own the business. Can you teach that to your people? Can you give them that? Now, part of this is giving responsibility with authority. If you give someone responsibility without authority, you've undercut them because they can't act like an owner because they have to come to you for Everything actually hurts you as well. If you hire the right people, if you treat, train them well, if you treat them well, they will treat your customers well and they will act more like an owner. If you give them the ability to think like an owner, treat them like you would do.

Now, that also means setting the right example. You know, what example are you setting, right? If the customers leave, do you start talking bad about customers? Well, that's what you're putting into their head. Or are you setting the example? Listen, this is, let's say for a wedding, you know, this is a privilege for us. Every time somebody says yes and we get to do a wedding, right, we want to have that privilege. If these are nice people and we want to help them have a great wedding, they have the budget for what we do, we want to knock it out of the park for them. Let's do everything we can do to make this amazing, right? If that's the attitude that you bring, they're going to do the same thing and bring that to your customers. But if you give them responsibility and you don't give them the authority, the authority to think in the moment, the authority to make things right. The authority to, yeah, it might cost.

Cost a little something to, to make this right, but it's going to make the customer happy, which then leads to future business referrals and things like that. The famous story of Ritz Carlton hotels. Ritz Carlton understands that over the life of the lifetime value of a customer, which is something we have to think about now, that is, with a hotel, people can keep coming back and back, but it's also future generations. Same thing with a wedding. You know, could that wedding lead to other weddings? Could it lead to corporate work? Could it lead to bar mitzvahs and quinceaneras and sweet sixteens down the line? Could lead to that other business, family, friends, all of that. Think of the lifetime value cost a little today to preserve that lifetime value. Ritz Carlton understands that the lifetime value of one of their customers is $200,000. It might even be more now.

And every single employee is empowered to spend up to $2,000 to fix something, to make a customer happy, to surprise and delight a customer. So if somebody overhears somebody talking about something and you can make something happen for them because it's a special occasion or there was something that they' for that you don't have and they can go get it or something happened and you make it right because it cost money, no questions asked. Spend up to $2,000 to do that because the 2,000 preserves the 200,000, if anything, it actually makes it even better. Well, are your employees empowered to make decisions that might cost you something today, but they'll preserve the good review that you're going to get, they'll preserve the repeat business that you might get, or prevent the. The bad review or things like that from happening? Right. Again, authority and responsibility have to go together for that. So think about the type of salesperson that you are also think about. And I've been speaking a lot about this lately in my workshops, where the people that you're dealing with, the longer you're in the wedding and event industry, it's more likely that the people that you're dealing with today are no longer your peers in terms of age.

They might have been when you started or maybe you were younger and then got into that. If you started really young, like today, the average couple is around 30. 30. So if you come into the industry at 25, you know, you're in the same ballpark and then you get to around their age and you're looking at your peers, but then 10 years after that, you're no longer looking at your peers. Right. When I started in the industry, I was about the age of a lot of my clients. Right. And we got older every year and couples didn't.

Right. Over the last 25 years, couples have gotten about three years older. Right. So you've been in the industry for 10 years. You're no longer talking to your peers. You might have to adapt. Not might. You should have to adapt to the current customer.

And then as years go on, still adapt to them because they're not supposed to adapt to you. So, Ian, thank you for this suggestion. If you have a suggestion, Please go to podcast.Alanberg.com there's an ask me anything button there. Or you can just email me@allen weddingbusinesssolutions.com don't forget about Ask Me Anything, my new AI alter ego, where you really want to ask anything to me. It answers like me trained on my books and trained on my podcast so you don't have to go back and listen to all of them. It knows all of them there. So thanks so much, Ian, for the suggestion. Please put your suggestions in.

Can't wait to hear what you have to say on another episode. Hit the subscribe button. Thanks.


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 or you can  text, use the short form on this page, or call +1.732.422.6362, international 001 732 422 6362. I 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:

©2025 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com


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Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

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