Article courtesy of weddingbuildingmarketing.com

Recently, I have had multiple Wedding Pros talk to me about the issue of price and brides. Price has always been an issue amongst brides for the simple reason that the brides have usually never bought what you sell before and are not aware of everything that goes into a wedding. Based on what has been given me lately, the price issue is rampant.

It is easy to get sucked into a conversation with the bride concerning price, however, when you control the conversation, you have a higher likelihood that you will control the direction of the sale. My suggestion is you steer the conversation towards value over price. Let me explain the difference.

What is valuable to a bride and what she will pay for are two different things. For example, she will pay for a party that rocks the house and makes her guests think that this is the greatest event they have ever been to. She will begin her shopping, however, based on that one factor of price. And if you do not change the conversation, she will stick towards price and go to the lowest price. That which she has value in and understands the reasoning behind the price tag becomes higher in priority to her and able for her to justify in paying.

Because most of the Wedding pros that I deal with are not the lowest price in the market, nor should they be, most times they lose the price war. They lose the price war because largely they do not know how to sell the things which are truly valuable to the bride. Let me share some ideas which will be incomplete, but hopefully get you started in the right direction on how to win by selling value. I could talk for hours about selling value (in fact I have on my CD’s), but let me give you some bullet points.

The most important thing about selling value that you need to know is what’s valuable to you, doesn’t matter. You need to sell was valuable to the bride. For example, if the bride is keyed in on a celebration that is more like Cinderella, and you’re selling the value of a throw down party your off-base. That is why it matters that you find out first what is valuable to her by asking the right questions. This discovery process is crucial in finding out or discovering what matters to her.
The second most important thing about selling value, you need to know is to not speak vaguely. Everybody understands that service to a customer is important. Simply stating we provide excellent customer service doesn’t blow my skirt up. Show rather than tell through use of video in this instance on how you provide excellent customer service. Perhaps video testimonials would do the trick here. Again, you need to state clearly why this value matters not just copy some catch phrases or slogans.

The third most important thing about selling value is to back up what you say. If you say that you’re a professional company and run yourself like a professional company, yet all of your materials seem like they were created on your home computer and do not have a professional look to them, you’re not backing up what you say. This leaves room for doubt in the eyes of the bride. Another simple thing that I see often is a company will state that they are very experienced, yet they just started two years ago. Perhaps they work for another company doing the same thing that they currently do, that’s fine. You simply need to state this and be very clear why you are experienced.

Selling value is a lot harder than selling price. But in the end result is totally worth it.

Article courtesy of weddingbuildingmarketing.com