Workshop02 07.21.15 Sales Secrets of the High End Wedding ......BookMoreBrides.com 1 Workshop02...

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Workshop02 07.21.15 – Sales Secrets of the High End Wedding Pro

- Transcript -

Stephanie: Hello, this is Stephanie with Book More Brides and I'm here today with my husband,

Jeff.

Jeff: Yes you are, I'm here with you.

Stephanie: And also our special guest, Justin – oh no, I forgot to confirm how to pronounce your

last name properly. Justin Jacques?

Justin: Haha, no. Justin Jacques.

Stephanie: Justin Jacques.

Jeff: That wasn't even close Stephanie. I'm embarrassed for you.

Stephanie: So we're here with Justin Jacques and we're very excited to be speaking with him

today about the Sales Secrets of a High End Wedding Professional: how to grow sales, save time

and get organized with automated follow-up.

So if you are consuming this and joining us on your computer, if you have that little question box in

front of you, you can type in any questions that you have throughout this presentation. Please do.

Jeff: And a quick note, if you could stay on topic somewhat with your questions, that

would be awesome.

Stephanie: Yeah. We're going to try to keep it to the topic we're talking about today: time

savings, automation and the kind of secrets that Justin's going to share with us today.

And just a little bit of introduction about how we got into contact with Justin. He emailed me a

while back and we got on the phone and chatted because he is an automation expert. He really loves

helping wedding businesses to blow their competition out of the water with systems that generate

leads and convert more sales.

Jeff: And on a note, I just want to throw it in there that that's really what put our wedding

business on the map. One of the big parts was how we harnessed this ourselves and it really helped

us grow our business. And I can't imagine it growing as much as it did without it.

Stephanie: Yeah, absolutely. And you can only grow so far as an individual entrepreneur. If you

want to continue to grow your business, you're going to need systems, you're going to need follow-

up that works and converts leads and books weddings.

So we chatted a bit about some really geeky internet marketing topics, and it was really obvious to

me that Justin has something very cool to share, that not only is he an automation expert, he also is

a wedding professional and had his own wedding entertainment business. So he knows what we're


dealing with every day. And so he brings that background to the topic.

So I guess without – oh, one more other thing. I want to remind you to eliminate distractions and

interruptions in your environment, get something to take notes with...

Jeff: And you guys can hear us, right? If you could type that in, that would be great, we

could be talking in the dark right now.

Stephanie: Yes, please. If you're on your computer and you can hear us, just confirm yes, we

hear you. And that way we'll know that all is well in the world. Excellent.

Jeff: Thank you.

Stephanie: Okay, so we've got the confirmation, cool. So take it away, Justin. It's all you. And

we're going to reserve the right to interrupt you with questions and to be really...

Jeff: It's my ADD, I can't help it, I'm sorry.

Justin: No problem at all. So yeah, I'm really honored to be able to talk to you guys and to

your community, thanks so much. Like you said I'm going to kind of give a kind of a better

introduction of where I came from and how I got to this point as well. So you guys can get a better

feel for why I'm talking to you.

So like Stephanie said I'm going to be talking today about the sales secrets of a high end wedding

professional. I'm going to show you how you can grow your sales, save time and get organized. And

I'm going to show you how you can automate all these things.

So even though Stephanie gave you a bit of an introduction to me, I'm going to go through a little

bit of where I started. So this is me at my first wedding gig. This was about five years ago, I had a

terrible haircut and I was actually DJ-ing for free because this was a friend's wedding. But I knew

that I wanted to leave my corporate job, I wanted to be working in the wedding industry and even

though I was working for free, I was like super excited about my new business. And I'm sure you

guys when you first started your businesses, you were in the same position. And this was my first

website.

Stephanie: God.

Jeff: That's hot.

Justin: I so agree with you guys, like this is terrible. Like you can see I wanted to prove

everyone that I was a wedding DJ by having an awesome picture of a record on there. I knew I

needed a website, I had no idea what I was doing. Like this is – I just want to show you that even

though I know what I'm talking about, you can get – if you're struggling right now with your

marketing, you can get to the point of building a system that really works because this is what I

started with, you probably started with something better than what I started with. And to even drive

the whole point home a little bit further; my first wedding I booked for $450. So I was one of those

guys that everyone complains about, advertising on Craig's list and undercutting everyone else.


I've gotten from this point from the point where I was five years ago to the point where I'm charging

$2,500 just as a base for my weddings.

Jeff: Nice.

Justin: Yeah. And because I had no idea what I was doing, I ended up making less than

$20,000 in my first year. And this is really painful because I had left a career as an engineer. And I

left that and I was making money below the poverty line. And it really really sucks.

Stephanie: Justin, you know, we've done surveys, multiple surveys of our wedding professional

audience at Book More Brides and the last three years every time we asked the question “How

much average income do you make per year?” Most people are making $25,000 or less.

Jeff: That's painful.

Stephanie: Like that's kind of where the mean is. Yeah. So you weren't alone in starting there,

either.

Justin: Yeah and it's really really tough and it's not fun, like I know, I was putting in a lot of

time and effort into the business. And I was making a really low amount of income. Like it real ly

wasn't enough to live off of. And luckily I'd saved up some money because I was planning on

transitioning from that corporate job to the business. Luckily I was able to get through it. But if that

had gone on for another year, there's no way I would have stayed in business. I would have had to

go back and find a job and be working for someone else which I would have hated.

So at that point I realized that I really needed to focus in on figuring out how I'm going to get more

sales and learn about marketing. Like I said I just didn't have that runway that I needed to keep

going at that pace. Like I wouldn't have been able to survive.

So what I ended up doing was I tried a lot of different marketing and sales tools. I studied and I just

tried everything I could get my hands on. So I started trying Facebook ads, I tried Google ads, I

tried blogging, I tried SEO, wedding shows, software, ads on wedding blogs and I tried re-targeting,

which is just another form of advertising online. And this was just a fraction of a whole bunch of the

different things I tried.

So the issue with this is that not all of these works in the wedding industry. So before the call I was

just asking Steph and Jeff how long they have been around for with Book More Brides and they

said they pretty much started a year or six months after I had started my wedding business. And at

the time when I was starting my wedding business there wasn't really that good an information

around on how to start a wedding business and how to market a wedding business with the internet.

That information wasn't around. There was a lot of information on how to market your business

online in other industries but in the wedding industry that wasn't around.

So I had to do a lot of testing and in the end I spent a lot of time and money figuring this out but

eventually I was able to build a system that kind of took my leads – generated me leads, took those

leads, converted them to clients and then made sure that I was getting referrals and getting reviews

online which then in turn gave me more leads in the future.


So last year I ended up with 322 leads. And these were all organic leads. I wasn't spending any

money on ads at all last year and the reason was I was able to turn off all of those ads because of the

system that I built that just kept kind of going on its own. To some of you this might not be a lot of

leads, especially if you're a venue and you really have to fill up a ton of spaces. But for me, I was

the only person working in this business, so having 322 people inquire about my service and me –

probably like the maximum amount of weddings I wanted to do was 50 weddings. That was a ton of

leads and it really allowed me to raise my price because the demand for my service was so high.

And not only that, I was actually sharing these leads with other wedding DJ companies because

there was just too many for me to have.

And in the end I booked, like I said, just over 50 weddings last year. And then the other wedding DJ

companies booked the other to get to a 140 weddings total and these were all at premium prices.

And like I said before, having this demand allowed me to charge that premium rate. And the

demand was there because of this system that I had created that I'm going to talk about.

Stephanie: Just a question, did you celebrate by throwing glitter confetti over yourself?

Justin: Yeah, obviously. I've now grown a beautiful mustache, I wear a scarf all the time.

Jeff: Nice.

Justin: So you're here today because you have – there are at least three reasons. One, you

want to grow sales because you're not quite living the life that you want to live. And if you're in that

group that is making $25,000 on average or around there, then I can definitely see that that's why

you're here today. Maybe you're also here because you want to save time. At some point once I

started growing my business, I was spending so much time on admin that it just felt like it was such

a time suck. I knew it wasn't the best and most effective use of my time and maybe you're here

because you're feeling the same way. Or maybe you're here just because you need to get organized.

You're constantly worried about you and your staff dropping the ball and leads falling through

cracks and everything like that.

So those three things I'm going to address in today's presentation.

Stephanie: Do you want to find out Justin what people who are around the computer, which of

these reasons is more resonant to them?

Justin: Yeah, let's hear it.

Stephanie: So it was – can you go back to that slide again? The first one was, which one of these

three do you want? Number one, grow sales. Number two save time or number three, get organized.

So as you're listening and watching if you're on your computer, just put in the number or all three.

Jeff: 3, sales, sales, all the above. Sales. People really like sales.

Stephanie: Yes people really like sales but people are also saying all three.

Justin: Awesome, okay. So yeah, I mean actually the most important part of the presentation

is the sales side. So the other stuff is going to come, too but the sales slide is the most important. So


that's great.

Stephanie: Awesome.

Justin: So, most of the wedding companies that I talk to and I know that you said this, too

Steph is that many wedding companies say that they're not getting enough leads. And leads are

important but I actually think that most wedding companies have maybe 99 problems but leads

actually ain't one of them. Did you guys get that one?

Jeff: Great, I agree with that totally.

Justin: The real problem is conversion. Today I'm going to try and help you get more out of

what you've already got. And the reason for that is because getting more leads is difficult or it can

be very difficult and it can be expensive. So to get leads you usually have to advertise or you have

to go to wedding shows, you have to generally be spending money to be getting more leads.

Whereas if you're just increasing the conversions on the people who are already reaching out to you,

it's a lot easier and it's a lot cheaper. And it's something that once you've built the system that does

this for you, then it just keeps going. Like you don't have to keep paying for ads and you don't have

to keep paying to get those leads. You already have that system in place and it just keeps generating

you more and more business as time goes on.

Stephanie: Now I'm just going to interject something that we see a lot. We've got a lot of

wedding professionals who you know, maybe they think I'm not getting enough leads, or I'm getting

bad leads. But out of every ten leads, people who actually contact them, in other words only two of

them respond when they email them back. So there's a huge amount of work that can be done.

That's the conversion factor that you're talking about.

Jeff: Huge in the funnel right there.

Stephanie: Pulling in more of those people that actually do find you. Or they land on your

website, they leave and they never come back and turn into real leads that you can follow up with

and book.

Justin: Yeah, using this system, like I'm going to talk about that. Like that's a key part of this

presentation that's coming up in a few slides. But just to address that point like I was – if you go

back to the amount of leads I was getting to the amount of conversions that we got between me and

the other wedding DJ companies, we were converting like 34% of sales, not just like getting a reply

back. And it's because of the system that I'm going to show you and using those really good emails

that you can get to actually make the sale. In a second you'll see I actually suggest Steph and Jeff's

first email, I forget what you guys call it but the first email that you guys have available on your

website.

Stephanie: Oh yes, the email response thingy.

Justin: Yes so we'll talk about that in a second but that email is really really powerful and it's

really going to help you increase those conversions increasing conversions is like I said in this slide

it's just so so powerful because it doesn't cost you anything else to change that system that you're


already using.

So we're going to take you through four parts today and the first part is going to be selling through

follow-up. I'm going to show you how you can really truly – if you're not following up with your

clients or with your leads I'm going to show you how you can – like I truly believe that you can

double your conversion rates if you're not doing this already. In part two I'm going to show you how

you can wow your customers and stand out from the other vendors. And then in part three I'm going

to show you how you can use all that effort that you put into part two to make sure that you're

getting five star reviews online. So I have over 100 five star reviews online and like I said my

business was just me and those reviews are extremely powerful in being able to cycle back into the

top and get you more leads and get you better sales. And then in part four I'm going to share with

you some of the tools that I've used to do all these things.

So first there's a quick, quick, quick note. This is really only going to work for vendors who can

offer a really high quality service. The system I'm going to go through today, if you're like this guy

and you're just showing up and you don't really care about the level of service that you provide, then

this system is not going to work. But because you can only create the kind of demand that I have

and charge premium prices when you provide a really excellent service.

But since you're here on this webinar I have a very good feeling that you guys are not the people

like this. Is that right, Steph and Jeff?

Stephanie: People we're working with definitely have a high quality service. And the people

who are members, they're all about improving. So absolutely.

Justin: Yes. So the key here is for all this stuff to work you really have to be providing that

high quality service and I'm not going to be able to go into too much detail on what specifically you

can do at a wedding to do this but some of the things I'll show you can do to really rile up your

customers in part two.

So part one, selling with follow-up. So one of my marketing mentors, one of the guys that I found

in that second year of my business while I was searching for marketing and sales advice was Dan

Kennedy. He's a really prolific author, I think he has like 13 or 14 books on sales and marketing.

And one of his quotes is “we don't have a bad economy, what we have is a really bad follow-up.”

So what I want you guys to tell me is how many times does it take for you to make a sale?

Stephanie: It's the key thing that's messing us up here...

Jeff: Alright. 5 to 7, 4 to 6, 3 days, 5, 6, 5, 4 to 6.

Justin: Okay, awesome, good. Those are all really good answers. So depending who you ask

the answer is, like with my own marketing mentors, one of them Jay Abraham says 7. But

depending on where you look at anywhere from 5 to 20. The point though is that it certainly isn't

one or two.

So I wanted to see what was going on in the wedding industry and maybe you guys are doing more

than 1 or 2 but I decided to do a test just to see what was actually going on. So I decided to reach

out to 24 wedding vendors in Toronto just because that's where I'm from and I didn't just reach out


to 24, any random vendor. These were guys who were spending money on Google click ads. So

they were spending like $3 to $7 a click for me to come to their website and then potentially fill out

their form to contact them or to potentially book them later on. And what I found was that 21% did

not respond to me at all.

Stephanie: Wow.

Justin: So they were paying for me to come to their website and I did not get one response

from them. And I could not believe this, like this was – I mean I thought it might be one or two but

it was 5 of those 24 that did not respond to me. 42% only sent me one email. So I mean that's better

than not responding at all. But you guys just have told me that the minimum anyone said was 4 and

many of you were saying a lot more than that. There was only one email sent, they only had one

opportunity to make that sale after spending all that money for me to inquire, like I could just not

believe that this was the case.

And just so you know, these vendors were, I did a test of photographers, DJ's, venues and officiants.

And then 29% sent 2 emails. So this is getting a little bit better. But to me this is still not enough.

And then I had one guy who sent me 3 emails. Which was obviously the best of the lot but this was

still not anywhere near, the minimum you guys told me was 4. So no one here tried to contact me 4

times which is the minimum amount of time that you mentioned.

And to kind of reiterate how important this is, I'm just going to share with you a quick story about

something that happened in my life. So last year I decided that it was probably about time that I

should purchase life insurance for myself. The problem was it was during wedding season, I was

really busy so I did end up contacting 3 or 4 different life insurance sales guys and then basically I

never made the purchase because I heard back from them once and then basically they went away

after I didn't hear back from them. And I was busy and I just forgot about buying life insurance. And

I mean I put it in the presentation, obviously it's something that I should just go and do but because

I stopped hearing that follow-up from them, I just, it fell onto the back of my mind again and I

never made that purchase from them. And it's just something that I just want to hammer on how

important it is to follow up and it's not annoying, it's actually helpful for clients. Because they can

tell you to stop and you can stop. But if you don't stop and they really do need that service that you

offer, then you're being helpful to them.

Stephanie: Amen brother. We see this constantly because we have these ideas in our heads about

what it means when they don't...

Jeff: I don't want to be annoying.

Stephanie: Yes.

Jeff: Oh wait that's on your slide, sorry.

Justin: We're on the same wavelength obviously. So this is something that like Steph and

Jeff just said, it is something that people worry about being annoying about. But I've actually had,

so I had when I was running the DJ business I had a system that I would follow up with people 7

times. So on the 7th email, I'm actually going to share that email with you in a few minutes and

you'll kind of see why this generates a response. But I've had numerous people reply to me saying


thanks so much for following up, I'm so glad that I keep hearing from you, here's why we haven't

been contacting you yet and we haven't booked you yet. So these are just a few of the reasons and

this happens very often. I had one client tell me that their parents were sick and they had been

taking care of them so that's why they didn't book me yet or they haven't replied to any of my

emails. I've had a bunch tell me that they're just crazy busy at work. I've had a few couples tell me

that they had just moved into a new house. And I've also had a few couples tell me that they were

actually on vacation.

So what happens is somebody comes to your website, they find your service, they're interested in

potentially booking you but then like a few days later they're moving into a house and they were

maybe on a break from packing up or something like that. And they just ended up on your website,

they decided to fill out that form but then things got crazy busy in their life and they forget about

you. And if you're only sending one email, then that email is gone by the time they come back to

planning their wedding. And it's really really powerful to be able to send those follow-up emails and

to make those sales.

So I hope at this point you're convinced that you're not being annoying. You're being truly helpful

by sending these follow-up emails. So just to make sure of that I have this kind of framework that I

use that helps you make sure that you're not being annoying and that you are being helpful and that

you're just staying at the top of their inbox instead of consistently haunting them.

So the first step is, I always suggest that you reply to their email immediately. And in my case

because I was a single operator, it was just me. I always had my couples put in their wedding date

and if I was already booked, then I had to tell them that. So I had to check that myself and instead of

them having to wait to hear from me, I always had the immediate email saying “hey, thanks so

much for inquiring, I'm really looking forward to talking to you, I'll get back to you within 48

hours.” And I think this is what you guys suggest, too, right Steph and Jeff?

Stephanie: We do. We don't get too much into an auto reply but yes, absolutely. It's a good thing

to do.

Justin: Okay, cool. So then in step two, then I would follow up with a more personal reply.

And I would always try to do this within 48 hours. And the key here is, I don't think it's important to

be an immediate reply but you also want to make sure that everyone knows that's inquiring in to

you that you are on top of your business and that you actually care about their business. So I think

48 hours is a reasonable amount of time for people to wait to hear that really specific answer to their

inquiry. And for this inquiry, I'm hoping that everyone that's on this call is using something similar

to Steph and Jeff's, it's the proven email sequence that they have on their home page.

Is there anyone that's not using that or something similar to that template for their like initial follow-

up?

Jeff: I was just about to ask the same thing and I was going to say don't worry, we won't

get our feelings hurt too much. Okay guys, we're asking, seriously, who's using it or not using it or

using something else like it or...? Okay.

Stephanie: Okay we have somebody saying yes, somebody saying no, somebody is saying no,

I'm not using it, not using it, not aware...


Jeff: Most not using it.

Stephanie: So it looks like most are not using it.

Justin: Okay, so Steph and Jeff, you have to send it out to your members.

Stephanie: Yes, I'm going to include that.

Jeff: It's always been there.

Stephanie: You know what that means? That means Stephanie and Jeff have been slacking on

the job. And I'll make sure to include that.

Jeff: We sent it out to you once but then we didn't follow up again.

Justin: I'm guessing that if you're here, you probably or you maybe have downloaded it from

Steph and Jeff before because it's something that they offer all over their website. But no matter

what, Steph and Jeff are going to share with you again. This is the most critical step here. That first

response can really make the sale or it can make you not stand out from anyone else. And if you're

doing what you're doing now and it's not similar to what they have in that email, I really think that

you're probably looking just like every other – all of your competition. Like it's going to be hard for

your to differentiate your service from your competition if you're not using an email like that.

So implement this like today. It's really that powerful. And then step three in the follow-up system is

that you just keep following up. Even if you don't hear back from the first email, from the second

email, from the third email, just keep following up. I just told you all those reasons of why it's

important to keep following up. Even if you don't hear back, it doesn't mean that they're not

interested in your service anymore. It just means that they got busy, that they have other things

going on in their life. And continuing the following up, it doesn't cost you anything and it's an easy

way for you to make the sale once they're ready to book your service. And I suggest that you do this

at least five times until they tell you to stop or they're no longer interested or until they book you.

And with those follow-ups I'll talk about the timing of them on the next slide here.

Stephanie: Justin, I'm going to tell us, you're probably just going into this but I just want to

make sure that you're able to tell us some of what's in your response email because it might differ or

it might even be better to have that different aspect than the one we recommend, too.

Justin: The initial response email?

Stephanie: Yeah.

Justin: Yeah it's very similar to what you suggest but it is a little bit different. I would be

more than happy to share that though. I don't have that in this presentation but I can share the

template with everyone if you want.

Stephanie: Can you just tell us what's in it, I mean I'd really want to know, too.


Justin: I honestly, I haven't, I wrote that thing – so this is the thing about this system is that I

wrote that probably three years ago or two or three years ago and I haven't changed it since because

it's been so effective. So I honestly don't even know what's in it. And it just happens automatically

so I don't remember what the details of it are.

Stephanie: Okay, cool. If you could share it with me afterwards, I would...

Justin: Yeah, I will share with you and everyone can have that and again, feel free to use

those details. And maybe I can just shoot a quick video, too, talking about why some of the points

are in there. Some of the lines are in there if that makes sense.

Stephanie: Cool, yeah, absolutely.

Justin: Cool, so other than that first email, I'm going to just give you kind of some ideas for

follow-up emails because this is I find where a lot of people get stuck. And I just want to show you

how easy it can be and how important it is to kind of just have this little system, this little template

that you can use and just send over.

So after that first email, the first follow-up email I just suggest you could say “Hey first name,

how's it going? Can we schedule a time to talk this week?” So it's just, you just want to make sure

that you're at the top of their inbox, that you're reminding them that they inquired to your service

and you're just trying to get a response from them and get the conversation going. And I know that's

what you talk about, too. You just want to get the conversation going. You don't want to have them

go away and never reply to you again, right?

Stephanie: Yes.

Justin: Yeah, cool. And I suggest you send this, I usually do this like 3 or 4 days after that

first email if you haven't heard back.

Email follow-up number two, this is just another suggestion you can use, you don't necessarily have

to use it but again, I just want to share some ideas with you. “Hey first name, we have a guide on” –

and if you're maybe a venue, it could be something like a guide on picking the best venues in

Toronto because I'm from Toronto, I'm just saying that but just a quick guide, maybe a blog post

that you have that you have already written. That you just share that and then you just want to say

again “I'd love to talk more about your wedding, when is a good time to chat?” You just want to

keep these short and quick and make sure that they're being read and then making it as easy as

possible again to reply. And usually I send this email about a week after the first follow-up.

And then email number three, again, “hey first name, can we set up a quick call on Tuesday at 6 pm

or Thursday at 7 pm?” Again, just making it as easy as possible, all they have to reply is with the

date and time if they want to reply to this email. And again I would follow up with these guys a

week after and then as you get further and further down the follow-up emails I would start doing it

two weeks apart so that you're not emailing them every day, you're just following up I think within a

reasonable time and you're not being annoying that way.

And actually just one other key point to these, you don't want to ever sound annoyed. You want to


sound friendly and you want to sound, you're just kind of like paying them, you're just letting them

know that you're still around and that you're still interested in working with them. You don't want to

be like “hey, I've sent you five emails, I haven't heard back from you. Where are you? Why have

you not replied to me yet? This is a business.” You don't want to do that. Although in my last email I

started to get to that point because it's really still friendly I think. But I want to kind of be a little bit

more firm with that.

So this is the last email that I end up sending. And this is where I generally get that reply from

people who are still genuinely interested but something else has come up in their life. And it says

“hey first name, this is my last attempt to contact you. You indicated your interest in my DJ service

on – blank – by filling out a form on my website. I tried to contact you five times now and I haven't

heard back.” Now I'm not like asking why haven't I heard back from you or anything like that. I'm

just kind of stating the facts of I still haven't heard from you. “Reply to this email if you're still

interested, if you're no longer interested, then you don't have to do anything. This is the last time

you’ll hear from me.” So it's still friendly, I have that little smiley face at the end but I want to make

sure that if they are actually interested than they do reply to this email. If not then that's fine, I've

had enough of this. But I just want to make sure to get a response from them and this has been

effective like I said in getting a response from the people who are genuinely still interested but just

haven't had the time to reply.

Stephanie: This is great Justin, you know, we've used an email that's similar to this but not quite

as specific. I think saying you know, like “I tried to contact you five times” and be like yikes,

whoops, I guess I did ask for information. We had a lot of success with sending a very short email

that says “hey, I followed up a couple of times, I haven't heard from you.” and then asking the

question “Are you still looking for a DJ? Are you still interested in our services?”

Jeff: It's good to be able to embed it at some point.

Stephanie: Yeah, so like “Are you still interested? Let me know.” And that email as a final one

and we usually had a series there that was actually our three email series, that was almost always –

by the time we got to that email, 95% response. So I could see the same thing happening here.

Justin: Yeah, totally. You just want to get them to try and take action if they're still actually

interested. And that's...

Jeff: Here's a quick question that I think goes with this. What kind of header would you

put on an email to get it open? Like subject line?

Stephanie: Oh, subject line.

Justin: Oh that's a good question. So I have different header – I should have included that,

I'm sorry. Again, I don't remember what the headline is on this but I do like just using like “hey.” So

“Hey ...” or “hey” and like their first name. That gets a lot of emails opened. That was actually –

and the reason I use that in some of my emails is that was one of – when Obama was campaigning, I

don't know if that was his first campaign or his second one. That was the most opened email that his

campaign sent out and they sent out like millions and millions of emails. And that's why it's

important to kind of study some of those things and it really does work to get something open. And

it doesn't really – it's just such an easy subject line to use. So I use that pretty often.


With some of the other follow-up emails I think I would use something like... what would I say? I

would probably use my name in some of them. Because some of them like BMB Wedding DJ

they'll remember that they had checked out my website. Yeah.

Do you guys have any other suggestions or powerful headlines or not headlines but subject lines

that you've used?

Stephanie: It kind of depends on the purpose of your email, right? So I think that you're trying to

just kind of get their attention, like this is someone who's contacted you. One that works well for us

though you don't want to overuse it, like you wouldn't want to use it every time you follow up with

the same person. If you put “For Justin” in the subject line. “For Stephanie,” “For Jeff.” That works

really well. Any time you put a person's name in there...

Jeff: They feel compelled to open it.

Justin: Yeah, it kind of makes it a little bit, it piques your curiosity as to why somebody's

putting that in the subject line.

Jeff: Yeah, absolutely.

Stephanie: If you ask a question, like – and this is again you have to probably be a little cheeky

to pull this off. It's something like “do you still like me?” You could use that if you're making fun in

this final email. You could use that.

Justin: Yeah, definitely.

Stephanie: You have a sense of humor and you suspect that the person you're talking to...

Jeff: Or “1 out of 5 doctors recommend you hire me.”

Stephanie: That would get opened, you know. That's the kind of thing. But it is, you know, it

also walks that fine line a little bit so it's up to your judgment if it's your personality to use it or not.

Justin: Right, I totally agree.

Jeff: Someone was asking “My last attempt, how would that be put in there?” It almost

sounds like a collection agency though

Stephanie: Well, you can have it in there, “This is my last attempt to contact you.”

Jeff: And you could use it as a subject line, you might scare them into opening it.

Justin: Yeah, for sure. I wish, I'm sorry, I should have checked. Again, I set this up like years

ago so like I don't specifically remember what the headline was and I should have put it in there.

Jeff: Something like “my medical test results” it would get opened immediately.


Justin: It might get opened but it probably will not get you the sale.

Jeff: Checking back one last time, that's a pretty good subject line.

Justin: Yeah.

Stephanie: The best thing to do guys is to test it. To actually test out different subject lines and

see what works. And if you're using a service like one of the ones that I'm sure Justin's going to tell

us about and I'm not going to steal his thunder again, you can do that automatically, you can test

against – you can send out emails and split test they call it or AB test. So that's something that you

can do but you don't have to a service to do it. You can actually just test out different subjects and

gauge a response.

Jeff: A quick question, too. “How many days apart were the first three emails again?”

Justin: So usually I said from the first email that you're actually sending them the one that I

highly suggest that you use is Steph and Jeff's template. So the first kind of follow-up email I

usually do like 3 or 4 days because at that point they've had enough time that they should've read

that first email.

Jeff: Okay.

Justin: And then following that I usually do a week and then two weeks after like for each

email following. Because like I said, I know the feeling of not wanting to be annoying and I think if

you're sending someone an email every week or two, you're not being annoying at that point.

Jeff: Only during daytime? Like you only send them during the week? That was another

question we had. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday? Which is the most opened emails?

Justin: Honestly, I don't worry too much about that and it's the same thing with subject lines.

Like I know that subject lines are important and I know that open rates are important. But when I

only had 300 leads coming through that's not really enough people to test. So what I do is I just try

and find some best practices and then just set them up. But some of those things, like the open times

of emails, usually if you look at data online, like it doesn't provide that huge of a difference. If you

send it at 8 am on Monday versus 2 pm on Tuesday. It makes a huge difference if you're sending out

a million emails because the percentage difference of a better open rate of like 2% or 3% is going to

make a huge difference. But I just kind of get something going, get it set up like don't spend a lot of

time worrying about all that stuff. Just get this – if you implement this system as best as you can, it's

going to be better than what you have now so worry about that. And then you can always make

slight changes if you're getting weird responses from some emails or you're not getting any response

and you can make a change. But I try not to – don't get caught up in the details. Like the details are

kind of important for some of those things but they're not as important as you think they are. Just

get it done. Like getting it done is way more important. If that makes sense.

Stephanie: Good point Justin, that's a really good point. You're absolutely right. You know,

we've kind of jumped into more of the internet marketing and large volumes of responses so we

tend to get stuck on things like that testing piece. But you're absolutely right. Take a template that

we've put together, or one that Justin is going to share with you and use that and get i t into play.


You're right, that's going to make the biggest difference.

Jeff: It's not a one size fits all anyway.

Justin: Yeah, yeah. And like the amount of volume that you're doing as a wedding vendor of

emails and stuff like that is just, it's near impossible to get actually statistically significant data. And

just don't worry about it, just do – just try things out and if they seem to be working, then keep

doing them and if they're not working then try something else. That's kind of been my – that's how I

tested all this stuff and that's how I built this system. It's just putting things into play and then

testing them. But not like on an individual small basis like on a much wider scale like putting in a

follow-up system and if the follow-up system is working, keep using that follow-up system. Not

like testing each subject line and each individual email if that makes sense.

Stephanie: Absolutely.

Justin: Okay, cool. So the issue with this is that like I said I had 322 leads last year and I'm

suggesting that you're sending a minimum of 7 emails per lead. So that actually adds up to a lot of

email. It ends up being just over 2,300 emails. And that's just emails related to leads. I don't know

like I said how many leads each of you have, if you only are getting 20 to 50 leads a year, then it's

totally manageable. If you're getting a lot like I was, then it starts to become unmanageable. I'll talk

a little bit more about kind of where I started and where I went but I just want to kind of get it in

your head that you have this as a system. So no matter where you're at you want to have that first

email template ready to be sent and if you're at the point where you're not using an actual system,

you're just doing it manually, you just want to be able to copy and paste that email and hit send. You

don't want to have to rewrite the same email every single time. You want to just copy and paste,

copy and paste, copy and paste every time the email needs to be sent.

So I'm going to talk a little bit more in part 4 about how you can do this but I just want to make sure

that you realize how important it is to have this as a system.

So part two, now that you have, now that we talked about how important it is to follow up and to

use email to follow up, I'm just going to talk a little bit about some of the things we can do to

differentiate yourself so that you're not differentiating yourself on price. Because if you're

differentiating yourself on price, you're never going to be able to charge the really high prices that

come with being a high end vendor. You really want to provide a lot of value and a I'm going to

kind of go through a few things that I've done to provide value for my clients. And another point is

that you really want to be so good that your clients can't help but talk about you. And the reason for

this is what we'll talk about in part three but you need to be able to get referrals and get those

reviews to really really grow your business.

So before I talk about what I did to make myself stand out, I want to hear what you guys do to make

yourself stand out and make yourself like really be the wedding vendor that your clients like want to

talk about. Because I find that there's so many different parts of a wedding, somebody is only really

going to be able to talk about maybe one or two of their vendors to their friends and family and they

need to have a story of why what you do is so cool. So I want to know what some of those things

are that you do that really makes you stand out from the other wedding vendors that your clients are

working with.


Stephanie: You know, we'll give you a moment as you're on your computer to type in something

about what makes you stand out. And I guess we could talk about our own experience. I guess one

of the first things was that always always in the email right away started getting personal and joking

around...

Jeff: Always very personal with them.

Stephanie: And using a sense of humor immediately. That didn't wait until I “knew them.”

Jeff: It built rapport.

Stephanie: If they gave me anything to go on, I would run with it. So if they say something

about the weather, I'm going to talk about the weather. If they talk about their dog, I'm going to talk

about their dog. If I happen to notice that their email address is from a school or something local,

“Oh yeah, my stepson goes to that school.”

Jeff: Sending them a postcard from us, a hand-written card to them, I mean that sounds

tiny but it had a huge impact.

Justin: Were you doing that before the sale or with your actual clients?

Stephanie: We were doing it before the sale, we were doing it with us clients.

Jeff: We would thank them for meeting with us. If they didn't book us at the meeting, we

would send them a hand-written card saying “hey it was really awesome meeting you. It was fun

talking about your wedding and your dog Fifi, or whatever.” Something personal outside of the

transaction.

Stephanie: We called them up – I would call up our clients, the ones we had booked every three

months just to say “hey, how's it going? Is there anything that you need? What's going on with the

wedding?” And our clients would be kind of like “oh, you're calling just to check on me? There's

nothing wrong?” at first and then they got used to it. And then they started sharing things “well, I

am looking for somebody different doing my flowers.”

Jeff: Yeah, can we help you with that?

Stephanie: We had these relationships with clients where some of these brides would be

emailing me every single week literally.

Jeff: So let me hit you with some of the...

Justin: That sounds awesome.

Jeff: … real quick here what they said. Personal attention to clients, many of them say I

felt like family that's probably similar to us here. I send a PowerPoint presentation and not just a

quote from my honey moon destination clients. Something personal that would seem special and

unexpected at the wedding that creates memories.


Stephanie: Oh cool, can you give us some examples of that? That would be awesome. But I

think that's perfect. Oh, this is something that we used to do. When we meet with the couple it

might be a year or more before the wedding and I always took copious notes. And we'd have them

talking about the music that they love and the artists they love. And then a month before the

wedding they are fried. We would meet to talk about what they want to have happen and then go

over the events but I wrote down all those notes from a year ago. So I remembered that they really

loved Bon Jovi. And they forgot to tell me before the wedding but I'll play it at the wedding and

they're like “how did you know? It's like you read my mind.” So those are the kinds of things that

are very simple but...

Jeff: Here's a few more that people wrote. I bring my skills as a multi-publisher romance

novelist to write the couple's love story and make it blend into the moment they take their vows.

Justin: Cool

Jeff: “I am not at all generic, I have no fear of showing my personality, or relating my life

to theirs, I'm a bit of a dork,” I like that. Hand-written thank you card, a $25 gift card depending on

the amount of vacation package. Remind them that I'm a legitimate licensed interior designer.

Wading up to my chest in an ice cold lake to get the shot. Oh I know where he's going with this –

wading up to my chest in an ice-cold lake to get the shot during their save the date shoot and

generally being funny and a big dork.

Justin: That's definitely further than I've ever gone for a wedding, I have to admit.

Jeff: Give them questions for booking a children's magician or providing party planning

templates and other helpful resources. Bringing in cupcakes and candles for a guest that has a

birthday.

Stephanie: Oh that's an example he was saying.

Jeff: Nice job. That's really good.

Stephanie: We used to give a gift also to our couples at the wedding that they didn't know about

of their wedding CD, not that they even know what a wedding CD is anymore but it was framed

with the couple's name and wedding date engraved on it. And that was something that was a

surprise for them, too.

Jeff: Checking with them a few times throughout the year and make sure it's easy for them

to plan. People have a lot here.

Stephanie: So hopefully you hear an idea that sparks...

Jeff: Find the one thing that is their thing and create a moment around it. Bingo, that's a

good one.

Stephanie: Yes.

Jeff: Listening and trying not to inflict my vision on them. Make sure they get what they


wanted.

Stephanie: Cool, hopefully you picked up an idea or something from that but let's keep going

Justin, it's good stuff.

Justin: Yeah, cool. Yeah, those were awesome ideas. I'm going to take you through just a

couple more that I do, too. So this one's really easy and it's – I mean actually I would book a lot of

weddings without ever meeting with people. They would book me just through email. We would

just be emailing back and forth and then they would send me a $1,000 deposit and we'd be ready to

go. So with those clients specifically I would record a video and just send them the link. You can

just do this on YouTube if you have a computer with a webcam built into it. YouTube allows you to

record a quick video and it's just like a “hey, thanks so much for booking me, I can't wait to work

with you. Can't wait to meet in person and just feel free to let me know if you need anything.” And I

always get a very surprised reaction and a very happy reaction to something like this. It just makes

me really stand out from all those other vendors.

Again, like Stephanie I check in every couple of months. I think this is really powerful, like you

said Steph like pretty surprised that they're hearing from their wedding DJ, like every couple of

months but I think it really makes you seem like you genuinely care which I think both of us do care

about our clients. And just checking in because what I hear from a lot of my clients is that they'll

book a vendor and then they won't hear from them sometimes until the wedding. Like they don't

even know if they're going to show up. Sometimes they'll have a hard time getting a hold of them

like the week of the wedding or whatever. And I don't want to be that person that's stressing out my

clients. I want to be that person that they think of as being on top of everything and ready to go for

their special day. And then just like a lot of you said, when I meet with my clients, I'll meet with

them and I'll make sure that it's not just a business conversation, it's like learning about them,

learning about their dogs or their kids or just learning about their life and trying to become friends

with them and not just be their wedding vendor but being their wedding DJ. I want to be somebody

who they really feel that is on their side and is ready to go for their wedding so that when we get to

the wedding and something bad goes on or something good goes on they just can't stop talking

about me because we have that relationship.

Jeff: Is that video one video you make – someone had a question – or is it custom for

every client?

Justin: Custom for every client. It takes – if you have a YouTube account, each one like

from the point of me logging in and doing this and sending them an email it's literally like five

minutes.

Jeff: Yeah because you're on your computer, right?

Justin: Yeah because it's just a one minute video. So yeah, I make a custom one for every

client.

Jeff: Okay, cool.

Justin: That's a good question though.


Jeff: Oh is this automated? Somebody wanted to know if you have this automated or do

you have it in your calendar?

Justin: Yeah so this is, like I said, like what I was just about to say was that this might seem

like overwhelming to do all these things and obviously if I'm recording a video for each individual

client, that part is not automated but reminding me to do so is automated. And that is something that

my system reminds me to do and then once I do record the video all I have to do is paste in the URL

in that email sent with a template that's already written out and I don't have to actually write the

email, I just paste the URL in and it's off to my client.

So like Steph and Jeff just said, hopefully you can take one of those – I mean there's a whole bunch

of awesome ideas now, I wish we had a list of all those things other than the ones that I've said

because there is some really really good ideas in there. Take all those things, find one that sticks out

to you that you think you can implement into your business and do that. And that's being able to be

the vendor that your clients are talking about really really like this is how you can really get your

business going and really build the system that continues to send you really high quality leads and

continues to generate you more business.

The issue with the wedding business like I'm sure you guys know there's really no repeat business.

Some different vendors might have the ability to be hired to work a Christmas party or something

like that for somebody's office but in general there's not a lot of repeat business in our industry. And

you put all that hard work in, you really value your customers and the only way really to leverage

all that hard work in my opinion at least is you have to get online reviews and then you have to also

get referrals because that's the only way that all that hard work is going to pay off.

This, like implementing what I'm going to talk about in a second here like this is what allowed me

to turn off my paid advertising because having these online reviews sends me traffic, organic traffic

directly and then that traffic is very likely to convert because they've seen all these extremely

positive reviews about my business. And like I just can't stress enough how important this is.

So the cool thing is I'm actually going to share with you in just a few slides like you can have these

specific templates that you can use, just give me a couple of slides, you don't have to take notes but

just pay attention to what I'm saying and you can hear why this stuff is important so that you can

implement in into your business.

So the first thing is after every wedding like Steph and Jeff I send out a thank you card in the mail

but that's not actually going to help me get a 5 star review. What I also do is I send a thank you

email and this is what it says, so it usually says “Hey Lora, I just want to thank you and Steve for

having me at your wedding. I had a blast. I just want to let you know that I really appreciate your

business. Thanks again and please let me know if you need anything else from me.”

So it's a very basic email, there's not a ton going on in here and one in a while I'll add like a little bit

of details about their wedding but honestly I don't actually think it's that important. I think just

sending this email, the purpose of it is first of all, I'm truly thankful for every one of my clients, I

really have a great life being able to go and DJ at people's weddings and it's really an important day

and I love being a part of it. But secondly I also use this email as a way to get a conversation going

about the wedding again and hopefully then I can ask them for a review.


So after they have replied – not everyone replies to that email and that's totally fine, I mean people

are really busy after their wedding and I know that that's what happens, just like what I was talking

about before, that email gets pushed down in their inbox and they just forget about it. And that's not

a problem at all. But with the people that do reply, I usually get a very enthusiastic reply talking

about how much fun they had, how much fund everyone had, how great I was to work with, etc.

And then once they say that, that's when I can ask them for a review because I know that they're

very likely to leave me a positive online review and that they're not only likely to leave me a

positive online review but they're just likely to leave me a review because of how highly they were

talking about my service.

So this is the email that I use to ask for the review, I'm going to take you through the four important

parts of why this is. So you can use this, if you want, use this template exactly in your business, feel

free, if you want to make some changes just note why these four important points are in here. So the

first is the line “these are really important to me, because they help me convince other couples to

book and I can win awards because of them.” So the reason I have this line in here is because of a

study done by Dr. Robert Cialdini who is the author of Influence and if you haven't read that book,

it's one of my absolute favorites related to psychology and marketing.

Jeff: Yeah, it's one of our big favorites, too.

Justin: Yeah and in that book one of the studies that he talks about is a study that was done

just to see whether or not people would be influenced by having given a reason to take action. So in

this study it was found that people were 51% more likely to take action if they're given a reason to

do so than if they were just asked to take that action. So that's why I include this in here. Because at

this point I mean I have 100 reviews, a lot of my clients could be like “well, he's got a lot of

reviews, it doesn't really matter.” But if I'm telling them that it really does help me book other

couples and especially that it helps me win awards, they're much more likely to keep adding on to

those reviews. And every review, I mean the first ten are going to be more powerful than your

hundredth to a hundred and tenth. But every review does add up and make it even more powerful

for somebody who goes to that page to potentially books you.

The second part is I just want to make it as absolutely easy as possible for people to leave me a

review. So what I do is I don't just link to Wedding Wire itself, I link to my page and specifically the

page where they are able to leave a review. And you can see in those brackets I also describe

specifically where they can leave a review. Because some of those sites are difficult to find the

place where you can actually leave a review. So I want to make it as easy as possible by giving

them the link and all they have to do is click and follow my instruction to leave a review.

The third note is that it shouldn't take you more than 10 minutes. And the reason for this is I want

people to take action right away. I don't want this email to get buried in their inbox, to be something

that they put off to do way later on and I want them to realize that this isn't going to take a long time

and that they should just do it now. Because if it gets buried in their inbox, like I said so many

times, it's just going to get forgotten about and not done.

And then the last thing is I just want to give them some ideas of things to write about. And it's not

necessarily that these are the most important things to me and my business, it's just I want to have –

again, people will get hung up on thinking of what they can write about. So if they have these cues

here, they're much more likely to go and leave that review right away. And all they have to do is


kind of fill in the blanks for what those points are.

So like I said, if you're interested, I have put these templates together, feel free to download them

and use them directly in your business or modify them as you see fit but you can go to

JustinJacques.com/bmb and you can get the templates there.

Stephanie: Very cool. I love this two step approach that you've taken Justin with the reviews,

I've not heard that before and I think that's super powerful.

Justin: Yeah, it's – like if you look at my reviews, I'm sure like everyone else here I've

looked at pretty much every review that I've gotten. And I have like I charge a lot of money and so

like I think Wedding Wire talks about value, so I think I have two reviews that didn't give me 5 stars

on value because I do charge a lot of money but out of those other 100 reviews every single one is

full 5 stars and those ones are very close to full 5 stars, it's just people wanted to tell other people

that I was not cheap.

So this system is like extremely powerful because you're not asking everyone for a review, you're

only asking the people who are very likely to leave you a positive review and you're not annoying

the people who don't want to leave a review by asking them as well. If I hadn't talked highly enough

about this system, then hopefully that drives it home.

And then with regards to referrals, there's a few things I do. So around in January as you guys know

I'm sure, a lot of people get engaged over the holidays and I just remind my past clients that

probably their friends and family have recently been engaged and if they think that I'm a good fit

for them, maybe it would be a great idea for them, I'd really appreciate them passing on my name to

those people.

I also send out first anniversary cards. And again, these are actually in the physical mail. And

they're just again to remind my clients again how much find we had together, remind my clients

about my service and hopefully have them talk about me when they get the opportunity. And then if

anyone does send me a referral and I end up booking with that person, I send them a gift card just as

a thank you because I just want to encourage as much referral traffic as possible. This stuff does

take some time. However, this is one of the easiest ways for you to get business. If you have

satisfied customers and they are talking about you, this is going to be way cheaper than spending

money on advertising on wedding shows. All those things take so much time and money. This is a

really really powerful and effective way to spend your time and your advertising dollars.

Jeff: Agreed.

Justin: Cool. So just a quick – I just want to check in on the time. So I think we're going a

little bit past 2. Is that good? Can I keep going?

Jeff: We tend to go a little longer than 2 around here sometimes. Let's ask our audience

here, is it okay if we go a little bit longer here because we're really digging this stuff.

Stephanie: Yeah I need to find out about the automation piece. And I think a lot of other people

are chomping at the bit about that, too. So if that's okay with you, just let us...


Justin: Cool.

Stephanie: Yes, go on. Please don't stop.

Jeff: Don't stop, please don't stop.

Justin: Alright, so to me these three small systems that I kind of shared with you today, if

you're not doing them, they're like low-hanging fruit. They're easy ways to really transform your

business and really get you more bookings. But like I said it can be hard to keep track of this

because there is a lot of things that are going on. So I'm going to kind of share with you a couple of

systems that I've used to set this up in my business.

So the first system, this is actually the same spreadsheet that you saw a long time ago when I was

talking about booking my first wedding. As time went on I started adding on ways for me to track in

this – it's a Google spreadsheet and I added on columns on here that would change different colors

depending on when I was supposed to send an email. So for example somebody inquired about my

services on Tuesday, I would have it set so that on their row, like five days later when I was

supposed to follow up one of the cells would change color and it would tell me that I would have to

send an email to them.

Now this system was really really good and was really effective for taking me from like $20,000 to

$50,000. It really truly works and I've shared this Google spreadsheet with Steph and where can

they find that stuff?

Stephanie: They'll be able to find it inside the membership site under the replay video. So you'll

be getting it as soon as it's ready, you'll know it's there.

Justin: Okay, cool. So yeah, if you want to use this spreadsheet it is like – when you're at

that point where you don't feel like overwhelmed with the amount of work that you're doing, then

this spreadsheet is fantastic for making sure that you build a system even though it's not automated,

it does require manual work but you have that system in place of like we're going to follow up with

somebody a few days after they inquire and then a few days after that and you have a way to keep

track of where everyone is at and what should be happening.

So I shared both this spreadsheet with Steph and also a video I created on how to use it. And if you

do start and try to use it in your business and you do have questions, feel free to send me an email.

I'd be more than happy to answer your questions.

So sorry, I'm getting a little parched here. So this system like I said, it was absolutely fantastic. And

like I said it really did take me from that $20,000 to the $50,000 but then at some point it kind of

broke. It was just – if you have a lot of leads coming in and you have a lot of customers, using this

spreadsheet to manage your business is not effective. It's very difficult to do. As I was growing and

kind of around that time when I was getting more and more busy I used a tool called Rescue Time

which just tracks where you're spending your time on your computer. And I found out that I was

spending 9.2 hours a week basically sending email back and forth. And I knew that those emails

were important because they were what was getting me sales and they were the reason why my

business was successful but I also knew that that was like way too much time to be spending on

following up with leads. So I was getting stressed out, I felt disorganized and I was really wasting


my time.

So again if you're at the beginning stages, use that spreadsheet. It's awesome. If you're starting to

grow, then I'm going to talk a little bit more about what the system is that you can use that I use and

that really brought me from that $50,000 to making a $100,000. So like I said I went searching for a

solution and what I ended up finding was Infusionsoft. And with Infusionsoft I've been able to

completely automate like all these things that I've been talking about with you today.

It saved me like five hours a week. It ensured that my leads were going through the perfect process

and not just when I felt like doing it. So the problem with that spreadsheet is that it required you to

like log in and say hey, who do I have to email today? And then it requires you to actually go in and

send those emails. Which some days I was really good at and some days I was not so good at. And

it – the process definitely worked and I want you guys to use this if you're not using something like

that right now. But at some point it gets to be just a lot to keep track of.

Jeff: That is right there probably one of the biggest problems people have and it's

understandable because life is happening while their business is happening so things happening

around them effects how they respond, how they follow up. Like well, I had a really shitty week or

a crazy week and I didn't get a chance to follow up but I'll be better next week. But when you do

something like this automated, it doesn't slip through the cracks. So yeah.

Justin: Yeah, exactly. I did also – because I was able to free up that time I was able to do

those things where I was able to give my clients that extra attention. And part of the system also –

because I was using this system it just reassured them that I was on top of their wedding. Because

they were getting reminders when they should've been getting them and stuff like that. And my

clients really loved it. You can see in my reviews like you can see how much people talk about how

on top of things I am, that they never had to worry whether or not I was doing a good job and just

how reliable I was compared to some other wedding vendors. And because of that system, like I

said, this is what truly allowed me to explode my business.

Again, I don't think this is right if you are not – if you're still trying to grow your business and

you're not at the point where you have a ton of leads and you have a ton of business. Then just use

that spreadsheet, it's so effective. It really truly is but if you're beyond that, then Infusion Soft really

gave me an edge. It was like I hired someone to work for me but I didn't have to worry about

whether or not they were going to show up, that they were going to do the job that I asked them to

do when I had asked them to do it. Because it's software, it's just going to run when I ask it to.

So at this point you might be thinking, “okay, cool. How does this work?” I'm going to give you a

quick demo and show you kind of how the software works and hopefully... oh that's not what I want

to do. Did I just leave?

Stephanie: You left.

Justin: Oh okay. I just left. It asked me to leave the webinar and that's not what I wanted to

do. I didn't want to do this but I guess we've been talking for too long so I'll have to sign in again.

Stephanie: Oh good. Give us some cool sound background.


Jeff: I'll tell you a story about when I was a boy.

Stephanie: I always go to the jeopardy theme, I don't know why. We need some mood music,

isn't that what they call it, right?

Justin: Alright, sorry about that. So this is the system, this is the campaign builder in

Infusionsoft. And this is kind of the core of the system. And just to kind of give you a brief demo of

how this works, right here we have a web form, somewhere on your site like your contact us from

or I used to use check availability or something like that. And once somebody fills in that form, they

get put into this sequence. And in that sequence what's going to happen is they'll get that immediate

email saying “hey, thanks so much for your inquiry, we'll get back to you within the next 48 hours.”

And it also is going to notify you or your staff that you have a new lead and that you have to follow

up with them.

Once you've sent that email which is this step, then this system will just keep following up which is

in the sequence – and I'll show you here in a second – with emails until something else happens. So

we'll go in here and here is the follow-up to what I was talking about where three days after that

first email gets sent they get sent the first follow-up email. Seven days later the second follow-up

email. Two weeks later the third follow-up email. And they just keep getting emails until something

happens. Until they've decided to book with you or until they've decided that maybe meet with you

before they book and they want to book a meeting with you or until they tell you go away we're not

interested.

And one of the coolest parts about this is like I used to spend a ton of time booking meetings. Like I

hated the back and forth of like “oh what time works for you?” Like going back and forth booking

meetings just drove me nuts because it felt like an obvious waste of time. So with this system I was

able to set up a like a calendar that shared my availability, a calendar which I could set when that

was and then basically I would keep sending reminder emails for people to book meetings with me

until they actually booked. And the system would know then when they booked a meeting so it will

stop sending them reminders.

So if they book a meeting after the first email then they're not going to get all these other emails.

But if they haven't booked a meeting they just keep getting reminders until they do. And then at the

end if they still haven't booked a meeting like three weeks later then I get a reminder that says “hey,

this person still hasn't booked a meeting, maybe you want to give them a call or follow up and see

why they haven't done so yet.” And same thing if somebody tentatively books you and tells you that

they want to book, you know, following up and getting – many people will pay a deposit right away

but I've also had lots of people that say they're going to book me and then they're still planning on

booking me, they just don't pay the deposit. They don't send me the contract. And it's the same thing

with this. We can keep following up with them automatically and you don't have to waste your time

or your staff's time following up because the system will just keep doing it for you and it will stop

as soon as it knows they've booked that event.

So this was just kind of a brief, a very brief overview of one small example of how you can use this

software but it's a really – I hope that kind of gives you an idea of what specifically what it can do.

Jeff: It takes a lot of anxiety too out of the fact that people worry about sending the next

email and it takes a lot of brain power and they're worried that they're annoying them but it's like


you've laid out this system here and it takes all of that out of it.

Justin: No, that's actually a huge point is that part of the problem with having that

spreadsheet is like even for me sometimes sending – at this point I guess I've kind of gotten over it a

little bit. But I still get anxious about sending some emails. And if you're feeling that worry about

being annoying then having that system in place and it's just doing it for you, you don't really have

to think about it. It's like relieves the stress and anxiety of doing that stuff. It's just so powerful like I

can't talk enough about how important that point is that you just brought up Jeff so thank you for

pointing that out.

Jeff: No extra charge.

Justin: Before I go on I guess I just wanted to see if anyone had any questions about the

software.

Jeff: Yeah, we got some here. Oh here's one right off the bat. “Does Infusionsoft have the

same restrictions about using an email list from wedding shows?” I would imagine yes, it's going to

fall under the same rules, right?

Stephanie: Well, let's have Justin answer that question.

Justin: Yeah, so they're pretty strict on their email lists. I generally anyways don't really

suggest using just like a cold list like that. I actually did try wedding shows and I got a couple of

weddings from them when I was in them but I never really found the amount of time, effort and cost

worth it because I was finding success doing this stuff online. But anyways, like I would always just

if I had a wedding show I would be offering something for free in exchange an email address and

that kind of list is somebody who has opted in to your email list and Infusionsoft would definitely

be okay with that. But they're pretty strict about – if you're getting market as spam like they're going

to kick you off their system and using a list like that is very likely to...

Jeff: Absolutely. That's risky behavior for sure. And I just want to put this out there that

we stopped having to do wedding shows because our automation works so well. I mean for us

you're preaching for the choir here. By using automation and plugging up those leaks in our follow-

up system we booked so many more clients we didn't have to do wedding shows. Sorry if there's

any wedding show producers on this call. I didn't mean it.

Justin: Yeah I think they can be really powerful if you know how to do them and everything

like that. For me the problem was it was just me so when the day was booked it's already booked,

you know, I'm not trying to fill a huge roster of DJ's, you know, if you're multi-op I think it's much

more effective but I think if you're all by yourself, it can be really tough to find dates that work and

make them effective and make a lot of sales with them.

Jeff: Here is a good one. “How do you fine-tune your automated Infusionsoft emails to

match a client's previous emails so you're not ignoring what they say?”

Justin: Yes. So I mean I don't just use Infusionsoft to talk back and forth. But I use it in

those instances where you need to follow up about things. And that's where the real power lies. Like

I still do email back and forth with clients. And I'm not just using this system to follow up. But the


system I kind of showed you there was definitely a little bit more simple than the system that I used

to use in my business. But I kind of had different steps in the process. So there was the initial

contact and there was like sending them pricing information eventually. And then after setting

pricing, those emails would keep going out as time went on if I didn't hear back from them. But if I

did hear back from them than I would take back the conversation and just have that in my Gmail. I

would talk to them directly.

Jeff: Right. So you'd pretty much looking at the layout on there it was kind of like you

weren't responding if they kind of... put it off.

Justin: Exactly.

Jeff: But when they do respond that changes what happens because now you're responding

to some of these specifics so if that then this kind of rule kicks in or whatever.

Justin: You got it, yes.

Stephanie: So Justin, does Infusionsoft have a feature where it actually records emails as they

come in the contact database for that potential client?

Justin: No. So that's not – again, that's not a feature that I actually. Like I guess it could be

kind of useful but I use the system to keep track of where everyone is at and then I don't pay super

close attention – and I make notes if things come in. That's where I'll use Infusionsoft to record that

in there. But I never really had to go back a lot of times once I implemented this system because

and like check to see what other people have said in their emails like a long time ago. Because I just

kind of use it to keep track of where they're at in the system or in my process and that has been kind

of enough to...

Stephanie: Cool. That's one of the differences between what we're using Ontraport which is

similar to Infusionsoft in some ways but you can actually – when you respond to, it integrates

enough with your email so that you're forwarding it to that person's contact record when you

respond to them. So you could go back and see all the emails that happened back and forth between

the two of you.

Justin: Cool.

Stephanie: So it's a cool system.

Jeff: So I'm going to keep reading the questions. So...

Stephanie: There are a lot of questions here.

Jeff: So “how does Infusionsoft know when they email back?”

Justin: That they email back? So again I would just use, that's kind of similar to, the

response is going to be similar to the last one but it's not going to keep track of the actual emails

back and forth. But you just want to move people along the process. So you do have to like log in

and just say “okay, we already talked about pricing, like I've just sent them the pricing, here is the


follow-up.” And you have to personally mark that off in Infusionsoft. But those follow-up emails

that are going to keep going are just going to keep going until you tell it otherwise.

I know it sounds complicated and it makes it sound more difficult but truly, like having those

follow-up emails is absolutely worth it and it's so much easier than actually having to write all this

stuff out and keep track of where everyone is at yourself. Like this system is keeping track of it. You

do have to go in and mark off okay, this person has told me that they want to book a meeting, like I

just marked that off in the system and now they're going to keep getting those emails until they

book that meeting if that makes sense.

Jeff: Does the software have email tracking?

Justin: I'm not sure...

Jeff: I think they want to know the open rates...

Stephanie: Like open and click through rates...

Jeff: Click through rates and all that stuff, like I would imagine that's what they're asking.

Justin: Yeah, so yes.

Jeff: Okay, that's what I thought, yeah. Okay, let's see. “If you're still trying to get your

first client, is Infusionsoft worth paying for?” Sorry guys, we're going to come back to that one.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Jeff: We're kind of on a run here. Well this is kind of where you're at. “Should I continue

to use my third party lead sites until the system takes off?” I think the answer is definitely yes.

Obviously you want to make sure it's working and systems like Infusionsoft you've got to tweak

them a little bit, too I would imagine to make it work the way you want it to work.

Justin: For sure. Sorry, what was specifically the question?

Jeff: Their current third party leads sites until they...

Stephanie: I think what he's saying is this system we're talking about to follow up and book

more of the leads you have and get reviews, they're saying should I continue to use my current third

party lead sites?

Jeff: … no leads coming in it's not going to do anything.

Stephanie: Right.

Justin: Yeah, Infusionsoft is going to help you, you're going to be able to set up this system

that will help you convert those leads. You're not going to be getting leads because of this but

implementing all those steps that I talked about today, it takes time for sure to be getting those

reviews and to be using those reviews to get more organic traffic, like it all just kind of builds on


itself. And if you're kind of at the point where like I said if you don't have enough business, you

want to build this system but you don't have to have Infusionsoft to use it. You want to build this

system of like I want to follow up a few days after the first email, a few days after the second email.

You want to have that system in place and you want to have those emails ready to go. And then

once you get to the point where it's too much to manage and you're making good money, then that's

when you can invest in something like Infusionsoft and have that do the work for you. That's

exactly the path that I took.

And use that spreadsheet. It's really really powerful, it's free if you're not at that point. But

Infusionsoft is going to help you with your conversions and help you manage your current clients

and make sure that you're not spending all day long sending emails back and forth I guess.

Jeff: Right. I had the same thing happen when I used Rescue Time like you said, I was

shocked how much time went into emails and stuff. I just didn't even think about how much time

was in there and Stephanie wants to cry when she sees my inbox. Because it's a freaking mess.

So here's another question “so if you don't intervene, it can possibly send an automated email out.” I

would imagine yes, you need to move them into a new category.

Justin: It could and if that happens, like – and it has happened to me once or twice, I just say

“oh, sorry. I didn't see you in the system.” You know, it's not the end of the world to me. Like if

somebody gets an extra email, they're not going to not book you because of that. And usually

because the time frame is so different like I mean there are some people that are going to take a

week to reply to an email. But generally people are going to reply to an email within a day or two.

So with those follow-up emails for example if you're sending an email and you're not sending a

follow-up email a week later, like they're going to likely reply in that first two days and if they don't

reply then the chances of them replying after that – so you kind of have five days to go on and mark

off that they've moved on. If that makes sense.

Jeff: Right.

Stephanie: So Justin how much more do you have in your presentation because I think we have

some more questions but they're a little bit off what we were talking about. So I want you to

probably just keep going, right?

Justin: Okay. Yeah there's only five more slides but yeah. Like I said, I was able to automate

almost all of my follow-up and it really was based on where my customers were at in the process

and it was just so powerful and so cool. I'm being able to do this and not having to spend all that

time following up with clients all day long.

It saved me a ton of time because I was able to automate other tasks like invoicing. This is another

cool example of how you can automate the system. It's like with your balance payment you could

be sending emails reminding new clients until they've actually paid your balance. So that task is

now fully taken off your plate. You can have the system keep sending those emails until they've

actually paid for you. And then you don't have to worry about chasing down people the day of the

wedding because you forgot to send them an invoice way before. Like all that stuff is done.

Stephanie: Very cool.


Justin: Yeah. And then like I said it really helped me get organized because I didn't show

you in the demo today because I just wanted to give you a quick overview but you can build out a

dashboard that shows you where all your leads are at, where your clients are at and what needs to be

done at each step.

So you came here because you wanted to grow your business and if you're like I said at that

beginning states, please use that spreadsheet, use the other things I talked about. If you are beyond

that and you're just kind of at the point where you're feeling like overwhelmed and you're ready to

go on, then I can help you do this. So I have helped other wedding DJ's, not just DJ's but other

wedding vendors implement this system in their business and this is just one of my testimonials.

And like I said it's going to help you automatically convert more leads, get huge chunks of your

business on auto-pilot and get more reviews, referrals and more time to yourself. And it's going to

be less straining for your staff because you'll be more consistent and you'll have that system in

place.

So if you're ready to do this and you want to check out Infusion Soft then you can just go to my

website right now, JustinJacques.com/wedding and I'd be more than happy to give you a demo.

Because I like the software so much I ended up becoming an Infusionsoft certified consultant so I

can help you get started on the software and we can implement these systems directly in your

business.

So if you are interested, go to JustinJacques.com/wedding. If you're not at that point yet, like I said,

please use that – I know I've said it a whole bunch of times but use that spreadsheet, get this system

in place and then as you're growing your business, you can come to me and we can take this

software and get your time back. But I want you to grow your business using those other systems

because they're really effective.

Jeff: Awesome.

Justin: So that's it.

Jeff: Awesome advice, Justin, I really – you know, I can't stress it enough myself that if

you fix these parts of your sales funnel and we all have this issue in our sales funnel to some extent,

you will make more money. It's like you know, most people are considering “where should I spend

more money advertising here, advertising there?” And it's like it's much more effective to fix what

you have first because otherwise when you spend money, leads are going to be coming in and

they're going to be pouring out these gaping holes in the system and it's not going to be effective. So

it is so critical to get this wired down.

Justin: I 100% agree. If you're advertising and you don't have a follow-up system in place,

you're literally like burning maybe not the full dollar that you're spending on every dollar you're

spending but like 50% of it is just being burned because you're not getting the most out of those

dollars that you're spending. You can set up these systems and they don't take long to set up, they

don't really take long to implement and they just like I said, I set these up like two years ago and I

honestly don't even know what's in the emails because I wrote them so long ago and this system just

keeps working. Like it just kept booking me weddings without really much effort on my part.


Jeff: Cool.

Stephanie: So just to reiterate, Justin has been kind enough to give us some gifts which I'll be

passing on to you. It will be posted in the membership site so you'll be able to find them there on

the replay page. So he's giving you the Google spreadsheet that you can use for tracking your leads,

he's giving you a mind map of that sequence of emails that 7 emails that he described so you can

download that and also you have that link if you go to JustinJacques.com/bmb you can download

his two review template email series if you want that and I'm going to put together a cool action

checklist so you can go through it and say alright, here are the things I've got to do to implement the

stuff we learned today. Check, check, check.

Justin: I'll share with you, too that first email that I use and I'll shoot a quick video on just

talking through the different points as well just so you can see why it's important some of those

lines I have in there and why I included them. So...

Jeff: Great, that's awesome. Thank you so much for sharing this with our peeps, I really

really appreciate it.

Justin: Yeah, no problem, do we have time for questions or do we want to wrap up? I mean

we already have...

Jeff: I think we're hitting the end, we're hitting the road here but really great job.

Stephanie: Awesome.

Justin: Cool. Thanks so much for having me guys, I really appreciate it and I hope you guys

got some value.

Jeff: We truly did and there's digital applause coming through right now, people are

applauding you. Good job.

Stephanie: Perfect. Thanks so much, Justin. And thanks, we'll be in touch soon.

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