Welcome my friend! Welcome to the Empowered Weddings group! If we have not met before, my name is Rachel, I’m a wedding photographer and business coach. I help wedding professionals elevate the quality of clients they attract, position themselves as the only clear choice for their ideal client, and confidently close high end sales so that they can have a profitable business working with clients they love.
Today we are talking all about the secret sauce- the exact steps I take people through that yields a 100-300% increase in annual income. I’ve used these same 3 steps multiple times in my own businesses and it works every time to uplevel my income.
First of all, I want you to figure out- what would a 70-100-300% increase in income look like for you this year?
So let’s say you made 60K from your business last year. A 100% growth would be 120k. A 300% increase would be $240k. Even just a 70% increase would tip you over 100k into being a six figure business, so you’ll want to stick around to the end of this training because I’m going to share with you exactly how I did this in my business and how I help other people do it too.
If you’re like me, you LOVE what you do, you already know that you’re great at what you do, and you’re providing an incredible experience for your clients. And what you really want is to feel the joy that comes from working with people who see your work as priceless, as invaluable and who just feel so lucky that they even have the opportunity to work with you. We want EVERY client to be like that.
If you’re like me, you also want this to be a successful business. One that pays you well, and funds the life of your dreams. You want to have time away from your business for quality time with your family, so you don’t want to be overbooked and overworked.
My husband and I are both self-employed and have been for years, so I really understand this- creating a work/life balance is hard especially when you feel like you’re really not making as much as you need or want for your life.
So! Here’s the deal, in order to grow the income in your business you either need to have more clients or clients who pay more.
What I’ve come to realize is that I don’t want a large volume of clients. I’d rather charge more and book less so that I have more time with my family, so my focus is on attracting better clients who pay a lot more.
So here’s the framework that I’ve developed over my years in the wedding industry, that is proven and if you follow it step-by-step you will see massive results from. I want you to write this down.
Step 1: You need to elevate the quality of clients you attract so that you’re speaking to the right people who are already a perfect fit- they have the bigger budget, they respect you as the professional, their personality meshes with yours. EVERYTHING gets easier because you are attracting the right people.
Step 2: You need to position yourself as a luxury, and the only clear choice for your perfect-fit client so that they are prompted to inquire with you and their mind is prepared to invest with you before you even talk about the numbers.
Step 3: You need to present elevated rates, close the sale, and confidently invite their yes so that you can achieve the goal here, which is bookings and cashflow!
If you do those three things in that order, you will see some big changes in your business right away. So, let’s get more into the details of how you take action on these three steps.
Step 1: Elevate the quality of clients you attract by speaking the language of your perfect-fit, ready-to-invest couples. To attract the right people, you must target your specific audience, the ones who are already ready to invest in their perfect-fit, and aren’t looking for the cheapest option. This means, first of all, that you need to get really clear about who you are talking to, and you need to know about their desires, dreams, what they like, dislike, and how they make purchasing decisions.
This is the FOUNDATION of your business and if you are not 100% clear about who your ideal client is and how to speak to them, your marketing and sales will be less effective or not effective at all. So this is super important to get right and to make sure that you are speaking directly to your soulmate clients so you who are ready-to-invest in your higher end services by focusing your marketing on their specific desires, aspirations, and values.
For example, my soulmate clients deeply care that their family and friends feel included and have a fun time at their event. So that is what I show in my portfolio images, and that is what I talk about in my copy- and guess what? I attract people who care deeply about their family.
When you understand exactly how to speak to your unique soulmate client, your marketing will become clear and magnetic. Your ideal clients will feel an immediate and powerful connection with you- you’ll have them at hello! This will make your sales soooo much easier because they are already warmed up to you, they already love what you do.
When you know your ideal client really well, you can also know what platforms they do and do not hang out on. My people- not on instagram. So I don’t focus my attention there. I focus on being where they are looking- because I know how they shop and how they make buying decisions. This saves me a ton of time and effort, right?! Because I can strategically use my time for the best impact.
Getting crystal clear on your ideal client makes it so that you can much more effectively market to the RIGHT people for you with way less time and effort AND they will be people who are ready to invest, ready to work with you for you!
2. To position yourself as a luxury, you need to show how you are different, and what you uniquely do that achieves their specific goals. And to me, that is the epitome of the luxury experience. You're fulfilling their aspirations, you’re creating something incredibly customized. Being luxury doesn't mean you have a specific aesthetic, or that you have to be a big known luxury brand like Chanel, Gucci or Prada. It means that you delivered a customized world class experience and you met their needs.
Even if you are attracting the right people, you will still need to effectively tell them WHY they should choose you over anyone else they are looking at. You need to clearly communicate your unique value and impactfully show what makes you the perfect fit for their vision.
Because remember, if a client can’t tell the difference between you and someone else, you give them no choice but to choose based on price. We want them to choose based on who is the best fit and the best connection for them.
So that means you need to know:
What do you do that’s unique?
What processes do you have in place that make a customized luxury experience for your clients?
How do you achieve your client’s goal for their event?
What values do you have that match your client’s values- making you the perfect fit?
When you are able to show your unique value to your soulmate clients they will perceive you as a LUXURY that is customized and specialized to their specific vision for their event which will drive them to contact you and prep their pocketbooks for the investment.
These two steps - upgrading the quality of clients you attract, and positioning yourself as the clear choice for their needs, naturally leads us to the final step which is to:
3. Confidently close and book perfect-fit clients!
Closing sales creates the life-blood of your business: cash - and you can see that the past two steps are leading us here and making this final step much more easy and natural because you’ll be talking with people who are much more prepared to go into the buying phase with you!
To confidently close prospects you need to create a process that qualifies the people who are serious about working with you, connect with them personally, personalize their results and present elevated packages that fit them like a glove.
So what a lot of people are doing wrong here is sending their pricing to anyone and everyone who inquires without qualifying them first! Are they even a good fit? Do THEY think they are a good fit? It’s easy to waste a lot of time with people who were never going to book you anyway because you don’t have a way of telling if they are serious about working with you.
And again, going back to being a luxury service provider- are you personalizing things for them? Are you showing how they will get the specific customized results that they really want or are you just sending a template thing over when they contact you.
When you do share your pricing information, are your packages customized to be a perfect fit for them?
Do you have complete confidence in your pricing, knowing that you’re profitable and have included what needs to be there to make it exciting to your ideal client?
If you don’t have complete confidence in what you are offering, it’s going to be really hard for your clients to have the confidence to buy.
You need to learn how to ask and listen for the right things that clue you in to what will be the deal makers. This involves asking the right questions, which leads them to share exactly what you need to say back to them.
The sales conversation goes a lot like:
This is what I want
This is what I do
This is a very natural conversation and results in much bigger and easier sales so you can book better quality clients and spend more time with your family.
So you can see that these three steps, again, taken in this specific order, are so powerful for your business. I’ve had over 100% increases in my income at least twice from doing this, and I know Gretchen is about to end out this year with a 300% increase this year, which is absolutely fabulous! I know the students currently in the Empowered Weddings program are raising their rates, attracting ideal people, and closing bigger sales with ease, and I can’t wait to hear all about their results as well!
This is of course the framework that I teach you in the Empowered Weddings program along with lots of personal and customized support to walk you step-by step through the process that will propel your business forward.
If you want some personalized help with applying this framework to your specific business, I offer free 15 minute strategy sessions. This is not a sales call, they are literally there to help you get clarity on all this, and to help you take that first step forward. If you want to have a free 15 minute strategy session with me, go ahead and type ME in the comments or you can PM me and I’ll message you the link to apply for yours! If you’re listening to the podcast, you can go to racheljordaneducation.com/audit to book yours today.
