Let's talk wedding inquiries, systems, processes, making money. Those are kind of all of my favorite topics. all of my favorite topics in one episode, but I thought it could be really helpful to put together three quick wins to help you, no matter where you are in your flower business journey. Let's talk about how to optimize your wedding inquiry process, because I know for those of you guys who've been listening for a long time, that you have heard many a story of how backwards I have had the wedding inquiry process.

I also know for those of you guys who are inside the membership that you kind of are dumbfounded, shocked, surprised, excited, ecstatic, and over the moon, I believe that is like the roller coaster of emotions you go through when you learn exactly how we navigate wedding inquiries. Because when you sign up for the program, my friends, you get access to our wedding inquiry masterclass, and I give you all of the templates, every single email, all of the tools and resources that we use to make the wedding inquiry process happen.

And I'm not gonna lie to you. There's a lot of layers to it, but once you wrap your head around it, you're like, holy fuck. This is such a better way to handle this. And I wanted to give you guys like my three quick wins to help you. If you have a wedding inquiry process and you're realizing this isn't working, right, like it's not scalable. It's very reliant upon you as the business owner.

You are feeling like you're spending all this time on admin, late into the night, and you're exhausted. I wanted to give you like my three best tips, but if you're brand new and you are just starting out, I want to really challenge your thinking. And I wish that somebody had done this for me early on in my business in really helping me question some of my assumptions. Because I think, well, I know we all have blind spots, right?

Things that we just take for granted assumptions that we're making in terms of how we're supposed to show up as business owners. And I think particularly how we're supposed to show up as floral designers. There's so much kind of supposition and a facade in our industry and such little substance when it comes to the actual making money and running a business and not running straight into the ground.

So I thought it would be super helpful to be able to bridge the gap for you and give you a bit of an inside scoop in terms of the way Kathleen's brain thinks about navigating event inquiries. So take any bits of this, that you like. You have full permission to take any ideas that you hear on this episode and then implement them in your business because I know for sure our industry will be better off and your business will be better off if you take any one of these ideas and put it to work in your own business.

So I thought it would be super helpful to kind of give you the 10,000 foot view of how I think about navigating client inquiries. And there's some really, really, really good stuff in here. And the three kind of guiding principles that I want you to keep in mind in terms of how these inquiries are navigated. And I really want to encourage you to question your own assumptions.

Most importantly, I want to give you permission to decide that you get to navigate inquiries in a way that works for you. I had such a strong narrative and such a strong story and felt like such an outsider. When I was looking at how other people navigated inquiries in their business, that I assumed that there was a definitive right and wrong way to do it. And the longer I run a business and the more florist in all the different corners of the planet that I talk to, the more I realize that there are some great guiding principles.

And then there is this amazing opportunity to make your inquiry process work for you because every single one of us has our own strengths, right? And I'll tell you, it's like, oh no, I am gonna build a system that requires the least amount of face to face customer interaction, the most amount of systems and templates possible. I'm not gonna waste time and energy on doing consultations.

I don't do proposals. I don't use fancy stem counting software, but I also don't want you to think that you can't use any of those things. Because when you run the business, you get to build a system that takes advantages of your strengths. And if you are the type of person that loves and you know, you're a great performer in a consultation process. I want you to build that into your system. I know I'm a great performer.

When it comes to building relationships quickly, I can do it very fast. I can do it very efficiently and I can do it without having met the person. I know that that's one of my greatest skill sets and I rely on that. I also know my brain is so well practiced at thinking about simplicity and efficiency and being able to get myself out of the system so that it's not holding up the process.

It's so helpful to pay attention to the things that you're good at, lean into your strengths and decide to build your system that way. One of the things that's been really helpful in our business, and it's still like to be brutally honest with you guys. It's I still struggle with this, but I still find it super helpful is that concept of like, if you have to take yourself outta the system, build your system without you, right.

Don't put the pressure on yourself to say like, you need to solve the problem overnight and make it work like clockwork without you in it by tomorrow. But I love that exercise and that challenge of sitting down and taking the time to go, okay, what can this system look like if it's not reliant on Kathleen, what can this system look like? If it's not reliant on you now, can you build the system, because this is how you get to scaling, right? This is how you get to streamlining.

Your approach is making it not reliant so much on one specific human, right? You can really become the bottleneck in your business. And this is where I get myself into trouble all of the time. and I am very aware of it. And it's something that I am going to continue to work on. But this idea of could your wedding inquiry system work without you, it's such a helpful perspective to have, right?

If you find yourself kind of holding up the process in terms of having to be the person who does all the custom quotes and responding to people and doing all the consultations. If you find yourself in that hamster wheel, I want to challenge you to the idea of where could you replace yourself with a system, with a template and or if you wanted to with a different staff member, because you don't even have to do any of this yourself.

The value is in setting up the system and then training your staff and having the templates in place. So that it's super simple for somebody else to navigate. This is something that's so fascinating because for those of you guys who like really consider yourself entrepreneurs and you love learning from other entrepreneurs, and you'll see that people who are in the online entrepreneur space, everybody has a VA and or a tech VA.

They have somebody who's working with them and navigating this stuff remotely. I love thinking about that concept, hiring yourself a virtual assistant and they do the wedding planning inquiry process. It is so mind bending. It is so awesome because it shows you right. It shows us as business owners, how clunky and hard and onerous were making so much of this process to be when an actual fact, right? If we take that concept of hiring a VA, right, hire yourself, a virtual assistant, the beautiful thing is they can be living on the other side of the world and they can do these things in their own time. And it's like, you've put the system in place for this whole process to run to your expectation. And your customers are ecstatic because they're getting the attention to detail the customer service. And these VAs are able to actually do the job better than you can do it.

Like it's so cool to think about. So here's the go here is the general guiding principle in terms of how to set up your business, to navigate wedding inquiries, way more efficiently. And I want you to take notes and you have full permission. As I said before, to take any of this, take any of it, to take all of it and put it into your business because it's super fun and it'll make your world so much easier to navigate.

So part one step one is actually what happens even before they find your inquiry form. So all of the marketing that you put out into the world, what you post on Instagram, that first impression that your potential client gets when they land on your website, the resources that you provide to your customers sets the tone in this relationship. This is the part that I totally missed early on in the beginning, parts of my business.

I thought the relationship started when they showed up to the consultation, right? And I have my little clipboard and I was taking notes and I was taking copious notes and I was asking them lots of questions. And I was even laughing the other day, because like our old wedding consultation questionnaire, I think was like four pages. like, it was like, I'd have to put my clients through an exam.

But this idea, if you put yourself in your customer shoes, if you think about your potential client, let's say they're getting married in some random day in November right now. I'm gonna assume that our clients work Monday to Friday and they're planning their wedding in and amongst all of their normal life experiences, having a job, possibly moving house, maybe they have a puppy. You know, they're human beings, two human beings who do a lot in their life.

And they're trying to plan a wedding in and amongst everything your client is probably sitting on the sofa either with their laptop, their phone, their tablet. And maybe it's like 11 o'clock at night. Maybe they're even lying in bed. Right. And she's just kind of flipping through Pinterest and she's scrolling around and it's late at night, they've worked all day.

They're exhausted. And they're just trying to kind of make a little bit headway, kind of cut through some of the confusion and overwhelm when it comes to planning a wedding, do you know which florist is going to win them over quickly? The florist who gets the pain and the struggle of what it's like to try and plan a wedding at 11 o'clock on a Monday night because businesses aren't open. People are not gonna be responding to emails. They're going to be trying to find helpful information in the middle of the night using Google.

So the client who is exhausted from having worked all day is spending time on Google. And their question is how much does that installation cost? Wow. That's ceremony feature look spectacular. I wonder how much it is. How much should I be planning for wedding flowers, the florist who makes it easy for the customer to find the helpful information is going to be the florist that wins.

That means that even before they find your inquiry form, that you take the time to very clearly and simply lay out for them. This is how the whole wedding flower planning process works. You give them the tools to start to understand how much maybe they should be allocating for their budget based on whatever their expectations are. And you have given them the tools to teach them how to set themselves up for success. So you've told them how you operate.

You've told them how to approach the wedding planning process. You've told them how to get the best bang for their buck. You've given them permission to not worry about the things that you don't think that they need to worry about. You've given them permission to do what they wanna do on their wedding day. And you do all of that in a way that makes it easy for them to find the information at 11:00 PM on a Monday night so that they have fallen in love with you.

They have a sense of confidence and they have an understanding of how this whole thing works and you don't even know that they exist yet. So that's part one of the process and that all comes down to your marketing that comes down to what you're posting on Instagram, how you're showing up on social media and the resources that you're supplying on your website.

And that happens before they submit their inquiry form. So then the next step happens and they submit their inquiry form. And this one fact change the game for me, 50% of customers will simply choose the vendor who responds first. So you can dramatically increase your close rate simply by being the florist who responds quickly. like, it's such a simple idea, right? But this idea of going, huh? Like I could make more money just by being quick to respond. Wow. That seems like a great idea. I'll do one. I'll do one of them. Thanks.

So here's how you can take this concept a little bit further. Imagine you have a client that comes to you. They kinda, because you've been super helpful. They have a sense of how this whole thing works. They have a vague understanding of like, oh, okay, well, $5,000 will get me, you know, this handful of things that I'm looking for because they found your super helpful blog post on your website.

And they know how this whole wedding inquiry process works because you've been helpful ahead of time. They submit the inquiry, you send your response and you send your response within 24 hours. It's clear, it's simple. They don't know this, but it's actually just a template email with a couple of very well chosen points of personalization and some charming emojis.

Just to make sure that they haven't overlooked some of the super awesome resources on your website, it includes a link to your top 10 planning tips. It includes a link to your blog post, or if you've done the work to get your online calculator set up in case they haven't found it earlier. And most importantly, it gives them permission to not know a thing. You've wrapped it up in a giant virtual hug. You've told them what your philosophy is in terms of floral design and what to prioritize on the day.

And you've made it very easy for them to know exactly what the next step is. You've made it simple. You've made it specific and you've made it very intentional and no, you haven't just sent them a price list. this is what I love. And I laugh so much because I so was convinced that that's what you had to do. Right? If I rewind the clock, I thought it was priceless, consultations, fancy proposals, and lots of Instagram followers.



Those were like the four magic ingredients in terms of how to build a wedding business, you can ignore all four of those things, right. And really think about what is the value? How can you educate? How can you empower your customers even before they submit their inquiry form? And then what exactly do you wanna know on that inquiry form? And then you set up your template, email response to make it even easier for your customer to say yes to what you have to offer.

And that doesn't include a price list because my friends, the secret is the more priceless you send out, the more you're encouraging your customers to price shop around. And you're never gonna win that game because there's always gonna be somebody cheaper than you. So after they submit the inquiry form, you've got that template, email that you send out and thanks for coming because that's a copy and paste job. If you have Honey Book, if you have Dubsado, you've already got it loaded up click of a button, possibly even just automatically triggered.

So you don't even have to do anything. this is so fun because it's such a smarter way to look at the whole process. And this is how you can start to see that it actually could be something that's done by a virtual assistant and something that isn't necessarily done by you from there.

And the next step that we ask our clients to take is we ask them to fill out a design questionnaire. This takes the place for me of doing the formal in depth consultation. And I love it because it puts the responsibility onto the clients to give us the information. So instead of us like pulling the information out of them, they are the ones who have to do the work. So they're the ones who are spending the time and they could do it in their own time. Right? She can do this work.

They can do this work at 11 o'clock on a Monday night. If that's when their free time is, they could do this work on their lunch break. He could do this work on Friday morning. If he's an early riser and is the one who wants to go through this process, right? So you're giving them the power in terms of doing it in their own schedule.

So that's step three is they will submit their design Q and a. This is a longer form questionnaire in terms of giving us some specifics and really laying out for us where their heads at, right? What is their dream? What is their ambition? What's important to them? What are they most looking forward to on the day? You already know what their budget is because they've submitted that in their original inquiry form.

But now you also know what their wishlist is. And I'll tell you right now, it does not matter what kind of budget your customer is working with their wishlist and their budget will never match. That's why it's called a wishlist.

Because it's called a dream, my friends. And then there's the practical realities of how much they've decided ahead of time. They wanna allocate to their flowers. It's not your job to make those two things come eye to eye. It's your job to give your customer a recommendation in terms of how best to invest and prioritize on that wishlist.

They're gonna have things that they need to make the decision that they are not going to spend money on. That is 100% up to them. Your only job is to give them permission, to not have to worry about the things that they're not gonna spend money on. Because they get to decide if they wanna go out and find more money.

They're allowed to do that. If they wanna decide that the ceremony's not important, they're allowed to do that. If they wanna kick off a whole bunch of their bridesmaid, cuz they wanna save some money. They're allowed to do that. I've never had a client do that, but it would be fun.



To be like, sorry, we've just prioritized this beautiful ceremony feature. We're cutting back on our bridesmaids. that could make a really fun reality TV show. We should do that. That would be fun. Who knows somebody at Netflix anyway. Okay. Back to the point, but they get to take their time in terms of filling out that online design Q&A and then magically in your inbox is an email with a very succinct summary of what their expectations are. You very clearly laid out this design Q&A it's very pointed.

It's very strategic. It's very intentional. It's very helpful to your client because they're for the first time probably gathering all of their expectations in one place. But most importantly it's super helpful to you because now you have a very clear, brief, right? You can see where their expectations are. You can kind of see inside of their head.

You can see what their understanding is in terms of how they wanna set the day up, what their priorities are. What's important to them. What they're looking forward to most on the day, you know what their budget is already. So then you can go back very quickly with a not fancy email that gives them some recommendations. again, I'm like, nah, don't do fancy proposals. I don't spend money on fancy proposal software.

I don't even do anything in Canva. This is as bare bones, basic like unsexy an email, but it is the most helpful thing for your clients because I don't worry about the fancy proposals anymore. And I just go, oh, Hey, thanks so much for submitting your Q and a here. My friends based on your wishlist is how much money you'd need to find. But I also know you have a very clear budget.

I'm giving you permission to prioritize. Here's what I would recommend. And the goal is to send that quick quote, back to them within 48 hours of them submitting their Q and a, I strive for 28, but I'm gonna give me 48 hours. So it could be within a matter of days, you've gone from inquiry.

They fill out the design Q&A. You're able to give them some guidance on budget. Then from there, inevitably, there's always a little bit of back and forth. They're gonna have questions about this. They're gonna wanna know about that. I am the person who gives our clients so much permission to ask questions so much permission to not know a thing. If your mom's worried about something, if your great aunt Betty wants to do something, you just come to me with all your worries and concerns because that's how I win the relationship.

And I know that, right? Give your clients permission to ask questions. And this is the awesome thing. If you're a designer who wants to have more freedom in terms of the colour palette, in terms of the formats you're creating in terms of what you actually deliver at the wedding day, work on that upfront relationship, the better your relationship is with your client. The more freedom you have to do, whatever the heck you wanna do at their wedding. like, it's so counterintuitive, but this is the thing.

All they're looking for is a designer who can meet their expectations and make them look good. I love being able to talk to my clients about what they're worried about. What are you most worried about on your wedding day? Because I know for me and I am happy to tell, well, Hey, I'm clearly happy to tell all of you guys this.

I'm also happy to tell my own mother this, but I am happy to say that the thing I would worry about the most on my wedding day, should I ever choose to have a wedding day is how do I keep my mother entertained and out of my hair? But it is literally my biggest worry and are all of the old people taken care of and what time do I get to start eating? When can the music start? And let's all just enjoy the show, but this idea of like giving your clients permission to share the burden of this experience, because they're all walking around, like, you know how we all walk around, shooting all over themselves.

Our clients are walking around, shooting all over themselves, forcing themselves to say, I have to enjoy this day. Meanwhile, so many of them like so many of my past clients, their biggest worry, their biggest concern is having all of those eyeballs on them.

This, I remember so vividly, like we literally had clients who would say, yeah, I really wanna wow. Factor the ceremony. So that it's distracting for me and my dress because I'm just like so worried about all of that attention. like, honey, I totally get it. like that that's fair enough. I also said, this is why we have champagne because I highly encourage you at least have half a glass before you walk down the aisle like, whoa, calm the nerves, my friends calm the nerves.

But step four in this inquiry process is that little bit of back and forth. Sometimes it's a lot of back and forth, whatever questions that your clients have. And I do not do any of the big onerous administration. I don't do the formal quote. I don't do the review of the terms and conditions until they say the magic words.

How do I go about booking you in? I don't do a mood board. I don't do style guides. I don't do any of that work until they say those magic words. Cuz now they're like, I wanna give you the money so that I don't lose you only then only then my friends do I sit down and do the administration around it, but you can see how like even this concept of going, it's so different to how I see other designers navigating inquiries, but it's all based on the fact that it needs to be scalable.

It needs to not be contingent upon Kathleen sitting down and doing all the work. And it needs to be something that you could outsource to a VA or you could outsource to somebody else on your team. That's the whole premise. And what is so helpful is I was just going back and looking at some of the recent inquiries that we've received.

And it's so interesting to see how different some of these old inquiries are than the way that our clients would approach us these days. So if you're the type of florist who's getting inquiries like this, that I'm gonna talk you through right now. These are some great examples of, you know, your inquiry process. Isn't optimized. If you're receiving inquiries like this, right? If you have a generic email from somebody or a DM from somebody that says, oh, Hey, I'm getting married on the 2nd of September, would you be able to provide a quote for my ceremony and reception?

If you get that inquiry, it's the perfect sign that you need to change your system. Because the goal gets to be that that person would able to find helpful resources and tips in their own time without having to talk to a real life human being, because how amazing would it be if you were that client and she didn't even need to send the email, right?

She finds through, maybe she's found you through the Instagram hashtag strategy. And then she knows she needs to go to your website and she's looking at your resources and she's able to get a sense for herself in her own time. Huh? Okay. I thought I could kind of get away with $2,000. Maybe I need to think more like $5,000. She's already fallen in love with you. You haven't even talked to her because you've been helpful ahead of time.

Another inquiry is like, Hey, I've been given your details by insert venue name, just inquiring about if you have any wedding packages, which you offer for floral arrangements. Now don't be fooled. It's very likely they don't actually mean wedding packages, what they wanna ask, but they don't have the balls to ask. And they don't have permission to ask because they're not supposed to in our industry.

But Hey, I have no idea how much to budget for wedding flowers. Can you help? like, that's what that's code for. Hey, I have no idea how much to budget for wedding flowers. Could you help me? And this is what's so amazing. That one question of how much should I budget for wedding flowers could form the basis for every single Instagram post that you make from now until the end of time, it is impossible to talk about that one piece of information. It is impossible because here's the magic solution.

Every new day, there's a whole new set of clients who have just started the wedding planning process, which means you could go back to square one and you could continue to talk about how much they need to budget for their wedding flowers. How much is that ceremony? Archie? How much should I allocate if I want that fucking holy crap, look at how many flowers are on that chandelier.

how much should I budget for that? You will win clients over by being the helpful one. This one thought has served me so well and it continues to prove true. And I love it. She, who is the most helpful makes the most money because this is the thing, particularly in the floral design industry where everybody's keeping everything.

So hush, hush, I promise you, if you are the florist who goes out there, makes it easy for your client to find the relevant information at 11:00 PM on a Monday night, they're gonna come to you and be like, how do I book you in and you're gonna be like, I've never met you. Yeah, correct. But I need to give you money because I wanna make sure you can do our wedding flowers because I trust you. I love your design aesthetic. I love your vibe.

Hey, here's $6,000. Hey, here's $20,000. When can I book you in? like, it's so fun. But it's really about looking at these things from a very different perspective. Here's another one. And this is one of my favourites because we've all been there, but this is such a perfect, perfect example. I'll actually give you two.

We are after pricing information for floristry, for our wedding in March of 2023. If you could please provide information and pricing for the following, that would be perfect. And they give you a list, right? In this case, it's a bridal bouquet, three bridesmaids. I need exactly this kind of arbor arrangement. And this makes me laugh, which will be then repurposed for the bridal table and four button holes, right? We all, every single one of us has gotten those inquiries. But here's the goal. My friends here is the goal.

You wanna actually cut down on the number of those inquiries that you receive and you wanna make it your mission that your client can find information. They can find the answer to that question ahead of time. Because this is so helpful, right? You can write a blog post. You can write so much Instagram content around why it's a shitty idea to repurpose an Arbor for a bridal table.

Why it actually doesn't work because they're designed in two different ways, but your client doesn't know that, right? So if you're the florist who gets to go out there and tell them that it doesn't actually work that way and you do it from a very helpful perspective, they will love you for it. And if you do that so that she can find that information at 11 o'clock on a Monday night, she will forever love you for it.

So the last one and this one, right, this idea of our clients think that they're supposed to know. They think they're supposed to come to you with all of the solutions. And then you're just a trained monkey who makes the thing. You are the one who needs to change that relationship because for years florists have kept everything so secretive so that when you get these inquiries that say, oh, hi, I'm getting married at the end of August.

I have some flowers in mind. I'll send you some photos. Can you please provide a quote? Right? So many clients think that that's how this whole thing works. And I used to spend so much time in frustration, just being like, I wish they'd give us permission. You have to be the one to take the initiative. You have to be the one to educate your customers ahead of time.

You have to be the one who takes the leadership position in this relationship and guides them through this process. And that is the basis for your wedding inquiry system. So two very quick wins. I'll actually say three. very quick wins for you to level up your wedding inquiry system right now.

I want you, before you respond to the next email that you receive before you respond to the next formal inquiry that you receive. I want you to grow a pen and a piece of paper, and I want you to actually write down step by step the system that you want to follow in your inquiry process. And I want you to make it as perfect for you as possible, right? I want you to set up a system that caters to your strengths and caters to your vision and caters to your ideal process.

Write it out, pen and paper and get clear on what you want that system to be. Number two. I want you to make it your mission to make it easy for your clients. To be able to answer the questions that they have without actually needing to reach out to you. The fastest way to do this is go back into your last five inquiries. Literally, the questions that they've asked, I want you to jump over to Instagram and I want you to answer their questions in the caption. Even better.

If you've already written emails back to them, congratulations, that's your next Instagram caption so that when somebody says, Hey, I don't know how much to spend on wedding flowers. That's how you open up your Instagram caption. How much should I spend on wedding flowers? And you give them your guidance and expertise. It's called providing results ahead of time.

It's a very smart sales strategy. this idea that because every other Floris makes it really hard, right? If I think about the process, I thought I was supposed to follow for an inquiry. There's no real strategy in the inquiry system or the process. There's no real strategy in the inquiry form. I have to do consultations. I have to do a mood board. I have to do fancy proposals. All of that takes a huge amount of time.

Yes, it takes a huge amount of time for you. But the delay in our customers still walking around with two very basic questions, because they're always gonna be asking, how does this whole thing work? And how much do I need to budget? But if you build your marketing to answer those two questions, you build your resources to support your philosophy on design, to tell your clients what to prioritize, to give your clients permission in terms of they don't need to know a thing.

They don't need to know how this whole thing works. They don't even need to know what's in season. They don't even need to name a single flower. You have to give your clients permission to make that happen. So that is quick win. Number three. I want you to give yourself, and I want you to give your clients permission to not know a thing. It's okay.

If your clients have no idea what flowers are in season, but like all human beings, they're gonna walk around and think that they're supposed to right? The shame and embarrassment that clients feel. When you tell them that pennies are only available for six weeks of the year, they're gonna like hide in a ball. But if you can tell them that information ahead of time, step into the leadership position and be the person who shares their expertise and their information, your entire wedding inquiry process is going to get so simple.

So simple, my friends. So go out there, question all of your assumptions about how you're approaching your wedding inquiry process. Right now, put yourself in your client's shoes. I want you to grab a pen and a piece of paper, right? I want you to document what your dream system looks like. How simple could you make this and then go out there and make that your system and remember as well, if you wanna get our wedding inquiry system, just come join us inside of flower boss academy, it's all in there waiting for you.

You have full permission to copy paste, copy paste, copy paste, coffee paste. Literally it's magical. My friend's magical. I hope this has been helpful as always, please take care of yourself. Drive safe, eat your vegetables, drink your water and get some sleep. And we'll talk to you again next week. Bye for now.