Ghost Busting Leads

One of the biggest issues facing DJs beyond the price paradox has been the problem of leads that just seemingly happen to ghost you.

As a matter of fact, one of the biggest reasons why brides have been ghosting DJs isn’t because they don’t like you. It is actually two problems…

First, we have an uneducated market that doesn’t want to be educated. Keynote speaker at this year’s MDJsLIVE Cara Lane spoke on the Millennial generation. The reasons for their actions aside (that requires a whole write-up on its own), millennials are of a mindset that only wants to learn what they have to, and unfortunately, weddings sometimes are treated as a formality. Surprisingly, a lot of younger people these days feel as though they must have a wedding. Not because they want one, but they need to have one.

DJs and entertainment fall in the same vein. Even if they are amped to have their wedding, they don’t necessarily WANT to have a DJ. They need to have one. They believe that a Spotify playlist could do a swell job. Personally, I can’t blame them! Unless I was aware of the importance of a well-trained DJ or experienced a bad one. I would never understand why I should be dropping $2000-5000 on wedding entertainment.

Secondly, we have clients that were never sure if they could even afford you in the first place. When they learn that you are out of their budget they don’t know how to communicate back to you in a manner that doesn’t seem offensive. We live in times where people are afraid to jump on the phone. Times where most conversations are held over Facebook messenger and texts. We have this issue where brides simply don’t know how to communicate with professionals, especially professionals they’ve never had to hire before!

This article is not here to argue whether you should publish your pricing on your website, but I do have to say that based on conversations that I’ve had with over 50 brides and brides to be, the least you can do is publish your starting rate.

Why?

Not too long ago, I had an eye-opening conversation with a woman named Angie who was married in the past 2 years. She was very transparent with me and was saying that when she was hiring different vendors she wasn’t sure who to talk to or what to expect. She had never been married before. She has never hired any photographers, florists, caterers, or let alone DJs before and had no idea what to expect to be charged. No one wanted to publish their price and so despite her having a very strict budget that she wanted to stick to, she wasn’t sure how to politely handle this pricing issue with the vendors.

Because of this she ultimately ended up calling dozens of vendors and ended up feeling guilty if they were out of her budget. She felt as though she wasted their time.

Continually insisting that the only way to handle a sale is to have a bride get on a phone call with you is only going to drive you as a business owner further up a wall. If brides do not understand what your company charges or don’t have any sort of expectations as to how the conversation will go you are walking on thin ice in terms of the negotiation.

If you are lucky enough to get a millennial on the phone to any capacity, it is best to help them out! By you going in publishing your starting rate, you now have a lot fewer brides to get on the phone with who might just be tire kickers. You’ll even have fewer leads ghosting you since they will already have a certain level of expectation when it comes to pricing.

Sales are not complicated. The psychology behind it might be, but small simple tweaks can make a huge impact.

P.S. If you are sending a follow-up email to a lead, have the email read:

“Hey [name],

Did you get my last email?”

Try it. (Trust me)