Making Business Decisions: Facts Over Feelings with Thomas Chelednik from The Knot

Kevin Dennis (0:0.810)

All right, folks, welcome to another episode of Mind Your Wedding Business. We have the one and only Tom Chlednik. Did I do it right? Was that close? All right, woohoo, from the knot. So he is the master of everything to do with sales and marketing. So Tom, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Tom Chelednik (0:7.773)

You did it? That's perfect.

Tom Chelednik (0:18.921)

First off, Kevin, thank you for having me. I've been looking forward to this for a long time. So a little bit about myself. As I have been in sales and marketing for a very long time, probably like 28 years, I worked for the not for 12 years in many different roles at the not. was director of sales, sales leadership, director of training and enablement. But during those first 10 years,

I traveled 70 % of the year learning from wedding pros and taking that information and then sharing that information and traveled, meaning like 70 % of the year. Then the knot in wear emerged and it took about a year and a half to merge the sales teams. So I was part of that group of merging the sales and marketing teams. And that was interesting. Then we moved, I sat on a bunch of wedding venue, board of directors and advisory boards across the country.

And one of them tapped me to be the COO of a venue group here in Florida, two Lux venues. And originally I said, no, I got it good. And I thought, well, that's stupid, Tom. Like go learn what it's like to be on your side of the business, Kevin. Like, what's that like, you know, to run a venue and deal with all that. So I did, I did that for two years, learned a lot. And then I came back and sort of what's old is new again. I'm back to, um,

traveling the country, probably more than 70 % of the year at this point, still learning from wedding pros and teaching and helping pros become more successful in all their marketing, advertising and bookings. So that's where we're at.

Kevin Dennis (1:36.993)

Oh wow.

Kevin Dennis (1:47.542)

Well, that's, so you help us get better is what you're saying.

Tom Chelednik (1:51.757)

I really try, I really try. And I think it's interesting, at this point in my career, I believe this comes across, I am not looking for titles anymore. I'm not looking for, you know, the aspect of...

Kevin Dennis (1:54.616)

No.

Tom Chelednik (2:8.783)

hiring and firing and all that within my career. I just want to help. That's it. I want to help internally, our wedding pros across the country and internally and educating our internal people in the knot about weddings and the pain points of our clients and the challenges and the successes. So I'm like, I've always said this, I have the perfect job. For me, it is like the best job at the knot for me where I am right now. So it's great. Thanks for having me.

Kevin Dennis (2:35.553)

Awesome. Well, I appreciate it. So we're gonna get into the topic today is do the math on your wedding business and make changes based on facts, not feelings. So it's gonna be, I think, which a lot of us do is we're really good at our art and not really good at the business side of what we do. So let's start off with like, how can business owners take the emotion out of making decisions?

Tom Chelednik (2:44.851)

See you later.

Tom Chelednik (2:58.067)

Well, first off, we're in a really interesting time in weddings this year, you know, last year and certainly through this year. And I talked to literally thousands of wedding pros, sometimes a month.

I talked to hundreds of wedding pros across the country, all different categories, every single month. And everybody's in this point where we have the perfect storm. call it the perfect storm three ways. Number one, the economy is affecting more weddings than ever before. Still plenty of people get married, still plenty of budget, but they're being more careful.

We have two million weddings taking place this year and we're expecting, you know, the not with all its data we can we can forecast and we're usually pretty right on we expect about two million weddings next year, but that's really down from the past couple of years 2.1 to 2.5 2.6. So there are less weddings and everybody's feeling that but one thing that I consistently hear and see where people were wedding pros are struggling and they're making decisions based on feelings rather than facts is the fact is

we have a generational shift that's happening with Gen Z. And I'm sure many people on the, let's listen to this podcast, have hopefully listened to a bunch of other podcasts, read about Gen Z, but it's a different generation.

Those of us who have been around a long time realize when there's a generational shift, you have to look at your entire business. It doesn't change overnight because as a generation keeps getting older and more of your clientele, your business changes. I just said this to somebody this morning. If you look back at your business, we go two years in advance.

Tom Chelednik (4:34.889)

and it's two years in advance and we look back to today, your business probably has changed quite a bit. And if it hasn't, you're really going to struggle. So pricing, products, marketing, advertising, how are you responding, everything, the look, the feel of websites, social media, all that really changes over the course of time. So where I see people really struggling is the fact that feelings are getting in the way of improving their business.

to adjust to this next generation on top of everything else that's going on in the year. you know, feelings, you're making decisions based on feelings, you're going to be out of business, period, eventually, or you're going to really, really struggle. When you're making decisions based on facts, it improves your accuracy, right? You take that emotional response out.

Kevin Dennis (5:16.268)

Yeah.

Kevin Dennis (5:24.492)

Mm-hmm.

Tom Chelednik (5:26.977)

that can lead to bias is overlooking critical details. The other thing based on facts is predictable outcomes. You pretty much know if you don't make any changes to your business where you're going to end up this time next year. If you know your numbers that we're going to review.

Kevin Dennis (5:41.815)

Mm-hmm.

Tom Chelednik (5:45.449)

Um, the other thing is when you focus on areas, when you figure out areas that need improvements rather than, and you invest in those areas, you do better. You become more profitable, right? You get, you get, you get more weddings. so this idea of, the feelings, I feel that the knot wedding wire isn't working. I feel that my website is doing better. You feel what this feeling, what does feelings mean to boot, to do with it?

Kevin Dennis (5:57.047)

Yeah.

Kevin Dennis (6:13.688)

Yeah, there's no facts.

Tom Chelednik (6:13.949)

But you increase your accountability, right? Increase the accountability. It's up to you. Like this person I was talking to this morning, it's your job. You're the owner of this unbelievable, it to be an entertainment company too, unbelievable big entertainment company out there. And you just said to me, I feel, and boy, I said, you need to listen to this podcast I'm gonna do.

Kevin Dennis (6:37.386)

Oh, how funny.

Tom Chelednik (6:37.573)

So, but, but the numbers, you consistently look at your numbers, it will show continuous improvement on your, in your business. We can't hide from the numbers. I can't hide from the scale. It says what it is.

Kevin Dennis (6:47.148)

Yeah, no. And I think that's, well, no. No, and I think we all get locked into the emotion of it all and trying to outdo our competitors or whoever on Instagram. There's a lot of us that get into that. Yeah.

Tom Chelednik (7:3.527)

outside influences are coming at you. I'm trying to, don't worry about anybody else. know, every DJ in California is not your competitor.

Kevin Dennis (7:8.824)

Yeah, I know.

Kevin Dennis (7:14.762)

No, no, no. I agree. All right, so before you got on, you were telling me about a case study. So can we dive into that?

Tom Chelednik (7:23.527)

t of the job, but in March of: 2024

Big photography company, they were used to doing 50, 60, 70 weddings a year. And here it is, March and engagement season, booking season is about done with them. And they had seven weddings booked. Seven weddings for 2024. So...

Kevin Dennis (7:58.913)

Oh geez.

Tom Chelednik (8:4.419)

They were making decisions based on feelings, right? Just, you know, had no clue and they were in a panic. They had a full-time staff of four people, full-time paying people, full-time staff, editors, photographers, a social media person, a marketing person. were, you know, big, big company. Well, the first thing that we really identified is do you have a lead problem or do you have a booking problem? Most people that I talk to, they're getting enough leads.

Kevin Dennis (8:20.141)

Yeah.

Kevin Dennis (8:28.888)

Hmm.

Tom Chelednik (8:33.181)

take it. What's the goal for: 2024

Kevin Dennis (8:43.607)

Mmm.

Tom Chelednik (8:52.591)

At minimum, they needed to do 50 weddings, they said. I need to do 50 weddings. So then we just started talking about the math, right? So the first thing that I look at when I'm talking to a client about math and improvements and things like that is let's look at your cost per lead, first off. Do you know how much every one of those leads are costing you?

Take, even if you only do it for six months, take all your leads you got for six months. It doesn't matter where they came from, Instagram, Not A Wedding Wife website, wherever they came from. And take all the money that you spent on that, on those leads for the past six months and what's your cost per lead. That's very enlightening. Many wedding pros don't do that. Kevin, do you do that? Okay. I want you to, because why is that important?

Kevin Dennis (9:36.595)

Uh, no, I don't. So I'm, I'm guilty too.

Tom Chelednik (9:43.495)

Because it should give you a sense of urgency that you paid for that lead. You as the owner paid for that lead. You as the owner that has somebody else following up on leads for you or doing sales for you to be able to communicate to them and say, listen, I'm paying for, we're paying for these leads. And this particular case scenario, they were paying $23 a lead, which wasn't a lot of money. They weren't spending a lot of money and they weren't getting a lot of money. They were spending a lot of money. They weren't getting a lot of leads. They only average 21 leads per

Kevin Dennis (10:4.696)

Holy cow. No.

Tom Chelednik (: 10:13

You know, so, but $23 per lead they were spending, right? So that then took me down this path with them of how many times you following up on those leads.

Right? Like it's, it, it logically, like you pay $23. How many times are you swinging the bat? They were only swinging the bat three times in two weeks. That was it. Okay. So I was like, okay, star, we need to fix that. The next thing that we looked at was the lead to booking percent. Right? That's the big number. Take all your leads divided by the number of book.

s particular case in March of: 2024

Kevin Dennis (: 11:16

No.

Tom Chelednik (: 11:26

how many weddings they would have had in 2024. think it was 15 off the top of my head. It was a total of 15 far from their goal of 50. Okay. So from there, okay, that's like the big number. Well, let's, how do you eat an elephant? So we're that one bite of a time, a time.

I then go into, and a lot of people aren't doing this now, and it's so important to do, your leads to two-way conversations. So out of 10 leads that you receive, again, does not matter where it's coming from, 10 leads that you receive, how many times did somebody hit reply and you had a two-way conversation going back or picked up the phone or texted you at that point? So that number in this case study,

was two out of ten actually hit reply. Okay, which some people would say not bad. Other people would like, oh, that's horrible depending on when you're in business, but that was not nearly enough for this particular person.

Kevin Dennis (: 12:24

Yeah.

Tom Chelednik (: 12:29

Why is no, why is it important to know like how many people are actually hitting reply? Because that'll take us down a path of, let's look at your followup. Let's look at your content of your followup. How many times you're following up? Are you making phone calls? Are you texting? Takes us down a path. All these numbers take us down a path.

So now, I'm going to recap. Now we know our cost per lead. Now we know our leads to booking percentage. Now we know our lead to two-way conversation. From there, out of those two-way conversations that happened, how many actually turned into a sales consultation? So not the actual sales consultation yet, but how many turned into them? In...

this particular case, only one out of 10 were turning those replies into an actual consultation, which was an extremely low number. So where does that think us down? Like, again, if you're visioning a road and we're on this road of,

Kevin Dennis (: 13:22

Oh.

Yeah.

Tom Chelednik (: 13:31

two-way conversations to sales consultation and there's an exit ramp. We're getting off this exit ramp, like full speed ahead here. So there was lots of discussion around, well, what are you saying in that two-way reply? How is that going? And that took us down the road. So then the last one, which some people know is there are consultations to bookings. If you're a venue, sales consultation to tours, I always look at, and then venue tours to bookings.

Kevin Dennis (: 13:57

Mm-hmm.

Tom Chelednik (14:0.795)

And in this particular case, this photographer was overall three out of 10 sales consultation. So there was lots of room, three out of 10 of their sales consultation into bookings, which is a very low number. And once you get to a sales consultation, if you're doing everything else right, and it's this, you're connecting with that client, they should already know your pricing, your style, your availability, all of those things. That should be a much higher number. So.

Kevin Dennis (: 14:14

Oh yeah, I agree.

Kevin Dennis (: 14:28

Yeah, I always think eight out of 10, seven out of 10 would be a good number.

Tom Chelednik (: 14:33

I always, I always strive for seven out of 10, but it's interesting in my role too. Cause I see so many, those numbers, all these numbers are different. I always say, so what's a good number. That good number is like whatever you need it to be to hit your goals. You know what I mean? Three out of 10 sales concentration, you're doing a lot of work and not booking a lot. So you need to like weed them out in beginning. So you get to that seven out of eight for, for, for sure. Um,

Kevin Dennis (: 14:45

Mm-hmm.

Kevin Dennis (: 14:50

Yeah.

Tom Chelednik (: 14:56

But it's, and those numbers are different in categories and markets across the country. One thing that's changed this year too, is instead of emailing three to five vendors, they're emailing five to eight. So the competition, imagine your inbox, right? Like your inbox, this is your email and you get a lead, you get a lead, you respond to it. And then it's going down, down, down, down, down. If you're not staying at the top of the inbox, it's not that it's not a real lead.

Kevin Dennis (15:8.790)

Oh wow, okay.

Kevin Dennis (: 15:13

Yeah.

Kevin Dennis (: 15:25

Yeah.

Tom Chelednik (: 15:26

It's not ghosting you. You just got lost. Period. How does that of the generational shift? The generational shift wants to deal with people that is part of the lead reply cadence and the content of those lead replies. You have to build trust and rapport in your lead replies. You have to be helpful before they're even going to hit reply back.

Kevin Dennis (: 15:29

Yeah. Is that part of the generational shift you think or? OK.

Tom Chelednik (: 15:53

So yes, that first email that you send, yes, we're available and this is the pricing and hopefully you're bullet pointing the five or 10 things or eight things that you actually do and we ended it open in a question. But then, I'm gonna back up a minute and let's talk about sales funnel. the old days of last year even, his old days at this point in the WordPress world.

Kevin Dennis (: 16:12

Okay.

Tom Chelednik (: 16:18

We would think you get a lead, the goal is to book it, right? You get a lead, you reply, you get a two way conversation going and you book it. In the middle of that sales console and that sales funnel knowledge, you get a lead, you reply. Within your replies, you're building trust, you're building rapport, you're being helpful, you're giving a sense of urgency just to get a reply. Where people are not, where I see people succeeding or

Kevin Dennis (: 16:42

Mmm.

Tom Chelednik (: 16:47

succeeding is they're doing that building that trust and rapport in their lead replies. They've changed that or they're being helpful. The people that are struggling, they haven't changed what they're doing. I mean, I just saw two weeks, two weeks ago, um, uh, their first lead reply was 680 words, 680 words. Have it. Here's a great tip. Take your lead reply, your first one even, and give it to somebody not in your business, a neighbor.

Kevin Dennis (17:3.308)

Oh, wow. That's a lot.

Tom Chelednik (: 17:13

And let them read it and count to 12 at 12 seconds. You stop them and ask them, what are your two takeaways? And did it encourage you to hit reply and do that every single one of your email follow-ups? I'll guarantee you probably going to make some changes. got, you got 12 seconds. That's it. They're either going to read on or they're going to hit reply in 12 seconds. So not a lot of time. The world's changing.

Kevin Dennis (: 17:32

Wow.

Kevin Dennis (: 17:37

Wow. It's not a lot of time.

Tom Chelednik (: 17:43

Well, it's changing. So I'm doing lots of talking. What questions do you have?

Kevin Dennis (: 17:48

Well, I was like, you know, so we were talking about all these numbers and all the different things. And one thing that you mentioned, you know, well, I want to know like what numbers should we be paying attention to? But then also earlier, it's like, you know, three times response is not a good time. So how many times should we be responding to people? So I got two questions at one.

Tom Chelednik (18:7.113)

Okay, so I think the first question is what number should you pay attention at? Okay, so let's recap that. Everybody write this down and you can email me. I guess my information will be at the end of this so they can email me. So please do, it's part of my job, right? So what's your cost per lead? Don't get hung up on it, right? Whatever. I have a...

Kevin Dennis (: 18:19

Yep, yep.

Tom Chelednik (: 18:28

a band in Miami when I was doing this exercise with him, we figured out his cost, please, $181. I thought he was going to crucify me. I thought I was nervous. And he was like, I'm OK with that because he's booking a lot. And when he's booking, he's booking a $25,000, $30,000 band. The cost per beat, you want to also know how many

Kevin Dennis (: 18:44

Yeah.

Tom Chelednik (: 18:52

how many percentage of leads to bookings, right? Total percentage of leads to bookings. Take all your leads divided by the number of bookings. The leads to two-way conversations, okay? So how many leads? Say 10 out of 10 leads, how many turn into a two-way conversation? Then out of those 10 two-way conversations, how many turned into a sales consultation? And then out of 10 sales consultations, how many are you booking? If you know or when you know those numbers,

it will take you down a path to be able to fix them. As far as follow-up, think that was your next question as far as like follow-up. I see this across the country. And again, category and market really does not matter to me with this.

Kevin Dennis (: 19:26

Yeah.

Tom Chelednik (: 19:38

You want to stay at the top of their inbox at minimum in the perfect world that I live in, in the venues that I was running and still all these people that I consult with at minimum, you're following up seven times over the course of 30 days. That's just email. If you have a phone number before you even send that email, you should be picking up the phone, calling it saying, Hey, you know, you're probably going to leave a message.

Kevin Dennis (: 19:51

Seven times in 30 days. Okay.

Tom Chelednik (20:5.659)

After you leave a message, you're going to text them and say, Hey, just left you a message about to send you an email. You should follow up at least at minimum two more times via text and phone call. If you have a phone number from the Nodder wedding wire from your website or whatever, that means that they've given you the permission to call and text, but yeah, we'll do that. I was in Austin.

a couple months ago doing a lead presentation or a round table presentation, just with 20 people. And an officiant, I said, how many people in the room call their leads? No. Well, why? Well, it's intrusive. like, first off, you're in cells. Second, you're here trying to learn to do better and have more bookings.

You got to pick up the phone. One officiant in the meantime got a lead from the knot. I couldn't have paid this guy, right? Like I couldn't have paid it for him. And we're all like, call him, call him. There was a phone number, call him, call him. So he calls it and we sat there and listened to him and he booked it, booked it on the spot in 20 minutes. And that's because he picked up the phone. Fast forward three hours later, another officiant came up to me at the end of the night and said, listen, I got a lead from the knot earlier. said, well, who is it? looked. He said, don't matter.

Kevin Dennis (: 20:54

Hmm.

Kevin Dennis (21:3.435)

Oh wow.

Tom Chelednik (: 21:16

bother calling it, he already booked it because he called it first. So, your leads. So, seven times, three phone calls. Then, in the perfect world in which I live, I put it on hold for 10 days. And then I create another four email sequence. And those email sequences are really a lot of tips and tricks and fun and little sales here and there. And then maybe I give up. Maybe I don't. I know

Kevin Dennis (: 21:21

Yeah.

Tom Chelednik (: 21:45

entertainment companies out there that will send for two years will keep following up. If you're a venue or you're a planner, after that rest of 10 days, a venue will put it on hold for maybe 30 to 40 days and then

Kevin Dennis (: 21:49

Oh wow.

Tom Chelednik (22:4.627)

Go after another email sequence for rehearsal dinners, post brunches, planners doing the same thing. Remember, you paid for that lead. Just because they didn't book you, book that wedding, doesn't mean you shouldn't be using that lead for...

Other opportunities or birthdays or portraits or whatever, whatever, whatever your category is. So I think that's where I see that in the wedding and true. We don't do a good job, but you have to have automation set. Kevin, do you have any automations for your workflows?

Kevin Dennis (: 22:34

We are okay. So we went to a new CRM that doesn't do any automations. And the reason why we did is because it's an inventory base. And so it's the best of the worst, if that makes any sense. And so we are in the process of realizing that we need the automations because it's, it's, it's, it's too manual to be going through and updating. So we're going to go through the process of using two CRM. So we're, we're going to use the one is inventory management and the other one is a CRM.

And so that's what we're in the process of.

Tom Chelednik (23:3.785)

So, I mean, you could just get like software like flow desk or chip mail and just use it as a workflow. Do you need a whole nother, I mean, plenty of like, I have a side hustle. I use flow desk is my, is my CRM it's 27 or $30 a month as my, as my workflow, but no, can't expect anybody out there to do their day job and everything else that comes with, you know, weddings and in general business to follow up that many times. However,

Kevin Dennis (23:9.751)

Yeah.

Kevin Dennis (: 23:14

Okay.

Kevin Dennis (: 23:20

Yeah.

Tom Chelednik (: 23:31

Follow the money. If you don't follow the money with your business, you'll have no, no business to service. No. So every follow the So absolutely. do it all the time. Yep. Yep.

Kevin Dennis (: 23:39

I got you. And you can do automations in Flowdesk? Oh, wow. Well, that's amazing. I didn't know that. We use Flowdesk for our newsletters and stuff, so I didn't even realize that.

Tom Chelednik (: 23:51

Yep, there it is. just create a whole nother, create a whole nother workflow within flow desk.

Kevin Dennis (: 23:56

Oh, that is awesome. All right. So I don't pretend I'm a business owner that is either afraid of numbers, don't like the numbers. Should I hire someone to help me with the numbers? What should I do? Go to wedding MBA or go to a conference and learn.

Tom Chelednik (: 24:13

Interesting thing is I've never really seen any conference out there that really digs into this as much as you can do on one-on-one. And I don't think if you're not a numbers person, then...

have some find somebody that likes the numbers but you have to have the data available right like a CRM a good CRM will have data available for you they'll be able to you'll be able to pull a report that says hey I've gotten you know 210 leads in the past six months and I've booked 30 of them that's an easy number to pull if you're using a CRM you know you can have your sales people or your yourself you know make sure you're tagging things or making tasks to be able to follow

But at end of the day, most of us aren't looking at the numbers that way or don't, or if it was that easy, they'd be making decisions based on facts. So my suggestion is simple like this in this case study and this person I talked to last week or actually this morning, I'm like, okay, then you manually need to go in and do it. And if that exercise takes you three days or two days or one day, whatever that makes, we'll make.

Kevin Dennis (: 24:53

Mm-hmm.

Tom Chelednik (: 25:21

factual decisions based on your future and your business. So it's worth the investment. So that means you're going through spreadsheets, looking at how many leads and how many bookings and how many times people, then that's what you need. That's what you need to do. The math is easy. You take two numbers, you need to divide them. But coming up with the numbers is what's at times difficult. But in this world, I think you have to.

Kevin Dennis (: 25:39

Yeah.

Tom Chelednik (: 25:48

Not I think, I'm confident you have to. One of my big things at The Knot too is, know, The Knot gets this rap that it's fake leads and all this stuff. There's nobody sitting out there sending fake leads, right? And it drives me nuts and trust me, I'm on every Facebook wedding pro page. Imagine when I see them all, if I'm not on it, 10 people are texting me saying, look what they're saying now, right? but the...

Tom Chelednik (: 26:18

They're, they're saying this, these things based on a feeling or based on their reality, but they're not making changes to their business to improve it so that you can make educated decisions of where you're spending your money. Trust me. I have people canceling on me and trust me four months later, they come back because they realize that it was their fault because they're not booking anything on their website either. You know, so.

Kevin Dennis (: 26:46

Mmm.

Tom Chelednik (: 26:47

Like when you're making the big thing of knowing your numbers, yes, to increase your bookings, but you want to be fiscally responsible with your money.

or your company's money or the owner's money or something like that. Like when I was running the venues, we did quarterly return on investment meetings and all the venues that I sit on board of directors, we do quarterly ROIs, every single one. And we look at that and we're like, well, this one didn't do so well, but is that our fault or is it their fault? What could we improve upon? And then let's try it for another quarter.

and see so we can make good factual decisions of moving forward or not on something or increasing it.

Kevin Dennis (: 27:32

about. All right, so what other factors should a business owner look at in addition to the numbers?

Tom Chelednik (: 27:42

Reviews are right like like this is outside of numbers, but Your own reviews will tell you what you're doing well and what you can improve upon you should be looking at reviews upon with other

Kevin Dennis (: 27:45

Okay.

Tom Chelednik (: 27:59

Competition, everybody's not your competition, right? But you probably know the three to five people that you're losing business to. Look at their reviews. Right? Like, look at their reviews, because it's going to tell you the same thing, what they're doing well and what they could do better on, and you can capitalize on that. So I think reviews are way underutilized. Way underutilized. How many people are looking at your Google Analytics? Kevin, do you look at your Google Analytics?

Kevin Dennis (: 28:10

you

Kevin Dennis (: 28:28

I do, yeah, that's something we do look at.

Tom Chelednik (: 28:31

So, and you're making probably decisions based on Google Analytics. What are some of the things you look at for Google Analytics?

Kevin Dennis (: 28:34

based on,

Kevin Dennis (: 28:39

I just look at how many people go to the site and then how many people click the, you know, submit button. Yeah, and those are my two that I look at the most. yeah, are we getting enough views? Are we getting out of the views? Do we get enough people to, you know, submit an inquiry?

Tom Chelednik (: 28:52

So great.

Tom Chelednik (29:0.477)

Perfect, so you know that number. I would look bounce rate in your Google Analytics.

Kevin Dennis (29:2.488)

Yeah.

Yeah, I do look at that because it makes me nervous when someone just comes on our website and bounces. yeah.

Tom Chelednik (: 29:10

Yeah. And that gets back to the 12 second rule. They're coming on your website, most likely to look at pricing and if they can't pricing on your website within 12 seconds, they're bouncing. That's a whole nother podcast. Cause there's probably people out there listening to me right now. So I would never put pricing on my website. I'm going to call you.

Kevin Dennis (: 29:17

Yeah.

Kevin Dennis (: 29:26

No, so one thing well and one thing we did is we put a range so we put a price range in that that um I feel like we did that maybe eight to Ten years ago somewhere in that range, but it took we were getting tons of leads and our booking rate was down and then once we did We we were booking more, you know, because the people are seeing real numbers, you know and and they're

feeling like, and it's a range, and it's just not, and the other thing we did too is we took away a minimum. We used to have a minimum for our lighting company, and we found that that was turning people off, and we took that away, and it went through the roof. It was amazing, the difference.

Tom Chelednik (: 30:14

Yeah, ABC testing.

nges from, I'm making this up: 2000

Kevin Dennis (: 30:42

Yeah.

Tom Chelednik (: 30:45

first email response, saying, know, whatever, congratulations, but your date is available, this date's available, and my next price range is blink blink couples usually spend. And it has to be quick and visible, and that seems to be working. Now within your website too, I see lots of different ways that people are putting pricing, just don't overwhelm them.

You know, caters and venues have an opportunity to overwhelm their couples with pricing. when I, when my daughter and I were planning her wedding, I was deadzilla, of course. Um, cause I would, but, um, I'd get, I'd get these PDFs from then from caters that are 27 pages long. like, I've never looked at a catering menu in my life. As much as a caterer thinks that it's easy to me, it was beyond.

Kevin Dennis (: 31:24

percent.

Tom Chelednik (: 31:40

impossible to understand. So like not responding to them because I don't understand it. So I think other other numbers other than we went through for sure is I've seen a couple of pros out there.

Kevin Dennis (: 31:42

Yeah.

Kevin Dennis (: 31:47

No.

Tom Chelednik (: 31:56

do customer satisfaction surveys. They'll do surveys after a letting. Yes, we ask for the review, but they take it another step in surveys. And it's just a quick Google survey that comes back with great tools to help improve your business. So these ads.

Kevin Dennis (: 32:12

Yeah, feel like I feel like you know even a bad review is is a good way to improve yourself because you know good or bad you can take something out of it and and learn from each of them so. Yeah. Alright.

Tom Chelednik (: 32:23

Right? Know where your numbers are coming from. Like where are your leads coming from? Do not invest everything in one bucket. When I started this business, I don't know about you, Kevin, but like many years ago, you had a, well, you might've had a website, but you had a website. So you were probably in the phone book, right? Like probably in the phone book.

Kevin Dennis (: 32:40

I did not when I started. I'm that old. I'm that old.

Yes, yes, 100%.

Tom Chelednik (: 32:49

If you have a lot of money, did newspaper and radio and TV, but that's only if you had a lot of money because that was so expensive. And you did the knot wedding wire and bridal shows.

Kevin Dennis (33:0.216)

It was the Yellow Pages and Brattle Shows. And a magazine ad. You know, and a magazine ad in a wedding news, in a wedding magazine. So.

Tom Chelednik (33:3.069)

Yeah, yeah, it was, it's.

Tom Chelednik (33:9.718)

Yeah. And in this particular case study that, um, that I worked on, they did the work. I mean, they, they did the work and it's not just this idea of know your numbers. Well, we got in that improve them. And the way you improve it is you AB test this lead reply, you AB test this, um, sub, uh, subject line, you AB test talking in this way in a sales consultation. You know, it's not an overnight thing. It just, it just isn't.

We are in engagement season coming up here. you're, if you, you know, people are struggling now, engagement season isn't the time to change your pricing, your marketing, your leader, you know I mean? Unless you're really failing. You've missed that boat. You should be looking at all these things year round, but you should be making adjustments to your business in June, July, and August at the latest so that you have time to start testing September, October, November, December. You're good to go of what changes need to happen.

Kevin Dennis (: 33:52

Yeah.

Tom Chelednik (34:8.649)

So 100 % there.

Kevin Dennis (: 34:11

All right, so what other tips and tricks do you have for us for making large decisions in business?

Tom Chelednik (: 34:21

Back to the... Well, yeah, of course, but you need to be an option in my mind. let's talk about that. You can't put all your eggs in one basket. I have people...

Kevin Dennis (: 34:21

other than to advertise with the nut.

Kevin Dennis (: 34:26

Yeah.

Tom Chelednik (: 34:33

Spend an 80, 90, $200,000 with us. And I'm like, okay, let's talk about your SEO game. You know what I mean? Like you don't have one. You're spending $150,000 with me. This was somebody two weeks ago and, and. You don't have an SEO game. You need to, you know, can't put you, put your eggs. You can't just put your eggs all in one basket. And it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll break your break your business. Right. So I think the math will really decide what you need to do. Like on the case.

Kevin Dennis (: 34:48

Yeah.

Kevin Dennis (: 34:53

All in one basket.

Tom Chelednik (35:3.512)

when they were only receiving an average of 21 leads per month, they weren't getting enough leads.

So what did we do is, you know, the SEO game is a long play game, you know, and they didn't have the money to do Google AdWords. They just didn't and all those things, you know, and they perform as well anyway. So we looked at all the things where they had free advertising at, even the local things and things like that. We got them out there networking a lot more than they ever networked before. We improved their storefronts on the NotWeddingWire and they did. They went from a professional listening to a feature vendor listening.

more money with us. But they went from that almost immediately to that average of 21 leads to 70 leads. just, they just a month, they just put a little more effort into that. They put a little more money into it too. And sometimes you need to do that. And sometimes while consulting people, I don't think you need to put more money in. You just need to do better with what you already, you you have. I'm not letting where our storefronts is your pricing there. You're about us team there.

Kevin Dennis (: 35:47

Oh, wow.

Tom Chelednik (36:7.133)

your search criteria, know, like people's websites aren't linked right. People's, you know, Instagrams aren't linked correctly. know, stuff happens, you know, going in, go in and check those things. So.

Kevin Dennis (: 36:16

Mm-hmm.

We check ours every three months. That's kind of what we do. Yeah.

Tom Chelednik (: 36:21

Yep. That's a good, that's better. always use this every time you get your teeth cleaned every six months, but you're right. think every, every, every, every quarter, everywhere you link. And then they have all the tools out there. Like what is it? A her the free, uh, website checking tool that you can put in your website and it will tell you how many broken links you have in your website. Yeah. A H A H.

Kevin Dennis (: 36:25

Uh-huh.

Kevin Dennis (: 36:41

No, I didn't know about that. What's called?

Tom Chelednik (: 36:46

REF, search free backlink checker. And there's a bunch of them comes up. You get so many free chances, that's a great one. email replies, in their case, they went to the seven after 30, put them on hold for 10, and then they stopped. But we went through at least four different versions of those seven email replies.

Um, until they really started seeing it, seeing a difference there. Um, and they're, they're now at 51%. But that didn't happen overnight either. was months of testing. Um, but it happened, it was better immediately, but it didn't ever hit that 51 versus that 20%.

Their leads to consultations, right? So the numbers of leads that said hit reply, and then they had a sales concentration was 12 and it went to 32%. Their consultations to bookings, was a win, went up to 63 % from 30 % to 63%. And their overall leads to booking percentage went to six to 11. If they wouldn't have done...

Kevin Dennis (: 37:43

Oh, wow.

Tom Chelednik (38:1.417)

bookings in: 2024

Kevin Dennis (: 38:14

Yeah.

Kevin Dennis (: 38:30

Oh wow.

Tom Chelednik (: 38:31

numbers don't lie. So huge amount of work on their end, but they did the work. You know, they did the work. And it's not, it's not just a one shot, one shot bullet, silver bullet. One thing I do want to share too, and your lead replies that I'm seeing more and more people get responses to is putting a video in your lead reply. And everybody's, everybody's like, I'll never do that. Why are video, why is video important?

Kevin Dennis (: 38:54

Mmm.

Tom Chelednik (39:0.903)

Gen Z consumes more video, this generation consumes more video than any other generation before, right? So imagine within your first lead reply, you have your normal template, you try to make it personal, but you do a quick loom video and you say, hey, Kevin and Cindy, da da da da da da da, and show your personality and da da da, boom, seeing some decent results there. I believe in three years, if people aren't doing it, they're gonna be really left behind.

So you might as well start doing it now. And remember, instead of three to five, they're emailing five to eight. You might as well try to stand out. You got to make sure makes you stand out. You can't do it on your phone. It has to be like on Loom video. I have venues taking their laptops around showing the video, showing the room, you know, um, if it's on your phones for whatever reason, it seems to spur spam.

Kevin Dennis (: 39:25

Wow.

Kevin Dennis (: 39:35

Yeah, and that would be one that would make you stand out.

Kevin Dennis (: 39:46

Yeah.

Kevin Dennis (: 39:53

Oh, okay.

Tom Chelednik (: 39:55

So like using Loom or Vidyard or something seems to working. in my case study, they just started doing video. They just start doing video. So I don't have any statistics for them right yet.

Kevin Dennis (: 40:10

amazing. All right, so we're getting to the end. many tips, so many things that we need to do that we've learned through this episode. So what are like the three tips that we need to do immediately? I think I have mine.

Tom Chelednik (: 40:25

Oh, okay. I would first off own the fact, own the own that you can't make decisions based on feelings somewhere to a sticky note that says facts, not feelings, right? Like, and put it on your laptop, put it on your wall, whatever, you know, you're paying, you're playing with your, your income or people's livelihoods when you're making decisions based on feelings. Um, I mean, the top three.

leads to booking percentage, your overall total number leads to booking percentage, your consultations to bookings. Those should be easy numbers for you to figure out. From there, you then can go, okay, well, let's look at my emails leads to two-way conversations. And that should be an easy number.

And then you can start making those tweaks. Shoot me an email all day long. I don't know how this turned into my job, but all day long I look at people's email. They shoot them over to me in a Google Doc and they tag me on it. And then I'm just tagging. Try this, try this, try this, try this. Advertise, don't advertise with doesn't matter. I'm here to help. So what are your three?

Kevin Dennis (: 41:43

All right, fair enough. And I would say is you gotta start looking at your lead percentage, like you said, was the biggest one. And automation was another one I came out with, because you can't do it all by yourself. So those were the big two. Oh no, no, no, one more, let's see. I guess, like really looking at the booking percentage as well. You know, like that's the biggest thing. It's like, you know, there's a lot of numbers in there that I think a lot of us business owners don't look at, you know?

And like you said, it doesn't matter where the lead comes from. Take it all in there and then then you'll really figure it out. So.

Tom Chelednik (: 42:18

No, I say that doesn't matter where the lead comes from. agree with that. It's a, if you got a lead, it's a warm lead. If it's a referral, that's a hot lead. You should be booked more of those referrals. You know, if you're, you know, the venue gives you leads or whatever the plan or whatever that situation, you should be booking more of those. Um, in this case study, they weren't getting any of those hot referral leads because they weren't on anybody's list. They weren't, they weren't networking.

Kevin Dennis (: 42:27

Yeah.

Kevin Dennis (: 42:36

Yeah.

Kevin Dennis (: 42:42

Cause they don't network. Yeah. Yeah.

Tom Chelednik (: 42:46

So would I take the referrals out? Yes, I think that's also a really good exercise to figure out how many referrals are you getting? Maybe the numbers up, maybe it's down, maybe you didn't realize the numbers going down until you do that exercise. But every lead you get, no matter where it's coming from, is a warm lead. They found your information somewhere. You paid for that lead.

Kevin Dennis (: 42:55

Mmm.

Kevin Dennis (43:7.960)

Mm-hmm.

Somehow some way.

Tom Chelednik (: 43:12

somewhere, some way, even the referrals you have paid for, you know, what can you do to improve it? Improve that overall percentage of bookings. And what's a number? You know, the venues that I worked we got about 6,000 leads per year. And we also did the exercise that how many

Kevin Dennis (: 43:25

think it's gonna be different for everyone. That number's different.

Tom Chelednik (: 43:39

leads per week could a sales rep handle and do everything else. know, follow up on the leads, do the tours, write the contracts. They didn't serve us, but everything else that needed to be done. And, um, I thought they can handle 60 leads a week easily, you know? And the reality of it is after we did the case studies or studies, it was 40 leads a week. So what did we do? We hired another salesperson, you know?

Kevin Dennis (: 43:44

Hmm.

Tom Chelednik (44:7.665)

because they wanted to take time with their leads and all of a sudden, guess what? Our booking percentage went up. So again, that was all decisions based on facts. The feeling was for me was 60. The feeling was 60, but the facts showed 40 leads.

Kevin Dennis (: 44:24

Yeah, amazing. Well, there you go. That's our other tip. know? Yep. All right. So we always like to leave Tom with ask everyone what's their favorite part of a wedding. So what's your favorite part of a wedding? And it could be it could be different. It's always different for everyone else. So what's your favorite part?

Tom Chelednik (: 44:27

There it is.

Tom Chelednik (: 44:43

The ceremony, because I'm old. It used to be the dancing, but now I'm the old uncle just sitting there. I think the ceremony, I don't know. I'm sentimental.

Kevin Dennis (: 44:45

Yeah.

Kevin Dennis (: 44:55

Yeah, I found since I've had kids, I get sentimental about it too. So I feel like it changes. It changes for everyone. I agree. All right, Tom. So real quick, we're going to put it in the show notes, but what's the best way to get a hold of you?

Tom Chelednik (45:1.245)

Yeah. Yeah.

Tom Chelednik (: 45:12

Email, it'll be in the show notes. Please send me an email. I want to hear from you when things are good. I want to hear from you when things are bad or in things, you know, any type of pain points that I can, I can help you with. If I can't help you, I am the first to say, I can't help you go to smart people like Kevin, or I'll do E-interest to other SEO people, whatever that may be. But that's the cool thing about this job that I have is I love being that connector. So.

Kevin Dennis (: 45:29

Hehehehe

Kevin Dennis (: 45:37

connector to everyone. Yeah, I know there's a lot of power in being a connector. So alright, Tom, I can't thank you enough. learned I learned a lot. I'm going to go one of the things I'm going to do is go put my flow desk to work because I didn't know it would do automation. uh, yep, yep. And why not use it? So anyway, I can't thank you enough. Uh, look forward to seeing you in person the next time we are pass cross. I really, I always enjoy it. Thanks, Tom.

Tom Chelednik (: 45:51

You're already paying for it!

Tom Chelednik (: 45:56

Great.

Tom Chelednik (46:5.385)

Okay, thanks for having me, Kevin. Have a good day.