E33 - How Event Pros Can Sell More, Get Ghosted Less, & Convert More Leads

In this episode, Alan Berg from Wedding Business Solution teaches us all about sales in the events industry. With more than 25 years in sales, marketing, and sales management, Alan Berg is uniquely qualified to help event businesses succeed.
He was recently included in the “Top 75 Speakers To Watch” by Motivator Music on LinkedIn, alongside Tony Robbins, Gary V, and Dave Ramsey. He’s the wedding and event industry’s first Certified Speaking Professional™ and one of only 38 Global Speaking Fellows worldwide!
Alan has extensive sales, sales management, and marketing experience ranging from publishing two wedding magazines to Vice President of Sales at The Knot.  He’s an Education Expert for WeddingPro and consults for major industry websites in Ireland, Dubai, India, Australia, and the UK, as well as countless venues, hotels, bridal shops, planners, entertainers, and more.
He’s the author of 6 books including his most popular book: “Shut Up and Sell More Weddings & Events” and his latest: “Why Are They Ghosting Me?” He speaks to thousands of entrepreneurs and business professionals every year through webinars, live presentations, and on-site sales training and now he's speaking with the Mobile Bev. Pros community on our very own podcast!

This episode is not to be missed and it's PACKED with GOLD! ✨


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LISTEN TO ALAN'S PODCAST ON YOUTUBE
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MASTERING SALES FOR YOUR MOBILE BAR
https://shop.mobilebevpros.com/mastering-sales-for-your-mobile-bar
MILLION DOLLAR MARKETING STRATEGY
https://shop.mobilebevpros.com/million-dollar-marketing-strategy

JOIN THE MOBILE BAR ACADEMY
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WORK WITH SARAH
www.mobilebevpros.com
JOIN OUR FREE FACEBOOK GROUP
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CONNECT ON INSTAGRAM
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FREE MASTERCLASS FOR MOBILE BARS
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Transcript

 Sarah: Today on the podcast, I'm here with Alan Berg, who's a wedding industry expert, podcast host, prolific author, and renowned public speaker. We're talking today about some of his favorite topics to speak on, which is how to sell more profit more, get ghosted less, and convert more leads.

Welcome to the podcast, Alan.

Alan: Well, thank you, Sarah. Thank you so much for having me on, and thanks everybody for tuning in. 

Sarah: You might be the biggest name that we've ever had on the podcast. So I'm really excited and not just a little nervous. I came prepared with a whole list of questions in the case, you know, I got a little starstruck and wasn’t sure what to say. In fact, you've got a new book coming out, so you have six currently on the market, and you have a seventh coming out very shortly. 

Alan: Yes. You know it. It’s a great story and I actually just recorded one of my own podcasts that's called, “This is the Book You Helped Me Write.” What would happen is people would come up to me at a conference or at a meeting or wherever they saw me, and they would say, “Which of your books has this in it?” If it was one of my current books, I'd say, oh, that's in, “Shut Up and Sell More,” Or, “That’s in, Why Are They Ghosting Me?” And if it wasn't, I'd say, “Oh, It's in the next one,” and I would just write it down. I started making a list of all these things people asked me for, like, “How do you respond to a bad review?” Or maybe they saw me speak. And said, “Hey, that was a great speech. Which of your books talks about that?” And if it wasn't in a book, I'd say, “It’s in the next one.” So I almost called it The Next One, but instead, I called it Stop Selling and Help Them Buy Weddings and Events. The subtitle is, For People Who Love Doing Events More Than Selling Them. The concept partly started as a book for people who hate selling. I was like, “Well, maybe you don't hate selling, but you might love having a mobile bar better, or you might love being a photographer better, or you might love cooking better.”

I didn't wanna make it for people who hate selling cuz you might not hate it, but it might not be your favorite part to get to the part you love, which is doing what you do. Why did you create a mobile bar is cuz you love doing it. Right? That's the whole point. 

Sarah: Yeah. I teach a little bit, not to what you do, but I teach about shifting the mindset around selling cuz I think, at least in the mobile bar industry which I can speak to with authority, is that we get a lot of creatives and we get a lot of people who are super passionate about what they do and so they create a business around something because they've basically bought into the fact that I wanna, you know, do what I love and never ha work a day in my life.

Alan: Right. 

Sarah: And then they're like, “But now I actually have to sell, and I hate selling. I hate sales. That's not why I do this.” I love what I do, and so I try and pivot their frame of thought in that you're not selling, you're serving. If you are really as good at what you do, as you say you are, then you're doing them a service by enabling them to have access to your zone of genius.
Sometimes that moves the needle a little bit. What other themes have you seen about people's resistance to sales that you address in, in your books and your training? 

Alan: You know, it's funny, the subtitle of the book almost was for people who love to serve more than they love to sell. And I ran that by a bunch of people, and it resonated with the people you're talking about, with the creatives. It didn't necessarily resonate as much as, “what does that mean? What does serve mean?” Because service could be volunteering, service could be at your particular house of worship or whatever. So what did serve mean? So I was like, eh, and then, of course, the caterers serving means something totally different cuz we're Or to bar bars, right? And bartenders,” we're serving, we're serving them drinks there.” So I have the table of contents here, or the new book, and the first chapter in the book is, What Is Selling? And the second is, If It Feels Like Selling, You’re Doing It Wrong. Then the next one is, Selling Can Be Creative. And the next is Be The Salesperson You Wish You Had When You Were The Customer. And the next one is, But What If I Don’t  Wanna Do Sales? Right? So I'm addressing those things specifically there because this was kind of the genesis of this for people who hate selling. So what you described as how someone got into the mobile bar business is pretty much how most people get into the wedding and event industry. They're really good at or passionate about, fill in the blank: Invitations, flowers, photos, video, music. Right? They're passionate about cooking. They're passionate about fashion, right? That doesn't qualify you to be in business. You are the exception with two advanced degrees, right? Most people don't come into the industry with that, or maybe their advanced degree is in art or design or something like that.

It's not necessarily in this, and the thing is, for a lot of people, it's a sideline that becomes a full-time thing, right? It's your side hustle. That becomes a full-time thing, and there's a big difference between having a side hustle and a full-time thing, or at least you should treat the side hustle as a business.

Most people don't. Most people are like, “Ooh, that's cool. We got extra money. Here we go. That's kind of fun.” And then when it becomes the full-time thing, all of a sudden it's like, oh, wait a minute. We need salespeople, or we need accountants and we need lawyers, and we need all these other things. So, the idea of, “I don't really like the selling part,” is to understand what you're really selling is the results that you provide that nobody else can provide. And that doesn't mean a mobile bar because other people provide mobile bars and bartending services. Other people do that and if you don't understand or can't own why people choose you to provide those results, then nothing you're selling is unique and the lower price is going to win. It has to win. It should win. When we're customers, the lower price wins when there's no other perceived difference. When there is a perceived difference, then you will pay more money to get other results.

I actually did a podcast of your results, I think it's actually a chapter in here. Are Your Results Really Better Or Are They Just Different? And the truth is, we'll never know if they're better because of that event. Is only gonna happen that time and nobody else is bringing their bar. So how will we know if somebody did a better job? Because they didn't. We, the customer has to perceive that I want your results and when they do, they have to pay your price. And that's when you understand as a business when you have pricing power and what you're selling. That's unique cuz otherwise it's a commodity. 

Sarah: Oh, I speak on this topic all the time about the difference between convenience and difference, and luxury and commodity. And so I love that you've brought that up. There's about 50% of the people who get into the mobile bar industry that were bartenders and they're like, “I can do this and I'm gonna do this for events,” and the other 50%, or at least the other 50% that is drawn to my community, they're people who serve from other industries, teachers, nurses, pharmacists, people who get burnt out in the service industry and want to do something that they perceive to be fun and work in beautiful scenarios and are creative outlets. They're not salespeople, and they're not marketers in most cases. And so looking at what they're doing and then creating messaging that is results-driven, to your point, is a real challenge for them.

So how would you recommend that people take a look at what they're doing and then to create that results-driven messaging for their ideal client?

Alan: Oh, great question. If you're not brand new, right? If you're brand new and you've never done any work, it's hard to say what's different, because now it's the look of my bar, right?

Whether it's the horse trailer or whether it's the cute old European little three-wheel, you know, whatever. Right? But if you've been doing it for a while, the easiest and best place to find out why you’re different, and what people perceive about you is to look at the reviews, the thank you notes, the things that people post on social, and the things that people say to you.

This is where your difference is. Because we don't get to define our brand, we get to define our branding. But we don't get to define our brand. So if anybody, I don't know if this is video or audio or both, but if I stand above my microphone, you see the logo on my shirt? This is branding the fact that over my shoulder it says, wedding Business Solutions and www.ellenburg.com is branding. So whenever I'm on a podcast, whenever I do my own podcast, whenever I make a video recording, my logo is over my shoulder, my books are over my shoulder there that is brand ding. That's not my brand. Right. You were very kind to say in your introduction that I'm the biggest name you've had on, I appreciate that. But what that means is that when you say, I want to have this guy on to speak about business, there's something you've seen, heard, read, watched, and experienced that says, something. I'm not gonna say what your something is, but whatever that something is that says, “I want him on here.” Right? I want him on here. And for you to be kind enough, to say that about me. I don't get to define my brand, right? 

I can tell you what my brand is, because I can tell you what other people have said. I can tell you that one of my favorite quotes about my speaking was from a guy named Aldo Ryan, who's got an entertainment company here in New Jersey, and he said, “Alan, you're probably the only speaker I can listen to without once looking at my watch.” That's a great line. Except the guy in Chicago saw that line and wrote, “Alan, I was looking at my watch, cuz I was hoping it wasn't over yet.” So that's my brand in terms of speaking and then in terms of sales training, in terms of marketing, in terms of other things. I have quotes and I have quotes and I have quotes. Hundreds, literally hundreds and hundreds of quotes cuz I've been doing this for a while. I was vice president of The Knot, was there for 11 years. I've been out of The Knot for about 12 years. So in 12 years, I've gathered some comments from people, right? Hundreds of comments. And the key is that, when someone reads that comment, it's called social proof. This social proof says, not that I say you're gonna benefit from this, but how you might benefit the same way they did. And this is no different than reading a restaurant review and, and reading about it. Like, uh, I'll give you an example. My dad just turned 93 and my niece and he, they do a dinner date.

Every once in a while, they're both down in Florida and they went on this date and it was an hour-and-a-half drive each way and an hour and a-half drive back. And my father loved it cuz he says he got five hours to spend with his granddaughter. The comments were, the ambiance of this place was beautiful. It was really, it was a great location. The ambiance was beautiful. The food was, eh. If you read that on Yelp, or if you read that on Google, or if you read that on TripAdvisor, are you gonna go right now if all you care about is the ambiance, I need a romantic place on the water, whatever you might go. Yeah. All right.

The food was, eh, it wasn't terrible. It was, eh, I might go, but if you're looking for a good meal, you got a few other choices, right? So their brand. And it's funny cuz, I was talking to my niece and asking her opinion, not just my dad's, and she said it was a beautiful place, whatever. And they won like best ambiance in this county or whatever. I said, “what did they say about the food? Cuz they won the best ambiance. And you guys love the ambiance.” So if I were to say to a mobile bar owner, “what is your brand?” Your brand is not the look and style of your bar. The brand is how people feel when they experience that, both the host and the guests and the other vendors that are involved in that event because everybody defines your brand.

If the guests love it, but the other vendors think you're a jerk. That's your brand. And the industry's not gonna recommend you because they think you're a jerk. But if the industry's like, “oh, she's so helpful,” or “They're so helpful, this is great. I love when I come on-site and I see that this bar is there.” I'm like, “this is gonna be a good night,” then that's your brand. Right? And if somebody reads that review and says, “anytime I see that X, Y, Z bar is gonna be there, I know it's gonna be a good night,” the next person's gonna go, “Well, I want a good night. I want it to be a good night,” right? So here's where your brand is.

So the easiest place to do it is the public reviews you have, the private ones, you have the emails, the texts, the thank you notes. Um, if you're not doing video testimonials at the end of the night, I highly suggest you take out your high definition camera that we all carry in our pockets these days.

And when someone walks up to you and says, “thank you so much, that was amazing,” Pull out your camera and say, “Hey, could you just say that over here on the recording so I can show other people?” Not everybody's gonna say yes, but, most of them will. And then you have video testimonials which you can then transcribe and use. That's where the words are. You don't get to make the words up, you get to use their words, but you don't get to say their words. 

Sarah: I love that. And not least of which, cuz I just taught an entire lesson on social proof, and video case study testimonials were part of that lesson. Uh, but I love that step one here is to identify your brand, and to your point, you can look at your reviews or you can look at some of the things that people are already saying. 

I think this is actually touched on a little bit in the book, Talk Triggers, wherein he's like, “look what people are already saying.” What I love about that is you do have some control over what people say. If you choose what you want people to say and then you reflect it back to them throughout your messaging and your sales pitch and you know, I used to do this because my whole mission was to make great event bars easy. And so I would reflect that back to them and, and tell them like, “our goal is to make event bars easl, did we make it easy for you?” And then we'd start to see that rep show up in our comments and our feedback. They made it so easy. They made great event bars easy.

So you do have a little bit of control only if you actually live up to what it is that you want to be known for. But to your point, If you're just getting started, you might not know what you want that to be. And so looking at your reviews, after working a few events and hearing the feedback, “what did you like most about working with us,” or “what was your favorite part about working with us?” Can really help you distill down what your zone of genius is. If you're not already aware of what your zone of genius is or what people like most about the way you make them feel, to your point, like the way you make people feel is really kinda that golden nugget. And so once we identify what our brand is and what people, cuz again, it's down to what people value.
It's not a commodity. So people aren't playing on price. When we're working in this industry, we want people to see value in what we're doing. 

In the sales process, how do we utilize our brand to close the sale, but you actually use it before they even get to you?
 
Alan: So there are four steps to getting more sales. When I teach sales training, I call it the sales cycle. So you first have to get someone's attention. And you get their attention through advertising, marketing, networking, all these different things that you do, social media. So use those words in those things. A big mistake I see people doing is on their websites, they have a testimonials page, which according to your Google Analytics, will show you that nobody goes there. The reason nobody goes there is it's your website, you put the things there, what are the chances you took the bad review and put it on that page on your site? So I've never seen a Google Analytics report that showed a testimonial to this page having more than one or 2% of the traffic. And it's usually that person looking at their own page there.

Before I was asking for reviews on Google. I had pages on my website. So going back 12 years ago when I started, uh, when I left The Knot, I just created a blog page and I said, you know, it was a testimonials page for speaking. There was another one for mastermind, another one for consulting, and people would post there themselves. I would respond to every review, which is important. I think we should get back to that, but it was, responding to every review, and again, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, and nobody went there. Nobody only to post, but they didn't go there to read them. So what I have on every piece of marketing that I do, and I'm talking about bookmarks, business cards, postcards, handouts, anything I do are single sentences that have been pulled out of those paragraphs that people said speak to whatever you are talking about at that time. So if I'm talking about sales training, they're gonna be a sales training testimonial. If I'm talking about a website review, it'd be a website review on and so forth in the books and so forth. So they're gonna talk to those points to support them because you say it, okay, good. You're supposed to say you're gonna do this. Somebody says, “yeah, they did that too for me,” right? “They did that for me, they did that for my guests.” That's much more powerful. So you wanna pull those single sentences out, but don't put them at the bottom of the page. Another mistake I see people making, we as customers and visitors to websites, know that we don't go all the way down to the bottom of the page yet how many people put their reviews further down the page? Doesn't make any sense, right? 

So think of them like speed bumps. And as you go through, there's your text talking about it. Actually, I'll give you a little quick thing. Four things you want on every page of a website are aspirational images. I don't wanna see your bar, I wanna see people at the bar. I wanna see people getting drinks, interacting with your bartenders, and your particular bar style.

I want you to talk to the visitor, the reader, about them, not about you. Don't start every paragraph with we, wee, wee, wee, wee wee. We, now you're speaking French, uh, or you, it should be you. You, when you, when you choose Z, Y, Z bar for your next event, you and your guest will. You, you, you, I call it the you test.

I literally search the page for the word you. It either appears or it doesn't. The third is the social proof. So if I talk about how fun and creative your bar is, if I, as the bar owner, and then I have someone who says, “I love their quirky style,” it fits right, it supports it. And then the fourth is the call to action, right?

So tell me what to do to get that result. So show me the result, talk about the result, have someone support the result, tell me what to do. But then everything that you do should include that. So if you do any advertising, do any marketing, highlight the reviews in your social media. Show a picture of that event with a review from that person.

Much, much stronger. Anything anybody touches of mine is gonna have a review on it. So I have these. My favorite phrase, “if you don't ask the answer is always no.” There are little postcards that I hand out, but the back of it says, “why should you have industry guru Alan Berg train your sales team?” And there's four testimonial quotes right there with attribution of who said it, where they are, and then a call to action if you put the attribution on your website.

So you say that this was so and so for their event, right? Whatever type of event, or if it's a company, whatever. And then the city and state, It can help your SEO because now you're mentioning all these other towns that you've worked in or all these other venues you've worked at, and it can help that incrementally there.

So everything somebody touches of mine, including a business card, all right, is gonna have testimonials on it because, yeah, I'm supposed to say it's good. But you don't believe me the way you'll believe somebody else. So in your marketing advertising, the videos, if you're doing the video testimonials I have on my website and I actually borrowed this idea from a client of mine who's a wedding band in Chicago. I take a few seconds, of what somebody said, and then a few seconds of what somebody else said, and then a few seconds of what somebody else said, and I put them together into a one-minute or a 90 second compilation so that it isn't just one person talking for 90 seconds about, “oh, I love what Sarah did and it was great.”
It's somebody, somebody, somebody, somebody, somebody, somebody, somebody, somebody with a call to action at the end. And the beginning is the why. It literally says, “Why should you have Alan Berg review your website?” or “Why should you have sales training by Alan Berg?” or “why?” And then the answer is that, and then it tells you who each person is and stuff like that.

So that's how you use it. It’s jjust like you've always seen on the, you know, you mentioned Jay Baer’s book, uh, Talk Triggers. I'm sure there are testimonials on the back cover. Right. I'm sure. I'm sure they're there. Every one of my books says testimonials on the back cover cuz we turn books over and we look to see why.

And that's the key, you know? Do you read a review before you buy somebody's book? Do you read a review before you decide to eat in that restaurant or, or buy that piece of equipment? Sure you do. You know I'm a bourbon guy. Do I read a review before I buy a bourbon? Yeah. You know, do I trust some reviews more than others? Yeah. Where are they? Did the person reply? You know, all those different factors are gonna matter. 

Sarah: Yeah, I love that. I think the study said that 90% of people making a purchase are going to seek some sort of social proof before committing. Whether it's a referral from someone that they know and trust, or even just an online review. Honestly, we trust people we've never met. And we have no reference point for anything about them, but we trust them more than not having that anonymous point. 

Alan: I'm listening to a book called Influence by Robert Chaldini, who's, who's great. And he was talking about that, you know, that we believe these people, but there are some reviews that are more believable than others, and then there are algorithms to figure out which are the fake reviews versus the real reviews. I'm a prolific reviewer above restaurants and hotels because I travel so much. I've personally posted over 650 reviews on TripAdvisor. Right? Personally. And I'm a Yelp elite for the last, I don't know, four or five years or whatever. So when I take the time to post a review, I want to post a believable review and not a review that's like, “oh, I thought it was great and I think you should stay here.” Right? I talk about what it is. I talk about people by name. I'll talk about the dish I had, if I'm with other people, maybe mention their dishes as well. So it's believable. Instead of it just being, “oh no, they paid this guy to post a great review.” And the thing is, I don't post the review as much as I have 650. I don't post the review of every restaurant I eat in or every hotel I stay at, and the reason is, it has to move the needle. It has to move the needle enough for me to say I'm gonna do it. And, and I actually had, I might even still be sitting on my desk here. I saved the, um, the receipt from the restaurant. If I think I wanna post a review, I might save it to remind me of what we had. But when I take the time to post, I'm gonna post a specific review so that when you're reading it, I want to post one that I would wanna read, and they'll say that I like this.

I didn't like the restaurant with my dad and my niece. I would've said it was a great ambiance. It was beautiful on the water. The service was great, the steak, you know, was just mediocre. So people can read it and know that balance and make their mind up. And then what I look for as a consumer is not just what are the other reviews, but if the platform allows it. Are they responding to the reviews? So Google allows you to reply to reviews. Yelp allows you to reply to reviews. The Knot and Wedding Wire allow you to reply to reviews and if you are on any of those platforms, and it allows you to reply, TripAdvisor allows you to reply to reviews. If you're not replying to reviews, you're missing out on a huge opportunity to stand head and shoulders above the other people there, because if I'm reading two good reviews and one of them has replies that are good, I'm gonna say that there are good replies. The other one has no reply. I will go to the one that had a good reply because you now had the chance to be in the room. When I was reading this review, you had the chance to be in the room and say thank you in a meaningful way.

A meaningful way just means read what they wrote and say something about what they wrote. I hate when someone replies with this generic, “thank you for taking the time to post your review. We can't wait to welcome you back”. I'm thinking, “Did you read what I wrote?” Right? Or there was one. What was it? Oh, where the hotel was under renovation and it didn't say it on the website. It just said the restaurant was closed for renovation and we show up in the hotels under renovation and they're wallpapering in the hallway or whatever. Like, what gives? We could have gone down the road. We didn't have to come here, and I wrote the review and I got back something like, “you know, we're very excited about the renovation as well, and can't wait for you to see it on your next visit,” or something like that. I'm like, “Um, no.” I was complaining, like, “did you hear me complaining?” Right. But that shows me they're not paying attention.

I will also be courteous. If I have a problem, I will tell management. I won't go just to post a bad review. If you don't respond, I give you two chances. I'm really being generous. I give you two chances. If you don't respond, then I'm gonna go to social. Right? If you respond badly, I'm going to go to social, because you had the chance, you had the chance to make it right. I don't mean you have to give me something. I don't go to you because I want a freebie. I go to you because you wouldn't know if, I don't tell you if I was the manager, I'd wanna know. Every hotel manager I work with would wanna know.

When I've had the opportunity to talk to somewhere, I got a little bit of a runaround. You could hear their frustration. The Ritz Carlton in Santa Barbara, I asked for the manager's name and, and email and they said, here's his assistant. Like, um, I didn't ask for his assistant. I asked for his name and email cuz he wasn't on property. When I finally got to him and told him, and I said, “that's what happened.” You could hear him rolling his eyes like, “that's not the way this works.” A guest says, I want the manager's name and email. You give the guest the manager's name and email.” 

Sarha: So yeah, as somebody who came through Cornell's hotel school, I worked pretty closely with Ritz Carlton on their customer service expectations, and they're up there with like the best of the world. I can imagine how he died inside a little bit, hearing that. What I'm hearing you say, Alan, from the questions that we have addressed so far is that a major part of the sales process happens before they even get into your lead funnel, right? 

Alan: Right. Because think about. What is our search process as consumers? If you haven't read the Barry Schwartz, The Paradox Of Choice. It's one of my favorite books to recommend. It's the second book I ever listened to twice on audio, and I'll probably listen to it again. It's just talks about how we make decisions. But if you think about it, the paradox of choice in the world that we live in is we want to know, we've seen all the choices when we're the consumer.

But when shown all the choices, there's too many choices and we can't decide. Have you been on Amazon for anything? Right? And and that's the paradox of choice. So I go on Amazon and I'm looking, I forget whatever the last thing I was looking for, and there's 7,000 choices. So what do you do? If your like me, you click prime, right? So now there's only 5,000 choices, and then you click four star or higher, and now there's 3000 choices, right? We try to narrow this down. I mean, even dating, right? Tinder, what is it? Swipe left, I've heard, I don't know. I’ve been married a long time to the same person since before dating apps, so I've been told that swipe left is bad, but, it's the same thing. It's a filtering process. So we always do a filtering process before we decide to make that inquiry. So the filtering process says, I'm gonna cut this choice of, which could be, you know, a dozen or it could be dozens, or it could be hundreds, or it could be thousands down to a small group that I think are gonna be a good fit.

For whatever reason, I couldn't narrow it down to one. Right? So if there was something so specific that I'm looking for that it ended up, there was only one, I would've reached out to that company and that's it. But, Let's face it, if they need a mobile bar, they have choices and they're gonna cut it down and say, based upon what I'm seeing now, and this is why your website is so important, and if you're on social, you need to be active. I'm not saying you need to be on every platform. You wanna be on the platform your customers are looking for you on, but if you're on the platform, you need to be active. You don't want somebody going and finding that the last time you posted was six months ago. If that's their platform, they're gonna say, I'll find somebody else.

So you want to go where they are. You want to be in front of them with the right information at the right time. And the goal of all of those things, your YouTube channel, and your social media and your website and all, is to get you an inquiry. That's its goal. And unless they can buy online and the case it's e-commerce.

I would imagine most people are not letting you buy online, right? They wanna talk to you first. So your goal is one thing. So when I go to websites and I review websites, it's one of my services. I always look and go, well, well why aren't you going towards your goal? Right? Your goal is to get me to make an inquiry. It's not book us now, which I see that button all the time on websites. Well, if I click that, it should take me to e-commerce, cuz it says Book us now. But it doesn't. Right? So the goal of your website is to get the inquiry. Once you get the inquiry, they have eliminated most of your competitors, it could be 95%, 98%, 98%, depending on how many you are in your marketing category.

They've eliminated most of your competitors, whatever it is they've seen, heard, like, experience, whatever. They know they like that. Why would they take the next step, right? So they've read your reviews, like you said, 90% or more reading reviews. They like what they've read, gonna take the next step when they reach out to you at that point, you're in a small group. Could be 2, 3, 4, 5, right? It's probably not 20. There might be a couple of crazies out there that do that. What they realize is it's their fault to then get 20 replies. Right? It's their fault. Although, it's sad to say with all the secret shopping that I do that. There are companies that don't reply at all, which is really sad. We're shopping 40 different companies right now, and there's at least three that haven't replied at all. And one of them was a client of mine that had me shop as people, and I said, we didn't get a reply, and he checked and find some issue that people weren't getting the inquiry, so we shopped them again and got no reply again. So it was not a technological problem. It's a people problem over there. So by the time you get that inquiry, Your job is to continue the conversation that they have started, right? 

You're not cold calling. Cold calling is you starting a conversation. They started a conversation which said, “I like what I've seen, read, heard, watched, or whatever. I want more information.” It's likely they're gonna ask you pricing because if there's no pricing on your website, They're gonna ask, they also don't know how to shop for what you do, cuz most people who are hiring a mobile bar, I would imagine have never before hired a mobile bar. So what do you ask?

You're not equipped to ask the questions. When they do ask you the good questions, it's either because they've hired a bar before or they've talked to somebody else who gave them the education on what to ask. And none of us are immune to that. 

Sarah: Or they went to another website or talked to another mobile bar that was better at you at.
Creating the expectation of, these are the questions you should be asking. 

Alan: Right. Which a again, they're never equipped to that beginning. Uh, my most popular book, Shut Up And Sell More Weddings and Events, I tell a story on the other side of the wall behind my monitor here is my baby grand piano, that when we built this house 12 years ago, we got the piano and I wanted to protect it from the sun rays cuz it killed my grandmother's piano, which was the baby grand I was supposed to get. So I wanted window tinting, UV window tinting. That was residential. I wanted, what did I wanted. So I was searching and I did my search for Central New Jersey residential window tinting for UV protection. Some really long search. Well, when I went to their websites, I found they were in my area. I found they did residential. I found they did UV. So when I reached out, I didn't know what else to ask and I did not want to ask price because I teach this stuff. And I was like, don't ask them how much. And I'm thinking, well, what else do you ask them? They're in your area. They do UV, they do houses. What else can I ask? So I did, it killed me and I sent this email and said, you know, how much is it to tint the windows? And when the first guy got back to me 15 minutes later on a Saturday night, by the way, 9:30 at night on a Saturday, and he said, well, “I need to come and measure the windows and see how many there were.”

I'm like, Duh. I didn't say, “I have this many windows, they're this big, this high up, how much is it?” So what if he had come back and said, “it's this much per square inch,” or something like, now I have to measure the windows and get on a ladder. Right? So it was a stupid question, but it wasn't a stupid question.

It was a natural question to ask when you ran out of questions. And if you have no questions, like a mobile bar, um, “How much is it,” right? Or you're standing on line at the supermarket and you have a jacket on and it says, “you know, Amy's mobile bar service,” right? And somebody taps you on their shoulder, “oh, hey, we're having a party. How much is a mobile bar?” Right? That's what they're gonna ask you. They're not gonna say, “tell me about your bar,” Right. So it's just human nature that the people are gonna do that. So by the time they reach out to you, you're supposed to continue the conversation that they have started. But what you're supposed to do is talk about the results that they want.

So one of the chapters in the book, I actually got this from a client of mine, a rental company in Westchester, New York, and he said they always ask three questions when they get an inquiry, “what's the occasion, who's coming, and what does success look like?” Right, and that's my version of his three questions.

Well, what's the occasion? We need to know We're having a barbecue, we're having a festival, we're having a. Wedding in the backyard. We're having a whatever who's coming. You need to know that as a mobile bar. I was at a wedding recently that was from four years old to 93. Kind of wanna know that going in, right? And it was a kosher wedding. Kind of wanna know that going in also. And then what does success look like? And this is a harder question because people have never experienced it, so they may not know what success looks like. So that's where you have to ask better questions and that's why Shut Up And Sell More is my most popular book.

You don't learn by talking, you learn by listening. So if you say to someone you know, “what's been your experience? What the last event that you went to. Did you go and get a drink at the bar? What was your experience?” Just leave it very open. And if they say, “oh gosh, I had to wait 15 minutes to get a drink, or the bartender didn't know how to make this particular drink, or I went up to the bar like, I'm a bourbon guy. So I went up and said, what kind of bourbon do you have?” And if they say, “Jim Beam,” I said, “well, what kind of wine do you have?” Because you, you didn't even try. I'm sorry, but I'm gonna say that out loud now. If all the only bourbon you have on your bar is Jim Beam, you're not even trying. Right?

Woodford, Makers, everybody would be happy with that. Jim Beam, sorry, I wouldn't put it in my car. Right? I'm just saying. I'll get off my soapbox in a minute. But you got fans on this podcast. Well, you feel the same. So this is how crazy the Bergs are cuz we have our own barrel. I have a three liter barrel where we blended a bunch of other bourbons that we bought into here and added French toasted French oak and toasted sugar maple chips into the barrel. So it's aging. 

Sarah: Oh, very nice. 

Alan: And the front of the barrel says it's the Berg BTM Blends blended in New Jersey. You got a problem with that?

It actually says that both on the bottom on the barrel and on the labels that we have made, because I'm a marketer, so I can't leave well enough alone. So we have our own bottles, with their own labels, with their own hashtags that tell you what's inside there. So yeah, so, okay, so I digress. In terms of you get the inquiry, so think about it. By the time you got the inquiry, the need has been established. And this is something I tell people all the time, and again, it's part of my books here. They already need what you do. You don't have to sell them what you do, you have to sell them. Why? What you're gonna do for them is gonna get them the results that they want. The thing is, They don't know how to ask for things they've never seen, so you might do things that they've never seen, right? So if somebody's making an old fashioned and they're gonna, you know, smoke the glass, there's a bunch of different ways to do that, and your bartender might do it a different way.

I was at a kind of a speakeasy, and the guy was pouring something out onto the marble top of the bar and lighting it on fire, and then smoking the glass on the bar. He wasn't happy with me when I asked for my bourbon neat, cuz that's how I drank it. It was like there was no smoking, there was no zesting. Sorry, I just like the bourbon. You know, I like to drink it neat. Uh, so what is the result that they want? What is the experience that they want for their guests? And you could lead the witness, like you were saying before, in terms of the review. You can lead the witness, you know, have you ever been to a bar where, you know, they didn't have a decent selection? Have you ever been to a bar where you had to wait too long? Have you ever been to an event where the bar was too far away from where you. And if they're like, “oh yeah.” And you say, “well, you know, you make, you know, would it make sense?” Which is a great way to ask for a sale, by the way. Would it make sense to have two different bar locations so that you can and you're not selling it, you're selling the result, which is, would it make sense to have two different bar locations so that when they're over there they can get a drink when they're over here, they can get a drink without having to cross through the dance floor or whatever, and they're like, oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

You're helping them buy, and that's why this new book is called Stop Selling and Help Them Buy Weddings and Events. You don't have to sell them. They already need it. Right? If you're walking down the street, knocking on doors, you're selling right. Encyclopedias, vacuum cleaners, whatever. But if they're coming to you, to your website, to your social, emailing you, calling you, texting you, WhatsApping you, whatever, and saying, “how much is it for a mobile bar?” They already need what you do. 

Sarah: Yes, they do. And I always tell people, if they've dropped into your lead funnel, they have asked for your time, attention, and support, and you ghost them. Or if you fail to follow up with them appropriately, then you're not doing them a service. So let's talk a little bit about follow up. I can't tell you Alan, how many times I'll ask people what their lead funnel looks like or their nurture funnel looks like and they're like, “Well, we send them their proposal and then we'll follow up one more time to see if they have any questions. And then they're dead to us.” 

Alan: You're from Brooklyn. Now, to me, that's not enough. Right? You're dead to me. That's it. 
Well, I'm from New York originally, so I'm, I'm born and raised in New York City, Queens, so that I changed my, my accent when I moved to New Jersey. So that's it. That's a New York joke. 

So one of the chapters in the new book is Should You Use Formal Proposals, and I actually hate formal proposals because formal proposals create this gap, right? The first thing is if you know what you do and you've done it for  enough time, there's no reason that it will take you time to come up with a proposal more than a couple of minutes, right?

If it's taking you more than a couple of minutes to come up with a proposal for something that you do every day, something's broken in the process, okay? You don't know what you do, you dunno what you do. Case, and this includes, and when, this is what I'm talking to caterers. I'm talking to florist, right?

I'm talking to people that could, you know, extensive menus and things. If you know what you do, right, you're a mobile bar service, you know what you do. And I would imagine that some of your, uh, listeners have liquor licenses and some of them don't. Right? So some of them are providing alcohol or providing the alcohol itself, and some of them are not. Right? So whenever you have an idea what this is, you should be able to give them at least a range of a quote and say, “well, you know what? That's gonna be between here and here for that event.” Then you'll have a pretty tight range, something like that work, “Yes. Okay.” Or “I need to, you know, I need to go back to the boss.” Okay. Well tell the boss, depending upon the actual, you know, bottles that you choose, or how many, uh, signature cocktails you want, or whatever you're gonna be between here and here, right? And then you want to find out what is the next step. Uh, I have these other postcards that say ambiguous next steps. Bring ambiguous results, right? So follow up. It's not up to the customer to follow up with you from the initial inquiry all the way through the sale. It's not up to the customer to follow up with you. It's up to you to follow up. We know that according if it's a wedding, according to The Knot, and I'm sure this carries through to other things, according to The Knot and Wedding Wire, couples choose the first one who responds about 50% of the time. Okay? So that's a big enough reason to get back to people quickly and what as quickly as you can. That's what it means. If you can get back to them within minutes, get back to them in minutes. If it's hours, it's hours. If you're watching your kids dance recital or soccer game or whatever, watch the game. Turn off your phone, you know, take pictures. Don't be doing work there, right? I'm a dad too, but get back to 'em as quickly as you can. And what we find in our secret shopping is most companies are pretty good at that. Most companies will get back to them the same day if they can, by the next day, if they can. Most, not all, but most will do that. What we also find is that most of them just stop. They just stop. Now, think about it. You're a consumer. You've done your research. You've gone to three, or let's call it five different websites for five mobile bars.

You sent out five inquiries. You get five responses back. If you don't get that back immediately, and I don't mean an auto reply, I mean a reply from someone immediately, you're doing something else. That's what we do as humans. We don't sit there staring at our computer screen going, “am I gonna get a reply now? Am I gonna get a reply?” We just go on to doing something else. We go to work. Whatever we have, you know, we have lives, we do other things. Then you get that reply in, and there's a couple of things you can do to get a fast reply from them. The first is, does it fit on one screen of their smartphone? If it doesn't, they're gonna do what we all do. You open up your phone, you go to your email, you look at the subject line, who sent it, and you go, “Ooh, it's from the mobile bar.” The subject line's a good, It's like, “you know, can we pour a drink for you? You know, Sarah?” Right? That would be a good subject line because we go, “Ooh, Sarah name's in there.” It's kind of fun. Okay. I open the email up. It's two screens long. I don't have time for that. We don't read, we scan. That's what we do. Nobody reads, we scan, nobody reads, and we scan from the top left to the bottom right, according to my graphic designer son, from the top left to the bottom, right, then over to the left, and then maybe back up to the top.Right? Well, if this is two screens long on your phone, sorry, we're not reading it, right? A couple of people will. Most people won't. They'll close it up, say, I'll get back to it later. They may not so fit it on one screen or their phone. Did you put attachments? Did you put links? Those are all reasons for them not to respond to you. Right? 

I wrote a whole book called Why Are They Ghosting Me? There are nine reasons why they're ghosting you. Eight of them are your fault, and some of the reasons they're your fault is, It's too long. You're asking for a caller meeting right away. If they wanted a caller meeting, they would've asked or they would've called you, especially millennials.

We don't wanna talk to you. We're talking Gen Zs now also, right? And then attachments, they, they open on their phone, but they're tiny because you made eight and a half by elevens or 11 by seventeens, shrunk them down to a phone screen and their dead ends. A dead end means if you end your message with a period or an exclamation point, the conversation is over. “I look forward to hearing back from you,” period. “We can't wait to work with you.” Exclamation point. You've emphatically ended that conversation. Why should I get back to you if you say we look forward to working with you? There's no action. Zero. The simplest thing, there's an officiant in Southern California, Alan Katz, his company does like 2000 ceremonies a year. It's great. Great Officiants, it's called, and we were driving to dinner one night when I was in California and he just dropped on me. I always have my people end every email with a question. It gets people to respond better. Duh, the simplest thing. He's credited in the book I wrote a book called, Why Don't They Call Me? Right? And then followed it up with Why Are They Ghosting Me? And the dedication has Alan Katz in there because it's just such a simple thing, but it's so powerful. If I scan your message and there is a paragraph, which is one sentence by itself, which is the question, and then the only thing after that is your name. That's what I'm gonna see. And if it's an easy question, then I'll answer it quickly. If it's a hard question, like, “what's your vision for your mobile bar?” Not everybody can answer that, right? I have two sets, Graphic designer, financial analyst, graphic designer's. Son is gonna want to think about his vision.

Financial analyst doesn't know how to answer that question because, “what? What do you mean by my vision? Like coming in on budget,” right? It's just a different brain, right? It just doesn't work the same way. So the, the keys to getting them to reply to you or making it easy to reply, don't gimme links to your YouTube channel. Don't gimme links to your social media. By the time they reach out to you, they don't need that. What they need is a person to talk to them. I'm doing air quotes talk because it's through our fingertips most of the time because they filled out your contact form now, unless you don't have a phone number on your website, which in the last two months, I've had two companies that I've worked with have not had phone numbers on their websites. One of them didn't know it. Believe it or not, didn't know it cuz it's called the curse of knowledge. You proofread what's there, not what's missing, right? The other one knew it and had the worst lamest excuse for not having one. And what they said was, “well, we're just, we're outta the office all the time. We're not really available to answer the phone.” I said, “that is the lamest excuse for not having a phone on a website like voicemail answering service.” Two easy choices right there. Forget about call forwarding, even voicemail answering service. So they were, I said I would go with answering service because answering service, a person answers the phone, takes a message.

People will leave a message with a person more likely than with your voicemail, but to not have it because you think, “ well, we're not available.” Or I had a DJ. He said, “well, they don't wanna call me anyway.” I said, “how would you know? your phone number's not on your website, how would you know they don't want to call you?” So three months later when I spoke to him, because he added it, he said, I get mostly spam like I thought, but two mothers of brides called him, right? Not Gen Z, not millennials. Baby boomers, right? Gen X's, they picked up the phone and called you. 

Sarah: I have a, a quick little anecdote cuz I preach this, put your phone number in your website and I preach this as much as I can. I did it on Instagram once where I was like, “if you don't have your phone number on your website, you need to go right now and put it in there. And someone responded back, they're like, “oh, I don't, I'm so scared of the spam.” And I'm like, “I promise you. The spam, you can ignore it, it's fine, but you have to have your number on your website,” and three hours later, I'm not kidding, it was three hours. She's like, “Sarah, you won't believe this. I just got a call from a corporate event planner. They have been searching for a mobile bar that they could actually speak with, it's a $3,000 event and I just closed it within three hours.”

Alan: Right. And, and the same thing with follow up. So I, I've written about this, I've spoken about this. I did a podcast on this and the guy that got got me started on my podcast is also a DJ. He was my producer in the beginning and he listened one weekend, he said, I'm just gonna listen to the episode on following up again. My podcasts are 5 to 10 minutes, literally 5 to 10 minutes, right? Just like the chapters in my book. You can read it in any order. You really don't have to go front to back, just pick a chapter. And he went back to months worth of leads. Not this week, not last week, months, some of which he had had a conversation of some sort. Could have been digital, could have been phone, whatever. Some of which he had never heard back from at all.

And he said, “I'm just gonna try again. What do I have to lose?” He booked five weddings. Okay. I spoke in Ireland last year, and a hair and makeup person came to the event, wrote to me, couple of weeks later, she followed up with five brides that had been ghosting and booked three weddings. And that was just trying one more time. One more time. The whole key is if you have not heard, you have to follow up again. That's it. And I'm okay with no, I am perfectly fine to hear no from someone. I would rather hear no than not hear anything. Cuz now I can move on. And if you have another option, if there's an option for a future event, like with a corporate customer, right? Maybe not for this one, you say. “Oh, thanks. Uh, thank you for letting us know about this one. What's the next event you have coming up? We might be interested in.” Okay, so ask again. But if you haven't heard, No, you have to follow up again and you follow up again. You follow up again because stuff happens, right?

Maybe the other bar  fizzled out on them or maybe they found the need was bigger. Or maybe somebody who's gonna come back and say, “you know what? That bar is kind of boring. Is there something more interesting? Well, there's this horse trailer one. They were a little bit more money, but we could do that.”

Well, it's not about the money. We want the look, right? So you have to follow up. I'll give you a funny story with me. A guy filled out my website form and I happened to be sitting at my desk. He came in and I called him right away, right? If there's a phone number. Called him right away, especially corporate customers, right?

Called him right away. He didn't have to answer, he answered, happened to be on a Friday. Well, and I'm talking minutes, like minutes, right? It came in and he's getting a phone call in and he said, you know, he is telling me a little bit about what he needs. He says, you know what? It's Friday. It's kind of busy.

Any chance we can talk next week? I said, great. How about Monday at two? Never say to somebody, “What's good for you.” Cuz they're gonna say, “I don't know Sarah, what's good for you?” “No, Alan, you tell me what's good for you.” “I don't, no, you tell me what's good for me.” Right? By the way, this is the same whether you're going to dinner or watching a movie or whatever, right?

Always give a choice of one or two. They can always suggest something else. I said, “sure. Monday, how about Monday at two o'clock?” He goes, “that's great.” I sent them a calendar invite. I called him Monday at two. He didn't answer. Okay. People get busy. Stuff happens, right? Or like you and I were talking before we got on our Google calendar, just doesn't put it in there for whatever reason.

So I follow up with an email. I follow up again with an email. I follow up again with an email. I call again, leave a message, right? Following up. So then I let it sit a little bit and then I follow up again with an email, didn't hear back, and then I sent him an email. Now he reached out to me, right? Who started this? He started this. I didn't start this, he started this. He asked about sales training for his people. Okay, so I sent him an email and I said, “don't you wish your team was as persistent as I am?” And this is after like six or seven contacts, right? And I got an immediate reply. And he said, he said, “yes, I do. I've just been really busy, been distracted by other things,” but the conversation is continuing, right? That's the point. He could have come back and said, “Yes, I wish, yes they do, but I found somebody else to help them,” or whatever. Something like that, which would've been fine as well. And it's still open. And the only reason I'm not following up more now is I'm just too darn busy. Right. And I don't know what's with this summer, but people keep coming to me. I just had a guy reach out to me from Georgia and about sales training, and I said, “when were you thinking to come?” He goes, “I was thinking soon. What does July look like?” Well, we're in June now. Right. And I'm like, “July's busy. July's really, really busy between personal and and business stuff. It's busy. August is really busy and I was kind of hoping he would say September when I'm not as busy”. Um, or “actually I'm a little bit busy. Uh, I'm looking for, I'm kinda looking for December now. Right now I'm fitting people in if, if I can fit 'em in.” And I told them, I said, “listen, July 26th. If you want me in July, that's gonna be the date,” right? “I'm on my way to Florida. I can stop in Georgia. I can do that.” So now it's up to him if that date works or not. But it's better than, “oh, well Alan can come anytime in July.”

No, he can't. No, no, no. Nope. That's when he Nope, that's when he can come. Uh, and it's not me creating scarcity. It's, there is actual scarcity there. I don't play those games with people. If I'm open, I'll tell them, you know, I can do over here. I just need to know soon. And it's next month. I mean, come on. Here you go. But who started this? He did. Now one of the things that in that conversation, if I showed it to you, you'll see that every time I email him, I ask a question because if I don't ask a question, then I'm waiting for him to get back to me. And if you're gonna follow up with someone, can you add value to the conversation in this case? Could I add, I actually have to give back to him, cuz I did give him two dates. I said I can go July 6th or seventh or the 26th and something just came up on the fifth. So now I can't even do the sixth, right? So I'm gonna go back and say, well actually now it's only the seventh or the 26th. Creating, and again, it's creating scarcity cuz it's there not creating scarcity because I'm just playing games with him.

So, but the follow up, every time I email him, it fits on one screen and it ends with one question unless somebody writes me a long message. Then they'll read my long message. If, if you write me War and Peace, you will read a long message. But if you don't, if you sending me sound bites and I send you War and Peace, there's no way you're reading that. Right? And that's why we're mirroring. Yes. Mirror style. Mirror tone, you know, uh, he's not writing Alan on it anymore, right. Or Dear Alan or High Alan. It's just. Right to the message. Well, I just mirrored that back and I don't keep adding his name in the beginning of it cuz he doesn't add my name in the beginning of it.

I'm mirroring the style. You won't notice the mirroring. You'll notice the lack of mirroring because it creates friction, right? You'll, you'll notice a difference in tone. If his tone is casual and my tone is formal, he'll notice that if my tone matches his. He won't notice. Kind of like body language, right?

I talk with my hands. Yeah. Well, if we're together and I'm talking with my hands and you're not talking with your hands, I clasp my hands together because they want to move. And if you are not doing that, I'm gonna kind of freak you out with this. New York hand thing going. Cause it just does. Right? You know what I'm talking about? It just does, right? But if I'm with someone who's quiet, I should be quiet. If I'm with someone who's loud, you end up getting louder. My language will get saltier to a point. I won't necessarily match your saltiness, but it might get a little saltier if that's who I'm with.

I've had this again in the New York area. I've had, you know, it's not uncommon in Brooklyn, you know, for the Bronx, for the language to go a little different. Yeah, we've got one word that works in all scenarios, so why not use it? It's, and it's just like punctuation. And then, and there you go. But, this is the point in messaging too, are we mirroring their style? Are we mirroring how much they write? That was in my book, you know, why don't they call me? I talk about the mirroring there, mirroring the tone, mirroring the energy. Uh, I'll give you emojis. I have emojis. I have me emojis. I have a me emoji that scarily looks like me, right? But I'm not gonna use it if you're not using them. Because I might look too informal or unprofessional in a professional setting. But if you send me an emoji, it's like, “oh, all bets are off now.” Right? You've just unlocked my emoji drawer and I can now emoji you back. But this is just business that we do this, we should be doing it subconsciously, but sometimes we have to do it consciously.

But follow up. How many times do you follow up? You follow up until you hear yes or no. Right now, how do you get a no? Make it easy for them, right? Sometimes just send them one sentence. “Are you still looking for, you know, for a cool mobile bar for your next event? Are you still looking for, you know, a something different and creative for the mobile bar for your next event?” And let them come back and say, “Hey, thanks, but I've chosen someone else.” It's okay. It really is. If you closed every lead you got, you can't handle it. Or I should say if, unless you scale, right? But, but again, and when is it, right? Like if it's next year, you can scale. If it's next week, it's harder to scale, but you know, you should.

And by the way, scaling should be because of demand. Not in anticipation of demand. It should be because of the demand. Just like discounting is because you're encouraging behavior that isn't happening, as opposed to, you know, just discounting just because people like to get a discount. No, that's a terrible reason for doing it. Or because your competitors do, you know, it's, it's just like having different pricing for different days. I call 'em your A plus dates, your A dates, your B dates, your C dates. You know, you should not be discounting your A plus dates. The dates that you know you're gonna book. If you do weddings, you should be booked every Saturday in October. It's busiest month in this country for weddings, period. It's gonna continue to be that. There's no reason to be discounting that. There's no reason to be, you know, selling any low kind of a package on a Saturday night in October for weddings. There's no reason to. Right? But if nobody's beating your do doors down for Wednesdays, Well, you might have a different price for Wednesdays than you do for Saturdays. That's okay. You're encouraging behavior that isn't happening on its own. 

Sarah: Oh my gosh. Alan, you've been so generous with your time today, and I could keep talking to you all day long about this, but I'm going to ask you, where can people find more of you? We know that you have a podcast, the Wedding Business Solution Podcast, 5 to 10 minutes a day. That's amazing. We know that you have six, almost seven books out, and I'm going to go purchase at least two of them, based on what you've said. Are you a speaker at Wedding MBA? Where else can we get more of Alan Berg?

Alan: So I've spoken at every Wedding MBA they've ever had since the first one. I am the only one who, who has done that. Back when I was at The Knot, I was Vice President of Sales, was the first time I spoke at Wedding MBA a when we had three or 400 people. Now they get 5,000, but I've been at every one of those. So thank you. Uh, yes, I'm speaking three times there, and I'll have a booth. My website, alanberg.com, has links to everything. Podcast.allenberg.com takes you to a page that has links to Apple, Google, YouTube, Spotify, you name it. It's got links to all of those on there. My books, If you like paperback, shopallenberg.com, and if you use the coupon code PODCAST, you'll get free shipping on me on anything in there. The new books, the old books, and the new book is there for presale now. If you're listening to this after July, you'll get it right away. Um, and the links to the podcast. It's not every day though, thank you. But it's, uh, once a week, five to 10 minutes. Every other Monday I have a guest on, goes about 30 minutes. We started about two years ago. There's, I think 170 podcasts up there. Um, and we're at 160,000 downloads. And then on YouTube there's tens of thousands more. So they're on video as well with captioning. Um, and then, uh, most of my books waiting for the new one, but,  if you need any of the books in Spanish, they're all there for paperback and Kindle in Spanish, 

Sarah: Perfecto. Thank you so much for your time today, Alan. 

Alan: Well, thank you for inviting me. This has been fun. And you're right, we could just keep talking about this all day. 

Sarah: Well, we should. We should maybe, uh, do this again sometime. 

Alan: Let's do it. Pick another topic. Let's do it.