Muddling through the choices

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Yesterday, we defined the indecisive client and discussed how in a sea of hundreds of choices they are sometimes paralyzed in their decision-making.  Today, we will talk about some selling techniques to better enable you to learn more about what the client wants.  And, how you can help educate them to make more confident choices.

In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Shwartz recommends minimizing some of the choices available to help make a decision.  As vendors, we can help do this by paring down the choices available for our client.  For example, with invite design, clients sometimes LOVE twenty designs… but do they really?  I know that if they walk away with twenty designs in mind, they aren’t going to choose any of them.  It’s all about asking a questions to help them whittle down the choices from twenty to three.

If you sense the client is overwhelmed with all the choices, these are some helpful questions to help them focus and become centered.  They help minimize the number of choices so that they can focus on less.

• SITUATION Questions
  These are background questions you can ask to determine the client’s situation:

  - When and where is your wedding?
  - What is the feel of your wedding?
  - What sort of experience do you want your guests to have?
  - What is it about your wedding location that made you love it?

• PRIORITIZATION Questions
  Questions such as these will help you determine what is most important to your client and will help them determine their priorities:

  - Which is the dominant color of your wedding? (if they have many colors, and seem unable to focus on one)
  - What is more important: the casual nature and fun-loving elements of your wedding or the traditional aspects you want to incorporate? (if they are having difficulty deciding between a casual style versus a formal style)
  - You like the style of this one and this one, but it is not what you initially had planned… do you want to take this in a new direction?  (if they came in with one vision and are distracted by a new vision)

As wedding vendors, we service our clients as educators.  We teach our clients about weddings and expose them to options for the design of their event.  It is up to them to make a decision that is the best match.  Asking the right questions of them, enables us to expose them to the best product or service.  Use your gut and work into a conversation to help them narrow down to a limited number of 3 choices with with to work.

Tomorrow, we’ll be tying all of this together to help your client finalize their decision.