Wedding Business Solutions

Do you really know your conversion stats?

• Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

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Do you really know your conversion stats?

You might know how many inquiries you get, but do you really understand what happens next? Are you tracking how many inquiries lead to real conversations? How many of those turn into meetings or tours—or sales? Are you missing out on bookings just because you’re not following up enough? In this episode, I dig into what key conversion metrics you should be tracking, how to identify your biggest opportunities, and why incremental improvements can add up to a much bigger bottom line.

Listen to this new 9-minute episode for practical ideas on tracking, understanding, and improving each step of your sales process to boost your booking success.

If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or visit my website Podcast.AlanBerg.com 

Please be sure to subscribe to this podcast and leave a review (thanks, it really does make a difference). If you want to get notifications of new episodes and upcoming workshops and webinars, you can sign up at www.ConnectWithAlanBerg.com  

View the full transcript on Alan’s site: https://alanberg.com/blog/


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I'm Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you'd like to suggest other topics for "The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast" please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:

©2025 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com

Do you really know your conversion stats? Listen to this episode and find out. Hey, it's Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast. Do you really understand your conversion statistics? Do you know what they are? And I ask a lot of people this, and people know some of them. And knowing some of them is good. It's better than not knowing any of them. But it could also give you some false information or false sense of security. So let's talk about what, in a perfect world, if you could have this information, what would it be good to have? All right, so let's start with this.

How many inquiries are you getting and from what sources? So ideally, again, in a perfect world, you could pull up a report and it would say you got this many inquiries and these are the sources that they came from. And remembering that they. The conversion from each source doesn't have to be the same for it to still be good. So ideally you'd look at this individually per source. But let's start with how many inquiries are you getting? And if you can tell how many inquiries per source, even better. How many of those people that inquired responded to you when you reached out to them? So remember, this is an inbound inquiry. This is not cold calling. That would be a whole different set of stats here.

Right?

How many cold calls did you make and how did you make them? Are they in person? Were they on the phone with, you know, how did you do LinkedIn or whatever? All right, so let's go back to inquiries that came in and from what source? And then how many of those people responded to you as opposed to ghosting you? Right, because we all get ghosted. I get ghosted. Even though I wrote the books, why are they ghosting me? Two versions of it? I still get ghosted sometimes.

Right.

So that's where a follow up process comes in. So how many of the people that reached out actually engaged in the conversation that they started? In other words, you responded and you got at least one response back, Right? So you got their initial inquiry, you responded, got something back. So what number is that? So you can come up with a percentage. So was that 10%, 50%, 90%? What number was that? How many of those people got to? Whatever your next step is. So if you're a venue, you want to get them from there. A lot of you want to get to a tour. Okay, so then we would go from inquiries to, to conversations, from conversations to tours.

Right.

If you're not a venue or if you're not a dress shop or something. Where you're trying to get people in. How many of those people went to the next step, which could be a sale, it could be jumping across a phone call or a zoom or whatever if you want to get them to a phone or a zoom or if that's normally the next step in the process. And a lot of you don't want to book them necessarily through email, text, Instagram message or the not messenger wedding wire message or whatever, because you want to speak to them, you actually want to hear them and you want to see if it's a good fit. And I'm okay with that. So if that's your next step, then it's from conversation to phone call, to zoom to in person, whatever, however you do that next step, okay, that would be the next step there. And then how many of them to a sale and how many of them did you not hear? No.

Right.

So these still have ghosts at that point. So you had a conversation, maybe you got them in. How many ghosts do we have there? Because the biggest opportunity you have, and I've said this, and I will continue to say this until I stop doing this, the biggest opportunity you have is someone that's already inquired, already thinks you're a good fit, already filled out your contact form, reached out somehow, already most likely read your reviews, maybe heard something about you, maybe experienced you personally, whatever, but they haven't told you no, that's your biggest opportunity. So what we, what I'm looking for is the opportunity for you. So when I do sales training, when I do consulting, I'm looking for the opportunity. So how many people inquired and then you never got them to a conversation?

Right.

So I was looking at stats the other day for with somebody and they were about 55%.

Right.

Another company was about 66, 67%. They got from inquiry to conversation. Okay, not as good as 80, 90%, certainly not as good as 100%, but okay, so there's an opportunity. Are they still following up with that other 45% or 33% that didn't respond to them?

Right.

To at least get a yes or a no. That's what we're trying to get. Yes would be great. But a no is also acceptable because we can close that out and say we didn't get that one. I know we didn't get that one. It's not just hanging out there as opposed to, and you've probably heard me talk about this, people who are getting response from people after the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th and more follow ups and the couple is responding then or the client is responding then, this is not just about weddings. This is just about business in general.

Right?

So if you look at that, that's the first opportunity. How many people never engaged in the conversation? Then we have the people who engaged in the conversation. You didn't get them to the next step. Well, is it closed at that point because you found out that they went another direction, or is that still hanging out? Because, let's face it, life gets in the way. And every one of us is ghosting somebody right now that we saw their message chose not to respond at that time because something else was a bigger priority. Whatever it was, it could be sleep, it could be lunch, it could be working with another client, it could be your family. But something else was more important at that moment than responding to that particular message. So we're all ghosting somebody.

Doesn't mean we're not interested. You aren't a priority. So can you put yourself back at the top of their inbox, whatever inbox it is, so that you will now be top of mind again? So, first opportunity, how many people inquired, never got to conversation. Second opportunity, had a conversation, never got them to the next step. Next opportunity, how many. How many people you got to the next step? Haven't closed yet. Are you still following up with those? If you can increase incrementally each of the percentages of those, what does that mean to your bottom line? Without spending any more than you currently are on advertising and marketing, in a few cases, you might actually be able to spend less because you're just not converting enough from the leads that you're getting. And that's because of the way you're doing it.

As opposed to they're not good leads. Just because someone's ghosting you doesn't make it a bad lead. It certainly doesn't make it a fake lead. You just don't know. And if you don't keep following up and how will you know? And the really interesting thing, I've mentioned this before is that people tell me all the time that after that, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, whatever, when somebody responds, they usually apologize to you because they were busy with. Fill in the blank. Work, school, family, health, whatever.

Right.

Just. I just had it recently myself. I was reaching out to somebody, not hearing back. Not hearing back. Well, it turns out that they had a health issue.

Okay, right.

Good reason for that. Good reason for that. They weren't ghosting me because they wanted to ghost me. They were ghosting everybody because more important, health. Health always comes first. I always say health comes first, then family, then. Then everything else, right? You don't have your health, you're no good to your family or anybody else. So health, then family, then everything else.

All right, so think about those. How many of those stats do you have? How many of those can you pull up right now and say, okay, I'm getting this many leads. I got this many to conversations, I got this many to the next step, phone call, zoom in person meeting, tour, whatever. And I got this many that I closed. Because if you can see those, you'll have a better idea where your opportunities are and whether or not you should be spending your money and time to try to find more leads, or whether you should be spending your money and time to follow up with the leads you're already getting. Because you can squeeze more out of that just like a wet sponge, you keep squeezing, you keep getting some, you can squeeze more out of that much easier and much more efficiently than going, throwing money to try to find somebody else to make an inquiry, who's then going to go into the same process you have. Once you tighten that process up, if you're still not closing enough, then you can look to get more leads because you've tightened up the process. So do you really know your stats? Do you really know your conversion stats?

Right.

We could drill in more. Like when I do consultations, we could drill in more and say, okay, from this source, if this ad is bringing you this many, this social media is bringing you this many, this, this many coming through your website. Although how did they get to your website is a whole nother question here.

Right?

In tracking.

Right.

We can go down those and say, all right, well, this source seems to be bringing you in more leads, but you're not converting as many. So maybe it's not as quality a source. This is bringing you less leads, but you're converting them. Well, okay, can we do something over there to increase the number of leads? Because they're converting better. That's what having visibility to this will do for you. So do you really know your conversion stats? If things are humming along and your business is the way you want it and you're profiting the way you want it, ain't broke, don't fix it. But if it's not, it's a good idea to open the hood and take a look and say, okay, what's really going on over here and where are my biggest opportunities? If you need some help, you know where to find me. Thanks for listening.

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Thanks.


I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or you can  text, use the short form on this page, or call +1.732.422.6362, international 001 732 422 6362. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:

©2025 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com


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Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

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