Wedding Business Solutions

Boy, I wish I had this kind of training when I was starting out!

• Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

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What if you'd had just one great book or course when you began your wedding business? How much further could you have gone? Are you investing in the right training for yourself and your team, or just hoping for the best? In this episode, I talk about how investing in your own knowledge—and your team's—pays off in sales, confidence, and retention, sharing stats and stories from my journey in sales and the wedding industry.

Listen to this new 9-minute episode for stats, insights, and simple ways to invest in yourself and your business so you can get ahead faster than you ever thought possible.

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

Boy, I wish I had this when I was starting out. Listen to this episode. See what I’m talking about? Hi, it’s Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast. I just finished another sales book, and I was thinking about how when I started out in sales, I didn’t read any books.

I actually started in sales when I had a rock and roll band as a teenager, and we had to sell that. So I guess I was in sales then.

Then I had a small burglar alarm business after I learned how to install alarms and got certified, when I couldn’t get a job in advertising out of college. After that, I got a job in car sales. My qualification was that one of my closest friend’s fathers opened up the Chrysler franchise. That was it. There was literally no training.

I remember giving my two weeks’ notice at my previous job, managing a retail store—which I also had no training for. I went to my friend and said, “Hey, I want to learn about the product. Give me something to learn.” He said, “You know cars. You love cars. We’ve always loved cars.” I said, “Yeah, but I need to know these cars.”

He spins around in his desk chair, pulls two binders off the shelf that hadn’t been touched since the beginning of the model year, blows the dust off them, and hands them to me. No one else in the dealership cared. No one wanted to learn about the product. That was my first foray into training myself—on the product, not even how to sell.

There was no sales training. It was just, “There you go. Go on the floor and do it.”

I did that for six years and ended up being one of the top 50 Chrysler salesmen in the country. I kept studying product knowledge, and when they had competitions, I was the national product information champion the first year—and the second, third, and fourth.

I’m a learner. But there was no formal training.

When I got into the wedding and event industry, again, no formal training. Many of you have heard me talk about this. I was the business manager at a Honda dealership, and my friend bought a wedding magazine franchise. That’s how I got into the industry. I didn’t know the industry at all.

I had never done outside sales. I had never done cold calling. It was straight commission—no salary, no draw, no base. If I didn’t sell, I didn’t make anything. My wife was pregnant, and our other son was turning three. No pressure there.

I had to teach myself outside sales. I had to teach myself cold calling. I had to teach myself the industry. There was no jumpstart.

I just finished reading a sales book and thought, if I had even one book back then or one course, how much more could I have done? You don’t know what you don’t know until you know it.

I read sales books all the time. Now I mostly do audiobooks. I love books on decision-making. This one was a straight sales book called Sell the Way You Buy, which is interesting because I tell people not to sell the way you buy—sell the way they want to buy.

The idea is simple: if you wouldn’t want something done to you, don’t do it to someone else.

That got me thinking about all the conferences, courses, books, and podcasts we have now. Not just mine—so many opportunities. I went into Perplexity and started looking up stats. What difference does training make? Because our industry is filled with people who just fell into it, like I did.

If you’re a photographer, a DJ, a florist, someone working at a venue—what sales training have you had? If you’re a craftsperson, what formal training have you had?

Here’s what I found.

Companies with robust sales training programs report up to 53% lower employee turnover than those without them. People worry about training employees who might leave. The real question is, what if you don’t train them and they leave sooner?

When I was at The Knot doing sales training, we flew people to Omaha and spent a week with them. So many said they’d never had a company invest that much time in them before starting a job. We wanted to set them up for success.

We had a big training manual, and I never opened it. That drove people crazy. I said it was like opening the owner’s manual to learn how to drive a car. It teaches products and rules, not how to sell. That’s what I did.

Here’s another stat. The average ROI for sales training is 353%. For every dollar invested, companies see over four dollars in return.

If you don’t invest, you’re missing the opportunity cost. You can buy a book, an audiobook, send someone to a conference, or bring in a trainer. When they do better, you make more money.

Another one: quality sales training improves individual performance by an average of 20%. That’s huge for small teams—which is basically everyone in the wedding and event industry.

I’ve read countless sales books. Audible told me I listened to 70 books last year. Some were just for fun, but at least 20 to 30 were business-related.

I’m not asking you to do that. Even one book—one idea—can pay you back. That one idea might help you handle the next objection, get one more sale, or give you more confidence.

I wish I had this when I started out. I’m sure some of it existed. I just didn’t know to look for it. Nobody around me was using it, and they didn’t teach this in college.

So what are you going to do to set your people up for success in the new year? Or to set yourself up?

I remember selling wedding advertising and visiting a photographer whose bookshelf was half photography books and half business books. He wasn’t the best photographer, but he had a better business than most. That should have been a clue.

We always think we know better.

My training and hands-on experience let me teach this now. I’ve done cold calling. I’ve waited in showrooms. I’ve been on the phones. I’ve driven 150 to 200 miles a day knocking on doors. I’ve owned businesses. I’ve made payroll. I’ve hired, fired, and trained.

That experience lets me teach you—or your people. And if your people are you, teach yourself.

Invest in yourself. What’s one book going to cost you? Do something to improve your skills so the next time that situation comes up, you do better—and that will encourage you to do more.

Thanks for listening.


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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